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Comment by chmaynard | Hacker News Reader

A minor quibble: the Mac operating system is no longer called OS X. The name changed to macOS in 2016, to align with the branding of Apple's other operating systems.

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I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

If Stallman had not written gcc, gdb, his version of emacs, the basic gnu utils, and, most importantly, the GPL, there would probably be no "Linux". Torvalds would have had to write a complete OS, and he probably would have got a job and a life before he accomplished that.

It's too bad RMS got sidetracked with Hurd. But, the GNU system now runs with several kernels - the Linux kernel is just the most developed and best known one.

There are also operating systems using Linux that have no GNU at all. So it doesn't bother me at all when someone calls it Linux, and I'll continue to call it that myself unless there is additional context needed. Even then, I'd probably just reference specific GNU tools since there are other userspace tools on the system that are also necessary, but are not GNU.

https://www.glaucuslinux.org/

https://www.alpinelinux.org/

That ex X still has us perplexed.

marketing!

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as macOS, is in fact, Darwin/macOS, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Darwin plus macOS. Darwin is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Unix system made useful by the BSD corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the Darwin system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Darwin which is widely used today is often called "macOS", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the Darwin system, developed by Next Computer.

There really is a macOS, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. XNU is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Darwin is normally used in combination with the macOS operating system: the whole system is basically Darwin with macOS added, or Darwin/macOS. All the so-called "macOS" versions are really versions of Darwin/macOS.

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Apple's engineers still refer to the OS as Mac OS X. Ventura is technically 10.18, despite the 13 major number in their marketing.

Your comment, probably meant as satire, adds nothing of value to the discussion and invites a pointless debate about naming.

Its parent was even more pedantic.

It is satire. It is a spin on a famous quote by Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) about Linux (or "GNU/Linux").

I can’t tell if you’re being intentionally funny or just funny.

> Apple's engineers still refer to the OS as Mac OS X. Ventura is technically 10.18, despite the 13 major number in their marketing.

No.

13.0 is not just a marketing number. It is the number stamped in the binaries produced with the Ventura SDK. It is the number in Ventura SystemVersion.plist. It is number used in the availability markup in the headers provided by the Ventura SDK. It is the number you use for runtime version checks when you use `#available` in Swift or `@available` in Objective-C. You will not find 10.18 in any of those build or runtime contexts (or anywhere else) because it is not the version number of macOS Ventura.

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