Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it’s what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use. Quite simply, there is nothing else like it.
Power of UNIX. Simplicity of the Mac.
Mac OS X is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. Everything — from the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day — is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. So whether you’re browsing the web, checking your email, or video chatting with a friend on another continent,* getting things done is at once easy to learn, simple to perform, and fun to do. Of course, making amazing things simple takes seriously advanced technologies, and Mac OS X is loaded with them. Not only is it built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability, it also delivers incredible performance, stunning graphics, and industry-leading support for Internet standards.
Perfect integration of hardware and software.
Since the software on every Mac is created by the same company that makes the Mac itself, you get an integrated system in which everything works together perfectly. The advanced technologies in the operating system take full advantage of the 64-bit, multicore processors and GPUs to deliver the greatest possible performance. The built-in iSight camera works seamlessly with the iChat software so you can start a video chat with a click. Your Mac notebook includes a Multi-Touch trackpad that supports pinching, swiping, and other gestures. And the OS communicates with the hardware to deliver incredible battery life by spinning down the hard drive when it’s inactive, by intelligently deciding whether the CPU or GPU is best for a task, and by automatically dimming the screen in low-light conditions.
Elegant interface and stunning graphics.
The most striking feature of a Mac is its elegant user interface, made possible by graphics technologies that are built to leverage the advanced graphics processor in your Mac. These technologies provide the power for things like multiway chatting, real-time reflections, and smooth animations. Fonts on the screen look beautiful and extremely readable. A soft drop shadow makes it clear at a glance which window is active and which ones are in the background. You can preview just about any type of file using Quick Look and because the previews are high resolution, you can actually read the text. Built-in support for the PDF format means you can view or create PDFs from almost any application in the system.
LINUX
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and
Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher), today Linux also runs on (at least) the
Alpha AXP,
Sun SPARC,
Motorola 68000,
PowerPC,
ARM,
Hitachi SuperH,
IBM S/390,
MIPS,
HP PA-RISC,
Intel IA-64,
AMD x86-64,
AXIS CRIS,
Renesas M32R,
Atmel AVR32,
Renesas H8/300, NEC V850,
Tensilica Xtensa, and
Analog Devices Blackfin architectures; for many of these architectures in both 32- and 64-bit variants.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of
The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although functionality is then obviously somewhat limited. See the
µClinux project for more info.
New to Linux?
If you're new to Linux, you don't want to download the kernel, which is just a component in a working Linux system. Instead, you want what is called a
distribution of Linux, which is a complete Linux system. There are numerous distributions available for download on the Internet as well as for purchase from various vendors; some are general-purpose, and some are optimized for specific uses. We currently have mirrors of several distributions available at
mirrors.kernel.org, as well as a small collection of special-purpose distributions at
Note, however, that most distributions are very large (several gigabytes), so unless you have a
fast Internet link you may want to save yourself some hassle and purchase a CD-ROM with a distribution; such CD-ROMs are available from a number of vendors.
The Linux Installation HOWTO has more information how to set up your first Linux system.
