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Another few months and they should have Office and HL2 (crosses fingers). I'm not sure how much X11 dependency will remain though :-/

Darwin is based on FreeBSD, not OpenBSD -- though I must admit, I have no idea how much cross-pollination there is among the *BSDs -- but like most of the civilized world, they do use OpenSSH.

Here's a few choice quotes from Darwine's list of TODOs

• Add an Aqua Driver so that Wine will act as Mac users would expect.
• Port Wine on Darwin/x86.
  Work has been done, and commited to the WineHQ CVS. Though it still crash.
• Work on the emulation side (binary compatibility with Win32's apps: have qemu-i386-darwin-user working.
  stalling, preliminary work on darwine cvs rep @ cvs.opendarwin.org

Again, I do plan on using Darwine if I ever buy a Mac, but its TODO page makes it look like it won't be usable for awhile.

>> All I see from reading this article is that, at some point, an Apple will be able to run Windows applications.

It already can. http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

Darwine. I haven't tried it yet, but they have an Intel version available. I doubt it is working yet, but it will be.

*ahem* almost, but not quite totally useless

*ahem* source code?

You can also use Darwinports to install ruby and ruby-gems and whatever DB you want. Caveats: you have to install swig if you're using sqlite, you have to change a shebang or two to avoid conflicts with the installation of ruby that ships with OS X.

So - you install a version of the gimp - you get a copy of gtk, install eog - you get a copy of gtk, install.... well I think you get my point.

Or you could use a package manager like Fink or DarwinPorts.

On the Mac you have scour the web deciding Free or Paid, can I trust this site? Am I downloading a trojan. Oh, this is windows only....

VersionTracker and MacUpdate keep track of "official" software sources. Apple has a directory as well.

Right. If you want to install the exact same apps on Mac OS X as you want to do on your Linux boxen, you can choose between the Debian apt-get package management system Fink or the FreeBSD Port package management system. They even have GUI frontends if you choose in .app directories that you can move wherever you want on the filesystem. Pretty simple, eh? ;-)

qemu has been ported to the Mactels, as is WinTel from openosx.com.

Of course, there's always Darwine as well.

It's called Darwine.

Cheers. Found the following list of apps that do use WebKit (although confusingly it also includes some WebCore) - more than you'd think.

http://wiki.opendarwin.org/index.php/WebKit:Applic ations_using_WebKit

Thanks for the clarification of my confusion - that's what you get for not cross-checking.

I've found the following list of apps that do use WebKit (although confusingly it also includes some WebCore).

http://wiki.opendarwin.org/index.php/WebKit:Applic ations_using_WebKit

Since you don't know how to google, you can download the source like this:
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.opensource.apple.com/svn/webkit/trun k WebKit

you can also grab the latest nightly build of Safari here: http://nightly.webkit.org/
(look at the icon and download it if you don't believe me)

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/ has more info.

Example, my workplace Exchange web interface- Safari misses parts of the page, FireFox renders it fine. ACID test or no, I like the one that works in all situations.

There are a lot of crappy pages out there. If a page doesn't make it through the HTML validator why should anyone expect a browser to render it? Are your pages at work valid? What's the point of standards-compliant rendering engines if they all allow exceptions to the standard to be rendered?

A lot of times Safari won't render big chunks of web pages because of malformed markup. Dave Hyatt (rightly, I believe) doesn't want to spend lots of coding effort dealing with error recovery when parsing sloppy web pages. Browsers like MSIE and Netscape (pre-Mozilla) are too permissive and have allowed people to get away with downright bad HTML.

That said, the Safari Compatibility Hit List was recently created, to either fix Safari compatibility problems or to encourage sites to fix their markup.

Actually, to be pedantic, Safari is not opensource. However its rendering engine (WebKit) is.

There is going to be a huge untapped market for a MacWINE variant, that will run Windows applications on the new Intel Macs.

Wine already runs on OS X.

What do you mean, "waiting?" I installed it last night!

