Posted by
michael
on from the for-masochists-only dept.
marmoset writes: "Apple has released a new Darwin (the open source foundation of Mac OS X) snapshot. The new version is 1.3.1, which brings the Darwin packages up to the level released on the Mac OS X CD. The big news this time? There are both
PPC and x86 disk images available."
Re:Here's the thing--
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS/2 for x86, everyone says "IBM'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.
But if they released OS/2 for PCs...
(1) They could STILL sell the ibm hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, IBM designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the MCA platform. I'd continue to buy it.
(2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.
So.. ibm releases OS/2 for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?
OSI Approved. & Reapproved.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
Re:Glad you weren't an early Linux user
by
Sabalon
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· Score: 2
C'mon...like it was that difficult to manually edit the floppy boot sector when you wanted to use something other than the first primary hard drive partition.
These damn kids nowadays with their fancy LILO's:)
No, it's not sarcasm, it's here
by
Watts+Martin
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· Score: 5
I'm stunned nobody else responded to this by pointing to the GNU-Darwin Project homepage. So here it is.
No, this isn't a joke.
Re:Ports collection, etc?
by
marmoset
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· Score: 2
Nice try, kids. Look here if you want the release info.
-- Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Good answer AIX admin (slight OT)
by
"Zow"
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· Score: 2
Good answer - I had to check the username to see if it was one of my college roommates (big Mac guys) and got a good chuckel. That was quite an informed answer for a user by the name of AIX admin. ..
neither solaris or os/2 were/are known for their ease-of-use and user friendliness like Apple's OS. If people could have a Mac experience on their x86s, I could easily see them bailing on Windows.
W
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-- -------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS X for x86, everyone says "APPLE'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.
But if they released OS X for PCs...
(1) They could STILL sell the apple hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, Apple designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the PPC platform. I'd continue to buy it.
(2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.
So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?
W
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-- -------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
1 - They had enough of a problem competing against clone's that paid them into the hundreds of dollars in license fees per machine. Remember that period, when they almost went bankrupt? What happens when they have to compete against $500 PC's? How much will OS X have to cost in order for them to feel comforatable releasing it for x86? $400? $500?
2 - Yes, one company makes good money selling operating systems for PC's. They're also an established monoplist. Kinda hard to compete against them, it was found in court. Look at BeOS, OSX's nearest equivalent on the PC. What other OS's are there for the PC? Do all the linux distro's in the world generate as much profit as apple does selling hardware? probably not...
OS X for intel just isn't a sound strategy, no matter how you try to slant it.
This, like other intelligent comments in this article, has not been modded up.
Doing an x86 oprt is indeed an excellent way to ensure the OS code is kept as hardware independent as possible. It undoes all the lazy things programmers do to get things done on time - they make assumptions and avoid abstractions because it saves time. Once you've ported Darwin to OS X, it can be taken anywhere, which gives Apple real leverage in terms of what chips they intend to use.
That and a few demos of OS X running on PC hardware just to demonstrate its superiority to Other Operating Systems in trade shows and the like. It slices, it dices, it has a BSoD emulator!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
I can think of another Software company that wouldn't be in a world of hurt today if they didn't have that bloody hardware company soaking up resources up until recently.
But I won't mention Sega's name, lest I offend other Dreamcast fans.
I think it would be in Apple's absolute best interest to open up the Apple design spec, sell off their hardware business, and go into the OS Market.
Try telling that to your average x86 lamer. Apple paid $400 mil for Next that quarter... somehow i don't think that they were in dire need of funds...
not to mention the fact that Apple had five billion dollars in cash and short-term investments at this time. that $150 Million from Microsoft was peanuts. Microsoft got off scott-free from that deal. the biggest thing they gave in that deal was the agreement to provide Office for the Mac, and they make loads of cash off of selling Office to Mac users these days! give me a break.
of course, things are different when you run an illegal monopoly. fuck Microsoft pisses me off.
So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?
That no average user would buy any Apple OS anymore because Microsoft Office would promptly become unavailable for it.
... you don't REALLY think that they'd ship Office for a directly competing OS, do you??
Hell, Microsoft wouldn't even let Apple ship Yellow Box for Windows. The whole OS is *so* not on, if you get my drift.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like the deal Apple got along with their $150 million.
