I disagree, 99.99% of people have no idea what is going on inside MS windows, yet they still use it.  Linux distros have a bit of a learning curve, but they are polished enough that the average lay person can use them for day to day tasks.  The distro I recommended, Linux Mint, by default is very hard to trash.

 

Android and Chrome OS both run on top of Linux.

That has nothing to do with anything.

OSX started with a BSD base.  Hell, I'm not sure Apple could distribute closed source OSX if it started life as GPL licensed code; the BSD license is much more open.

ETA  That page is a very shallow review of the subject.

While I agree that it's more complex, I think it would be fair to say that they both share a common heritage.

 

+1



 

Go back far enough and everything has a common heritage :-)

But Josh is correct when he writes "OSX is not and has nothing to do with Linux".

No, technically and colloquially I am exactly correct.

Linux is a kernel that has nothing to do with OSX.  Linux distributions are a conglomeration of a Linux kernel and GNU utilities and usually some variant of the long term terminally fucked X-Windows system along with GDE or KDE or XFCE or some other imitation of a commercial desktop manager.

OSX is a variant of BSD Unix, specifically it's very similar to FreeBSD and Apple actually contributes to the FreeBSD project.  It has a combination Mach/Microkernel called XNU (released as open source under Apple's license).  http://opensource.apple.com/

BSD is actually Unix.  It traces its line back much further than Linux and in a different line.  It has a different kernel, different utilities, a different userland, a completely different license, and in the case of OSX a completely different windowing system (most commercial Unix variants also use CDE or another window manager that isn't available in Linux distributions as well).  Apple also uses and distributes a completely different compiler as well.

The only small similarity you might find between the two is that there are some GNU utilities that may also be used in some Linux distributions used in OSX, which most people will never see or know exist.

The only common heritage they have is when Linus wrote Linux he wrote it in order to have a free copy of a teaching OS that wasn't Unix to begin with, and then he used Stallman's GNU utilities to build an OS because Stallman's Hurd was never going to get built.

Linking to a Gordon Kelly article while accusing others of looking bad. Hoo boy. GD don't you ever let me down.

Roger that.  I was thinking of "heritage" more in a cultural sense then a biological/version control sense.

actually, he was 100% correct. OS X is BSD running on a Mach Kernel. it is Unix, not Linux. Linux is very Unix-like, but it is not Unix.  
You can get many Linux packages to run on OS X, because Linux provides so many Unix-like services that are compatible at the API level. But in the end, they are running in Unix.

I hate to break it to you, but GNU's Not Unix.

See my picture above...  Both Linux and Minix (what Linux was designed to mimic) are not in the Unix tree.

As someone who worked at Microsoft for 24 years (still consulting there) I'll share a couple thoughts. "Customer experience programs" have been in operation for decades; I worked in SQL Server and if you've ever installed it, you've seen the OPTION to participate. I tested the code that collected data, and analyzed the aggregated results that was uploaded. It was all about feature usage so we could asses the impact of deprecating or investing more in features. If you didn't want MS to know you used a specific chart control in an RS report, you opted out.

I "did the computer search" and scanned the KBs mentioned, and they referred to consent.exe which I believe is the UAC popup you get when a program tries to do something that needs admin permissions, I assume they track what was being attempted because its a security risk, and um, MS wants to be more secure.

Secondly, data privacy and security is a HUGE priority there with policies, mandatory training etc regarding PII (personally identifiable information, which is not included in the CEIP program data we're discussing) and customer data. All because its bad for business when customers don't trust you to be secure with the data they provide.

IMHO this is all fud.

duped