I've been using MacosX for a few months. It looks exactly like Freebsd underneath.
The big difference between X and 'real' Unix is that instead of putting all the important config files in /etc, they're xml located in /var/db. Granted, this is a better idea than dump everything in /etc, but we're used to the old mess and the new one is confusing. The mapping between unix home directories as the MacOsX multi-user 'home' gui environment is sort of strange and seems to rely a lot on automounting. I have documents that show up happily in one world an not in the other. I haven't yet determined if the problem is between keyboard and chair. I haven't worked with any of the X stuff available for it. I've heard good things, tho, if you like yours raw and beta. It's really cool to be able to give other people accounts on your box, let them log in, and scp files. The environment comes with sudo; there is no obvious root passsword, and you have to sudo to get to root. all the accounts and config stuff are somewhere in /var/db, so editing /etc/password won't help. Retrofitting MacOsX on a rev B IMac is a painful proposition, because 333 MHz just isn't enough for all the gui stuff. Forget running aps in classic mode; they take a half hour to load. On the other hand, I've been doing it, and will continue to do it until someone decides to give me another Mac (yeah, right). Apple will laugh at you if you phone them and ask for help with Darwin (the FreeBSD stuff). I even got an Apple droid to quote me the policy. I think this is rude and short-sighted, but if you need help, you can get it from the Apple community bulletin board. It's also fun helping a large population of Unix newbies figure out their way around the fun stuff. Be sure to upgrade to the latest version; I think they are at 10.0.2 or some such. Less buggy versions of openssh are the biggest payoff. You can also upgrade openssh yourself. Stuff just builds on it. I built nmap. In most cases, someone has to have done some porting for everything to work, but if it's really important, the porting is already done. You won't be so fortunate with most commercial drivers. Palm is still working on a final version of their software. Epson doesn't have it's scanner software ready. You can still boot into 9 to use things, tho. Lauren --- Send mail for the `bblisa' mailing list to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. Mail administrative requests to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.
