Are macOS and FreeBSD the same Operating System?

[@marcmakes1725]

I attended the 1997 Mac Hack conference where Apple showed us Copland and BeOS was there walking all over Apple. Copland could hardly run for more than 10 minutes without crashing. That was probably one of the nails in the coffee for the original Mac OS. Later I attended the Apple Developer conference after Apple purchased NeXT and had a few beers with some of Apple engineers. The concuss was that Apple purchased NeXT over Be mostly because of the preexisting ecosystem of BSD and NeXT apps including some important Adobe apps. It was also a much more mature OS even then. Besides all that, Apple got Avie Tevanian in the deal. Getting one of the primary guys that invented Mach was kid of a big deal that flew under the radar.

[@joesalyers]

Years ago I read on the Steve Jobs blog thing, that MacOS was more openBSD & NetBSD than FreeBSD hence MacOS and openBSD are NetBSD semi-forks, the userland is a combo of those BSDs as well as the core-utils like the PF firewall taken directly from openBSD. The original desktop was a QT clone of XFCE since Nextstep/openstep used a modified CDE desktop with Xforms. Apple needed a QT based desktop to run on the Quartz Compositor and Aqua window manager, because Apple didn't want to use X11 or Xforms, so they forked a very early version of XFCE and cloned it to QT for the animations and a for simpler themeing. Basically the Quartz Compositor was Apple moving away from x11 in 1999 while Linux waited another 20 before moving toward wayland. Steve Jobs talked about how Aqua was a desktop environment so pretty you wanted to "lick it"? He was strange to say the least. But you can still see the heritage of those choices today. X11 is still available in MacOS with the XQuartz app and allows you to run X11 applications like GTK apps built into a MacOS binary in a sandboxed X11 environment with all the Mac creature comforts. Not sure if the Steve Jobs blog is still up on the net but it was mostly him arguing with people about things like Flash and other things and mostly Steve answering questions about why apple doesn't want to be more like Microsoft and support everything under the sun. But their were some interesting bits about the history and evolution of Nextstep to Mac OSX but its mostly Steve ranting. LOL Great video Cheers!

[@supercellex4D]

holy shit, that's why I still see resemblance to Xfce in macOS sonoma

[@joesalyers]

@@supercellex4D MacOS is closer to KDE or LXQT than XFCE today but the earliest versions of XFCE used QT and then they switched to GTK. But If LXQT would add some animations and a unified theme that wasn't openbox it could be a very efficient desktop environment. But yea MacOS still has that xfce feel to it. Cheers!!!

[@impossiblescissors]

Excellent summary. Although to say MacOS is more like one flavor of BSD versus others is somewhat moot, since much code is shared between the BSDs. MacOS is also a relative of the PlayStation OSes in that regard!

[@joesalyers]

@@impossiblescissors Yes you are correct, the playstation, MacOS and 90% of the Nintendo Switch are all cousins. MacOs is actually a Fork of BSD 4.4 with the XNU MACH "darwin" Kernel. MacOS is the only Unix Certified operating system in the Mainstream today. But since the fork from BSD 4.4 MacOS has sort of bloomed into its own thing. But at its core it is still a Unix System using the more modern ZSH shell. Apple even abandoned the BASH shell around the switch to ARM. Linux has done some great work with Wayland as well and honestly I use mostly Macs for work at my recording studio but all of the PC computers I buy that aren't Apple run either a Linux distro with KDE or FreeBSD with XFCE. I just don't like Windows as an operating system after decades on Nextstep then MacOS I feel more at home with Linux o FreeBSD.

[@Yep6803]

TBH I would say NetBSD and MacOS nowdays own the same amount of code, after Hubbard's job. But neither NetBSD and MacOS and OpenBSD are FreeBSD. GhostBSD, DragonflyBSD and PcBSD are FreeBSD.

