Mac OS X is a Unix OS and its command line is 99.9% the same as any Linux distribution. bash is your default shell and you can compile all of the same programs and utilities. There’s no notable difference.

Is the Mac terminal the same as Linux?

As you now know from my introductory article, macOS is a flavor of UNIX, similar to Linux. But unlike Linux, macOS does not support virtual terminals by default. Instead, you can use the Terminal app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) to obtain a command line terminal and BASH shell.

Is Apple OS based on Linux?

You may have heard that Macintosh OSX is just Linux with a prettier interface. That’s not actually true. But OSX is built in part on an open source Unix derivative called FreeBSD. … It was built atop UNIX, the operating system originally created over 30 years ago by researchers at AT&T’s Bell Labs.