Owen Byrne wrote:
Kernel is netBSD - and "mostly duplicated" and "a few tweaks" are definitely understatements. There is a lot of depth to the integration of GUI and underlying operating system.
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Fair enough.
Indeed, the underlying integration of GUI with OS is, as you say, non-trivial. But from where I sit (and I admit to being a bit of a GUI cynic) Aqua, though undeniably very lovely, does not possess much more raw functionality than say, more recent iterations of KDE. So it seems that tweaks, while surely not for the faint-of-heart or the bereft of skill, are entirely do-able (at least, theoretically) to duplicate Apple-esque behaviors.
But I'm not at all religiously attached to this view and perfectly willing to be schooled.
Regarding OS X's kernel pedigree...
I receive conflicting reports. FreeBSD partisans say ver. 3.2 of their baby was the source of OS X 10.1 with later versions growing from 4.4, netBSD folks make different claims. Apple, on the following blurb-a-licious website -
http://www.apple.com/macosx/architecture/
only mentions FreeBSD.
But again, I'm not a crank on these matters so if you have other info I'd be happy to check it out.
.d.