Well, there's a few extra twists. Roughly in order of how Microsoft perceived their importance:
1) Apple agreed not to drag them through the courts for being caught stealing QuickTime source code;
2) Apple had to kill not only Rhapsody/x86 but also Yellow Box for Windows;
3) Apple had to give IE pride of place over Netscape in all system releases etc.
In return, Apple got:
1) Cash, which they really didn't need
2) Committment to deliver a new version of office for 9.x (this is office 2k1) and X.x (coming sometime) which is pretty darn important for ANY new OS to get traction
3) Chairman Bill up on the videowall at MacWorld promising to not kill Apple, really, which was probably the most important part of the whole deal from the analysts' point of view.
Re:Darwin Server, not worth it
by
AIXadmin
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· Score: 2
"I did some testing and playing around with large (hundreds of users) streams set up a few months ago, and Darwin was barely able to break 35 connections. I'm sure part of this is because Darwin was originally written for the Macintosh, and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac! "
Funny, I know Apple has been able to server a 1000 times that using Darwin streaming server. Oh yea, and the Mac OS had a web server right after NCSA was released. It was called MacHTTPD , now known as WebStar. Now there are three or different options, even a commerical Apache port.
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
They'ed have to release thier OS ahead of any available apps... Meaning it would flounder. No one's going to pay their developers to port applcations to an unreleased platform, and Apple would lose out big time by releasing OS X on intel without any apps. Look at how "successful" Be's been - releasing a cool OS with very little app support.
You need to register before you can download. It prompts me for a password. Now if I could only remeber what mine was....
Now if they port the rest of OS X to Intel I'd be interested in getting it. But whats the real difference of getting darwin vs BSD or some other UNIX for intel or Linux?
It might be nice to try Darwin with X and see how stable that would be vs Linux or BSD.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
--
Only 'flamers' flame!
Re:"Open Source Foundation"
by
rm+-rf+/etc/*
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· Score: 2
and that's about it. you can run x-windows on it (which isn't all that easy to do on OS X), or whatever you want
Actually, it's just as easy on OSX, just head over to xfree86.org and download the 4.0.3 binaries and install them just like you would on any other unix system. Then you can go get Xaqua to run X apps in tandem with the OSX window system.
Re:Carbon and Cocoa: open source emulation?
by
rm+-rf+/etc/*
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· Score: 3
GNUstep is a GNU project to create an open source set of frameworks that conform to the OpenStep (now Cocoa) API. Core foundation is 99% complete currently, and very usable. AppKit has a way to go yet. Basically, at best GNUstep will one day give you source compatability (meaning don't hold your breath for those proprietary closed source mac apps). Currently, it's not there yet for several reasons.
First, AppKit has some work to do on the more advanced controls (like the text model). Second, the GNUstep folks are trying to catch up to a moving target (Cocoa). Third, there's an amazing lack of interest in the GNUstep project so it is not moving all that fast. Finally, Cocoa apps used a completely different makefile format and also store interfaces in nib files which are in a semi-proprietary format. This means to build OSX apps, you'd have to rewrite the makefiles (pretty simple), and either convert the nib's to something your app can use (conversion is very rough, doesn't work well) or rewrite your interface by hand.
So one day I hope things will look better, but right now anything with a complex interface would be a pain to port to GNUstep.
Re:Darwin isn't Open Source!!!
by
adolf
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· Score: 2
[...]THE SOFTWARE IS COOL AND SUPPORTED BY SOMEONE I KNOW WILL BE THERE TOMORROW, versus OS projects that can disappear if the maintainer decides to ditch it. Apple's not going to ditch the core of their OS.
Right. Just like IBM isn't going to ditch OS/2. None of the other huge computer companies (Apple, MSFT, etc) are as bull-headed as IBM when it comes to supporting and maintaining forgotten things, but OS/2 is (by their own admission) quite dead.
Did I mention that it is closed-source, and thus the few nagging bugs which persist will very likely never be fixed at any point in the future?
Or, the Amiga OS (what was it, Workbench?). Commodore is at least six feet under right now, but at one time was seen as having no danger of folding, with one of the most competent desktop operating systems in existance to their name, and killer hardware to match. Much like OS/2, nobody can modify the OS to any genuinely useful extent, and so it has been stale for years.
I suppose it's nice that Darwin sources are available, but if Apple kicks the bucket, all the code in the world won't change the license restrictions into something which allows people the freedom to work independantly on the software and share their improvements with the world. It is therefore no better than the aforementioned worse-case closed-source scenarious.
