GNU-Darwin Goes Beta

proclus writes "OSX.1 users can now install the GNU-Darwin base distribution automatically with one command. As Root: "curl http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/one_stop | csh"." This assummes you have curl or wget or something. From there you can install gnome, abiword, gimp or whatever. Looks pretty smooth (although I'm kinda confused how you get back to OSX.1 from there ;)

Comments

getting back

[jbarket]

i think all the information on getting back etc is covered at www.xdarwin.com ... something like ctrl+fnc a i think.

Ximian

[cachedout]

Why is this so unique? Ximian Gnome has been using this installation method for a while now. All a user has to do assuming X is installed and working is type as root, 'wget http://go-gnome.com | sh'. Simple as that....

Cool stuff, but beware of Dillo

[CmdrTroll]

A few of my friends have installed this package and they've generally been very impressed. The applications are speedy and rock-solid. The one exception that they mention is Dillo: "a replacement for any major web browser." Although Dillo renders quickly and doesn't have a bloated UI, its support for major features such as JavaScript 2 and CSS is lacking, to be kind. Many web pages, such as MSN and Tom's Hardware, look very cluttered and misrendered in it - if they even come up at all.

Dillo is a neat little effort, a cool side project, but no replacement for a real browser like Galeon or Konqueror. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt, the lowest point of the GNU-Darwin package.

-CT

Re:gnome over x?

[Chakat]

Simplicity and variety, my friend. Instead of having to boot to another OS, you just have to fire up gnome. Plus, there are a few apps, such as the kickass Galeon, which don't run under OSX. More programs is always a good thing.

And the 20 second rule is to try to discourage crapflooders and trolls. Not very effective, but its something most regular users don't come across (I haven't, at least).

Re:OS X.1

[alfredo]

Here is an old screenshot, several months old that is.
rootless

UNIX for the rest of us.

That script is weird...

[CoolVibe]

It replaces everything with GNU darwin stuff if you run it on Mac OS X. How do they know that doesn't break anything? e.g. GNU ls is different from the BSD type ls Mac OS X has installed default. I think a big YMMV is in place here.

That said, I'll just download the ISO and free up a partition to run it alongside Mac OS X and Aqua. That way my normal OSX system is guaranteed not to break. My mac is a test machine anyway. I run different operating systems on it depending on what I need to test. I urge everyone that wants to test this on their machine that runs important stuff to BACK UP THEIR IMPORTANT FILES, just to be safe.

Oh.. another thing: it's BETA. It might break. So be a little cautious, and be prepared to pull up your sleeves and do some work if it breaks, but hey, that's what being bleeding edge is all about, right?

But anyway: Great work guys! I'll seriously check it out. I'm downloading the iso as you read this comment.

Re:That script is weird...

[rockrat]

Running the script hosed my system unrepairably. It would no longer boot into OS X AT ALL! Only a full reformat & re-install fixed it.
Definitely a YMMV is in order.

Re:That script is weird...

[CoolVibe]

Why is it trolling? I'm just warning people that they should not run that script with reckless abandon. I read the script and there is stuff in there that is just beyond me. Replacing the OSX shipped fileutil-like tools with GNU versions is a bad idea. if the OSX user is running on a HFS+ partition (as many do. Mac OS Classic and Carbon apps have some issues with UFS, because the directory delimiter on HFS is ':' and UFS uses '/'. This seriously confuses some apps. Same goes for some GNU utils that just don't take the proprietary HFS+ filesystem features into account, which is understandable, since the HFS+ fs isn't really open. You needn't replace them because they're not broken. Oh, and not everyone has the same setup. Some people use UFS, some with HFS+. Some people run with classic, some without. Some run OS X 10.0.4, and some run 10.1. That's a lot of variables. So it might work on your system, but not on someone else's. However, the people that _do_ end up with a hosed machine should mail you guys about what setup they have, what version OSX they use, if they use HFS+ or UFS etc. etc. That install script can go a long way as you get more input about systems on which it doesn't work. That's Finnagle's law for ya.

Nevertheless, what you guys are doing with the free Darwin system is very cool, I will heartily agree with that, but "upgrading" my existing OSX system with your script is a bit dangerous. There's another comment in this discussion somewhere that talks about that as well. Maybe you could provide a version of the script that only installs the rootless X stuff and the GNOME bits, and maybe a script that transforms an Aqua system to a GNU/Darwin one. The possibilities are endless here, as are the wishes of the people that wish to run those nifty OSS X11 apps on their Aqua setup. I would like to help, but I have priorities elsewhere that take up most (if not all) of my scarse free time. I will definately try GNU/Darwin on my Mac, but I'll just play safe and set a partition aside for it, so I won't hose my Aqua system.

