Macos

From TWUUG

Apple MacOS and TWUUG

Unlike versions 9 and below, MacOS 10 (AKA MacOS X), is basically a Unix operating system (BSD) with non-typical Unix layers on top of it.

Much of MacOS is, indeed, Unix. But some very important and visible parts (like the GUI) are essentially proprietary to only Apple and thus those types of applications will really run on nothing else but MacOS. For this and other reasons, the Apple "experience" is not usually the same as the typical "Unix" experience.

Every "proprietary Unix" (Solaris, HP/UX, etc) and non proprietary Unix (Linux, BSD), uses X11 for graphics. All the X11 GUI applications can be ported (sometimes easily) to every other "proprietary" and non proprietary Unix platforms. That is simply not the case with MacOS applications. Although MacOS 10 can run an X11 server and use many FOSS and non-FOSS X11 applications, the reverse cannot be said for native MacOS applications running on other Unixes.

Non-MacOS Unixes have far more in common with each other, especially concerning applications and GUI, than with MacOS. And those are the aspects that most users are going to interact with, see, and learn. There are Apple users who focus on primarily the Unix aspects of MacOS 10 and run most of the same applications as other Unixes/Linuxes/BSD's, run X11, hang out in the shell, enjoy a *ix type filesystem, think in the "Unix way". Those types of users are NOT typical, but TWUUG would be an interesting place for them, at least part of the time.

For the 98%+ of the "typical" Apple users who are rarely, if at all, concerned with MacOS's underlying Unix nature, there is a local computer user's group that is far more appropriate than TWUUG: Tarmac.