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Darwin/Mac OS X: The Fifth BSD

LiquidPC writes: "Lance M. Westerhoff from AppleLust has written a superb article on the history of BSD. The article talks about the first versions of BSD and continues with the stories of NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, BSDi, and it finishes off with Darwin/MacOSX."

64 comments

  1. wierd by jacobb · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Funny, how he writes a whole long lengthy article on bsd, and misspells it EVERY time. It's Berk e ley.

    Makes me wonder

    1. Re:wierd by Drishmung · · Score: 1

      He also misspelled Novell, as Novel. You on the other hand, misspelled weird as wierd. Or was that a little meta humor?

      --
      Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
    2. Re:wierd by jacobb · · Score: 1
      hehe. um, yeah. uh. metahumor (append fixed Homer-style fake grin here).

      Yeah, on /. posts, i tend to make a complete idiot out of myself. *sigh*

  2. Re:How much brain does it take? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More brains than the /dork crew has it would seem.

  3. I had a cat..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would seem that you caught me on that one. I had a friend with a cat named "Berkley" (without an 'e') who I used to take care of from time to time. I'd often write a note concerning the cat, and I just kinda got in the habit. Thanks for the heads up! I'll be sure to add that one to the spell checker for future ref...

    -Lance

    1. Re:I had a cat..... by raga · · Score: 1

      Seems like they are 5 of them.

  4. What about... by BSDGeek · · Score: 2, Troll

    What about ClosedBSD?

  5. Trusted MacOS!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you read the article, you might want to follow the link to: Secure Trusted Operating System Consortium Apparently there is a project to enable Darwin, the underpinnings of MacOS X, to have the capabilities of a trusted OS! Amazing.

  6. The Sixth BSD? by Drishmung · · Score: 1

    Does that mean that JUNOS is the sixth BSD?

    --
    Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
    1. Re:The Sixth BSD? by pope+nihil · · Score: 1

      How about xMach?

  7. ClosedBSD is FreeBSD by yerricde · · Score: 1

    What about ClosedBSD?

    ClosedBSD is a distribution of FreeBSD designed for firewalls and NAT boxes. Read More in the FAQ.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
    1. Re:ClosedBSD is FreeBSD by linzeal · · Score: 1

      Whatever happend to securebsd?

    2. Re:ClosedBSD is FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't care. For an incredible amount of laughs, you should visit http://www.lainos.org - The most pathetic piss-poor attempt at making an OS ever. An anime themed FreeBSD. All they've managed so far is a fucking GNOME theme!

  8. Mac OS X is not BSD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is NeXTSTEP, not BSD.

    It is Mach, with a BSD syscall server, and some BSD and GNU userland bits, with NeXT libraries.

    1. Re:Mac OS X is not BSD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, but it is good PR for both Apple and the *BSD projects to claim otherwise.

    2. Re:Mac OS X is not BSD. by gowmc · · Score: 1

      It was to my understanding that NeXTSTEP was supposed to be based on BSD. But of course, I can't tell you where I heard that, so if you feel otherwise, go ahead and tell me.

      --
      -- If it aint broke, fix it till it is. --
  9. fifth BSD by Partisan01 · · Score: 0, Troll

    I think it's good to see another branch of BSD, not just a fork. I think Darwin has real potential to be something great in the BSD world. Just needs a little time to mature. Does anyone know it's strengths over other forms of BSD?

    --
    ahh, the egg in the basket..
    1. Re:fifth BSD by linux_avenger · · Score: 0, Troll

      yeah, it's created by Apple. I mean, wait, that's kind of a weakness. Oh well..

    2. Re:fifth BSD by linux_avenger · · Score: 0

      what's with the troll rating? what's going on with BSD slashdot land?

    3. Re:fifth BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      huh? go check out the /. article where apple asks x86'ers what they could do to get them to use OSX. Just about every 3+ post is another fan boy saying how good it is Completly off topic, but it seems those with mod points don't have any sense of humour about the mac... or any objectivity, but that's not new.

