On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 08:45:37PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> On Monday 16 April 2007, brian d foy wrote:
> > Mac OS X isn't "mostly compatible with UNIX", it is a *nix.
> >
> > Use.perl is missing from the Web Forums link
>
> Thanks for you commentary. I disagree about the Mac OS X one - some
things
> about Mac OS X differ from most other Unix-flavours, including the
absense of
> most of /etc, their case-sensitivity problems, their extended file
properties
> (that have often broken perl Makefile.PL) etc. I hate the term *nix
because
eg the use of dylib rather than dlopen (prior to 10.4), Because dlopen is
far
less restrictive in what it allows. Given that most open source software
hails
from Linux, Solaris or *BSD where dlopen is used, it ends up accidentally
taking advantage of dlopen's laxness.
> no one understands what it is, while "Unix-compatible, a Unix-clone, a
> Unix-flavour, etc." is much clearer.
It's a FreeBSD fork atop a Mach microkernel.
It's pukka Unix, more so than Linux actually is. As I understand it, Linux
doesn't derive code from the original AT&T source tree, whereas FreeBSD
does:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html
Linux neither uses any of the AT&T code base, nor p***** the Unix
trademark
conformance tests (unlike, say, z/OS) so isn't.
Whatever term you choose to use, for whatever reason, does not make you
correct when the facts are against you.
Unix-flavour would be an accurate description, and you are correct that it
is not that similar to many other flavours of Unix, which has practical
implications, which you are wise to note. But clone it is not.
Nicholas Clark
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