"rich tapestry of life" lol@Porter

One of the nice things about FOSS is that your favorite utilities can usually be compiled cross-platform. There's no need to port "ls" but if you've got a program that is opensource, you can compile it for OSX.

But I understand your frustrastion; there should be a "OS compatability pack" that I can install cross platform, so that when I run commands from the OS that I accustomed to, it will tell me "hey, that command doesn't work on this distro, try THIS command instead". Rather like high-tech training wheels.