The OS X Aqua GUI interface shields the naive and routine users, who are mainly concerned with running applications such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop and so on, from the complexity of the underlying unix operating system. The whole of Mac OS X is thus a superset of unix the Aqua graphical user interface (GUI) of OS X provides an aesthetically pleasing and functionally elegant mechanism by which the user can control the computer via the underlying unix operating system using mouse clicks in application windows rather than typing cryptic unix commands.

Unlike Cygwin, a unix emulator that can be grafted onto the Microsoft Windows operating system, Darwin is the fundamental core of the Mac OS X operating system. The flavor of unix on Apple computers running Mac OS X is called Darwin, and it is closely related to BSD, from which it has evolved. There are many varieties, or 'flavors,' of unix, including Irix, Solaris, BSD, GNU/Linux and so on, each of which has its own peculiarities in terms of file system structure and occasionally command syntax, but they all tend to be quite similar and function according to the same principles. Scientific computing is typically carried out on computers equipped with the unix operating system.

8.4 Launching an X-windows based unix program fails.

8.3 Running X11 programs that require 256 colors or 8-bit display.

8.1 Terminal.app starts and immediately launches a unix command.

7.5 Shell Scripting and scripting languages:.

7.3 Books and tutorials specific to Mac OS X Unix:.

7 Some Useful Unix Links to Help You Get Started.

6.5 Why zsh Should Be the Default Shell on OS X.

4 The Terminal Application and Alternatives.

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