    4. Re:fifth BSD by anarkhos · · Score: 0

      Darwin has IOKit, a really neat driver architecture.

      Darwin's kernel, xnu, is also potentially faster since both Mach and BSD are combined as one binary whereby a message only takes one function call (thus faster).

      --
      >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
      >life
  10. glad to see by Partisan01 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Glad to see another branch of BSD and not just a fork. I think that Darwin has the potential to be a strong player in the BSD arena once it matures up a bit. Does anyone know what specific strengths it has over other BSDs?

    --
    ahh, the egg in the basket..
    1. Re:glad to see by LizardKing · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Please stop forking your comments, most people probably wont get the joke.

      Chris

    2. Re:glad to see by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      super cool UI, ease of use, intuitive, and euro support out of the box!

  11. glad to see by Partisan01 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I'm glad to see that there's another branch of BSD now and not just a fork off some BSD that's been around a while. I think that Darwin can become a viable player in the BSD arena once it matures up a bit. Does anyone know the specific strengths that Darwin has over other BSDs?

    --
    ahh, the egg in the basket..
  12. Darwin strength by aphor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Darwin is a Mach kernel, which is a microkernel, based OS. Microkernels ONLY manage/arbitrate the connections between the upper half of device drivers and the IO buffer interface that software can see. The FreeBSD kernel is wrapped around Mach, rather than attatching drivers directly. As a result, the kernel (managing all kinds of goofy stuff like tables of TCP/UDP sockets in use) is preemptable by drivers that need realtime processing (like a FireWire video stream). Also, since the FreeBSD kernel layer only sees a virtual device interface, devices can be attatched and detatched at will without crashing the kernel. You can unload the device driver, recompile it, reload it, and you have just upgraded a device driver without needing to reboot. If your hardware wouldn't fry in the process, you could rip the video card out of a runnig machine, and replace it. Applications may decide to die when they get the message they are not allowed to write to the framebuffer, but then again they could be written to wait patiently...

    The same sort of technique is used to "virtualise" filesystems. So, you have Mac, Mac-extended, UFS, FAT, EXT2FS partitions on the disk, the software is insulated from the differences. It's as if everything looks like it's wrapped in an NFS mount to the OS. This may not be totally accurate on a technical level, but you should understand that there is another layer of abstraction to the Mach kernel architecture..

    Theoretically, you could have heterogenous CPUs in a system. Mach would treat them just like another device with a driver and IO to route here and there. Not that this isn't possible in other OSes, but Mach makes it much easier to do the software side.

    --
    --- Nothing clever here: move along now...
    1. Re:Darwin strength by ZigMonty · · Score: 2
      Good overview.

      For those who want to look deeper:

      The IOKit especially is very cool.

    2. Re:Darwin strength by isdnip · · Score: 2

      I understand the benefit of the microkernel, but have they fixed Mach's performance penalty? Mach was written way back when in the mid-1980s, when networking was not a priority but timesharing a host among multiple users was. So they put in nice task scheduling, but didn't put interprocess communication in the microkernel. So there's substantial overhead in communicating with the network stack. Chorus, I'm told, is a microkernel that works better on the network because of the IPC.

      While I haven't use MacOS X (Windows and Linux, basically, on my current machines), I've heard that its performance is a little slow. Could this microkernel penalty be part of the problem? Could it be fixed? (This note is not meant as a dig against MacOX X, which seems like a brilliant concept; it's a serious question.)

    3. Re:Darwin strength by aphor · · Score: 2

      I have a TiBook 667, and friends run OSX on Pizmo powerbooks. The networking has never been an issue to be quite honest. The packet handling code is all lifted from FreeBSD-3.2, which is blisteringly fast. The slowness I've heard about is in the Aqua eye-candy features like transparency and the "genie" effect. I have personally had slowness with some Carbon (The OS8/9-OSX cross compatibility framework) apps due to poor event loop handling, but that's just cooperative multitasking that hasn't been fixed in the "Carbonization" of the app.

