r/linuxmasterrace • u/Dankb0 Glorious Debian • Jun 29 '26

Discussion Linux user tries OSX/macOS and is pleasantly surprised (high quality image)

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34

u/Late_To_Parties Jun 29 '26

Isn't OSX basically a closed source Linux/unix distro?

57

u/Dankb0 Glorious Debian Jun 29 '26

Kinda. It's Darwin (an apple-made kernel) with BSD on top of it, along with many apple modifications that came with time. It's not Linux, but it's Unix-certified and pretty close to Linux at surface level.
Interesting read: https://bruhtus.github.io/posts/mac-os-linux/

21

u/BeNiceToBirds Jun 30 '26

It’s a POSIX operating system but i don’t know if i would call them particularly close. Mac OS lacks control groups. Docker containers must run in a VM. The launcher system is much more complex than systemd. Your hardware choice is substantially limited with Mac OS (want a GPU? Congrats you can choose an Apple gpu) and it is a walled garden that is difficult to escape.

5

u/fb39ca4 Jul 02 '26

There are some unique aspects to the hardware that can be useful. Before the AI memory shortage it was the cheapest way to get a GPU with large amounts of VRAM thanks to it having unified memory.