Amusingly, just as GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix,” XNU stands for “X is Not Unix.”How is macOS different from Windows? The only exception was Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but compliance was regained with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

It has been since 2007, starting with MAC OS X 10.5. MacOS is a UNIX 03-compliant operating system certified by The Open Group. The architecture of macOS describes the layers of the operating system that is the culmination of Apple Inc.’s decade-long research and development process to replace the classic Mac OS. Amusingly, just as GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix,” XNU stands for “X is Not Unix.”What is OSX architecture? A monolithic kernel is responsible for managing the CPU, memory, inter-process communication, device drivers, file system, and system server calls. While the macOS kernel combines the feature of a microkernel (Mach)) and a monolithic kernel (BSD), Linux is solely a monolithic kernel.

However, versions prior to 10.5 (as with many ‘UNIX-like’ OSes such as many distributions of Linux,) could probably have passed certification had they applied for it. Apple has submitted OS X for certification (and received it,) every version since 10.5. What operating system is Mac OS X based upon? Furthermore, Mac OS has lots of applications that are not open source and are build on libraries that are not open source. This means that these systems are similar, but not binary compatible. Mac OS is based on a BSD code base, while Linux is an independent development of a unix-like system.

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