You guys are doing a great job, but the OSX install script has issues (and it even says 'untested' in the script header somewhere). I am not trolling, and I am not attacking your project. I am merely warning people that they should be careful.... That's all... You guys keep on going. You are doing some cool stuff. But a YMMV is definately in order here.

So people, just try the upgrade script, but your mileage may vary. Oh, if it somehow screws up your machine, please send bugreports to the GNU/Darwin people and don't forget to report what setup you have and what the problems were so they can fix it.

Re:And whats even better,

[Anonymous Coward]

Few reasons:

• beause you can access your existing HFS+ volumes
• because you don't need to repartition your harddrive when installing alongside MacOS
• because you can access resource forks, type/creator codes and all that stuff
• because putting a machine to sleep actually works

and more...

Re:GNU Darwin?

[marmoset]

What are you talking about? How does culr "taint" anything? Curl is dually licensed under an MIT/X-derived license and the MPL. The MIT/X license is GPL compatible. Are you trolling or just confused?

curl is "absurdly proprietary?"

[Anonymous Coward]

...something as absurdly proprietary as Curl...

Uh, what exactly is "absurdly proprietary" about this? Try and get your facts straight before your pour more salt on licencing wounds, OK?

Re:WGET Missing from OS X.1

[TotallyUseless]

they did this because wget is gpl, and for whatever reason they saw this as a reason not to include it. After updating to 10.1 the first thing i did was install fink tho, and type 'fink install wget' into terminal. Minutes later i had a fully compiled/working install of wget, waiting to go! Yay fink!

Re:gnome over x?

[Ryan Amos]

Aqua doesn't, however, you can download a rootless X server (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/) that lets you run X apps right along with Aqua apps. The same files are also available on http://macosx.forked.net/ in Mac OS X .pkg files, along with other useful stuff OS X doesn't include, such as ncurses. The window manager, by the way, is whatever window manager you decide to install-- it's just XFree86 ported to a darwin kernel with a rootless option. If you're not running OS X, XDarwin (not XonX) will probably work better for you.. It doesn't have the rootless option, but if you don't have Aqua, you don't really need it. Hope this was of help to some people.

context switching

[WiseWeasel]

Your X environment is a Mac application that you can switch to by clicking on its window or on its dock or double clicking on its finder icon. Once the X environment is frontmost, you can switch frontmost apps the way you usually do with whatever window manager.

fink == apt-get

[mbrubeck]

I use fink myself. It's sort of a clone of apt-get for OSX. Minor correction -- fink is not "sort of a clone" of the Debian tools. It is actually a frontend to the dpkg/apt suite, which they ported to OS X. Fink uses the real Debian package management tools and the .deb package format.

Note the actual license on GNU-Darwin-ports

[mr]

Is actually a BSD license.

And, on the main page, the license is listed as GPL. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-darwin/

DON'T DO THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO REPLACE OS.X.1

[Nijika]

Um yeah... Just for the people who copy and paste before reading through!

http://curl.haxx.se/

[bagder]

Hey

Lots are being said about cURL in these discussions, both favourable and some things not so favourable. Feel free to stop by and make your own opinion.

We host our project web pages at http://curl.haxx.se/ and we welcome your contributions!

Re:What's so special about this distribution?

[pfistech]

Bad day?

Not at all. I'm just horrified by the scripts that you ask people to execute as root. I'm also defending Fink in the comparison you make. Saying that GNU-Darwin and Fink are the same and the only difference is the number of available packages misses some important differences, and one of them is testing and quality.

None of the above has anything to do with the quality of the distro.

Quite to the contrary, they have very much to say:

• install-info and install are on completely different playgrounds. install is an enhanced version of cp/mv with special features for installing executables in their final destination. install-info is used to maintain the 'dir' file of a documentation collection in Info format. There are actually at least two incompatible versions of install-info out there, and the install command is far from a useful substitute. /bin/true would be a far better (i.e. less dangerous) "do nothing" replacement. Anyway, this tells me that a) GNU-Darwin doesn't maintain the dir file, and b) you don't even know what install-info is supposed to do.
• The only reason I can see to link enlightenment from /bin is because the enlightenment.install script distributed with it is somewhat broken. Instead of fixing the script, you've opted to make a link in an inappropriate directory.
• Major revisions of shared libraries are made because there are changes that break binary compatibility. Linking one major revision of libfreetype to another one - instead of looking into the problem and coming up with a real solution - is asking for trouble.

And, well, the version number and the complete lack of sanity checks and error handling in the install script also says a lot about the quality of the distro. Remember, distro = packages + infrastructure + handling scripts.