Darwin 6.0.2 for x86 Released

Jos Louis writes "Apple has released the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X. You can download the bootable ISO on Apple's site."

Comments

Not a troll

[IamTheRealMike]

Could anybody give me a rundown of why you'd want to run this on your PC over say RedHat 8, which is also available for free, and under the GPL to boot?

Also, what is the hardware support like?

Re:Not a troll

[makisupa]

Two words, one hyphenated:

Multi-boot fetishists.

Re:Not a troll

[greenskyx]

BS... that certainly wasn't a troll. I have the same question.. What's good about it and if we are using Linux why would we consider switching...

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to test server apps for MacOS X you develop but don't have a Mac, it's a good option.

Re:Not a troll

[bogie]

You wouldn't. When I asked this question before the answer I got was this is just Apple "Giving back" what they could.

I guess it's better than nothing, but I'd prefer they give back some of the interesting stuff, but that's never gonna happen.

Re:Not a troll

[Arkham]

I guess it's better than nothing, but I'd prefer they give back some of the interesting stuff, but that's never gonna happen.

What about Darwin Streaming Server and Rendezvous? What about OpenPlay and OpenDirectory? Apple is releasing lots of neat projects as open-source. This just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Darwin is great for OSX developers because it lets you look into the source of OSX and see how it works. It's not particularly useful as an x86 platform

Re:Not a troll

[Lussarn]

Exactly, apple wants to play nice with the opensource community and releases a kernel. Something the community got tons of allready, and very good ones too. If there where a penny to earn in apples kernel they wouldn't release that either, that is if it where better than Linux/FreeBDS etc.

They have some programs which clearly are better than what the opensource community has come up with but none of this is open source.

I don't think thats fair, and I think that matters.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst, "were", not "where"

Re:Not a troll

[IamTheRealMike]

What about Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com]

Umm, a streaming server for a closed and proprietary media format.....

What about OpenPlay [apple.com]

And a project that appears to have been abandoned (the last newsletter says Happy new year 2000)?

Darwin is great for OSX developers because it lets you look into the source of OSX and see how it works. It's not particularly useful as an x86 platform

Don't confuse OS X with Darwin. We already know how most of OS X works, although it has some neat stuff it's hardly revolutionary tech wise. Considering that Darwin itself isn't all that useful except perhaps to help improve OS X (a proprietary product) I'm left wondering why it's released in the first place.

Re:Not a troll

[Jezza]

Err... I'm guessing that to a lot of Unix guys - the kernel doesn't really matter a jot. Afterall we use the Unix calls and as long as it does what the man page says it should that's fine. So a lot of this is redundant.

But there are a lot of reasons you might want to use Darwin over GNU/Linux. You can add X to it, and compile up lots of software, from three feet away who'd guess it wasn't Linux or some other form of BSD?

If that's true (and I think it is) then why is this less useful than Linux?

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to test server apps for MacOS X...

...you get a mac.

Seriously tho; if you're writing software for the mac, don't *assume* it will work on a mac if you did all your designing, testing, updating on a DIFFERENT ARCHITECHTURE! (sorry for screaming)

Re:Not a troll

[jdera]

Simply put, you wouldn't. If you have a PowerPC machine, you're most likely going to run all of Mac OS X, and not just the Unix underneath it. If you have x86 hardware, you probably can't run it because of a lack of drivers. If you're a Linux user and you want to use a real Unix, try one of the other BSDs instead. Darwin/BSD fills a very small niche for those who are interested in seeing the changes that Apple has made to the Mach 3.0 kernel and userland FreeBSD. Be

Re:Not a troll

[vranash]

Two Words: Hardware Compatibility Now given a few years, it very well might be, but the APSL is still a bit of an 'iffy' open source license, nowhere near as bad as the original license drafts (The primary reason I won't touch it). Personally, I'll just wait for AtheOS/Syllabus/OpenBeOS/BlueOS/OtherTrulyOpenSour ceDesktopOS To come out, but as usual, this is my opinion, and to many others this may be the 'bag O potato chips' as it were :)

Re:Not a troll

[bnenning]

Umm, a streaming server for a closed and proprietary media format

No. The QuickTime format is completely open and documented. It just happens that the most common codecs used with it are closed (Sorenson) or patent-encumbered (MPEG4). There's nothing stopping anyone from writing their own codec and having QuickTime support it.

Re:Not a troll

[proj_2501]

As the Ogg Vorbis folks have done. There are QuickTime extensions for Ogg Vorbis, albeit still not quite ready for production.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

"Umm, a streaming server for a closed and proprietary media format..... "

afaik, it's the sorenson codec that is closed

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, a streaming server for a closed and proprietary media format.....

+5 interesting??? Hello? Moderators? Are you there?...

BTW, you are completely wrong and must be living under a rock because the same people have said this before and the same people always correct them saying the same thing that Quicktime is an open and completely documented format...

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

The important point to remember is that Darwin is based upon OSS and Apple is totally playing "fair" and "right" and giving back to the community. What they took and built may not interest a lot of people, but they are following exactly in line with the spirit of OSS.

The fact that they have a bunch of stuff that was developed totally in house (presumably) that they haven't released the source to, is completely irrelevant, however disappointing (in two year old that didn't get the proper christmas gift sense of disappointment) it may be.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

but the APSL is still a bit of an 'iffy' open source license, nowhere near as bad as the original license drafts (The primary reason I won't touch it)

You don't like it because it's iffy or because of earlier drafts? If the latter, you're an idiot, but I surmise that you are not that ignorant.

So what don't you like about the APSL? It's almost exactly like the GPL except for the added clause that any changes you make, even if you only deploy them internally, must be made available. The APSL is actually a 'more free' license if you consider the GPL to be a 'free' license.

Re:Not a troll

[General Ishmoo]

What about Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com] and Rendezvous [apple.com]? What about OpenPlay [apple.com] and OpenDirectory [apple.com]? Apple is releasing lots of neat projects as open-source. This just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Yes, but it is the foundation upon which you can run all of these things; foundations like that may not be interesting, but they are useful and necessary. Thus, Darwin is a potential way to make an apple-like server without all the GUI stuff - kinda like a linux install without the X (an x-free install, one could say!).

