[TerryP]

The underlaying OS for OS X is Darwin on the user side and XNU on the kernel side, which does contain some parts of [older] FreeBSD userland and custom hacking of 4.3BSD/FreeBSD/Mach kernel into XNU. The 6.x whatever you got out of uname, is probably is the Darwin version used by OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard), unless you did it on a real FreeBSD machine, rather then OSX. Beyond the ksh and ksh93 part, I'm not familiar with AIX, but using one unix CLI is quite easy to pick up coming from the other.

FreeBSD 7.1-Release is coming in the near future, 6.4-Release and 7.0-Release and associated stable branches are currently in use. AFAIK, most elements of FreeBSD in OS X come from FreeBSD 5, but I don't work for Apple, nor own a Mac :-(


The method you mention about downloading a Debian mirror, should more or less work fine with FreeBSD, unless a mirror/package site bans your friend for extreme bandwidth usage. You can basically download the latest packages out of ftp.yourmirror.tld/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-YOURVERSION/Latest/ and checkout a copy of FreeBSD source code via CVS (csup is more often used on BSD machines, then a normal CVS client).


I learned to use FreeBSD and 'live' in a shell, having never used a CLI for more then launching programs on 5 1/4" floppy out of MS-DOS 2; and never used a Unix like system. If you can use GNU/Linux at the CLI level, you shouldn't have much problem - read the man pages for details on changes of what flags mean what (most importantly, ls and tar). BSD systems have good manual pages, lots of other documentation, and in OS X's case: Apple hopefully borrowed the manuals along with the code. On the other hand, if you are used to using Distro specific tools (hiss) for configuring your rig, you're gonna have to learn a few things. If you know what you're doing, you'd be surprised how much you can do even on an XP machine via CLI.


Most people that I know who have used Macs, are either computer illiterate, Apple fan girls/boys, or like clickly clickly for some worky worky. Most people I've encountered who even know there is a command line interface in OS X, already knew Unix or GNU/Linux ;-). I believe classic Mac OS didn't even have a CLI, so no wonder.


For a primer on what Apple uses in OS X, read XNU and Darwin OS on Wikipedia, then check Google. Then take a look into the Mach micro kernel and BSD.



Do bare in mind, WinModems and LinModems like many softmodems, can be troublesome under BSD.