Re: Mac iBook OS10 + BSD

[Justin C. Walker]

On Sunday, December 22, 2002, at 10:24 PM, Steve Kudlak wrote:

David Hunt wrote:

I have been using Linux (Slackware) for a number of years on my
desktop, and have never used BSD. From what I've gathered, BSD sounds
like the kind of OS I would like.

[snip]

This brings up an interesting question. Apple makes all sorts
of noises about BSD being the basis of the MAC.

FreeBSD 4.4 has, more or less, been integrated with the Darwin/Mac OS X kernel for the 10.2/Jaguar release. It's a real Unix under all the colors. You can get at it with ease, using Terminal, or remotely via ssh/rlogin/telnet.

Keep in mind that because there's a serious commercial product around it, and the heritage includes NeXT, it's not identically FreeBSD. The very low layers are Mach-based, which accounts for some differences. The networking is BSD-based, and incorporates much of FreeBSD 4.4, but is not entirely compatible. None of this should bother you if you are not deep into kernel development.

 If I get the
bucks I may switch to a MAC. My question is how much of
the BSD operating system can one get access to on a MAC
running OS X?

You can get at all of the low-level OS. As above, it's not identical to any flavor of BSD.

Has anyone done even simple things like
started up cron jobs

Yup.

and the like to do housekeeping? Most of
the MAC users I know, know BSD is there but haven't done
much with it. IN fact there are noises one can't get at all the
internals and the like.

Noises abound, but as is generally the case, the more noise, the less information.

 Does anyone have any details about
all of this stuff. I know this is kind of general question to post
on this list. But so far even lurking this list is often where real
questions often get answered. Any pointers would be appreciated.

You can lurk on the 'darwin' lists (http://lists.apple.com) for discussions of low-level stuff, as well as kernel extension and driver development. Try the lists at http://www.omnigroup.com for discussions dealing with the management of Mac OS X systems.

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large *
Institute for General Semantics | If you're not confused,
| You're not paying attention
*--------------------------------------*-------------------------------*


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