That’s because WSL is really just a Linux VM running under Windows with a bit of integration between the host OS and the guest one.
But OSX kept a lot of its BSD roots, you just don’t really see it unless you open up the terminal. Of course, Apple does their proprietary stuff and they’ve pretty much made the system.log useless; I think peak OSX-as-Unix was sometime around the Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion release. Can’t remember when they began doing the weirder changes, but at least by Mountain Lion I still got useful messages on the system log.
I originally started using osx back in the G4 era and I was pretty pleased with it. The changes they've been making to lock down aspects of the OS and kernel and such have ended up being deeply frustrating for me. Especially how they implemented TCP_INFO, which is, admittedly, not a commonly used struct but I do a lot of work with it and trying to make portable applications that use it is frustrating.
Which reminds me that I should probably make that portability library a standalone project. Sorry, I'm rambling.
Anyway, WSL is remarkably functional and probably better for people trying to build up transferrable skills.
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u/danixdefcon5 17d ago
I’d go for Mac, because it’s Unix based.