Check out http://www.openpackages.org/ (hope this link prints correctly this time). There's already a project to unify the ports/packages collections across the various BSDs. Note that by ports/packages I mean FreeBSD-style ports and NetBSD-style packages (which are the same things, different names).
-- I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
Re:"Open Source Foundation"
by
q[alex]
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· Score: 4
From what I've been able to gather from the FAQ and other stuff, you get:
a mach kernel
a bsd subsystem - regularly synched with freebsd (libraries, object interfaces, etc) and netbsd (some user commands)
and that's about it. you can run x-windows on it (which isn't all that easy to do on OS X), or whatever you want.
the directory structure isn't all that important (to me, anyways)... what is important is that you're getting an OS that's binary compatible with Mac OS X (except for the carbon and cocoa toolkits, Apple's GUI frameworks), and also happens to be very close to a FreeBSD reference platform. Pretty damn cool.
-- I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
Re:"Open Source Foundation"
by
nphinit
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· Score: 4
It's a bare-bones BSD-like OS. If you want XFree and goodies like that, you need to download them yourself.
Ok, so why use Darwin at all?
1.) It's *painless* to install on a Mac. Absolutely painless.
2.) It's small and lean.
3.) An Apple-branded opensource BSD variant? Count me in!;)
Re:Darwin isn't Open Source!!!
by
Hard_Code
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· Score: 2
"I can modify and submit changes to the source code for free."
Except, I believe that the Apple license does not give you *ownership* of that code. You can make the changes and submit them, but then they're *theirs* not yours. That is the big difference. I may be wrong here, but that's the last I heard on that license. Nobody says you don't have to like it. More companies allowing people to view their source is great. Just don't bless it as "Open Source" or "Free Software".
They really need to stop erroneously using the words 'Open Source'.
Re:Darwin isn't Open Source!!!
by
ahknight
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· Score: 2
I can download Dawrin for free. I can install it for free. I can use it for free. I can get the source code for free. I can modify and submit changes to the source code for free.
If you mean you can't take Apple's code and use it elsewhere, you might have a point, but, really, Apple is a company. Get your head out of the FSF's ass long enough to see that that the world cannot exist on free software along. SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, has to cost money for someone to make money. Free goes no where. We tried it, the VCs poured money into it. None came out and the stockes crashed. Learn from this. If you want to see Darwin 2.0 then it can never be RMS' idea of "free" because Apple would go the way of VA Linux.
Whoop-de-friggin-do that RMS and FSF don't like it. I couldn't care less about their opinions of things. This is free as in beer and cool as hell and by God I'm using the damned thing and the entire whiny "Open Source" (with big capital letters) movement can kiss my furry ass if you dislike the license BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE IS COOL AND SUPPORTED BY SOMEONE I KNOW WILL BE THERE TOMORROW, versus OS projects that can disappear if the maintainer decides to ditch it. Apple's not going to ditch the core of their OS.
Re:How long before GNU/Darwin?
by
ddstreet
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· Score: 4
No, sorry, GNU/Hurd uses the Mach kernel; it would be GNU/Darwin (not GNU/Mach).
'Hurd' refers to the (userspace) device drivers, as does 'Darwin'. Both use the Mach microkernel.
You need to understand the difference between a monolithic kernel and micro-kernel to see the difference between Hurd and Mach (or Darwin and Mach).
A monolithic kernel (like Linux) has all operations and device drivers in-kernel; they all run in kernel mode (ring 0 on x86).
A microkernel (like Mach) only has the basic operations, but doesn't do everything you need. You need userspace 'server processes' which complete the kernel and run in userspace (ring 2 on x86). Thus, you have GNU's Hurd (play on words, it's a 'herd' of server processes) and Apple's Darwin.
Re:Darwin Server, not worth it
by
dbrutus
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· Score: 2
You basically answered your own question. If you have a low to medium volume server (let's say a military unit alumni association) that really needs to be secure (maybe you got tired of being 0wn3d), then Mac's the place to be.
The % of PPC code v. emulated may have been right at one time but I don't think this is true anymore.
For those who wish not to register with Apple's crazy crazy system:
user: goatsecx
pass: goatsecx
Direct Link to the x86 gzipped image.
True life example of how Darwin helps Apple
by
e271828
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· Score: 2
When OS X Final was released, a lot of folks with dual processor Macs reported kernel panics when getting online via dial-up. A Darwin developer (Louis Gerbarg), who is not an Apple employee, tracked down the bug in an open source kernel extension, and fixed it. No big deal in the Linux world, but possibly a first for a commercial OS (again, this was a kernel level bug!)
