Mac OS X Leopard is Now Officially Unix

An anonymous reader writes "Mac OS X Leopard is now officially Unix, according to the Opengroup." I know everyone out there was really worried about this one. Welcome to the August news vacuum!

Comments

I think its a major achievement

[DogcowX]

There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)

Re:I think its a major achievement

[krgallagher]

"There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)"

Yeah that was my reaction. I checked on the site to see the list of other certified OS'. Here it is:

• Apple Inc.: Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard on Intel-based Macintosh computers
• Fujitsu Limited: Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System on Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER® 64-bit SPARC® Based Platforms
• Hewlett-Packard Company: HP-UX 11i V3 Release B.11.31 or later on HP Integrity Servers
• IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.3 dated 7-2006 or later
• IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.2 dated 8-2004 or later with APARs: IY59610, IY60869, IY61405 with VAC 6.0.0.8 or later on pSeries CHRP systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System plus patch 118844-06 for X86 and on, on 64-bit X86 based systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit X86 based systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit and 64-bit SPARC based systems

There is no Linux. The only BSD up there is OS X. Apparently even Unix isn't Unix. It looks to me like 'THE Open GROUP' is a PR firm for Sun and IBM.

Re:I think its a major achievement

[fermion]

Apple Inc.: Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard on Intel-based Macintosh computers

so when I install Mac OS 10.5 on my powerbook, it is not Unix?

Re:Doesn't make me want to buy an Apple any more

[Otter Escaping North]

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to buy an Apple and not have the Apple-chip installed into your brain. I'm living proof. I have a Mac mini which I bought as a family computer for a number of reasons; I wanted a good, usable OS, I couldn't get good CUPS/SANE support for my printer/scanner on Linux, and I wanted the iLife suite to make videos of the pups. The form factor is beautiful, and it's quiet - working within Mrs. Otter's ban on loud, whirring machines in the family room. It wasn't an impulse purchase by any stretch of the imagination (I weighed the decision for about a year). So I've got a Mac - and if that Mac goes, I'd replace it with another because I want those features.

That being said, I run a Slackware server, I have an Ubuntu desktop in my study. I run Kubuntu at work (a non-supported OS). I've even got a Windows machine, thought it stays powered down for months at a time except when I want to check something. I'm planning on a laptop purchase...a Dell with Ubuntu if they can get it together in Canada.

I can get the same specs as a souped up powerbook for about a grand less at Dell. Grandpa Otter's MacBook started flaking out recently, and I'd service the thing if it wasn't Fort Knox to get in. I know what Apple's strengths are, and I know what their weaknesses are, and I've not bought into a cult because they build stuff that does what I want. iLife is a good suite, but iMovie can be kinda unstable. Front Row is cool, but the interface is a bit sparse, and can be unwieldy if you have a lot of media (I do). The price of their computers is very high, and they tend to lag behind in terms of hardware specs. You can't really customize (you can only upgrade), and nothing ever goes on sale. The design of the machines are beautiful. An extra $150 to have it black??? The fact that they try and keep you out of them is very frustrating to a hobbyist like me. OSX is a good OS that's easy to use. I can't believe it's taking them until Leopard to get multiple friggin' desktops. Everything "just works" on a Mac...yeah, except the new headset I bought because the audio-in jack won't work with an unpowered microphone.

See? Apple computer, no Apple chip in the head. It is possible.

You should think differently.

OS X was finally my opportunity to learn UNIX

[boxlight]

I spent 10 years as a Windows user, and often watched UNIX savvy coworkers dance magically around terminal windows and vi. While I always thought the character driven interfaces were decidedly 1980, I also always felt it would make me a better rounded tech guy if I learned more about that world.

When I bought a Mac (because I wanted something better than Windows), I thought a nice side effect was I would have to learn more about UNIX. I bought a copy of "Learning UNIX for Mac OS X Tiger" and read through most of it. And I'm now very comfortable using the command line for simple things like FTPing, changing file permissions, and modifying simple text files (although I always use PICO because VI just seems like black magic to me).

But you know what? I really don't ever need to "know" that Mac OS X is UNIX. More so than any LINUX or Solaris box I've ever used, the UNIXness of Mac OS X is very nicely hidden -- actually, not "hidden", it's just that since Mac OS X has such a nice UI, and such great apps, I never really need to care about the UNIX underpinnings.

It's quite nice to be able to have your nice UNIX cake, and be able to eat your nice GUI cake too.

Re:Dumb questions

[TheRaven64]

Was Tiger (10.4) certified? No.

I don't see it listed on the Open Group website. Did Apple even try to certify Tiger? I don't believe so. They were sued by TOG a while ago for abusing the UNIX trademark. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Why (not)? In order to be certified as UNIX, an operating system must implement the Single UNIX Specification. There were a few problems with the implementation in Tiger. From memory, the implementation of POSIX thread cleanup routines is horribly, horribly broken (to the extent that code using them won't compile. I don't know what the monkey that wrote the code was thinking, but they should never be allowed near a compiler again), since it used macros with unbalanced braces instead of functions. There were also a couple of minor problems with realtime signal delivery. In the areas I've used, it was closer to compliance than FreeBSD or any Linux/GLIBC combination I've come across (although far behind in speed in a lot of places), but a few things from the spec that worked fine in Solaris just didn't on OS X.

If not then why start now with Leopard? Tiger seemed close to implementing the SUS spec, but it still had holes. Presumably these have been fixed with Leopard. Now, if they could just stop the VM subsystem being an order of magnitude slower than FreeBSD...

Linux, BSD and Unix certification

[Savage-Rabbit]

Linux isn't UNIX for cost reasons. UNIX is a copyrighted compatibility certification. It costs a lot of money to get that moniker, and it really doesn't mean anything in these days of Linux and BSD.

Linux is Linux, it doesn't NEED to be UNIX. A Unix certification is a bit more than a moniker. It means that the level of software portability between Unix 03 compliant systems is guaranteed to be very high. That may not be important to you but to companies/corporations seeking to reduce costs and development times and to achieve the maximum level of reliability and portability in their business critical software a Unix 03 certification has meaning. Also keep in mind that although no linux or BSD flavor other than OS X has gone for actual certification apparently many Linux distributions for example still make sure they are more or less Unix compliant and they do it using Open Group test suites. So even if no Linux distro has officially applied for certification it looks to me as if they are keeping their options open.