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spainbran

macrumors member
Sep 20, 2021
74
50
The user named root, or superuser, is a special user account in UNIX-like operating systems that has unrestricted read and write privileges to all areas of the file system in OS X 10.10 or earlier. However, in OS X 10.11 or later, the root user’s write access to certain areas of the file system is restricted

Sorry,
I'm too old for that: DOS 6.1 in the 90' I had more rights.
OK I will will switch back to OS X 10.10, where you even born?
Oh and before you get the right to vote: I don't want my phone sending a photo of me every second to your business partners Zuckerberg and ... .

Onf
 
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plinden

macrumors 601
Apr 8, 2004
4,029
142
I'm not going to go into the reasons why no sane person would log into their *nix machine as root (since we'd fall into the "it's my machine so I should be able to do what I want, and I'm cautious anyway so won't have any problems" rabbit hole), but to answer the original poster.

Look up bash and/or zsh tutorials (zsh is the current default terminal shell in MacOS)

If there's some command you like or need that's missing, you can usually find it in Homebrew, MacPorts, or Fink
 

spainbran

macrumors member
Sep 20, 2021
74
50
The first command:
export SHELL_SESSIONS_DISABLE=1


Disables to have a folder at each session, unless you want to.

Onf
 

jjcs

Cancelled
Oct 18, 2021
317
153
One important distinction to make is that *nix operating systems can us different shells that are not all compatible. One of the most popular is Bash. I would recommend researching that.
Yes. Ignore the zsh install that Apple provides now due to OSS licensing. That and macports or brew to update all the stuff Apple doesn't care about anymore.
 
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TiggrToo

macrumors 601
Aug 24, 2017
4,205
8,838
OK, let’s clear some misconceptions up.

There’s Unix (usually seen as a commercial Unix), there‘s BSD (that came out of the University of Berkeley), there’s IBM’s AIX and now there’s also Linux based distributions (there was also Xenix as well, but the least said about that, the better). I cut my eye teeth on Unix in the early 1990’s - with System V/88.

Linux distributions are not monolithic either - some use one form of package management (rpm), some use a different form (deb). Some used init to startup system services, many use systemd - and so it goes.

Then there are shells - bash, korn, csh, zsh etc. I started using the bourne shell, bash, then migrated to the korn shell, ksh, and now am using zsh on my various Macs.

What @jwolf6589 seems to want to understand is what commands are available within MacOS (which is a derivative of BSD). Most of these commands are shell agnostic to a fairly large degree. It’s only when one starts getting into the nitty gritty are there some derivations (e.g. where one might want to download gawk or gdate where the OS supplied awk and date executables don’t cut it).

Also, Linux isn’t an operating system, nor is it an environment - it’s a Kernel. The distribution defines what executable are available on the command line, and the shell defines what the built in commands are and how they operate.

With MacOS we have the basics of BSD behind the scenes but the ability to expand upon that with utilities such as homebrew.
 

jjcs

Cancelled
Oct 18, 2021
317
153
Surprised they paid the fee these days. Good to know.

OS X still isn't as cool as IRIX, though. Any volume control panel with a -spinaltap option is much cooler than anything Apple ever came up with.

Seriously: I do wish X11 was better supported. Xquartz has dropped a lot of capability that reduces its utility talking to, well, OSes like IRIX.
 

jjcs

Cancelled
Oct 18, 2021
317
153
OK, let’s clear some misconceptions up.

There’s Unix (usually seen as a commercial Unix), there‘s BSD (that came out of the University of Berkeley), there’s IBM’s AIX and now there’s also Linux based distributions (there was also Xenix as well, but the least said about that, the better). I cut my eye teeth on Unix in the early 1990’s - with System V/88.

Me, it was the BSD-based SunOS (as a desktop, prior was a Cray X/MP remotely). I found the System V Solaris a bit slow.... Particularly on a Sparcstation IPC! Solaris 2.5.1 was pretty decent, though.

Gives one a good perspective of the compute performance that people seem to take for granted now. What was a Grand Challenge problem 10 years ago on a supercomputer is Tuesday at work now.
 

jjcs

Cancelled
Oct 18, 2021
317
153
This is a bizarre statement. BSD is a Unix. MacOS has a base that is BSD. If you don't like SIP and other platform security features, you can turn them off.

OP (not the person you replied to, of course) was probably referring to shell scripting and command line tools. Which you can, indeed, learn to use on MacOS. You can even learn on Windows (Cygwin, SFU, ...). When you get to building software that is configured to expect a variant of Linux (which is most FOSS), it can get a bit complicated, but not much worse than porting from Linux to Solaris. It is definitely a bizarre statement.
 
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You’re not me

macrumors regular
Sep 23, 2021
154
189
UNIX is a trademarked name and OS owned by AT&T. Apple’s Mac OS is based on a bsd version called FreeBSD. It is an important distinction. UC at Berkeley was using UNIX and was sued by the owner of UNIX(I don’t remember the name off the top of my head) at the time and so UCB took all of the copyrighted lines of code out and wrote their own open source version referred to as BSD-Berkeley Software Distribution. There are many forks of it. The open source license is different for Linux, I won’t go into detail because this post would be so long it probably wouldn’t be allowed.
 

TrapDoorSpider

Suspended
Aug 25, 2021
65
103
You clearly did not read my OP.

"Anyone got any starter websites for learning Unix on the Mac? I once was good at MSDOS so I have some background in command terminals. Thanks.."
You clearly did not realize that spainbran was adding to the discussion that bsamcash set forth. Clearly.
 

TrapDoorSpider

Suspended
Aug 25, 2021
65
103
Who the Hell even knows what Unix is these days? Everyone's just sitting around Googling, mincing their words trying to look smart, but this stuff is like trying to decipher pixellated hieroglyphics from a foregone era of purity in computing that no longer exists. People largely don't even care about the same things that O.G. computer scientists once did. Why everyone's trying to be one is beyond me.
 

jjcs

Cancelled
Oct 18, 2021
317
153
Who the Hell even knows what Unix is these days? Everyone's just sitting around Googling, mincing their words trying to look smart, but this stuff is like trying to decipher pixellated hieroglyphics from a foregone era of purity in computing that no longer exists. People largely don't even care about the same things that O.G. computer scientists once did. Why everyone's trying to be one is beyond me.

Quite a few people care. Some of us still even code in Fortran occasionally.... Shock, horror! Unix - and Unix-like OSes like Gnu userland Linux (for the pedantics who state that "Linux" refers only to the kernel) are everywhere. Now, whether something is actually a certified UNIX(tm) is another matter and largely not relevant.
 
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