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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!
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There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)
Now can we have POSIX specs publically available (free)?
this is unix!
I can finally officially launch Terminal.app and not feel dirty!
:)
(hooray for betas
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The Open Group's trademark-protected Unix certification program determines who gets to call themselves 'UNIX'. Just because an OS is derived from the original Unix sources at some point doesn't make it a 'UNIX'. You get to call it a 'UNIX' if it passes the Open Group's tests, which determine if it meets the specifications. In this case, Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard', only when running on Intel Macs, not PPC Macs or any other box was found to meet the UNIX 03 specification.
My blog
Does this mean that turtle neck wearing goatie bearded design weenies will start calling themselves Unix geeks?
Peter
Oddly enough, I don't see any Linux vendors on that list. Does this mean that OSX is more Unixy than Linux?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
No.
No.
Well, if you want certification, you gotta start sometime. I seem to remember the Open Group getting into a little tussle with Apple over Apple's use of the UNIX trademark in its advertisements. The Open Group owns the name UNIX, so you don't get it to call it UNIX unless the Open Group says so. I think this may be part of the arrangement they entered into....
Anyway, the process is expensive. So expensive that none of the *BSDs are certified, no Linux, of course, is certified (yes, a Linux distro could be), etc.
The members of the UNIX club are few: IBM, HP, Sun, NEC, The SCO Group, and a few others.
My blog
Did you forget that GNU is Not Unix?
If UNIX meant more than real world UNIX Compatibility, there's now an easily usable, affordable real UNIX on the market - is the jist of the news. For the few organisations that demand real UNIX this could be in Apple's favour. Yes, the hardware may be crappy, but admin costs would be lower. Or not. Either way the Pointy-haired bosses of the world will be all over it, so many admins will have no choice.
It's not about the 'name' it's about what the certificate represents: Compliance with a specified set of tests.
That's actually very valuable and it isn't just the name, because it means that if you have an application that relies on the functionality proven by those tests, then you're good.
That's the whole point of standards and standardizing bodies. You want a gallon to be a gallon (US or UK, just be consistent!), a kilogram to be a kilogram, a UNIX to be a UNIX. Testing isn't free, so instead of relying on volunteers to do testing it looks like IBM, Apple, Sun, HP, and Fujitsu paid some guys calling themselves the Open Group to do some verification and certify that some standards are met. I don't see a lot of controversy there.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
At least, that was what was going through my head when my eyes were glossed over and I was trudging to the car with my shiny 15" MacBook Pro in my hand. But hey, can I really call myself an American if I don't have several thousand dollars worth of credit card debt spent on totally expendable consumer electronic devices? I don't think so!
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.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
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.
Damn, GNU is still Not UNIX.....you win this round yet again mac fanboys!
In soviet russia, computer systems certify you!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think the more accurate statement is that Leopard is the first one that -passed- certification.
dave
It's right there in the name. GNU's Not Unix.
Stallman's head would probably explode if they certified a GNU/Linux system as Unix!
hmmm....
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
But for everyone else out there, remember : Every time you call a glossy Mac a Unix Server, a geek somewhere dies.
Or he is kept in isolation in a high security prison with a pristine, never installed Dual 4 Cores Xeon 32 Go RAM 10 Gb Ethernet card with a Ginormous(TM) 34" LCD screen Quad Nvidia 8800 GTX SLI and only a WinME cd with no Internet access and VGA drivers.
Well, to keep things short he suffers. A lot.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
...ranging from $40.000 or so and up to $500.000... $40 to $500 (with an extra digit of precision on the cents thrown in for good measure) doesn't seem too bad. Those companies should be able to afford that easily!The trick is to write a set of macros that implement Pico in EMACS. Then you're safe.
Breakfast served all day!