(Unfortunately, I haven't gotten Steam working yet, though...)

"Now it seems they are no longer releasing the source to OS X's xnu kernel." - does that mean ANYTHING to you? That's the issue, and that has not been fixed. Stupid apologists.

http://www.opendarwin.org/~bbraun/slashdot_respons e.html

Dude, did you ever have a look at the site: http://webkit.opendarwin.org/ ? I don't think you did. There there is actually their version of konquerors rendering engine. If you had checked their mailing lists you would know that there are a lot of ports (some of the in the same source tree as webkit) going on right now. So Apple and KDE are actually cooperating to a larger degree than you think or say.

Beg to differ. That would be Darwin or OpenDarwin - the resemblence to BSD exists, but is generaly overstated.

The ability to run specific win32 apps.

If Apple tried to go all Windows there would be such a backlash that people would port every application possible to Darwin and/or Open Darwin. Far to many people love the Apple interface to just let it go.

Camino uses Gecko. Safari uses Webkit, which is based on HTML. This is really not a question of browser as much as it is of the rendering engine behind it. Browsers like Flock and Shiira are based on Gecko and Webkit respectively, so you should expect similar results. Firefox, incidentally, is also based on Gecko.

For what it's worth, many people I know describe Opera as being significantly faster than Gecko, WebKit, and MSHTML (the rendering engine behind IE).

That's a common misconception. Sure, "Safari" can be easily removed, just like "Internet Explorer" can, but the real meat of the rendering and parsing work is done by WebKit, which is also used for Dashboard, Mail, and a number of third-party applications (notably Adium, SubEthaEdit, Colloquy, Xcode and NetNewsWire)... in this sense it's EXACTLY like Windows' MSHTML and MSXML, in that it is a required, integrated component of the operating system.

Ultimately we would like WebKit to be nothing more than the embedding APIs for a given platform and infrastructure/glue code that is needed to tie into a specific platform. All of the remaining logic should move to WebCore.

IMHO WinE will be a much better option to get windows programs running on MacOSX for Intel. Check out darwine.

Codeweavers are putting big amounts of work into this. CrossOffice will support MacOSX in one of the next versions. Codeweavers were rather enthusiastic when Apple announced their switch. No surprise, the desktop market share of MacOSX is bigger than Linux's.

I really expect great things to come!

Bye egghat.

Calm down! SVG is a standard that will probably appear in the next major version of Safari. It's already in Webkit (available in in the latest nightlies).

Well, I'm certainly no expert but I believe compat_linux does its work in the netbsd kernel. So XNU would need to be modified to support loading linux binaries. A task for the OpenDarwin community?

IE 7 beta 1 - nothing where the graphs would be expected
Opera 8.5 - black boxes in place of graphs
Opera 9 preview 1 - graphs are visible but about 1/2 the size they are in Firefox
Konqueror 3.5 - text from graph appears inline
Safari - don't have a Mac handy at work, but SVG only recently made it into development versions of WebKit.

Something key to recognize, though, is that all the major browsers except IE either have partial SVG support already or are working on it. It's kind of frustrating that Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8.5 support different subsets, but they're both working toward a standard so we can expect those subsets to converge over the next few releases.

Since when do BSD code and OpenDarwin "stay private"?

then why does Safari comply more and more with every SMALL point release? I would go so far as to say Safari is more standards compliant than FireFox.

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=32

• The developers' weblog for Safari/WebKit.
• The WebKit developers' mailing list.
• OpenDarwin bug tracker.
• Download the source code for lots of things.

Apple aren't that secretive - you can download lots of their code, participate in development, hang out on their mailing lists and IRC channels, look at their bugs, etc. They go a lot further than merely running some weblogs.

• The developers' weblog for Safari/WebKit.
• The WebKit developers' mailing list.
• OpenDarwin bug tracker.
• Download the source code for lots of things.