[@SalivatingSteve]

Sony’s PlayStation 4/5 OS is based on FreeBSD. Something interesting with Apple’s Metal game porting toolkit, is I’ve noticed the first games they announced like No Man’s Sky are all Playstation ports. I suspect there are a lot of similarities between Apple’s Metal 3 API and PSSL.

[@ooooooooooo9656]

Yes, but Sony doesn't contribute to the FreeBSD codebase Which is fine, it's allowed by the license

[@anthonymacgregor9790]

@@ooooooooooo9656 i watched a chris titus tech video on playstation and FreeBSD and turns out they do contribute to freebsd but thanks to a deal they cut don't get credited.

[@anthonymacgregor9790]

if i recall PS3's operating system is also based on FreeBSD too

[@SalivatingSteve]

@@anthonymacgregor9790 yep all of Sony’s modern consoles run a customized form of FreeBSD. I think it was just easier for Apple’s HLSL tool to convert PS Shader Language and Vulkan API calls into Metal vs converting DirectX 12. APIs.

[@NonameEthereal]

@@ooooooooooo9656 Per statements by FreeBSD team - Sony contributes a LOT to the FreeBSD codebase. Sony just strips its name from those contributions - probably to avoid competitors inferring what Sony is planning.

[@petrisalmimeri5026]

Thanks for your interesting video on MacOS origins. Your clear and calm style without any fuzz and show is the best one. I'll need to subscribe your channels. See ya!

[@LappDog]

Fun fact: I watched this video on my 2011 MacBookAir. It still works great! neofetch --stdout OS: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 17G14019 x86_64 Host: MacBookAir4,2 Kernel: 17.7.0 Uptime: 51 days, 10 hours, 26 mins Packages: 942 (port) Shell: fish 3.6.0 Resolution: 1440x900 @ eXtendedHz DE: Aqua WM: Quartz Compositor WM Theme: Blue (Light) Terminal: iTerm2 Terminal Font: Inconsolata-dz 12 (normal) / InconsolataForPowerline-dz 11 (non-ascii) CPU: Intel i5-2557M (4) @ 1.70GHz GPU: Intel HD Graphics 3000 Memory: 3499MiB / 4096MiB

[@donaldmickunas8552]

While I’m not an Apple fanboy, I don’t hate them either. Their products don’t suit me very well at all but my preferences are not main stream. Yet, I recognize that Apple products do fit some people very well and I have suggested looking at them to some individuals on that basis. Great video. Thanks!

[@GaryHTech]

Thanks for the feedback 🙂

[@hollnagelc]

New subscriber here 👋🏻. I’ve dabbled in all the popular OS. Windows , MacOS and last few years I’ve been messing with Linux along with MacOS. I’m currently looking into playing around with FreeBSD. I just like learning about things in general. I’m looking forward to learning from your channel. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.

[@GaryHTech]

Hope I can help you on your journey 🙂

[@islam-karam]

This is really great question, thank you a lot for taking time to answer this question.

[@wildmanjeff42]

Thanks for the video Gary

[@Upliner1]

For me different executable formats (ELF vs Mach-O) are enough to say that they are different OSes.

[@godnyx117]

Yep! Such an important difference. It can be enough for someone that makes a compiler (with a fully custom backed) to not support one OS.

[@3a146]

dont be so confident, Windows RT is windows as well.

[@Upliner1]

@@3a146 What's wrong with WinRT? I've took a look and under the hood it still uses PE executables. It's just like Linux and Android. Most regular Linux apps don't run on Android, but under the hood Android still runs Linux kernel and ELF executables.

[@3a146]

@ then it signifies my idea more, certainly arm native and x86 native are different. And WinRT died because branding different executables same extension name does not make them the same. If you were talking about how machine protocols distinguish operating systems, then winRT shows that it’s not the case. Different machine protocols can support a same OS. And also consider DOS, certainly different from Windows, but share the same executable format. My idea is simply that OS is about emergence, not just where it comes from, nor just where it goes to. OS is about how from and to are wiring together. And for unix-like systems, because of compiler software distribution, how you encode executables on disk is even less relevant to how you distinguish different OS. A thought experiment to use zip on all executables on top of a Linux would still yield a Linux.

