So recently I made a cancer thread that got closed, and I was actually going to ask this question how close is OS X to its Unix/Linux counterparts? How much of it is actually Apple's input? If someone can show me some code that would be great, I am not looking at this as a flame war but as computer science student I would like to start a constructive and informative thread. Hopefully this thread does not get close. I also wondered how Linux drivers seem almost plug n play, almost every device I plug in works with no problem at all (sort of), the only thing I have seen not work in Ubuntu was this Rosewill wireless adapter, which I am glad it didnt work it made me find thinkpenguin such a great site really. So how do they have almost universal drivers? How did they even go about coding such a thing?? Or how does it work?
I also provided some pictures where most people would say the difference is aesthetics not really.....
the real question is , when osx first came out , was there a linux distro that looked exactly like it back then?
There has been give and take between both.
Ubuntu was what started the"App Store".
OSX popularized the smart dock.
There are a bunch more examples also there differently is influence to and from Windows.
Nothing wrong with using what works even if it is "not invented here"
Yes there exaly was a linux distribution that was a like a copy of OSX.
It was called Pear OS if i´m not mistaken, but it has been discontinued.
Anyway in terms of looks, there are a couple of Linux distro´s who are designed to the looks of Mac OS.
- Elementary OS, which Ubuntu / Debian based.
- Apricity OS, which is based on Arch.
I have tried both, and they are basicly pretty good.
Apricity was in beta the time i tested it, so there were a couple of flavs with it.
But i think that those are fixed now days.
Of course you can also install any Linux distribution, and modify it with OSX theming.
Also for docks, Docky or Cairo dock for example.
well I'm thinking the claim here is that osx is pretty much just a linux clone , at least visually , however I don't think there was a linux distro in 2001 that really looked a lot like that prior to osx.
Nice feedback but my question isnt really about design and aesthetics it was more on the coding side, like drivers, headers, and kernels. Does Apple write their own or do they just copy and paste it or take it from Unix??
True but I dont know they are a tech company many people actually think they invent most of the stuff they produce, and as a tech company the should have at least invented or creatively created something for their OS (aside from aesthetics)? Right?
Well the OSX we all know today was born from another OS that steve worked on when he started the company next. It was based on Unix with some stuff from BSD.
Steve took the next OS and then built the modern day OSX on top.
In terms of UI, its always been apple. You can follow the UI progression throughout the years and you can see the evolution. The first GUI they had had a panel at the top and icons at the bottom.
With Nextstep the icons turned into a really ghetto dock. And so on and so on.
Did they really steal or copy anything? Not in the same sense one might think. Apple would do something first. Someone else would take it and do it better. Then apple would take that persons idea and one up them.
So there has been a lot of back and forth, which causes a lot of similarities. But there is very little relation between the different projects.
Mac osx is basicly a unix based operating system.
So its not that strange that there are some simularity´s.
On the UI side it's all back and fourth. Just a few examples:
Apple took the modern UI from Xerox.
Apple did GPU GUI, then Linux, then windows.
Linux did multiple desktops, then apple, then windows.
As for drivers. Apples will use the same architecture as BSD, however many of the drivers are likely proprietary as much of the system now is.
They do release some source code for what they decide to release that you can check yourself.
Ty
Lol yea thats apple take something and sue them for it. But the UI is not much different from debain like in my pictures its not any different actually. But as someone pointed out apple did make first gui on the GPU so yea i guess thats it.
linux is mostly plug and play because most of the non-proprietary drivers are installed on the system, or part of the kernel. Or i operates in a generic mode.
Yea i get that but how would you go about coding such an amazing thing? I mean it made Apple's job a joke when they used osx on the original iphone...what is this godly code?
you just program it like normal. its nothing special. you may have to make specific drivers for platforms like arm, x86, mips, etc.
on the drivers end it did not always work as well as it does now. I remember back in the mid 2000's with ubuntu you still had to make sure your devices were supported even for things like generic Texas Instrument based FireWire or SATA expansion cards. What needs to be remembered is that there has been more standardization of designs as more parts have been produced/replicated in china and there has been a long length of time to get driver support for some devices and platforms.
My opinion is,
The Apple was pretty smart about using open source. They used alot of really awesome things, only example that I can think of right now are from KDE. There are alot of graphic and pic like the Disc pick used from KDE. Also the reason we have fast web browsers like chrome becuase of Webkit. What you may not know is the apple to khtml from Konqueror and modded it and use it is safari. If the licence had not been GPL2 then there would be no Chrome. I am sure there are other examples.
Also answer to universal drivers. You might be interest in look at https://www.darlinghq.org/ in know that @DeusQain has mentioned it on a few posts. Which looks to have a compatibility layer between OSX and Linux.
While I do not write drivers, I think that as Linux has a monolithic kernel and OSX has a hybrid kernel there is a fundamental I/O difference between the two platforms. That would make universal driver impossible.
? It's extremely special...can you boot windows on as much devices as you can with linux? No. These drivers are amazing and in my opinion they make up what makes linux so great.
Ah thanks for the links man! And we have to give it to apple they knew what was going to be the next craze and made sure to get their hands all over it. They are really good with this and marketing.