# Mac OS versus FreeBSD: A Comparative Evaluation.



## rigoletto@ (Jul 4, 2018)

Mac OS versus FreeBSD: A Comparative Evaluation.
( apparently there is a paywall )


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## tingo (Jul 5, 2018)

No worries, most articles of that type is clickbait anyway. Do not waste time on them.


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## rigoletto@ (Jul 5, 2018)

You can get it for free if you still have your University account. Ironically I can't because I did Law and my old credentials does not open this particular door, it seems.


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## usdmatt (Jul 5, 2018)

It's a technical evaluation between the Mach microkernel and BSD monolithic kernel, published by the IEEE, so you'd hope there's no clickbait or heavy favouritism. I'm not paying to read it though. A 40+ page in-depth kernel comparison probably wouldn't mean a lot to me anyway.


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## kpedersen (Jul 5, 2018)

I have skimmed over it and one thing that stood out was this statement:



> VIRTUAL MEMORY
> Xnu uses the Mach VM subsystem (with a few modifications). FreeBSD is also heavily based on Mach. Thus, VM implementation is similar in xnu and FreeBSD.



At first I thought it was a typo. But check against here: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/design-44bsd/overview-memory-management.html

And it turns out that FreeBSD's virtual memory system is infact based on Mach. I have officially learned something new and interesting today .

The comparisons are quite interesting but because of the limited platform support of Mac OS X, testing Linux and FreeBSD on a HP PC was completely pointless and actually confuses the results somewhat. They did run FreeBSD and Linux on the iMac too which was still useful.

In general, nothing that ground breaking. Mac OS X is what it is; a solid UNIX-based system with a slow and bloated UI system.


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## tingo (Jul 5, 2018)

usdmatt said:


> It's a technical evaluation between the Mach microkernel and BSD monolithic kernel, published by the IEEE


Well, I guess it takes more than a committee (actually, an organization of committees) to impress me.


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## rigoletto@ (Jul 6, 2018)

I managed to get a copy. I will read during the weekend.

usdmatt

The article has just 10 pages, and not 40+; however the page numbers are high(er) because it seems to be a part of a publication.


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