[@Upliner1]

@@3a146 I'm not sure I really understand you. MacOS also can have ARM app bundles and x86 app bundles, both sharing the same bundle extension, but it surely isn't going to die because of that. And surely the same executable format isn't enough to claim them as a same OS, as both Linux and FreeBSD use ELF, but they have different ABIs. And I don't know what do you call "emergence". What about MS-DOS, DR-DOS and FreeDOS?

[@amanitamuscaria4946]

Hey Gary, it was a delightful video about the two arch-nemesis operating systems, macOS and FreeBSD. I was wondering, what do you think about the hardware compatibility of these operating systems? Currently, I'm using Debian as my daily driver, but I'm looking for my next journey and am considering FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Additionally, could you make a video about contributing to the FreeBSD project? Thank you so much for the video! Cheers

[@GaryHTech]

I've never seen an issue with hardware compatibility but some do, macos can be run in a proxmox VM now and FreeBSD runs on round in pretty much anything. That's a good suggestion I'll look into that 🙂 as I maintain a few ports myself

[@mala5873]

Thanks for the video Gary!

[@EirikrTinkerTries]

On a very random note, I noticed GhostBSD and MidnightBSD are missing from that tree along with xv6,Plan9 and 9Front

[@NonameEthereal]

Plan9 is not a Unix, so should not be in the Unix family tree. If it had matured past the research OS stage, it would have had a similar relationship to Unix as Unix does to Multics. I would argue that Ghost and Midnight are more akin to "distributions", not actual separate Operating Systems.

[@moshesabovich9362]

I would be interested seeing your laptop running on Haiku OS!

[@icollided]

I remember the $10,000 neXT black cube.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

and actual money. It was a workstation in theory and that was a normal price for an entry-level workstation back in the day. Even the Mac II could be configured to easily be that expensive (Macworld did an interesting comparison). The problem was that Next did not have an entry machine (to get revenue for R&D and marketing stay competitive and make people fall in love with it). The machine was far ahead in software terms but had not chance. It's important to recall that the Wintel machine was in full production.

[@maximilianschwab9668]

I am as old as you, and back in the day, they said very openly, that Mac OS was a BSD system, they did not want to make the same mistake that Microsoft did.

[@GaryHTech]

Shame really as MS had a great foundation with BSD's network stack.

[@marktrerise]

Not sure if it’s just me but between time stamps 7:25-7:35 with the ‘man mv’ example, the video doesn’t show the terminal at first then it catches up and is gone before you can really see the output. Maybe some sort of lag but bummer to not be able to see it. Good video topic though.

[@Moustafa-Sabry]

@@marktrerise Yea I saw that too. But if you go frame by frame it’s at 7:33 and you can catch it. The title of the man pages is “BSD General Commands Manual” - the rest is just the guide for mv.

[@solembum78]

So you basically know nothing and refer to wikipedia and simply reading it most of the video. Why bother making a video then?

[@kevinmiles5770]

came here to say the same thing, but I didn't want to be as rude (hahaha) few other things about the video that need serious polishing.

[@scottharvey-davies1607]

The Haiku OS project is a modern take on BeOS...

[@Yep6803]

MacOS is older, MacOS is a pure BSD but this isn't being FreeBSD. BSD isn't necessarily FreeBSD as OpenBSD and NetBSD is FreeBSD. PcBSD and GhostBSD and DragonflyBSD are FreeBSD forks. MacOS and NetBSD share the same amount of FreeBSD genetic, a lot but aren't FreeBSD. Is commonly called "FreeBSD" since most of the code is FreeBSD but isn't. Apple hired Hubbard in 2012, before they were based in something alike 8.3BSD and they were really really outdated. So, nowdays 70% of MacOS is a pure FreeBSD but isn't FreeBSD since Darwin is itself a distro of BSD stand alone. MacOS is a distro of BSD, they cannot be FreeBSD if they are already a BSD. Is unsensical. Distros can share stuffs but isn't being the same thing: userland is FreeBSD but Darwin is a 8.3BSD.

