• Bogasse@lemmy.ml
    0·
    18 days ago

    I’m not that surprised, a lot of people around me dot have a clear picture of what is the relationship between MacOS, Linux and Unix is. So I suppose some of them would guess that Linux is a modern fork of Unix and MacOS based on Unix.

  • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    I remember a podcast I used to listen to a long time ago that argued that MS should just make a fork of the Linux kernel and just make the gui work like Windows. Better security and stability, and huge increase in user base with all the normal Linux users seeing it as viable alternative. I thought it was a brilliant idea. Well except Microsoft would likely have figured a way to kill Linux from the inside.

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Except for the part where decades’ worth of software no longer runs on Windows.

      • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        17 days ago

        Seriously, Microsoft’s absurd level of commitment to backwards compatibility is the entire reason Windows has such staying power. I had to fuck around with things to get a Linux port of a ten year old game running without issues, and it was even the Steam version, but Windows will install and run most twenty year old games right off of the original CD without the user having to do anything at all.

        • tiddy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          17 days ago

          I hear this a lot but in production I still see xp/win 7 era PC’s all the time due to comparability issues (half the time still online too :/ )

          Maybe its just absurd support for big spenders like the US military?

          Seems like the small companies are mostly getting burned by gambling on MS

        • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
          0·
          17 days ago

          That compatability has been dropping recently, especially for games. Most of my CD games need extra libraries to run now, if they work at all.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      17 days ago

      That is the literal opposite of what the world needs.

      Windows isn’t a bad OS from a purely technical perspective. If Windows were released as FOSS, I would switch to Windows without hesitation.

      • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
        0·
        17 days ago

        Are you sure it’s not bad from a technical perspective? I saw a story from a former programmer talking about how changes would be made the to the interface in the new settings app that’s trying to replace control panel and the shit was like a horror story.

        • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          17 days ago

          maybe, but there are also things it arguably does better than Linux, e.g. user access control

          (If you can still find this story, I’d be very interested in it, please do link to it here.)

          • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            17 days ago

            The windows kernel isn’t all that great, particularly in the realm of memory security or scheduling.

            You know, to each their own. Question is really whether windows maintaining a closed source kernel even makes sense from a maintenance burden perspective when it really doesn’t give them much money in return. (Most of their money in 2025 comes from cloud services, not operating systems)

            • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
              0·
              17 days ago

              Rumors (Yes, just rumors, I know) have it that MS is working on a shim to be able to just use the Linux kernel under the hood. That’s what spawned WSL. It is a side effect of the work to get the shim between the Win64 userland and Linux kernel. The shim will probably be a temporary thing, until all the ABIs are done.

        • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          17 days ago

          Mostly because Microsoft tries to maintain backwards compatibility to ridiculous extents, and their customers grew accustomed to it so they kinda rely on it, no ?

          • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
            0·
            17 days ago

            I mean, they do until they don’t. They eventually retired 16 bit subsystem, and they are gungho on TPM now. They have always had EOL dates for old OS’s too. I’m not entirely sure why they do what they do, I suspect they are too large and unwieldy to operate as an entity with a unified vision.

            • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              17 days ago

              Sure, and for home users the backwards compatibility feature only really comes up for people into retro-gaming, but a significant portion of their customer base is government agencies that haven’t updated their software since the '90s. The old hardware is dying, so they need new stuff, and that means something with a new OS to run it, but it also needs to be able to run an ancient program that can only be replaced if some some seventy-something who calls every console a Nintendo can be made to understand why software older than their grandkids isn’t the best thing to have, and they might need to introduce and pass a bill to get it done, not to mention budgeting to commission a company to code the replacement.

      • 🅃🅾🅆🅴🄻🅸🄴@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        17 days ago

        The full Microsoft XP source code was leaked and is available for anyone on GitHub; not the same, I know, but it’s atleast NT based. I’ve just always wondered why a community never formed to fork it

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
          0·
          17 days ago

          Because it’s not legal and no one’s going to develop software for XP. Someone could make and sell security patches for it, but the type of person who still runs XP either doesn’t care enough to buy security patches or it’s running some hardware that isn’t connected to the internet.

          There are exactly two games released in the past few years that have XP support, but that was more a flex on the part of the developer then catering to the market. HROT and Zortch are those games if you’re curious.

  • penquin@lemm.ee
    0·
    17 days ago

    Lmfao. My fucking lead was arguing with me the other day how Linux is Unix. I just said ok after I saw that it was going nowhere.