End result: Lots of happy OS X users (who paid upto $129 a pop to buy the software), without any involvement from Apple! Talk about a win-win...
Re:Darwin Server, not worth it
by
naasking
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· Score: 3
and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac!
Really? Then what's this? Oh, and how about this? And then there's this, and this! Don't forget this. And finally, there's this! Now I figure either you meant to say something else, or you just don't know what you're talking about. If it's the former, perhaps you should clarify. If the latter you just lost alot of credibility in my mind.
First - Windows Media Services is a great way to go if you want to continue Microsoft's hegemony on the desktop. Competition is good.
Second - Last I heard, Real was charging $2,000+ for Real Server 8. That may be cheap to you, but it isn't to me.
Third - Darwin was not written for the Macinosh, it was built on BSD and was never intended to be used solely on PowerPC hardware.
Fourth - If you're down on apps that are configured through text files, perhaps you're not really very familiar with this thing called UNIX, which happens to use a text files all over the place for configuration. Ever heard of Apache?
Fifth - Speaking of web server platforms running on the Mac, maybe you've heard of Apache, WebTen, WebStar...
Sixth - "free with the purchase of Windows 2000" says it all.
Without Aqua, Carbon and all that other stuff.. Why would you use this over say FreeBSD? Not like you can run OS X apps on it or anything.
Please explain to me why I would get this and what the benifit is of it?
Also, on the PPC side, does it support the G3 Firewire notebooks? And the airport cards? I got Yellow Dog, but I can't get the speakers to turn on.. I havn't hacked around with the Airport card much.>p? --
Of course there WAS no interest...
by
alexhmit01
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· Score: 2
Until 3 weeks ago, there was no large shipping operating system supporting OpenSTEP like APIs. Well, that started to change on March 24. If a handful of programmers realize the power of the Cocoa environment, we'll see the sucker improving. However, with NeXT basically dead, OpenSTEP marginalized, and then it completely disappearing while Apply worked on OS X, there was no incentive other than porting old NeXTSTEP code.
Now there is.
There needs to be a common API for writing applications for the UNIX workstation market. Within 6 months, the market leader in that space will be Apple.
Either get Trolltech to port QT to Quartz (and then the KDR extentions), or port GTK+ to Quartz, or port Cocoa (via GnuSTEP) to X-Windows.
Either way, Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS X are a natural alliance. The combined desktop marketshare is much more worthwhile to port to than any of them individually.
whoa. i gasped (loud) when i saw this article. doing a bit of research, i found this page, containing the x86 installation notes. Take a look! it appears that you need a specific intel board.
"emulators such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards." ...you can't try this out with VMware!! that's how almost all of us were going to play...
Re:Wow and look at all the hardware support...
by
ahknight
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· Score: 2
And at version 1.3 Linux was any better? It wasn't until 2.0+ that anything useful was supported. This is how an OS grows. People seem to forget that Darwin and Mac OS X (10 that is) are BABIES in the world of OSes. They are just getting started with hardware and application support. Give 'em time and they will refine it. You think Windows 95 supported USB at all? It barely supported good video cards. Given time, however, Win 98 SE did a pretty good job at USB and video acceleration.
Give Apple some time and don't judge the first releases like this is the final product.
With the x86 release of Darwin a complete OS X release for the x86 platform wouldn't be far away
Sadly Darwin is a tiny part of the effort required to bring Mac OS X to x86. Above this sit many layers of software, including Quartz, Carbon, Aqua, Classic, Cocoa, QuickTime, Java... Don't forget, Apple has had a team of up to 500 engineers working on Mac OS X for PPC for the last three years or so. Of that effort, only a tiny subset has been dedicated to bringing up Darwin.
I'd guess that you'd be looking at several hundred man years of effort to get the rest of Mac OS X ported to Intel, particularly if you want it to run on a decent spread of hardware. I wouldn't hold your breath...
You're assuming that higher-level code is all written in PowerPC assembly language. I don't think that is the case. I would expect that most of the OS X code is written in C, C++, or Objective C (the object-oriented dialect of C used on NeXTstep).