Re:Not a troll

[dcobbler]

...if we are using Linux why would we consider switching...

How on earth do "we" know the answer to that question? You could be using Linux for any number of reasons and I can't assume that your reasons are the same as mine. x86 Darwin might not have been released for any reasons connected with Linux so an "if linux then why this" line of questioning isn't really any help, as far as I'm concerned.

...and for the record, I run SUSE 8.1 on my desktop at work and OS 10.2 on my iMac at home. Both do their respective jobs splendidly and I have no use I can see right now for Darwin on x86.

DCobbler www.digitalcobbler.com (shameless plug)

Re:Not a troll

[Inthewire]

There's nothing stopping anyone from writing their own codec and having QuickTime support it.

That's a relief! I thought the fact that I know dick about programming would have stopped me. Good to know that isn't gonna be a problem.

Re:Not a troll

[smittyoneeach]

Begs an off-topic philosophical question:
How would Karl Marx have felt about the fetishing of costless commodities?
Coders of the world, patch!

Re:Not a troll

[SumoRoach]

obviously, that's the safest path, but not always practical. Buy cheap x86's for your developers, but test on the final platform, so you don't *assume* that it will work on a DIFFERENT ARCHITECHTURE (sic).

Re:Not a troll

[Theom]

How about an Unreal Unix?

Re:Not a troll

[multiplexo]

Hmmmmm, yessss, multi-boot fetishism. Black leather stilettos that lace up to the crotch. Cowboy boots with spurs, Chrome studded biker boots, FreeBSD, Win98, OS/2, BeOS. Ohhhhhhhh, I'm so hard now.......

Re:Not a troll

[benedict]

DSS can also serve MP3, according to its FAQ.
And although the FAQ doesn't mention it, I think
you can use DSS to serve RealMedia and other
formats as well.

As for OpenPlay, maybe they finished it. :-)

Apple released Darwin as open source in order to
help Mac OS X developers who are interested in
understanding and possibly closely integrating
with the OS. They're also hoping to get some free
maintenance and development. Anything else, like
a benefit to community relations, is gravy.

Nobody uses Mac OS X for its ideological purity.
But it is pretty darn open for a commercial
desktop operating system.

Re:Not a troll

[benedict]

Does the open source community have anything that
does what Rendezvous does, but better? Sun tried
with JXTA, IIRC, but I don't think it caught on.

Even if you were right, what exactly is unfair
about Apple keeping their good stuff to themselves?
What is it with Linux weenies that they think
people can pay software developers hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year and then give away the
results? Are you mad because Apple uses free
software? I have news for you: they abide by the
licenses of that free software. BSD developers
*want* commercial entities to adopt and improve
upon their software, even if the result isn't
open source -- that's why they use the BSD license.

Re:Not a troll

[Koatdus]

I exchanged email with Jim Sorenson about a year and a half ago.

I asked him to allow his codec to be used as a module in xanim. I mentioned that at the time the author of xanim was saying on his web site that he was even willing to sign a non-disclosure if that is what it took.

The reply I got (to paraphrase) was that he would love to do that but the contract with apple forbids it.

Apple doesn't really want Linux users to be able to view Quicktime.

One of the things I really dislike about apple (the company) is that they are two faced. They claim to want to be open and to support open source but they don't.

It is all just PR. In the end apple is as propriatary as microsoft.

Real, a much smaller company, dosn't seem to have any problems putting a unix version of their player out there, apple wouldn't either if they wanted to. The fact is that they don't want to. I am sure that Jobs would be quite happy if just Linux went away.

I make it a habit to email the editor, the web master, and the marketing department of any site that I find that puts video out in only microsoft or quicktime format. I make sure that my email is formal and polite and include my real name and contact info. I explain to them that I would have loved to use their web site but unfortunatly was not able to and had to go elsewhere...oh and would they consider putting out their video in a more accessable format in the future.

I think that a lot of times the marketing folks (who by the way have more pull then you think) have no idea that there are people that can't use their web site. They also have no idea how many of us there are. If you politely mention that they are losing market share these folks tend to listen.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple doesn't really want Linux users to be able to view Quicktime."

Do try to not confuse the Sorenson codecs (which is what Sorenson was talking about) with QuickTime. They are not the same thing.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

" Real, a much smaller company, dosn't seem to have any problems putting a unix version of their player out there, apple wouldn't either if they wanted to."

They don't. QuickTime Streaming Server is part of the standard Solaris release.

Re:Not a troll

[Koatdus]

"Do try to not confuse the Sorenson codecs (which is what Sorenson was talking about) with QuickTime. They are not the same thing."

They may or may not be the same thing but since the codec is required to view recent quicktime video the result is the same.

Re:Not a troll

[Koatdus]

They don't. QuickTime Streaming Server is part of the standard Solaris release.

We are discussing players not servers.

Re:Not a troll

[iamatlas]

Hey, its not a fetish, its a disease. Especially those on the way multi-boot extreme running something like apple's 10.2 with classic emulation running virtual PC, whichi is in turn running Win98, in turn running WinLinux booted from within Win98 (remember that?;), with that in turn running basiliskii 68k emualtion for full and complete emulation/multiboot circle j***r*rk.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for bugs in Quicktime. For starters, Quicktime doesn't like VBR audio (like the vorbis you mentioned).

Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no source. The source remains unreleased because the source does not exist. The real story is the part that Apple is not telling us: The fact that they have evolved an organic "force" capable of developing a kernel directly, as executable machine code, without human intervention. The implications are terrifying and profound.

Why do you think they called it.... DARWIN?!

Re:Where's the source?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

The real story is the part that Apple is not telling us: The fact that they have evolved an organic "force" capable of developing a kernel directly, as executable machine code, without human intervention.

The part you were unaware of, is that MS is miles ahead of them as Outlook 2002 can automatically run organic machine code without human intervention.

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is source, you just have to use cvs to get it, or download all the components separately via the html frontend somewhere on the Darwin pages @ apple.

Re:Where's the source?

[tswinzig]

The part you were unaware of, is that MS is miles ahead of them as Outlook 2002 can automatically run organic machine code without human intervention.

The irony here is that you are making fun of the first version of a Microsoft email program that does NOT give users access to executable attachments, and does NOT let an outside program use it to send email without approval gained from a popup window.

Re:Where's the source?

[azaroth42]

The part you were unaware of, is that MS is miles ahead of them as Outlook 2002 can automatically run organic machine code without human intervention.

Also known as the Virus.

Re:Where's the source?

[Ilan Volow]

That's no AI. That's Clippy. He's been running in spite of human intervention for years.

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony here is that you are making fun of the first version of a Microsoft email program that does NOT give users access to executable attachments, and does NOT let an outside program use it to send email without approval gained from a popup window.

But it does eat babies.

Really! You can test this yourself. If you or someone you know has a computer with Outlook 2002 installed, leave it on overnight, and watch. At some point between midnight and 2 AM (what exactly triggers this feature is as of yet unknown, although the time of activation seems to oscillate within its two-hour window with the phase of the moon) Outlook 2002 will climb out of the computer, skitter to a window, climb outside, and hunt the streets until it finds a house containing a baby, at which point it will enter, consume the baby bloodily, and return to your computer. If during the entrance or exit of either your or the victim's house it encounters a locked window, it will shatter the glass and continue.

This behavior has been independently confirmed numerous times since the release of Outlook 2002, and yet so far Microsoft has declined to comment on it. I suggest you go read the rather long bugtraq thread on the subject.

Re:Where's the source?

[gnuadam]

We give no comment but the following: Buffy has been informed.

Re:Where's the source?

[ncc74656]

The real story is the part that Apple is not telling us: The fact that they have evolved an organic "force" capable of developing a kernel directly, as executable machine code, without human intervention.

Considering that Steve Wozniak wrote Integer BASIC without the aid of an assembler, I'd guess that anything is possible...:-)

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this modded as a troll? It's fucking hilarious!!

Re:Where's the source?

[mehfu]

Well, Clippy has been running despite human intervention for years.

No matter how hard you try you can't get rid of that *#Ä"#!ing little piece of metal junk!

Re:Where's the source?

[joebp]

Kind of like this?

Re:Where's the source?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

The irony here is that you are making fun of the first version of a Microsoft email program that does NOT give users access to executable attachments, and does NOT let an outside program use it to send email without approval gained from a popup window.

Had I not used all the clients up to OL2K and finally given up on it and used Kmail exclusively I would have known that. Nice cheer for 2K2 though ;-)

Re:Where's the source?

[Tassleman]

The irony here is that you are making fun of the first version of a Microsoft email program that does NOT give users access to executable attachments, and does NOT let an outside program use it to send email without approval gained from a popup window.

This is only the Default behavior by the way - this can be changed easily with a small change in the registry. I had to enable it for a company I did some work for because their custom software uses Outlook to automatically send e-mails in the background. Poor Bastards.

Re:Where's the source?

[.pentai.]

Changed in the registry, which means one of those hundreds of worms out there that get tossed from person to person can (if run) make this registry change, and then commence to send itself out to everyone (perhaps even changing the registry back afterwards, to hide itself better?)

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to hear that they finally figured this out, and that it only took them about seven years.

Re:Where's the source?

[qwerpoiu]

Microsoft was right! Open source is viral!

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woz is a GOD! A GOD

Re:Where's the source?

[shnarez]

And what's to stop a script from getting the ID of that popup window and sending it the click-on-OK-button event before the user has a chance to even SEE the window?

Programs click faster than humans. Game over.

Re:Where's the source?

[spongman]

you could always right-click on it, selection 'options' and uncheck the check-box that says 'use the Office Assistant'. not that hard, really.

for some.

Re:Where's the source?

[dylan_-]

But it does eat babies.

This is only the Default behavior by the way - this can be changed easily with a small change in the registry. I had to enable it for a company I did some work for because their custom software uses Outlook to automatically eat babies in the background. Poor Bastards.

(Sorry Tassleman ;-) )

Re:Where's the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there is no source, they used BSD code, and because the BSD people think their software is freed by allowing Apple to use it without giving code back to then, this is exactly what happens...

Serves them right for not GPLing...

Re:Where's the source?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

And what's to stop a script from getting the ID of that popup window and sending it the click-on-OK-button event before the user has a chance to even SEE the window?

The fact that it is not allowed to execute should stop most scripts. Seriously, code is not allowed to execute so your solution is to use code to circumvent the restriction a clever idea only until you think about it.

Re:Where's the source?

[mehfu]

It does however show up occasionally after doing that. "Are you sure you don't want me? ..."

It's getting closer

[boy_afraid]

It been rumored that Apple would bring OS X to the x86 and has a working version in secrecy under penalty of death to whomsoever relveals it. Apple knows that they have something that the Linux/Windows geeks really want, just like we want the iPod to work under Windows.

Steve Jobs is not smoking crack, just weed.

Re:It's getting closer

[derch]

and what crack are you smoking? People had hacked the iPod to work with Windows shortly after it's release. To boot, Apple now sells a Windows version.

PS - Even if Apple moved OS X to the x86 family, you'd still have to buy an Apple PC.

Re:It's getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

There IS a working version of OSX for x86. How do I know this? I talked to an Apple employee and no I will not name names.

Re:It's getting closer

[Jezza]

And miss out on AltiVec, many of the iApps (iMovie, iDVD) need AltiVec to run at a reasonable speed. They would be far too slow on an Intel or AMD based system. This is of course deliberate on the part of Apple, to play to their strengths (AltiVec in this case).

Of course iTunes is also optimized to make heavy use of the AltiVec, but MP3s don't actually stress a modern processor at all so AltiVec isn't important here.

Re:It's getting closer

[kitzilla]

> Apple knows that they have something that the Linux/Windows geeks really want...

I'm a fan of Mac, but I don't know that the above statement is true. SOME people might want OS X running on PC hardware. I'd rather see it run well on Mac boxes. We have Linux for x86.

Re:It's getting closer

[dildatron]

And I think an Apple PC would be cool. It would provide a little more flexibility, and probably a pretty big cost savings. You would have to use limited hardware, but still, things like processor speeds could vary widely.

Re:It's getting closer

[Greebz]

Depends.
They could always just rewrite the optimized sections to make use of SSE, etc.

That coupled with the faster processors on offer in the x86 world would more than offset the lack of AltiVec.

Just looks at PC software that does similar jobs. It's out there, it works fine. Maybe not quite the same way you're used to, but that's mostly just a case of implementation details.

Re:It's getting closer

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You are a liar.

Informative my ass.

Re:It's getting closer

[pauljlucas]

And I think an Apple PC would be cool. It would provide a little more flexibility, and probably a pretty big cost savings.

How would it provide more flexibility, exactly? If Apple switched to x86, all that would change would be the CPU plugged into the motherboard. The rest of the G4 case and components would be exactly the same. That being the case, the cost savings would be nil.

Re:It's getting closer

[be-fan]

The only reason the iApps need AltiVec is because that is the only reasonably fast part of the G4. Plain C/C++ code optimized by a good SSE-enabled compiler (Intel C++) would perform just fine, especially given the fact that none of the iApps do anything that would take more than a (by today's standards) ancient 1 Ghz x86 proc anyway.

Re:It's getting closer

[russellh]

It been rumored that Apple would bring OS X to the x86 and has a working version in secrecy under penalty of death to whomsoever relveals it.

Really? Y'know, ever since Apple broke their "Apple II Forever" promise, I guess anything could happen.

Re:It's getting closer

[be-fan]

The G4 case is probably around $100, and all the other components aren't that great. What isn't mediocre (hard drive, graphics card, etc) is crap (sound card, speakers, etc). The only nice bit is the GigE card, which is less than $50 on PriceWatch.

Re:It's getting closer

[Jezza]

No it's not, it's different - sure it has different strengths and might even be better for different jobs (this isn't a my Mac's better than your PC rant) but the way that Apple have solved these problems are deeply AltiVec.

That's also true for BLAST, and why the work was done on the PPC. G4s just have the edge over x86 in this. it's also true for Photoshop (that's why Apple often bring that to the demo table so often) it is written to make best use of whatever platform and it always does better on the Mac.

Re:It's getting closer

[Jezza]

Look at encoding video so it can be written to a DVD (and played on a normal player) this is one example where the AltiVec blows x86 away. Don't forget iDVD needs to do this, also the video transitions in iMovie are another area where the AltiVec helps a great deal, and extra speed is helpful. I agree that there are problems out there where the AltiVec isn't at all useful, but a suprising number where it is. The Mac hardware uses other "tricks" to get better performance - Quartz Extreem, makes use of the compositing in the GPU to lighten the load on the CPU.

The G4 also has a very short pipeline that helps on "normal" code as well. Lastly all the Mac Towers use 2 G4s, making use of the fact that Mach is well optimized for SMP.

Re:It's getting closer

[WatertonMan]

It will never get released though unless both Motorola and IBM drop the ball. The reason is that x86 chips can not easily emulate PowerPC code. (The reverse is not true, due to the different ways the chips are designed) That would mean that if Apple moved to a x86 architecture you'd have BIG problems with backwards compatibility.

Apple's done some amazing switches. The 68040 to PowerPC went nearly flawlessly and amazed most people. Even Classic emulation on OSX is fairly impressive. But trying to emulate Photoshop on x86 would be nasty. Further look how long it took the big players (Macromedia, Adobe, etc.) to come out with OSX native programs. The switch to x86 would likely involve a two year wait for several important native apps. Not something Apple could withstand easily.

Re:It's getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

It will take a year to recompile what they have all ready ported to OSX? A few months, but unless they are tricking out the apps with a lot of processor specific (Altivec) extensions, then I cannot see a year wait. Also, I really think that Apple would deliver a developer version to Adobe, etc, before you or I would see it.
It would be nice to see OpenStep fat binaries live on as a testament to the flexibility of the system. Compile / Run the same binary on both x86 and PowerPC.

Re:It's getting closer

[drsmithy]

[...] That being the case, the cost savings would be nil.

But the amount of processing power in the box would be much higher, so the customer would be getting (much) more bang for their buck.

Re:It's getting closer

[WatertonMan]

Once again I'm just going by how long between 10.0 and when all the Apps started coming out from the major players. Several key applications still haven't come out in OSX and many applications have only come out the past couple of months. And that was with those companies having betas long before 10.0 came out.

With the switch to a new processor you can expect many more things to break. Apple undoubtedly can recompile all their iApps. The issue is third party companies. (Especially MS Office)

I think Apple has been hedging their bets because of problems with Motorola. Thus they've been compiling much of Darwin on both systems and likely Aqua as well. But to run them on x86 will undoubtedly create all sorts of problems. Not to mention optimization problems.

It might be nice in the long term, but consider what the initial user experience will be those first six months to one year. . .

Further most companies will be forced to develop for both PowerPC and x86 version of OSX.

Unless IBM falls behind schedule I just can't see Apple being able to afford the costs of switching to the x86. The real problems of the PowerPC chip in terms of competitive speed though means Apple has to be able to if necessary.

Re:It's getting closer

[pauljlucas]

But the amount of processing power in the box would be much higher

Clearly, you've been fooled by the megahertz myth.

Re:It's getting closer

[drsmithy]

Clearly, you've been fooled by the megahertz myth [apple.com].

Er, no, it is you who have been fooled.

Re:It's getting closer

[Greebz]

I'm very much aware of the differences between SSE/3DNow and Altivec. For those that aren't sure, SSE/3DNow are mostly only of use on graphic operations, with the exception of the memory pre-fetch stuff, which is useful for any processing involving a large dataset. Altivec is a lot more comprehensive.

My point was that a mix of that and the current x86 processor's speed advantage - I mean 'work done', not clockspeed - would be more than enough to compensate for Altivec's speed. And that some of the graphical stuff can indeed be offloaded onto SSE/3DNow and even good ol' MMX.

The software you mentioned aren't doing anything that modern PCs can't do.
Sure, it's rewriting, but that's always going to be the case when switching archs and dealing with code that uses SIMD instruction-sets. If you're moving platforms, you just do it once and it's done anyway. If it's something that's used commonly, you write a library. Nothing to give anyone at Apple genuine concern.

Heading horrendously off-topic, I've seen a number of benchmarks showing a G4 dual 1GHz G4 box to be slower than a single P4/2GHz machine. But that's benchmarks for you. The unscrupulous can pick the ones that demonstrate their point. I'm not totally convinced Photoshop is a level playing field, either.

You know the old saying. "Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks".... :)

Okay, perhaps that's overstating it a bit, but you know what I mean.

And I agree - this isn't X vs Y. Such discussions are pointless. Plus, my old 3.5MHz Z80A box 0wnz j00 4LL!

Re:It's getting closer

[Jezza]

That's actually part of my point SOME applications look better on the G4 than others (I'm highlighting Photoshop as an example that makes the G4 "look good" - of course if you run Photoshop a lot then this might be the metric that gives the best impression).

I'm sure someone out there will be able to find applications that really DON'T make the G4 look good. My point is that (warning: possible bad spelling) Sorenson Encoding is one thing that really needs the AltiVec to run well (another example is BLAST, but I guess fewer of us will want to run that).

As to a twin G4 1GHz being slower on benchmarks than a 2GMz P4 - yeah if you choose your benchmark carefully that'll be true (of course that "carefull choosing" might actually indicate the performance of the application you're interested in - it's the converse of the Photoshop example above).

Of course in most applications on modern machines G4s and P4s aren't the limiting factors. But that's whole different can of worms.

The only sensible advice about benchmarking is: test the application you want to use, with the operations that will take you the most time.

Re:It's getting closer

[Greebz]

A quick look around on the 'net reveals no G4 vs P4/Athlon benchmarks, which seems a mite odd given the codec is (according to Sorenson, at least) available for both. Curious, unless the Sorenson available for x86 isn't the same as that available for the Mac? I'm no expert on codecs. The few people I do know "into" video are pros and all swear by FCPro. In fact, porting the "must have" Apps that don't already exist on x86 would probably be a bigger deal than the OS, at this point. But I'm digressing, once again (a bad habit of mine).

Let's assume that Sorenson will always suck on currently available x86 - I'm not completely convinced, but I'm cynical like that. If Apple were to release an x86 box tomorrow, based upon, say, a P4 (they'd never go with current Athlons, due to the heat... Mr. Jobs and fans in computers, anyone?), they could always use a different codec optimized around the target processor. If you want Sorenson to convert to/from, they could still offer it as an option. There's still no technical reason Apple couldn't switch if they wanted to (pun intended) which was my original point a couple of posts back.

Actually (warning: sliding slightly off-topic again), Apple being Apple, they could use SSE2 without fear. After all, they'd only be releasing, say, P4's, and that guarentees you SSE2 support. So, a significant boot for floating point operations, too. Controlling the hardware offers some nice software development advantages.

The only thing that really matters with the codecs is that you can play the output on a wide number of machines, or that you can kick it out to a video deck or MPEG stream of some sort. None of these are significant problems.

Especially, as, IIRC, MPEG4 and H.263 are both offered for iMovie output.

BLAST's a highly specialized case, and I'd never even heard of it 'til you mentioned it, but I couldn't see it figuring highly in Apple's "reasons not to use x86" column. The new IBM PPC chip due 2Q03 is probably THE biggest reason, right now. I suspect having to eat humble pie after all their anti-x86 rants would be higher, tbh. I quite like Apple, but I'm no fan of Jobs.

Ah, well, enough rambling (Huzzah, screams both members of the crowd.)

Re:It's getting closer

[Jezza]

Sorenson encoding is what we're talking about here (decoding is pretty easy - even quite feeble processors can do that) but encoding is hard.

G4s are encoding video at better than 1:1 speed last time I looked a high spec P4 was doing this at 1:25 (one hour of video encoded in 25 hours). Now that was a while ago, so I'd expect P4s to be doing better now (but are talking about 2GHz(ish) P4s here, they have got better since then).

This dramatic speedup for the G4 was the result of a "discovery" at Apple on how to do this. This lead directly to the SuperDrive. On the PC people use custom boards to do the encoding. Of course if you don't want to create DVDs that play in domestic players then this is a total non-event! But a lot of Macs are being sold on the back of this, from the eMac (cheap CRT all in one Mac, very much like the old iMac, but with a G4). Of course this also means that the SuperDrive won't appear in the iBook (no AltiVec).

Of course, you bring up another thing that requires AltiVec, FinalCut Pro RealTime Effects, again VERY important to Apple.

BLAST sells lots of Mac's sure you need to be a genetics researcher to need it, but in that field it's like MS-Office! Yeah, most people here won't care - but it's important to Apple - there are reasonable numbers of machines to be sold into this area, and it makes good marketing copy.

Supported Hardware

[Darth_Burrito]

Read this first:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/d arwin/6. 0/install.x86.txt

Supported Hardware
------------------

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.
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
IDE controllers.
IBM ThinkPad A21m (with onboard Intel ethernet)
Known to not be supported:
All AMD and VIA based systems.

Re:Supported Hardware

[Kissing Crimson]

Odd. That's exactly the hardware in my (home) Red Hat server at the moment. Maybe I'll actually take a look at it tonight.

Re:Supported Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. See what happens as soon as your precious Apple releases something on x86? The much vaunted hardware support goes out the window, and we get something that doesn't support a good 40 percent of the population. If this is what an x86 OSX release would look like, I'm going to be going to bed unfulfilled for years to come. When oh when will I find hardware and software that satisfies all of my desires?

Re:Supported Hardware

[MondoMor]

This has always bugged me about Darwin, since I've got a Via-based system. I dig my brothers Jaguar machine, even though it's a G3, and am curious about apple-ness.

I'm in no way competant enough to write drivers for a Via motherboard, and even if I was I wouldn't have the time.

Also, why does it say, "This is the first release of Darwin/x86."? There's been many x86 Darwin releases before.

Re:Supported Hardware

[otisg]

Lovely, I love free OS options, but such limited hardware support won't make all that many people happy. I guess I'll stick to my Winblows XP....just kidding.

Re:Supported Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you guys download the source and write the drivers for your hardware. After all, isn't that the point of it being open source?

Re:Supported Hardware

[Sick Boy]

>IDE:
> Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.

Am I the only one who read PIIX4 as "Pentium Two-by-Four"? Because if not, I'd really like one to serve as my new LART.

oh well..

[bm_luethke]

Known to not be supported: All AMD and VIA based systems.

There goes me trying it. seems to have a fairly small set of hardware it runs on.

Re:oh well..

[Anonymous Coward]

so get off your ass and enhance it for your needs.
it is opensource after all...

Re:oh well..

[Jezza]

But it is open source - so these problems are in our power to fix, right? I mean Linux only ran on a couple of hardware configs to begin with, look at it now. (Runs on pretty much everything)

Serious question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone actually use Darwin on x86? I know it's good that Apple have kept open the core of their OS (although it'd be a good step to see more Aqua code), but surely if you want a PC-based UNIX you'd go for some BSD flavour or Linux in the first place.

Only reason I can see for running Darwin is for Mac hackers who want to enhance the OS -- but that poses another question: does Apple accept patches?

This is a serious question -- what are the benefits of Darwin being open?

Re:Serious question...

[DeltaSigma]

Depending on the license, the benefit might be that one could fork and make their own version of darwin, allowing mac (and x86 Darwing users) an instance of choice. ...and choice is a beautiful thing.

Re:Serious question...

[Raster Burn]

They say on their website that they maintain an x86 port just to ensure that their code is relatively portable - not really for our benefit.

Re:Serious question...

[lemkebeth]

Yep.

Though, if you were a kenrel coder, you could improve the i386 support.

GCC

[00_NOP]

I assume Apple don't build their production software with GCC, or do they?

Anybody care to comment - as best they can - on the difference between the GCC compiled code and code compiled with whatever tools Apple use?

Re:GCC

[chriswaco]

Apple uses gcc. I think they moved to gcc 3.x for the PowerPC builds. I don't know what version they are using for Intel builds.

There are probably some projects at Apple that use CodeWarrior or even MPW, but in general MacOS X is built using gcc.

Re:GCC

[The Bungi]

Quality?

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

The developers tools that ship with OS X do use GCC, and it is my understanding that Apple developers use these tools for their own software.

The dev tools that ship with OS X are excellent, and I would be very surprised if Apple put all that effort into making such kick-ass tools only to use something else internally.

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does compile with GCC. They released 10.2 with a new version of it.

Re:GCC

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Anybody care to comment - as best they can - on the difference between the GCC compiled code and code compiled with whatever tools Apple use?

GCC is nearly ansi standard, I am sure that whatever they use for C it also is nearly ansi standard. Additionally, (correct me if I am wrong) but I do not believe it matters what you compile on. What will matter later on is what libraries are installed and that is a user/administrative choice. That is why you can get a Linux environment for your windows PC from Red Hat.

Re:GCC

[00_NOP]

I meant in terms of performance. Not the actual code base.

Re:GCC

[killmenow]

Attention /. readers: Please don't feed the trolls.

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

In the recently released movie "Jackass," this dude attempts to walk across a tightrope over some alligators. Of course he falls in. Your post reminded me of this scene.

> any software compiled using GCC could be considered
> a "derivative work" of the GCC

No, this is pure flamebait and BS. Mod parent down...wayyyy down.

Re:GCC

[ryochiji]

>Due to the viral nature of the GPL, any software compiled using GCC could be considered a "derivative work" of the GCC, thus forcing that software to be open-source under the terms of the GPL

Um, somehow I doubt that's true. I can't point to any part of the GPL, but GCC is pretty much the standard compiler on Linux and *BSD now days, and I'm pretty sure I've seen non-GPL programs that had to be compiled using GCC. Also, since the MacOS X IDE uses GCC as it's backend, if this were true, any and all software developed using Apple's IDE would have to be GPL'd, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Re:GCC

[vranash]

Dude, that is so flamebait.

Go read the GPL, or hell, just read the GCC FAQ, I believe that covers it.

Code COMPILED with GCC is *NOT* required to be under the terms of the GPL, it is only required to abide by the terms of the libraries in question that it is linked again, libstdc++ and libc are both LGPL'd, which basically states your program may be licensed in whatever way you deem fit, however any changes you make to the LGPL'd libraries in question must be made availible for those who recieve a copy of the program/libraries. This is in no way intended to limit one's ability to use proprietary code as a frontend or backend to the library in question, it's simply meant to ensure that proprietary extensions don't get made to 'standardized libraries' and thus break compatibility with existing/future apps (of course sure breakages might occur anyway, but it prevents the microsoftian 'embrace and extend' philosophy).

Re:GCC

[vranash]

Oh yeah, and furthermore, if you truly are a member of MENSA, I'd have to say I'm quite glad I'm not. Being smart is one thing, being arrogant enough to make such statements without verifying your facts just proves you lack the the maturity and humility necessary to be someone who can be respected.

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

It seems (from a developer's point of view) that they use GCC for Darwin and Cocoa and CodeWarrior for Carbon.

This makes sense - Mac developers have used CodeWarrior on "classic Mac OS" for quite some time.

NeXT always used GCC (in fact I think they helped to add Objective-C to GCC in the first place).

It's a safe bet they use GCC for the Intel builds too - that's how you get portability for Kernels (that's how Linux does it too).

It's always seemed to me that GCC was the unsung hero of open source, and Linux in particular.

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant troll. Congrats.

Re:GCC

[Number_5]

If this is true then everything compiled for vxWorks with Windriver's Tornado (which is based on gcc) is covered by the GPL. The same would be true of the LynxOS compiler which is also gcc.

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

Actually it matters a lot. Small differences they might be, but as the old saying goes: "The Devil's in the details". GCC is the best choice, because it's a damn fine compiler (I've used it for years, it's great) and because it's so widespread, especially useful if you want to create code that's portable (Linux is a great advert for portability of GCC developed code).

The other compiler that Apple advocate is CodeWarrior this has a long history with Mac developers, and is used for Carbon projects (again they're probably derived from Classic code originally developed with CodeWarrior. There is nothing wrong with that compiler either, so as the old saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it"). Mac developers are used to that compiler so switching doesn't make any sense. Again if you have an application like Office or Photoshop it doesn't make sense to get bitten by lots of compiler issues.

Re:GCC

[mindstrm]

CodeWarrior is a compiler? It hought it was just an IDE

Re:GCC

[h0ss]

Unlikely it's cocoa, since that isn't a compiler, but rather a framework for building applications. Itts development environment is ProjectBuilder, which is a front-end for GCC (among other things). Were I a betting man, I'd say that it's all codewarrior & gcc for compilers.

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear vranash... look carefully at the signature, see the spelling mistake? It's an attempt at humor.

Your user id shows that you haven't been around here very long. When you spot a troll it is best to ignore it. If you respond, well, that's what a troll is for.

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

Your logic is flawless, and that is indeed true. You can use a GPL compiler and the binaries aren't GPL (bacause they aren't extentions to the code in the compiler, they are the output from the compiler). Linking is a grey area. Say you subclass an object that's GPL, then the subclass is also GPL even though your code is in a different file. But this is a library issue, not a compiler one, this could happen if you used a GPL library with Visual C++!

I think the issues are generally overstated, but of course you do have to check what you're doing. Of course if you're happy to use the GPL for your code then this isn't an issue!

Re:GCC

[AgtAlpha]

mwcc is the Metrowerks C Compiler. It's also the same compiler that is used for BeOS PPC (BeOS x86 uses gcc).

Re:GCC

[Methuseus]

If you're saying that they use CodeWarrior which is just a front end to GCC, then you'd be wrong, unless they changed compilers in the last year or so. Last time I used CodeWarrior was a frontend for the Metrowerks compiler, as someone else stated in another post. It may have some commonalities with GCC, but it's not bare GCC.

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

Heh, It's a suite of tools that includes a compiler - so I understand. I'm not from the Mac side of the tree so, I get stuff like this wrong. Anyway people from the Mac side use this stuff (whatever it's called) and I think Apple do too for stuff that's come from old style Mac OS.

Thanks for clearing up my confusion!

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

Yeah sorry - I was REALLY unclear.

They use GCC for all Darwin and TO IMPLEMENT (the words I forgot!) Cocoa.

They use the CodeWarrior toolset (here I am confused - if I still have the name wrong, I'm talking about the compiler that comes in the box that has CodeWarrior on it, I just assumed it was called CodeWarrior: my bad) for the old Mac derived stuff.

Well that's what they suggest developers do anyway. Darwin IS built with GCC.

Re:GCC

[sparkz]

It's always seemed to me that GCC was the unsung hero of open source, and Linux in particular.

Which is why you should be saying "GNU/Linux"

If you mean the statement, you should say GNU/Linux - if you do not agree with it, then just say "Linux"

Re:GCC

[solferino]

It's always seemed to me that GCC was the unsung hero of open source, and Linux in particular.

i agree with you (about gcc not getting the credit it deserves) however i would have worded my support somewhat differently, viz.

It's always seemed to me that GCC was the unsung hero of free software, and GNU/Linux in particular.

As i'm sure you know, GCC is a GNU project and was originated by RMS - if we want it to attain more recognition, perhaps referring to it as its authors request would be a good start

Cheers

Re:GCC

[borg]

I agree. The problem that I have had is that I'm too lazy to type four extra characters each time I mean to say GNU/Linux. I've solved this by implementing a perl script that scans STDIN for the phrase "GNU/Linux" and replaces it with "GNU/GNU/Linux." This is really handy for me, since I do with to honor the contribution of the GNU project to GNU/GNU/Linux, but I don't want to be bothered having to type GNU/GNU/Linux when just GNU/Linux conveys the same information.

I think there's still a few bugs in it, though. I'll post it to freshmeat when I've debugged it a bit more.

Re:GCC

[Uller-RM]

I don't know what they use internally... but the Developer Tools on the third Jaguar CD use the jam project manager (make alternative) to shell out to GCC for compiling. All the compiler options are available. In fact, there's even an option to choose between gcc-2.95 and the 3.1 beta.

It also wouldn't make much sense to use different IDEs for different APIs. Cocoa can be used with C++, and Carbon with Objective-C, you know. They're just different APIs, one that takes advantage of OO and dynamic typing wherever possible, the other that takes a more fragmented but backwards-compatible approach. Personally, I like both of them; I'm still more comfortable with C++ though than with Obj-C, so I use Carbon more.

(I used to hate Obj-C, mostly because it does dynamic type checking out the ying-yang and I'm an old Z80/8088 optimization hack, but I'm warming up to it now. It's somewhat like mixing C and Smalltalk, easy to learn but at the cost of orthogonality.)

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your logic is that GNU/Linux is fucking retarded. Should I refer to my VA Linux servers as Intel/VA Linux machines, because they have Intel chips in them? Should I say 'that's a nice Edelbrock/Chevy Blazer?

fuck no, unless of course he plans to call Hurd systems running BSD software BSD/Hurd.

Re:GCC

[benedict]

NeXT actually violated the terms of the GPL --
something about restricting distribution of their
version of gcc -- and the FSF had to threaten
them with a lawsuit to get them to play fair.

Re:GCC

[absurdhero]

Infact, they do. Their version of gcc is slightly modified to support some extra features, but it is still gcc, and it is still compatible. Apple's free developement CD includes gcc, automake, etc. along with Apple's simple IDE and tools. I think it is safe to assume that they use gcc to compile their own stuff too. Especially considering that Darwin is developed by open source hackers using systems such as linux and OSX.

Re:GCC

[Cryptnotic]

It is not necessary to include GNU software with a Linux distribution. There are plenty of small Linux installs (such as for portable devices like iPAQ's or eMpeg's) which do not include any GNU utilities and do not even need to be linked with GNU libc (glibc). Busybox provides a rather usable shell and set of shell utilities (things like ls, cat, vi, sh, init, login, stty, etc). It can be compiled with uClibc (a free, lightweight libc) and it uses no GNU code.