        • rmrvf@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          17 days ago

          What would you say determines whether a kernel is a Unix kernel? I believe Linux is as much a Unix kernel as the BSD kernel is, the FreeBSD kernel, the AIX kernel, the System V kernel, etc.

          • penquin@lemm.ee
            0·
            17 days ago
            1. Code base. It has no relation whatsoever to anything unix. You know the ATT bell labs unix. Unix kernels descend directly from that, Linux doesn’t. It was written by this genuine man named Linus lol
            2. Unix trademark certification that is maintained by the “open group”. Linux is not a certified unix, even though it is POSIX compliant.
            3. POSIX compliance. Linux is POSIX complaint, but that’s just how it behaves in terms of APIs and system calls. POSIX complaince doesn’t make a system “unix”. Linux is not derived from unix at all, its code is its own code, it behaves like unix, but it is not unix. MacOS, BSD and other unix systems are derived from Unix (I know MacOS has taken its own way now, but still, it came from a Unix code base).
              Tldr; Linux is not unix because it does not descend from AT&T Unix or BSD and it is not UNIX-certified.
  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    0·
    18 days ago

    macOS is UNIX, certified UNIX actually.

    But I mean, if someone had the merest impression of macOS and was very familiar with Linux and never bothered to look any further then I’d understand. Maybe they only played around with macOS a little and saw the terminal app had bash and most all the familiar tools as on Linux. It’s not hard to see why they might’ve thought it’s Linux based.

    • Matriks404@lemmy.world
      0·
      17 days ago

      macOS is a certified UNIX, sure, but according to some 2002 specification, and if you modify your system in such matter that it will be in nearly broken state.

    • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      I think 10% of people believe nearly anything. It’s basically the rounding error for a survey.

      Honestly, if you had asked me 10 minutes ago “Is MacOS based on Linux?” I would have gotten it wrong. But if you asked “Is MacOS based on UNIX or Linux?” I would have gotten it right.

      • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
        0·
        18 days ago

        It is now, but it was bash before.

        But in any case once you start doing anything remotely advanced you’ll find the individual command line utilities are wildly different between macOS and Linux. They seem (are?) much closer to FreeBSD than GNU utilities.

          • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
            0·
            16 days ago

            Look I love GPL to death but I’m not going to pretend that every OS vendor on the planet needs to give away everything for free.

            You can like two things at once, and in my case I love my walled garden, commercial OS for end-user stuff as well as Linux for networking gear and servers. I used desktop Linux for awhile but at the end of the day I like things like Airdrop, AirPlay and the seamlessness of it all.

            Honestly, I like BSD operating systems more so than Linux ones despite the licensing arrangements. Linux is open as hell (obviously) but it’s super disorganized. I haven’t found a package manager I like as much as pkg (especially installing binary packages and compiled from source packages side by side with shared libraries).

            Looking forward to being downvoted to hell for having a differing view of Linux than all the recent Windows converts.

        • False@lemmy.world
          0·
          17 days ago

          Yeah, it’s always fun to find out that a standard looking util on osx actually requires weird args and syntax.

          • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
            0·
            17 days ago

            I’m mostly used to it now. Though -r is supported in macOS’ rm command I still prefer -R and use it even on Linux where I believe -r is the preferred argument.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    It’d help if Lunduke were to explain the true origin of those things like Ada Lovelace and programming, and Grace Hopper and the moth. And what predated that.

  • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    18 days ago

    I would be more surprised if 12% of “tech workers” know what Linux is at all.

    Fwiw: I work in a call center as basically a more knowledgeable tech for our client facing team to rely on for help and only about 1% of them have any familiarity with Linux in the slightest.

    I wonder about the framing of this question, like another comment mentioned, it’s kinda like evolution where MacOS and Linux have a common ancestor, I could see the wording throwing people off.

    “Is MacOS based on linux” seems to be the wording used?

    I’d bet less would fall for, “Is MacOS a Linux distribution?”

    Edit: Ha some people in the comments had similar thoughts, in addition to Linux and Unix being nearly synonymous to all but those who are very into that kind of thing.

    Edit again, if anyone else is curious https://youtu.be/jowCUo_UGts

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
    0·
    18 days ago

    What I find more shocking about this assertion is that I have no facts to back it up, but I believe it, and I’m not surprised.

    Of course someone here has a link to some actual research … right?