Actually, I'm not assuming that Mac OS X is written in PPC assembly language. I worked for Apple as a senior software engineer for four years, up through the Mac OS X beta. I spent a lot of time working on the internals of Mac OS X. Porting an OS written in C/C++ is not a case of recompiling for a new instruction set. It would be a significant amount of work to bring the upper software layers of Mac OS X up on Intel.
The biggest technical challenges would probably be the Classic environment (which has to run PowerPC and 68K machine code), device support for the millions of different PC I/O configurations, and reoptimization of low-level code that takes advantage of AltiVec.
Classic would be a major challenge. Not only the technical issues of running a PowerPC emulator on Intel, but also the usability issue that emulation brings - namely your emulated Classic apps would run very, very slowly on Intel.
But the real reasons you won't see OS X on x86 are business reasons. Apple thinks of themselves as a hardware company -- they weren't willing to tolerate even limited competition from authorized cloners, and so they certainly wouldn't want to have to compete for hardware sales in the x86 world. And Office gives Microsoft a lot of hold over Apple, even if using one monopoly to maintain or extend another is supposed to be against the law.
I agree, the major reasons for not porting Mac OS X to Intel are business-related, not technical. The technical reasons are huge however. To re-iterate what you said, Apple is a company that does around $8 billion a year in revenue. Of this about 95% is from hardware. So the first year that Apple transitions from being a hardware company to being a software company, its revenues drop from $8 billion to $400 million. Its hard to see how any company could justify that kind of decision. Can you imagine how their shareholders would react?
Personally I don't think Microsoft has much hold over Apple. That's just a red herring as far as I can see. Its the revenue drop they couldn't stomach.
Mac OS X was also updated. Up to 4L13 (10.0.1). This is the official apple sanctioned release version. Check out macnn for tips if you installed an earlier, developer only build (4l5?)
Get it by running apple software update, letting it update your software update application, run it again (to get 10.0.1), reboot, and run it again (to get updated epson printer drivers) if you want.
Have fun...
From Apple:
Update Now: Use the Software Update feature in your System Preferences to get the latest Mac OS X software. Improvements including better support for 3rd party USB devices, Classic compatibility and overall application stability as well as support for the popular open source Secure Shell service. For Japanese users, an update to the Epson printer drivers is also available.
I imagine it would be a headache, but how difficult would it be to bring over the ports collection and the drivers from FreeBSD?
although I can agreed that in this case it would be better to go with the pure BSD installs for a standard system, and use the darwin setup for a mad scientist rig.
-- "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Wow and look at all the hardware support...
by
philask
·
· Score: 2
---COUGH--
IDE:
Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.
Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better.
Ethernet:
Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported.
All PCI based Intel 8255x cards tested worked fine, however
the mobile 8255x controllers in laptops are not supported.
Video:
You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all
modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators
such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards.
Successfully tested hardware:
All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
Re:Darwin Server, not worth it
by
update()
·
· Score: 2
Huh?
One, this story is about the Darwin OS, not the streaming server. Two, on what planet does MacOS not have any web servers?
Yeah, I know it's a troll. I'm just wondering what the idiots moderating you up are thinking. Anyway, when it comes to trolling, Michael has you beat with from the for-masochists-only dept.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Re:Darwin Server, not worth it
by
KingAzzy
·
· Score: 2
Quicktime beats the crap out of Windows Media and Real codec's many times plus some. Go check out http://www.apple.com/trailers/ and if you've got decent bandwidth, check out the high bandwidth videos. I've never seen WMP or Real equivs to that quality, even at high exposure places like atomfilms.com. Even the low-res clips look great.
Moral: It's an aesthetics thing. Totally different universe from Unix geekdom.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS/2 for x86, everyone says "IBM'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.
But if they released OS/2 for PCs...
(1) They could STILL sell the ibm hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, IBM designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the MCA platform. I'd continue to buy it.
(2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.
So.. ibm releases OS/2 for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?
OSI Press Release
C'mon...like it was that difficult to manually edit the floppy boot sector when you wanted to use something other than the first primary hard drive partition.
:)
These damn kids nowadays with their fancy LILO's
I'm stunned nobody else responded to this by pointing to the GNU-Darwin Project homepage. So here it is.
No, this isn't a joke.
Try here.
Nice try, kids. Look here if you want the release info.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Good answer - I had to check the username to see if it was one of my college roommates (big Mac guys) and got a good chuckel. That was quite an informed answer for a user by the name of AIX admin. . .
