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Mac OS X Leopard is Now Officially Unix

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Aug 01, 2007 07:51 AM
from the thank-god-now-cat-will-work dept.
OS X Businesses Operating Systems Software Unix Apple
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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  • I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DogcowX (888899) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @07:53AM (#20069241)
    There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)

    • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Funny)

      by nightcats (1114677) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:09AM (#20069445) Homepage Journal
      If The Open Group is "making standards work" (TM), then who is Making Work Standard? These are the really big questions that we have long meetings about here in corporate America. These are the things you contemplate when you've finished your third cup of jove and are sitting on the porcelain throne, thinking about death...

    • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Interesting)

      by krgallagher (743575) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:30AM (#20069669) Homepage
      "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 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ericrost (1049312) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:37AM (#20069753) Homepage Journal
        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.

        • Linux, BSD and Unix certification (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Savage-Rabbit (308260) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:49AM (#20070801)

          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.

      • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:05AM (#20070153) Homepage Journal
        Part of the problem with this certification is that it needs to be renewed for each version. For Linux, it's not feasible, because it certifies entire operating systems, rather than kernels. The Single UNIX Specification covers a few basic devices, a huge number of C APIs and a set of useland tools (e.g. shell, C compiler, etc). Linux implements a page or two of the spec, and system calls that allow glibc to implement a load more. The GNU tools implement a lot more beyond that.

        A distribution of Linux could apply for certification, but the certification would only be valid for the exact version; update the kernel, any of the GNU utilities, etc, and it would stop being UNIX(TM) (although, for PR purposes, if FooLinux 10 is UNIX, then people probably won't care that FooLinux 10.0.1 hasn't been certified).

        The certification is more than just PR, however. Any product that has the certification is guaranteed to comply with the SUS spec. This means any software written to the specification will work. I'm glad OS X is getting it, since there are a few gaps in the implementation on 10.4 that should have been plugged before they got this. I've written code to the SUS spec before, and had it work flawlessly on Solaris but have minor issues on FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X. The more operating systems that conform to SUS, the easier it is to write cross-platform code. Whether they get the certification is irrelevant, to a degree.

      • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Funny)

        by memfrob (157990) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:24AM (#20070403) Homepage

        IBM Corporation: AIX[...]

        Now we know they're joking. When did IBM port AIX to UNIX? :)

      • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fermion (181285) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:50AM (#20070817) Homepage Journal
        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:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Informative)

          by larkost (79011) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:18AM (#20070313)
          "Unix" (notice the capitol U) is a specific certification whose criteria Apple has met (and paid for the right to use that designation). Generally people refer to things that have their roots in the old Bell Labs UNIX as "unix" or "unix-like" (notice the lower case u's). This is more of a philosophy of how things should work ("everything is a file, even when its not").

        • Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:4, Informative)

          by Creepy (93888) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:30AM (#20070463) Journal
          Unix is trademarked by the Open Group [unix.org], and so to be Unix, you need to pay them to certify your OS. There are several other similar cases in the industry - POSIX is a biggie, as is OpenGL. Often you'll see OpenGL compatible (like Mesa) or POSIX compatible (like Linux and even MacOS X for a while) - basically, they're saying they're API compatible, but not certified.

  • Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ceeam (39911) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @07:54AM (#20069255)
    Now can we have POSIX specs publically available (free)?

    • Re:Good for them (Score:4, Informative)

      by the_arrow (171557) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:41AM (#20069811) Homepage
      Well, the "Single UNIX Specification Version 3" is available to read on the Open Groups website, for free. Registration needed but then if you need to it's easy to download with wget. It contains all of POSIX and more if I'm not misstaken.

  • I know this... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2007, @07:56AM (#20069273)
    this is unix!

  • Thank goodness! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pope (17780) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @07:58AM (#20069303) Homepage
    I can finally officially launch Terminal.app and not feel dirty!

    (hooray for betas :)

      • Re:Thank goodness! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by HairyCanary (688865) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:36AM (#20069751)
        Ummm... when I hit Ctrl-D, it DOES close the terminal. Ever thought about examining the preferences? I guess not.

        • Re:Thank goodness! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by HairyCanary (688865) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:39AM (#20069777)
          forgot to mention... (sorry, I hit submit before it occured to me ;-))

          OSX Terminal is one of the few terminal programs I've used on any OS that dynamically re-wraps existing text in a window if you resize the window. That is very handy. OSX Terminal is otherwise a fairly minimal setup, but it is reliable. I sometimes wish it had tabs, but I generally use screen in any case for session portability, so it's not super critical to me to have elaborate terminal management via the GUI.
  • 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.

  • Saints preserve us (Score:5, Funny)

    by pzs (857406) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:00AM (#20069333)
    Does this mean that turtle neck wearing goatie bearded design weenies will start calling themselves Unix geeks?

    Peter

  • No Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quanticle (843097) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:01AM (#20069343) Homepage
    Oddly enough, I don't see any Linux vendors on that list. Does this mean that OSX is more Unixy than Linux?

  • If it meant anything (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mjgraham (1135833) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:08AM (#20069435)
    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.

  • OS X was finally my opportunity to learn UNIX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by boxlight (928484) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:25AM (#20069609)
    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.

  • GNU (Score:4, Funny)

    by AlanCramer (1132757) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:26AM (#20069613) Homepage
    Damn, GNU is still Not UNIX.....you win this round yet again mac fanboys!

    • Re:GNU (Score:4, Funny)

      by lilomar (1072448) <lilomar2525@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:14AM (#20070271) Homepage
      Which explains why Linux will never be Unix.

      Math:
      GNU/Linux = !Unix/Linux
      so, (hypothetically) if Linux = Unix, then GNU/Linux = !Unix/Unix
      We can't let Unix be 0, because then there would be no Unix, and we can't have that.
      So, let Unix = !0.
      now, !Unix/Unix = !(!0)/!0
      this simplifies to 0/!0
      since 0 over any non-0 is 0
      we get GNU/Linux = 0. Now, GNU/Linux is not 0 for the same reason Unix isn't 0. (it's just to awesome to not exist) So, therefore, Linux != Unix. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

    • Was Tiger (10.4) certified?


      No.

      Did Apple even try to certify Tiger?


      No.

      Why (not)? If not then why start now with Leopard?


      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.

    • Re:Dumb questions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @09:14AM (#20070279) Homepage Journal

      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...

    • Re:Money is taken away from the idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ThosLives (686517) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:10AM (#20069469) Journal

      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.

    • I look at all the people coming out of the Apple store when I walk around town during lunch & those people REALLY DON'T CARE, that's for sure, they look like they're in a trance coming out of that store...
      Well, if they're anything like me they're probably just contemplating whether or not they can pay off their credit card bill next month after buying a MacBook Pro and AppleCare coverage. "Hmm, if I only make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the family I might be able to pay for half of the MacBook Pro this month and half next month... Oh shit, I should really just take it back... oh man, but I'd have to pay a $250 restocking fee... shit. I'm just going to go home and play with it and maybe I'll feel better about my purchase even though my 15" Powerbook was working perfectly fine and was only 2 years old."

      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.

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