Apple aren't that secretive - you can download lots of their code, participate in development, hang out on their mailing lists and IRC channels, look at their bugs, etc. They go a lot further than merely running some weblogs.

• The developers' weblog for Safari/WebKit.
• The WebKit developers' mailing list.
• OpenDarwin bug tracker.
• Download the source code for lots of things.

Apple aren't that secretive - you can download lots of their code, participate in development, hang out on their mailing lists and IRC channels, look at their bugs, etc. They go a lot further than merely running some weblogs.

• The developers' weblog for Safari/WebKit.
• The WebKit developers' mailing list.
• OpenDarwin bug tracker.
• Download the source code for lots of things.

Apple aren't that secretive - you can download lots of their code, participate in development, hang out on their mailing lists and IRC channels, look at their bugs, etc. They go a lot further than merely running some weblogs.

rosetta - PPC --> x86.

darwine - x86 --> PPC.

But now Macs are x86 too... :)

Only the kernel, Darwin, is opensource, but what about the application layer?

WebCore, the majority of both Safari and Dashboard, is here.

OpenSSH, remote login.

launchd, system startup and configuration.

The shell, print spooler, local web server, all the security components, the equivalents of virtually all Windows services and registry, basically every command line application or daemon is there. Not a lot of the GUI, with the exception of WebCore, but a hell of a lot more than just the kernel, and the corresponding components to most of the parts of Windows that have been big security problems: RPC, HTML and HTTP, IIS, CMD.EXE and the Registry, remote file access and file-and-print service, it's all in there.

Safari and Dashboard are the bits I'm most worried about in OS X. WebCore is there, and the parts of them that aren't in WebCore are pretty thin shell layers (in fact they've been re-implemented by third parties). The biggest component left out that doesn't seem to be covered is LaunchServices (not launchd, that's an unrelated coincidence), and you can limit your exposure to any LaunchServices-related issues by disabling "Open Safe Files after Downloading" in Safari.

Only the kernel, Darwin, is opensource, but what about the application layer?

WebCore, the majority of both Safari and Dashboard, is here.

OpenSSH, remote login.

launchd, system startup and configuration.

The shell, print spooler, local web server, all the security components, the equivalents of virtually all Windows services and registry, basically every command line application or daemon is there. Not a lot of the GUI, with the exception of WebCore, but a hell of a lot more than just the kernel, and the corresponding components to most of the parts of Windows that have been big security problems: RPC, HTML and HTTP, IIS, CMD.EXE and the Registry, remote file access and file-and-print service, it's all in there.

Safari and Dashboard are the bits I'm most worried about in OS X. WebCore is there, and the parts of them that aren't in WebCore are pretty thin shell layers (in fact they've been re-implemented by third parties). The biggest component left out that doesn't seem to be covered is LaunchServices (not launchd, that's an unrelated coincidence), and you can limit your exposure to any LaunchServices-related issues by disabling "Open Safe Files after Downloading" in Safari.

Only the kernel, Darwin, is opensource, but what about the application layer?

WebCore, the majority of both Safari and Dashboard, is here.

OpenSSH, remote login.

launchd, system startup and configuration.

The shell, print spooler, local web server, all the security components, the equivalents of virtually all Windows services and registry, basically every command line application or daemon is there. Not a lot of the GUI, with the exception of WebCore, but a hell of a lot more than just the kernel, and the corresponding components to most of the parts of Windows that have been big security problems: RPC, HTML and HTTP, IIS, CMD.EXE and the Registry, remote file access and file-and-print service, it's all in there.

Safari and Dashboard are the bits I'm most worried about in OS X. WebCore is there, and the parts of them that aren't in WebCore are pretty thin shell layers (in fact they've been re-implemented by third parties). The biggest component left out that doesn't seem to be covered is LaunchServices (not launchd, that's an unrelated coincidence), and you can limit your exposure to any LaunchServices-related issues by disabling "Open Safe Files after Downloading" in Safari.

Both companies pursue that old-fashioned model of closing their codebases and asking developers to sign NDA's.

