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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: XDG and Freedesktop
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 23:57:02 -0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 09:01:50 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> OSX is marvelous - it's Unix when freenix zealots want to count it for
> representation in popularity contests vs. The Great Satan of Redmond,
> but *not* Unix when they need to justify some arbitrary decision of a
> freenix "standards" group as The Only Way. A true chameleon!

There is this thing called “the Unix philosophy”. Or perhaps we should 
start calling it “the *nix philosophy”, to get away from any trademark 
confusion.

One of its principles is “mechanism, not policy”. The OS kernel and core 
userland should be a versatile toolkit on top of which the user/developer/
admin can build more specialized applications; that core should not 
enforce any particular policies about how such apps should work, instead 
just providing a suitably-general mechanism on which the user/developer/
admin can implement just about any policy they desire.

Consider how the X11 display server, and its Wayland successor, conform to 
this philosophy, being basically toolkits on top of which you can build 
countless different styles of GUIs. Or even none at all, if that’s your 
desire. And consider how MacOS violates that philosophy, by inextricably 
binding its “One True” GUI, right up to a very high level, directly into 
the OS kernel.