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Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

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Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#41
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly as the reference UNIX seems to be a Linux with systemd, which isn’t UNIX.

> UNIX I don't understand why UNIX is such a big deal in 2020. Linux has won, and at least one BSD has binary compatability with Linux. If anything, we should be taking about Linux compliance. Having no strong package manager story, yet being UNIX compliant, seems like an extremely bizarre priority choice.

There is some value in standards such as UNIX and POSIX compared to whatever the maintainers of a GNU project decided this morning.

As for your second point, it just means that package management is irrelevant to UNIX (or POSIX) compliance. It did not prevent different package managers to appear over the years, because all the expected infrastructure was in place.

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#43

I keep hearing that `sudo` insecurity argument everywhere. I think that argument is fundamentally wrong. In practice, a package manager that eschews `sudo` does not protect you any less than a package manager that works with `sudo`. If malware has obtained file system access, it’s already game over. The malicious code can now mess with your shell profile and fake the `sudo` command.

Yes the only way around that is to have sudo activate a Secure Attention Key. Windows has had that for many many years ("press ctrl-alt-del to continue") though they seem to have ditched it in Windows 10. Presumably users didn't know what it meant or why it was there and just did it when asked by anyone.

I don't think it's really possible to make sudo use a SAK on Linux though because it requires tight integration of lots of components and Linux systems are cobbled together with glue and string.

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#44

> Some Differences between macOS and Common Unix Systems ...by which is meant, "Some differences between macOS, a certified Unix™, and systemd/Linux". Which is fine and valuable! But macOS is the most common Unix™, so the title as written is... entertaining.

It's true mac OS is the most common Unix, but that doesn't mean it's the only Unix which could be considered common.

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#45
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UNIX I don't understand why UNIX is such a big deal in 2020. Linux has won, and at least one BSD has binary compatability with Linux. If anything, we should be taking about Linux compliance. Having no strong package manager story, yet being UNIX compliant, seems like an extremely bizarre priority choice.

> at least one BSD has binary compatability with Linux. Two BSDs (NetBSD and FreeBSD, no OpenBSD, don't know about Dragonfly), and a handful of Illumos distros (who call the feature LX-branded zones). > If anything, we should be taking about Linux compliance. Please no; a standard defined by one implementation isn't a standard.

> Please no; a standard defined by one implementation isn't a standard

Linux has another implementation: WSL 1

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least one BSD has binary compatability with Linux. Two BSDs (NetBSD and FreeBSD, no OpenBSD, don't know about Dragonfly), and a handful of Illumos distros (who call the feature LX-branded zones). > If anything, we should be taking about Linux compliance. Please no; a standard defined by one implementation isn't a standard.

> Please no; a standard defined by one implementation isn't a standard Linux has another implementation: WSL 1

Linux has many implementations; some are more complete than others.

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#48
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De facto or de jure? Linux isn't technically one, sure, but given that Linux is where the OS hot-shit is now (e.g. eBPF, although I think FreeBSD has the basics - no idea whether it got merged but I saw a student project) is it not fair to say it's where Unix would've been had things been different?

Both, I would say, particularly with the GNU’s Not UNIX userland. I don’t think it matters much, though, as you can have a great non-UNIX OS, which Linux definitely is. Also, we might forget it now, but in the past there were a lot of UNIX that were quite different in small and large ways. The differences between Linux and Darwin might be as great as the differences between SunOS and Xenix, or indeed NeXTSTEP, back i…

You just reminded me of this site, which I found incredibly useful back in the day when I was working closely with Solaris, Linux and OSX (as it was then known).

http://bhami.com/rosetta.html

Re: Some Differences Between macOS and Common Unix Systems

#50

> Some Differences between macOS and Common Unix Systems ...by which is meant, "Some differences between macOS, a certified Unix™, and systemd/Linux". Which is fine and valuable! But macOS is the most common Unix™, so the title as written is... entertaining.

I worked at a Telco that ran over 100k Linux VMs in one department.

Not sure about unix certified os's, but mac os has a much smaller install base than linux.

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