-"Zow"
neither solaris or os/2 were/are known for their ease-of-use and user friendliness like Apple's OS. If people could have a Mac experience on their x86s, I could easily see them bailing on Windows.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS X for x86, everyone says "APPLE'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.
But if they released OS X for PCs...
(1) They could STILL sell the apple hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, Apple designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the PPC platform. I'd continue to buy it.
(2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.
So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"I did some testing and playing around with large (hundreds of users) streams set up a few months ago, and Darwin was barely able to break 35 connections. I'm sure part of this is because Darwin was originally written for the Macintosh, and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac! " Funny, I know Apple has been able to server a 1000 times that using Darwin streaming server. Oh yea, and the Mac OS had a web server right after NCSA was released. It was called MacHTTPD , now known as WebStar. Now there are three or different options, even a commerical Apache port.
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
They'ed have to release thier OS ahead of any available apps... Meaning it would flounder. No one's going to pay their developers to port applcations to an unreleased platform, and Apple would lose out big time by releasing OS X on intel without any apps. Look at how "successful" Be's been - releasing a cool OS with very little app support.
Now if they port the rest of OS X to Intel I'd be interested in getting it. But whats the real difference of getting darwin vs BSD or some other UNIX for intel or Linux?
It might be nice to try Darwin with X and see how stable that would be vs Linux or BSD.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Actually, it's just as easy on OSX, just head over to xfree86.org and download the 4.0.3 binaries and install them just like you would on any other unix system. Then you can go get Xaqua to run X apps in tandem with the OSX window system.
GNUstep is a GNU project to create an open source set of frameworks that conform to the OpenStep (now Cocoa) API. Core foundation is 99% complete currently, and very usable. AppKit has a way to go yet. Basically, at best GNUstep will one day give you source compatability (meaning don't hold your breath for those proprietary closed source mac apps). Currently, it's not there yet for several reasons.
First, AppKit has some work to do on the more advanced controls (like the text model). Second, the GNUstep folks are trying to catch up to a moving target (Cocoa). Third, there's an amazing lack of interest in the GNUstep project so it is not moving all that fast. Finally, Cocoa apps used a completely different makefile format and also store interfaces in nib files which are in a semi-proprietary format. This means to build OSX apps, you'd have to rewrite the makefiles (pretty simple), and either convert the nib's to something your app can use (conversion is very rough, doesn't work well) or rewrite your interface by hand.
So one day I hope things will look better, but right now anything with a complex interface would be a pain to port to GNUstep.
Right. Just like IBM isn't going to ditch OS/2. None of the other huge computer companies (Apple, MSFT, etc) are as bull-headed as IBM when it comes to supporting and maintaining forgotten things, but OS/2 is (by their own admission) quite dead.
Did I mention that it is closed-source, and thus the few nagging bugs which persist will very likely never be fixed at any point in the future?
Or, the Amiga OS (what was it, Workbench?). Commodore is at least six feet under right now, but at one time was seen as having no danger of folding, with one of the most competent desktop operating systems in existance to their name, and killer hardware to match. Much like OS/2, nobody can modify the OS to any genuinely useful extent, and so it has been stale for years.
I suppose it's nice that Darwin sources are available, but if Apple kicks the bucket, all the code in the world won't change the license restrictions into something which allows people the freedom to work independantly on the software and share their improvements with the world. It is therefore no better than the aforementioned worse-case closed-source scenarious.
Kid-proof tablet..
Does it come with Quartz for the GUI?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Check out http://www.openpackages.org/ (hope this link prints correctly this time). There's already a project to unify the ports/packages collections across the various BSDs. Note that by ports/packages I mean FreeBSD-style ports and NetBSD-style packages (which are the same things, different names).
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
From what I've been able to gather from the FAQ and other stuff, you get:
a mach kernel
a bsd subsystem - regularly synched with freebsd (libraries, object interfaces, etc) and netbsd (some user commands)
and that's about it. you can run x-windows on it (which isn't all that easy to do on OS X), or whatever you want.
the directory structure isn't all that important (to me, anyways)... what is important is that you're getting an OS that's binary compatible with Mac OS X (except for the carbon and cocoa toolkits, Apple's GUI frameworks), and also happens to be very close to a FreeBSD reference platform. Pretty damn cool.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
It's a bare-bones BSD-like OS. If you want XFree and goodies like that, you need to download them yourself.
Ok, so why use Darwin at all?
1.) It's *painless* to install on a Mac. Absolutely painless.
2.) It's small and lean.
