If you like open source development, you'll love Mac OS X. This fully-conformant UNIX operating system—built on Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5—bundles over a hundred of the most popular Open Source products. You can shell out with bash, tcsh, ksh, and zsh; edit your code with emacs, vim, and nano; and build your projects using gcc, make, and autoconf.

Need something a little higher-level? Run your X11 apps side-by-side with native apps using X11R7 from X.org. Serve your web site with Apache 2.0 and PHP 5. Start scripting with Ruby and Python, and build web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. You can even measure your application's performance using DTrace from OpenSolaris.

All these Open Source products are integrated into every Mac, ready to use. You don't need to worry about finding and downloading compatible versions of different projects. Instead, you can get right to work. Of course, you can also download and build the latest versions of those projects yourself, thanks to the thousands of projects available on Fink and Macports. And for those who prefer more than just a command-line, the free Xcode tools included with every copy of Mac OS X will speed up your development time. No wonder the Mac is the favored platform for so many Open Source developers and computer science professionals!

Mac OS X also includes the Open Source WebKit HTML rendering engine that powers the Safari web browser, Dashboard, and other Mac OS X applications. WebKit is derived from the Open Source KHTML project, and includes support for JavaScript, Java applets, DOM manipulation, CSS, and more.

Mac OS X combines a robust and open foundation with the richness and usability of the Macintosh interface, bringing Open Source and UNIX technology to the mass market.

If you are ready to begin learning about the APIs and tools available on Mac OS X for UNIX, go to the UNIX Features page; also see the UNIX Technology Brief for details.

If you are ready to begin learning about the APIs and tools available on Mac OS X for Darwin, go to Getting Started With Darwin for a guided introduction and learning path.

For news, updates and links to other ADC content related to Open Source on Mac OS X, return to the Open Source topic page. Visit the Fink and MacPorts sites for even more Open Source projects that you can download.

Updated: 2007-11-28