It would seem sensible for Apple to fork an OS like Debian and focus on the distinguishing features of Mac OS such as the UI,gestures,power usage optimizations and Apple specific applications.
From the user and developer point of view, the only major drawback would be applications. Devs porting over apps to linux and users not having some of their favourite apps available.
It's becoming clear that Apple is not paying enough attention to the under the hood details of an OS and the security situation. And maintaining the OS is a huge investment from Apple. So it only feels natural to base Mac OS on linux and, as I said earlier, focus on the distinguishing features.
Technically though, it would still be a huge challenge as there are lots of factors to consider,but in the long term everyone wins Apple,linux though maybe not Microsoft.
I have been thinking about this idea of Apple using linux instead of its proprietary Mac OS for a long time, and have considered the transition only at a very high level. I would like to hear what the HN community thinks of this idea.
Edit: So instead of forking a version of linux and developing it independantly like what Apple did previously, a better model might be where Apple periodically forks from upstream projects and makes its modifications. Something like what Linux mint does with Ubuntu. So this way, they continue to get the latest and greatest developments from upstream projects without investing additional resources into maintaining their forked OS(this is currently what is happening with Mac OS).
Except Apple already did this once, and honestly the under the hood bits are mostly fine. Virtually all the bugs that people complain about are in userspace programs, like Mail, Safari, or especially Finder. Using a different kernel and switching form BSD to GNU under the hood isn't going to fix any of that.
If Apple made a new OS, using a Linux kernel, and getting rid of the NeXT framework stuff (no more Objective C bullshit, no more deprecated Carbon, or Cocoa/ObjC/Swift), I think it would work pretty well.
Many major issues regarding security,filesystem keep cropping up(there are a couple of links in the article). The idea is that instead of spending time and effort trying to maintain the OS, they can instead use the battle tested linux and focus exclusively on the distinguishing features.
And this will hopefully enable Apple to focus on the issues in the userspace.
You could run into licensing problems. Apple wants their products to be a walled-garden. Even then, you'll have people complaining that the core is bad software.
From the user and developer point of view, the only major drawback would be applications. Devs porting over apps to linux and users not having some of their favourite apps available.
It's becoming clear that Apple is not paying enough attention to the under the hood details of an OS and the security situation. And maintaining the OS is a huge investment from Apple. So it only feels natural to base Mac OS on linux and, as I said earlier, focus on the distinguishing features.
Technically though, it would still be a huge challenge as there are lots of factors to consider,but in the long term everyone wins Apple,linux though maybe not Microsoft.
I have been thinking about this idea of Apple using linux instead of its proprietary Mac OS for a long time, and have considered the transition only at a very high level. I would like to hear what the HN community thinks of this idea.
Edit: So instead of forking a version of linux and developing it independantly like what Apple did previously, a better model might be where Apple periodically forks from upstream projects and makes its modifications. Something like what Linux mint does with Ubuntu. So this way, they continue to get the latest and greatest developments from upstream projects without investing additional resources into maintaining their forked OS(this is currently what is happening with Mac OS).