Referring to squosl's post (and going somewhat OT here to correct a misconception or two):
One is better served not to refer to any Mac OS version released prior to 5 September 2000 as 'OS X'. The facts are as follows:
* OS X 10 Public Beta (Fall of 2000) - marketed even though Steve Jobs wasn't "completely satisfied" with how it looked or ran;
* OS 8, 8.1, 8.5 9.0, 9.0.1 (everywhere but USA) 9.0.4, 9.1 -
Not versions of OS X -- based on the original Mac 'classic' core as modified for E-RISC Macs in the years 1994 and 1995;
*
Every Mac OS version since 1 April 2001 has been a Mac OS X, including the pared-down builds on the iPhone, development of which delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (say it with me: "Steve, you're such a perfectionist!"
).
BZT
Quote:
Originally Posted by
squosl
I adminstrated a handful of OSX servers a few years ago, OSX 8 I think. Structurally, OSX feels a lot like any other BSD variant. The problem I had is that apple inserted a layer of abstraction to make the GUI work with the system utilities, and it was easy to make changes to the system from the command line that wouldn't show up in the GUI and created interesting states after reboot. Networking and server startup/reset, IIRC, were especially "creative". There's a whole bunch of commandline utilities that are supposed to automagicallly update all the differenct configuration files to keep the GUI happy, but I don't remember what they are right now.
If you need an OS to play around with for your class, I would suggest a BSD or linux.