      I am a FreeBSD person, so I have very high expectations about the multitasking performance, and I *HATE* the vestiges of classic that people leave in their apps. I have a prejudicial preference for all things Cocoa, because that means OSX preemptive multitasking ala FreeBSD (as far as performance goes).

      I regularly FTP/SFTP from OSX to sparcv9-Solaris-8 and x86 FreeBSD-STABLE. I am impressed with the performance of the little 5400 RPM 30GB HDD on my TiBook, but thus I haven't felt the network stack's influence on latency or bulk transfer speed: Mach or anything.

      --
      --- Nothing clever here: move along now...
    4. Re:Darwin strength by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know, a me too post, but still - running Unix stuff on OS X (especially XDarwin) is as fast as one would expect from any Unix; it's just the poorly carbonized stuff in Aqua (including supposedly parts of the Finder) that are slow. Don't think it's the kernel.

  13. Re:Elegy for *BSD by someonehasmyname · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Too bad it's not true. Even if BSD did die, I'd still install it on all my new boxes.

    --
    Common sense is not so common.
  14. HAHAHAHAHA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that is lovely. post it everywhere

  15. the 5 BSDs....+ lainOS by thanjee · · Score: 0, Troll

    When are people going to start talking about lainOS across the wired? It's the 6th BSD :)

    --
    Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
    1. Re:the 5 BSDs....+ lainOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why has this reply been marked troll? Obviously the moderator doesn't like LainOS!
      Having seen some of the work that has been going into LainOS in the past few weeks it will be the next BSD variant to go public.
      I for one look forward to its arrival.

    2. Re:the 5 BSDs....+ lainOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice propaganda, Neovanglist.

    3. Re:the 5 BSDs....+ lainOS by thanjee · · Score: 1

      neovanglist != thanjee :P

      --
      Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
  16. the Sith BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I knew Steve had horns!

  17. I heard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that BSD can only survive 9 incarnations before it dies. Of course I've also heard that it has two hearts and a mechnnical dog named K9.

    1. Re:I heard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's 12 incarnations. And I doubt the Doctor worries about the O.S. he uses.

  18. The big advantage... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The UI doesn't suck like the others.

  19. Request to Moderators who use up mod points in BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Save your mod points for the OBVIOUS trolls.

    Most BSD threads are small, I read at 0 (yeah zero). It only takes a few minutes to scan through all the postings and pick out the interesting ones.

    It really is a waste of your mod points.

  20. Never mind off Slashdot hey? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Heh.

  21. very good article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this article is great for those mac users who are interested in understanding part of the reason why they went from their traditional mac os to BSD, and why it didn't happen sooner.

  22. /me applauds Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I luv OSX. Easy to use, powerful, and pretty much the #1 thing that made me want to jump ship from Windows. If you want to compare to Linux, it is definatly a clear choice. OSX has the polish of an OS where Linux makes it hard for someone outside a CS major to understand the damn thing! :)

  23. wewt! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i said wewt!

  24. Re:Request to Moderators who use up mod points in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the problem is that we have a bunch of anti-BSD people coming in here and using their mod points just to mess up the conversations in here. About 90% of all the troll rated stuff was non-trollish. Maybe not particularly funny, not particularly informative, perhaps slightly off-topic, or even just boring, but not a troll.
    Yes you are right. It is not hard to just go through 50-60 unmoderated posts.

    Is there any other BSD news site where anti-BSD people don't get to mod down conversations?

  25. PCI Hotplug by drewness · · Score: 1

    If your hardware wouldn't fry in the process, you could rip the video card out of a runnig machine, and replace it.
    Actually, there are people working on this for the linux kernel at least See this page or the May issue of Linux Journal page 54.
    I imagine that similar capabilities could be coded for any BSD as well.