3.) An Apple-branded opensource BSD variant? Count me in!
"I can modify and submit changes to the source code for free."
Except, I believe that the Apple license does not give you *ownership* of that code. You can make the changes and submit them, but then they're *theirs* not yours. That is the big difference. I may be wrong here, but that's the last I heard on that license. Nobody says you don't have to like it. More companies allowing people to view their source is great. Just don't bless it as "Open Source" or "Free Software".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why does everyone simply believe Apple when they say Open Source?!?
The Apple Public Source License is not approved by the Open Source Initiative nor the Free Software Foundation. In fact RMS gives reasons why it is not acceptable, even their new 'version 1.2' APSL release.
They really need to stop erroneously using the words 'Open Source'.
No, sorry, GNU/Hurd uses the Mach kernel; it would be GNU/Darwin (not GNU/Mach).
'Hurd' refers to the (userspace) device drivers, as does 'Darwin'. Both use the Mach microkernel.
You need to understand the difference between a monolithic kernel and micro-kernel to see the difference between Hurd and Mach (or Darwin and Mach).
A monolithic kernel (like Linux) has all operations and device drivers in-kernel; they all run in kernel mode (ring 0 on x86).
A microkernel (like Mach) only has the basic operations, but doesn't do everything you need. You need userspace 'server processes' which complete the kernel and run in userspace (ring 2 on x86). Thus, you have GNU's Hurd (play on words, it's a 'herd' of server processes) and Apple's Darwin.
But they BOTH use the Mach microkernel.
See history of FSF and GNU (scroll down to 'The GNU Hurd") for a better explanation.
You basically answered your own question. If you have a low to medium volume server (let's say a military unit alumni association) that really needs to be secure (maybe you got tired of being 0wn3d), then Mac's the place to be.
The % of PPC code v. emulated may have been right at one time but I don't think this is true anymore.
For those who wish not to register with Apple's crazy crazy system:
user: goatsecx
pass: goatsecx
Direct Link to the
x86 gzipped image.
End result: Lots of happy OS X users (who paid upto $129 a pop to buy the software), without any involvement from Apple! Talk about a win-win...
and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac!
Really? Then what's this? Oh, and how about this? And then there's this, and this! Don't forget this. And finally, there's this! Now I figure either you meant to say something else, or you just don't know what you're talking about. If it's the former, perhaps you should clarify. If the latter you just lost alot of credibility in my mind.
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"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Second - Last I heard, Real was charging $2,000+ for Real Server 8. That may be cheap to you, but it isn't to me.
Third - Darwin was not written for the Macinosh, it was built on BSD and was never intended to be used solely on PowerPC hardware.
Fourth - If you're down on apps that are configured through text files, perhaps you're not really very familiar with this thing called UNIX, which happens to use a text files all over the place for configuration. Ever heard of Apache?
Fifth - Speaking of web server platforms running on the Mac, maybe you've heard of Apache, WebTen, WebStar...
Sixth - "free with the purchase of Windows 2000" says it all.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Please explain to me why I would get this and what the benifit is of it?
Also, on the PPC side, does it support the G3 Firewire notebooks? And the airport cards? I got Yellow Dog, but I can't get the speakers to turn on.. I havn't hacked around with the Airport card much.>p?
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Free Mac Mini
Until 3 weeks ago, there was no large shipping operating system supporting OpenSTEP like APIs. Well, that started to change on March 24. If a handful of programmers realize the power of the Cocoa environment, we'll see the sucker improving. However, with NeXT basically dead, OpenSTEP marginalized, and then it completely disappearing while Apply worked on OS X, there was no incentive other than porting old NeXTSTEP code.
Now there is.
There needs to be a common API for writing applications for the UNIX workstation market. Within 6 months, the market leader in that space will be Apple.
Either get Trolltech to port QT to Quartz (and then the KDR extentions), or port GTK+ to Quartz, or port Cocoa (via GnuSTEP) to X-Windows.
Either way, Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS X are a natural alliance. The combined desktop marketshare is much more worthwhile to port to than any of them individually.
Alex
whoa. i gasped (loud) when i saw this article. doing a bit of research, i found this page, containing the x86 installation notes. Take a look! it appears that you need a specific intel board.
"emulators such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards."
...you can't try this out with VMware!! that's how almost all of us were going to play...
