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Comment by p_ing | Hacker News Reader

To certify any version of macOS as UNIX, the security had to be significantly altered (disabling SIP) among a few other things. This is why what is shipped is not what is certified as UNIX. You can /make/ it match what is certified as an administrator, but that would be inadvisable.

https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certif...

EDIT: And really, UNIX certification means nothing except to potentially government agencies and people who don't understand what UNIX and/or UNIX certification is. Or why being "certified UNIX" is generally meaningless: see the BSDs, which are much closer to "UNIX" origins than macOS will ever be.

Or Windows, which is frankly just has better architected internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)

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> is. Or why being "certified UNIX" is generally meaningless: see the BSDs, which are much closer to "UNIX" origins than macOS will ever be

MacOS is BSD over Mach, which is itself derived from BSD.

Yes, that's the point. It's further removed from UNIX than the BSDs are.

macOS contains BSD userland, networking, file system, POSIX, and a couple of other things. But XNU, the kernel, is "X is Not UNIX", if there ever was a statement to be made about the underpinnings of macOS.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...

This is a very silly argument.

There were several actual Unixes released based on Mach, and some of them more purely Mach than macOS/NeXT ever have been.

The people that certify it say that you are wrong. What you think and what actually is are two entirely different things in this case. The fact remains that, according to the OpenGroup (and they are the one that matter here), macOS 26 is UNIX.

macOS 26 that is /altered/ is UNIX. macOS that ships on every Mac is not certified UNIX -- but it can be made to match if you're willing to give up security.

You should read through the actual certification - https://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/noreferences=1&RID=... (there are a couple more in the repo).

To run the VSX conformance test suite we first disable SIP as follows: [...]

Feel free to disable SIP on your Mac. I certainly won't be doing so on mine.

You’re confusing operating mode with operating system.

SIP/SSV don’t create a different macOS, they restrict mutation and introspection. They don’t change the POSIX surface, the SUS semantics, or the kernel interfaces being certified. They just stop test harnesses from instrumenting the system without elevated privilege.

By your logic, no modern OS is anything it claims to be unless you run it in an insecure debug configuration. Linux isn’t POSIX because you need root. Windows isn’t Windows because kernel debugging exists. That’s obviously nonsense.

The Open Group certifies macOS 26 as shipped. Temporarily relaxing protections to run a conformance suite does not produce a “different OS”, it produces a different trust configuration of the same one.

Saying “it’s not really UNIX because SIP is on” is like saying a container isn’t Linux because it doesn’t let you mount /proc without extra privileges.

You didn't read the article, did you? SIP isn't the only alteration. And we don't know all of the changes required due to the waivers.

> if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the UNIX® 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions with the strictatime option, format your APFS partitions case-sensitive (by default, APFS is case-insensitive, so you’ll need to reinstall), disable Spotlight, copy the binaries uucp, uuname, uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin, set the setuid bit on all of these binaries, add /usr/local/bin to your PATH before /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, enable the uucp service, and handle the mystery issues listed in the four Temporary Waivers.

The certification test suites are clearly a superset of what most "Unix" applications require.

I haven't used UUCP since the 90's, have you? I ran a UUCP node for about 5 years. Fun times, but not exactly useful today.

Don't be rude. I did read TFA, hence my comments. You didn't understand my comment, did you?

Whether it disabling SIP, enabling root (see the bit about Linux and Posix in my previous comment), enabling case sensitivity in APFS (done for backwards compatibility), or any of the other stuff, the OS shipped remains the same as the tested one, and pay attention because this is the bit you seem to be incapable of grasping, with the extra bits turned on! Some are dumb, some for backwards compatibility and some are genuinely useful.

A Kia Ceed is still the same Kia Seed if the showroom add their stickers, changed the tyres and put some registration plates on it.

You have just described OSF/1 (and later – Tru64) – a certified UNIX with a hybrid kernel operating over a Mach microkernel, BSD userland, POSIX conformance etc.

What is the point that you are making?

> Or Windows, which is frankly just has better architected internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)

Current macOS user, and former NT kernel dabbler and VMS user here. That's highly debatable.

On the kernel side, Windows is still filled with legacy VMS-isms. Eg: Object Manager (object/resource model), named objects, handles, how processes and threads work, vmem, scheduling etc etc

On the userspace side, Windows is still filled with legacy DOS-isms.

Don't me wrong, I love the underlying Windows OS, despite its many quirks, but it's filled with perhaps even more legacy cruft and definitely isn't any sort of step above anything else.

I also don't believe anyone actually runs macOS in a UNIX-compliant configuration. Rather, it's a checkbox on some RFP and nobody is clued into why it's actually there, because all the people that did know have since retired.

What lineage of OS predates both DOS and VMS? :-)

As the popular phrase goes: "It's legacy, all the way down". What matters is what's left of those legacies in current revs.

In both cases: "Quite a bit", but I wish the base Windows OS would evolve away from legacy as much as macOS has. Start with eliminating drive letters.

> Start with eliminating drive letters.

Drive letters are there for the presentation layer and of course backwards compat. Windows refers to them using device paths internally. You can too, if you wish.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/io/file-pa...

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