MachTen

MachTen
DeveloperTenon Intersystems
OS familyUnix-like BSD
Working stateDiscontinued
Source modelClosed source
Latest release4.1.4 / February 2000 (2000-02)
Supported platformsMacintosh: Motorola 68000, then PowerPC
Kernel typeMicrokernel
LicenseCommercial, proprietary
Official websitetenon.com/products/machten

MachTen is a Unix-like operating system from Tenon Intersystems. It is based on the Mach kernel, 4.4BSD, GNU programming tools, and the X Window System. It runs not natively but as a classic Mac OS application program in a virtual machine.

Unlike Apple's contemporary A/UX, which boots natively from a dedicated partition, the MachTen application shares the host's Hierarchical File System (HFS). Tenon released the original version for Motorola 68000 processors in 1991, followed by Power MachTen for the PowerPC architecture in 1995. The product was discontinued in October 2001, citing the successor Mac OS X.