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
And at version 1.3 Linux was any better? It wasn't until 2.0+ that anything useful was supported. This is how an OS grows. People seem to forget that Darwin and Mac OS X (10 that is) are BABIES in the world of OSes. They are just getting started with hardware and application support. Give 'em time and they will refine it. You think Windows 95 supported USB at all? It barely supported good video cards. Given time, however, Win 98 SE did a pretty good job at USB and video acceleration.
Give Apple some time and don't judge the first releases like this is the final product.
With the x86 release of Darwin a complete OS X release for the x86 platform wouldn't be far away
Sadly Darwin is a tiny part of the effort required to bring Mac OS X to x86. Above this sit many layers of software, including Quartz, Carbon, Aqua, Classic, Cocoa, QuickTime, Java... Don't forget, Apple has had a team of up to 500 engineers working on Mac OS X for PPC for the last three years or so. Of that effort, only a tiny subset has been dedicated to bringing up Darwin.
I'd guess that you'd be looking at several hundred man years of effort to get the rest of Mac OS X ported to Intel, particularly if you want it to run on a decent spread of hardware. I wouldn't hold your breath...
Sailing over the event horizon
You're assuming that higher-level code is all written in PowerPC assembly language. I don't think that is the case. I would expect that most of the OS X code is written in C, C++, or Objective C (the object-oriented dialect of C used on NeXTstep).
Actually, I'm not assuming that Mac OS X is written in PPC assembly language. I worked for Apple as a senior software engineer for four years, up through the Mac OS X beta. I spent a lot of time working on the internals of Mac OS X. Porting an OS written in C/C++ is not a case of recompiling for a new instruction set. It would be a significant amount of work to bring the upper software layers of Mac OS X up on Intel.
The biggest technical challenges would probably be the Classic environment (which has to run PowerPC and 68K machine code), device support for the millions of different PC I/O configurations, and reoptimization of low-level code that takes advantage of AltiVec.
Classic would be a major challenge. Not only the technical issues of running a PowerPC emulator on Intel, but also the usability issue that emulation brings - namely your emulated Classic apps would run very, very slowly on Intel.
But the real reasons you won't see OS X on x86 are business reasons. Apple thinks of themselves as a hardware company -- they weren't willing to tolerate even limited competition from authorized cloners, and so they certainly wouldn't want to have to compete for hardware sales in the x86 world. And Office gives Microsoft a lot of hold over Apple, even if using one monopoly to maintain or extend another is supposed to be against the law.
I agree, the major reasons for not porting Mac OS X to Intel are business-related, not technical. The technical reasons are huge however. To re-iterate what you said, Apple is a company that does around $8 billion a year in revenue. Of this about 95% is from hardware. So the first year that Apple transitions from being a hardware company to being a software company, its revenues drop from $8 billion to $400 million. Its hard to see how any company could justify that kind of decision. Can you imagine how their shareholders would react?
Personally I don't think Microsoft has much hold over Apple. That's just a red herring as far as I can see. Its the revenue drop they couldn't stomach.
Sailing over the event horizon
I hope they're not trying to impress us with osx server - it looks like they're slashdotted...
Mac OS X was also updated. Up to 4L13 (10.0.1). This is the official apple sanctioned release version. Check out macnn for tips if you installed an earlier, developer only build (4l5?)
Get it by running apple software update, letting it update your software update application, run it again (to get 10.0.1), reboot, and run it again (to get updated epson printer drivers) if you want.
Have fun...
From Apple:
Update Now: Use the Software Update feature in your System Preferences to get the latest Mac OS X software. Improvements including better support for 3rd party USB devices, Classic compatibility and overall application stability as well as support for the popular open source Secure Shell service. For Japanese users, an update to the Epson printer drivers is also available.
-ETF EOM
although I can agreed that in this case it would be better to go with the pure BSD installs for a standard system, and use the darwin setup for a mad scientist rig.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
---COUGH-- IDE: Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work. Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better. Ethernet: Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported. All PCI based Intel 8255x cards tested worked fine, however the mobile 8255x controllers in laptops are not supported. Video: You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards. Successfully tested hardware: All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
One, this story is about the Darwin OS, not the streaming server. Two, on what planet does MacOS not have any web servers?
Yeah, I know it's a troll. I'm just wondering what the idiots moderating you up are thinking. Anyway, when it comes to trolling, Michael has you beat with from the for-masochists-only dept.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Moral: It's an aesthetics thing. Totally different universe from Unix geekdom. ;-)
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase