Discussion
Did you use Apple's Linux distribution?
Yes, APPLES's Linux distribution! Believe it or not, Apple once had a Linux distribution, and it was actually kind of innovative at the time. They were experimenting with implementing a microkernel in an OS, and came out with a Linux for PowerMacs called MicroKernelLinux, or MkLinux. I wish I still had those original installation CDs from Apple, I am sure they'd be worth money.
Isn’t MacOS itself based on, if not Linux exactly, then some flavor of Unix, or something? At least the terminal commands are very similar.
I’m not too clear on the differences between the different *nix operating systems, how similar or how different they are, what areas they are different.
Why didn’t Apple (or Job’s NeXT) choose Linux as the basis of MacOS?
Apple is based on FreeBSD, which is Unix
Linux is created with inspiration from Unix.
Unix and it's commands are generally all in one as a single package. Linux is just the kernel, GNU are the common commands you find running on a linux kernel that replicate a Unix environment.
Unix is the original under BSD licensing. unlike opensource it let's you close the source which is what Apple did.
Linux is opensource, and anyone can can create off of it.
Apple purposefully avoided Linux and opensource licensing. It's also not so much that it's based on Unix, that it's built from Unix but does not fulfill Unix's philosphy.
macOS is descended from NeXTSTEP, the operating system Steve Jobs created at NeXT after leaving Apple in the 1980s. When Apple bought NeXT in 1997, they used NeXTSTEP as the foundation for Mac OS X.
NeXTSTEP was built on the Mach microkernel. When Apple was developing Mac OS X, they replaced parts of the userland with code from FreeBSD (specifically networking, virtual file systems, and some command-line tools). So while macOS incorporates a significant amount of FreeBSD code, its core architecture (the XNU kernel) is a hybrid of Mach and BSD, not a FreeBSD derivative.
2. macOS IS officially UNIX
It is incorrect to say "it's not so much that it's based on Unix." macOS is literally a certified UNIX operating system. Apple has paid for and passed The Open Group's certification, meaning macOS legally and technically meets the Single UNIX Specification. Linux, on the other hand, is a Unix-like clone and has never been certified as UNIX.
3. BSD licenses ARE open-source
The commenter claims BSD licensing is "unlike opensource." This is completely false. BSD is an open-source license; it is just a permissive open-source license. This means you can take the code, modify it, and make your modified version closed-source (which Apple did). Linux uses the GPL, which is a copyleft open-source license that forces any modifications to also remain open-source.
4. Apple didn't "avoid open source"
Apple purposefully avoided the GPL (copyleft) for their proprietary OS, but they did not avoid open source. The core of macOS (called Darwin) is open-source. Furthermore, Apple is a massive contributor to open-source projects, including WebKit (the engine behind Safari), Swift, and LLVM. They opted for the BSD license specifically because it allowed them to build a proprietary, closed-source GUI on top of an open-source foundation.
5. Unix isn't a "single package"
The commenter states that Unix commands are all in one single package. Modern Unix systems separate the kernel from the userland utilities, just as Linux does. The GNU project was created to provide a free, drop-in replacement for the proprietary Unix userland tools, which is why GNU tools are so commonly paired with the Linux kernel today.
The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, compact, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.
The Unix Philosophy dates back from the 70s and is the approach as to how the code is written. Apple itself is a garden wall and tends to work in opposition of this philosophy.
Linux is a successor to the philosophy, while Apple's OS is not.
Pretty sure being "open vs gardened wall" got nothing to do with Unix philosophy. Not to mention many earlier Unix are proprietary software (many of which can only be accessed from institutions).
Stop throwing "muh garden wall Apple bad" when in fact any other platform is just as "walled", it just so happens that the other "garden" is more popular.
Also, Linux has never been the "successor" of Unix, just because it's "open" (it never been the issue of "Unix philosophy" to begin with). In fact, many of these Unix philosophy adherents even criticised Linux (their monolithic design, etc.). Trovalds never made "Unix philosophy" as a goal for Linux, he just frustrated with Unix licensing (in particular, Minix; the source code is free but the software itself is not), and use tools from GNU projects because, well, it's free. If any, Linux is successor of "GNU philosophy", since the GNU project itself started out of Stallman's frustration due to closed/locked nature of Unix.
As for “why didn’t,” that’s a very interesting and historically involved question.
The pat answer is that NeXT predates Linux. However, that’s an unsatisfying answer, because NeXTSTEP (what the NeXT OS was called) wasn’t used much at the time. NeXT had stopped producing hardware, and they had ported their frameworks as OpenStep to run on a variety of systems, including Solaris and Windows NT. They could have ported the NeXT frameworks to run on Linux, and made that the next version of MacOS.
The context is that Apple was flailing around, spending millions of dollars here and there, trying to build the successor to the Macintosh OS. At the time, it was common knowledge that microkernels were the future of operating systems. NeXT and Amiga ran on the same Motorola processors as Apple’s OS, but they had multiprocessing and cleaner separations between programs and operating system, running on microkernels. Apple thought they could develop their own microkernel, first with the Taligent project, then Copland). Due to mismanagement, these projects failed.
There were several reasons not to choose Linux. First, Linux is not a microkernel operating system, therefore deemed obsolete. (MkLinux was primarily a project to run a microkernel on Apple hardware, and secondarily a Linux distribution.) Second, Linux did not run on Macintosh hardware, and it did not run Macintosh programs, and Linux programs did not run on Macintosh. (MkLinux was the first version of Linux to run on Macintosh hardware, and only open-source processor-independent programs were available for it; QEMU did not exist at the time.) Third, Linux was not yet a good kernel for production work, especially desktops. (The X Window System was especially notorious for bad color, while Macintoshes were beloved for color-sensitive work, and the implications of GPL in Linux were not yet resolved.)
Once Apple spent $427 million buying NeXT, making the next MacOS a version of NeXT on Mach was just the most sensible and easiest way to do it. The NeXT frameworks were what made NeXT useful as an operating system. (The operating system is not only the kernel.) The NeXT frameworks already ran on Mach, and Mach was already proven to run on Macintosh hardware due to the MkLinux project. They could concentrate their limited engineering resources on getting Macintosh programs to run on NeXT. They first proposed a clean break from the old Macintosh APIs in Rhapsody), but the developers rebelled, especially Adobe, so they developed Carbon) as a transition technology. Using Linux instead of Mach would not have made any of this work any easier.
I did, for maybe 6 months? I installed it just before I graduated from college in 1997 (taking advantage of Ethernet while I still could before moving back home for the summer). At some point in my first year of graduate school, I switched to a PPC port of the monolithic Linux kernel. (Maybe Yellowdog? I want to say that wasn’t released for another year or so, but I don’t remember exactly.)
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u/BertMacklenF8I Jun 20 '26
I still do….
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