Here is the source to WebCore as shipped with OS X 10.4.4, which is Apple's equivalent to Microsoft's HTML control. Now, this is kind of an important part of the OS from the point of view of security, since Microsoft's HTML control is by far the biggest security problem in the Windows world, and has been since 1997. The BSD core, everything you need to get to a self-hosting OS with login and user-account security, is in the tree at opendarwin.org. From the point of view of a security analysis, the difference between Microsoft and Apple's openness is pretty much as wide as you can get between two software companies.

Oh, certainly, there's a lot of OS X that isn't as open as this... but even the closed parts are amazingly transparent and easily understood compared to Windows, and no important part of Windows is open at all.

So I did some research and there is a project doing just this, right now. It's called "Darwine," and they have a developer preview for Darwin-PPC, and are working on a Darwin-x86 version. They seem to be in need of people running Darwin-x86 for testing and development purposes. I can only imagine such people will not be in short supply once the new Intel iMacs start shipping. Mac OS X is not even strictly required, OpenDarwin on x86 will do.

The project:
http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

What we really need is a port of Wine to Mac OS X86 -- a wrapper around the Windows DLLs and system calls, but that doesn't do any microcode conversion. That way you wouldn't need Windows.

It's already being worked on. See the Darwine Project.

I think the key here is WINE -- forget emulators like VMWare and VPC.

I can compile and run WINE on Mac OS X right now. The problem is I can't run any Windows apps because I don't have an Intel CPU on my Mac. They ported a couple of small Windows apps to PowerPC for proof-of-concept, but WINE is essentially useless on Mac OS X right now.

Unless you get one of these Intel Macs. Then, there shouldn't be any reason why you can't compile WINE in OS X and run any Windows app in OS X like I run in Linux right now. I successfully run Lotus Notes (work), Office 2003, and several other weird little Windows apps I need for work on my Linux PC at work.

Check out for more info:

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

The first thing I'll do when I get an Intel Mac (for work) is to test compile WINE and see if I can run the above Windows apps.

Being able to run Windows apps, especially Windows itself in a dual boot scenario, will really kill almost all opposition to buying Macs at work. Often, but not always, the Macs we could buy instead of the standard laptops we buy are very price competitive so the main reason business or I.T. people don't even entertain buying Macs is they "can't run Windows software".

Just like Linux, once somebody can see that they can do everything they want in the non-Windows OS, they're very likely to stop using Windows altogether. That's why it's very important that dual booting Windows be possible -- it doesn't have to be incredibly easy for I.T. people like me, but just not a big headache.

I have about a dozen people (out of 160) who will switch to Macs immediately if they can dual boot Windows as a safety net.

Yes, the Unix part of OS X is open source, which is what the GP was saying:

http://www.opendarwin.org/
And it's been running on x86 for quite some time.

It's GUI is not.
But I can see your confusion.

Regular slashdot readers woule be aware that the 'red box' dream of rhapsody is to some degree being realised in the form of Darwine, itself based on wine

Don't hold your breath relying on Microsoft to be a good Mac community member and open sourcing this 'legacy' browser. If true IE compatibility is required then at least in theory it is possible to run the real thing under wine in OS X.

The advantage of this strategy is that by contributing to wine's completeness, other Windows applications will be runnable within OS X. :)

Sure you'll be running a Windows app, but you'll be able to browse all the IE-dependant intranet webapps your Windows XP colleagues use, from the sanctity of your Mac environment.

I guess you could start KDE ;-)

Darwinport now installs KDE 3.4.1, with the command port install kdebase3.

This sounds like something the DarWine project is working on... mapping Win32/DirectX API calls to Mac/OpenGL calls. The x86 code is also emulated on PowerPC using QEMU. This sounds like a good fit for the PS3 as well, since it uses a PowerPC based CPU, and the graphics subsystem is said to be using the OpenGL API. Wouldn't it be grand if PS3 Linux could run Windows games as well?