[@destroyer2973]

Short answer: No, although the underlying Darwin OS shares much code with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, the XNU kernel is only really used on Mac OS. Likewise, although Mac OS is Single Unix Specification v3 compliant, it has an object oriented programming layer written in Objective C called Coaca, which only runs on apple platforms. The closest thing to an open source coaca is the GNUstep project, although that is more of a rewrite of nextstep, not modern Mac OS.

[@seasonfilms9375]

So can we run apple programs on Free BSD then?

[@BillRalens]

Computers are kind of like welders, when people find out you know something about it you get bombarded for help. If I had the power, I'd banish windows from the world. It'd save me so much headache. My mac pro, only turned it off to blow the dust out. Up and running for nine years. I'm not an apple fanboy; you just like things that work. I prefer cartridges over disks for video games too. Load times? What's that?

[@stevejohnson1321]

The supposed sameness between VMS and "nt" is a bit more questionable. There are some similarities because of shared author, but things fell apart what with backward-compatibility. Recent apple' OS started with a focus on security, by contrast.

[@itzelcoutino1258]

Hi gary, I am new to this, but I have a question: how can I configure the dhcp service for clients? In college I have to do an homework where I have to provide the dhcp service to my clients which are connected to my switch. But I have no idea how to do it.....

[@brenthendricks8182]

RANT: Don't leave your dock up on the screen! I wanted to work on something while watching this, started clicking on the doc in your video in full screen, and wondering why none of my apps were launching!!! :)

[@badpiggies988]

MacOS is the brother of Linux, both were born from Unix. And since Android is a distro of Linux, that means iPhones’ and Samsung phones’ softwares are distantly related. Interesting.

[@suzieq8379]

my network and macbook have been hacked by bluetooth global or something as of Sept 15, it has I can't count the plugins I have Exec , or Unix is installed and I want it gone.. My Netbios tell me my computor is being used by someone else, my wifi is all messed up they are in my iphone, turning my bluetooth on

[@kevinmiles5770]

[@juanalejandrolopezmatias3154]

Video VPN in freeBSD 13.1?

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Man, don't suffer, it's a 1 minute video: No it's not. Both started as from the BSD lineage, but that is all.

[@dynamitestyle8678]

I don't like Apple and their iOS products due to their limitedness but I don't mind MacOS.

[@safi164]

FreeBSD and MacOS are not the same OS... MacOS uses FreeBSD's userland utilities but it has a different kernel called the Mach Kernel nor MacOS and FreeBSD are binary compatible.. I remember during early 2000s Apple used to release the lower parts of their OS called Darwin as opensource and it was possible to make distros out of it like the OpenDarwin distro and I have even used it though Apple like all greedy corporations stopped releasing the source code to stop any such thing... One thing with MacOS is that being a unix-like OS and POSIX compliant it shares similarity and some compatibility with the rest of the Unix world like BSDs, Linux, etc but that is mostly about it.

[@remigoldbach9608]

The XNU kernel from Apple seems to be on GitHub, but nothing interesting happens with it...

[@DimitriCrono-gu5pk]

I head that Sony uses Free bsd. Does that mean I can play Playstation games.

[@denniskoeman3098]

No. That's only the basic core operating system and tools

[@happygofishing]

I wish that bsd used gpl.

[@happygofishing]

@nrezmerski bad licenses are defacto to-be-proprietary licenses. The software only exists for corporations to use in their own locked down systems.

[@happygofishing]

ah you love cucking to megacorporations.@nrezmerski

[@suchen6845]

Macos can run Zoom, bsd can't. So its different. 😂

[@Cmdrbzrd]

hell nah

[@jackelofnar]

It's just bsd with spyware 😂

[@MrPage62]

Want more viewers? Cut the fast zoom in and out, and the VERY annoying Tiktok-esque titles. You're talking tech, not kittens.