Linux may be GPL, but it is not necessarily associated with GNU (except that it expects to be compiled with GCC-compatible tools).

(By the way, Linus has always praised GCC, without which, he says, Linux would not have been possible. Linus does not, however, request that his kernel be called GNU/Linux.)

Re:GCC

[solferino]

It is not necessary to include GNU software with a Linux distribution.

agreed, however almost the complete majority of os distributions using linux as the kernel heavily rely on GNU software including gcc - and i was responding to the original posters comment where he stated -

It's always seemed to me that GCC was the unsung hero of open source, and Linux in particular.

obviously, he is here referring to linux-kernel based systems that include and use gcc otherwise how could gcc be the unsung hero if it was not even present?

open source relates to a particular technocratic 'best-tool-for-the-job' philosophy - to use it in relation to a flagship project of a different philosophy (Free software) which, while holding mostly harmonious views, differs in the emphasis on certain priorities is just a little off-track - i was simply pointing that out, and saying that if you do want to give praise to gcc (as the original poster did) then you should word yr support properly

finally, to answer yr final paragraph

(By the way, Linus has always praised GCC, without which, he says, Linux would not have been possible. Linus does not, however, request that his kernel be called GNU/Linux.)

good for linus, i appreciate his tremendous contribution and his acknowledgement of the work of the shoulders he stood upon, and continues to stand upon - however i think yr point is irrelevant as no-one is asking that the kernel should be called GNU/Linux as you state - simply the request is that the overall os when it benefits greatly from GNU contributions should acknowledge that support

you seem to be a little confused on this point - i would suggest you visit the fsf site to check out their faq on this point

finally, i didn't want to pick a fight here - mostly we are all working together to build something of great philanthropical importance and ppl who use and support free software i count as my friends - my original post was simply to say that if you want to praise gcc, then best to refer to it as its creative team ask it to be - as free software and not open source - fairly straightforward point i think

cheers

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

If one is talking about Linux the kernel (as I am here) then I think GNU/Linux is wrong. If we're talking about a typical distribution then GNU/Linux is a better description (as in most there is a vast amount of GNU software). Of course there is always a danger that people who are less equainted with the subject will think that GNU/Linux is something different to Linux.

Re:GCC

[Jezza]

The point I'm making is that new applications are usually developed in Cocoa and then they use Apple's tool set (and GCC). Older applications are being updated to Carbon (so called Carbonized) and there is no merit in making that job harder be switching toolsets (you a start you need to learn the new ide) and so they stick with CodeWarrior.

Of course new Carbon apps are a different thing, but Apple are "encouraging" that new applications are written to Cocoa. For a new application then Apple's tools are a perfectly good choice. (And have the benefit of being free)

Re:GCC

[anarkhos]

Another reason to use CodeWarrior is CFM/PEF is more efficient than dyld/Mach-O, especially for C.

Maybe a major problem?

[jimson]

From the release notes:
* IDE drives may not work on x86. Try it, if it doesn't work, it's a known problem.
That seems like a pretty major problem to me.....

Re:Maybe a major problem?

[SirDaShadow]

can you say, half-assed effort? :)

Re:Maybe a major problem?

[Jezza]

Open Source - hello!!! This is WHY it's open source so you (or someone else) can fix it. Do you think Linux just emerged supporting almost every configuration?

As this is a "known problem" then I guess someone is busy fixing it as I type this.

Re:Maybe a major problem?

[PhreakinPenguin]

No, but I'm assuming that he knew enough to support the basic workstation setup. Or I am wrong to assume he didn't think of supporting an IDE drive? I mean, it's only on 95% of all pc's.

Re:Maybe a major problem?

[Jezza]

As far as I understand this is a problem that's limited to CD-Rom drives. I don't run Darwin on x86 so I'm not sure, but that's what I understand.

The kernel boots..

[Zephy]

and the code compiles.. assuming there isn't a lot of h/w specific code.. then OSx86 not far away?

Re:The kernel boots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh, big fat no there. OS X on x86 is not only far away, but will never come to pass in the way that you are imagining. If IBM/Motorola totally let Apple down and they have to jump to Intel, it will be a special configuration of hardware. Meaning, OS X won't run on your run-of-the-mill crapbox. You'll still have to get Apple computers to run OS X w/ Intel, and that is IF they even go that route. Besides that, there is a TON of stuff in Aqua that is PowerPC specific so this is still a huge undertaking to make the switch.

Short story: You will never have OS X on your Windoze box.

Re:The kernel boots..

[lemkebeth]

:sigh:

Even if Apple maintains an internal i386 build of OS X it is only for two reasons:

Testing of portability/good code
Negotiating leverage

I'm confused...

[Dirtside]

Okay, every time there's an OS X story on Slashdot, someone asks when they'll be able to use it on x86 hardware, and someone else responds and says, "Never!"

So here we have "the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X". Huh? Is it just the user interface part of OS X that there's no x86 version of? And exactly how much stuff does this "FreeBSD-based core" contain? Is it just a kernel, filesystem, and some basic utilities, or what?

Re:I'm confused...

[IamTheRealMike]

So here we have "the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X". Huh? Is it just the user interface part of OS X that there's no x86 version of? And exactly how much stuff does this "FreeBSD-based core" contain? Is it just a kernel, filesystem, and some basic utilities, or what?

Darwin itself is just the kernel, some drivers, some tools (mostly bsd and gnu) and a few bits and bobs like NetInfo. Large parts aren't actually BSD however, like the microkernelness, and they have their own IO APIs (IOKit).

MacOS X is then everything else - not just Aqua as some suggest, but Quartz, Aqua, all the utilities/programs (finder, mac ui, control center), the iApps, Cocoa, Carbon etc. In fact, virtually everything that you need to have a useful OS.

From what I've seen so far, it seems that Darwin/x86 is at about the same level that Linux was in terms of features/hardware support in 1993.

Re:I'm confused...

[tswinzig]

Okay, every time there's an OS X story on Slashdot, someone asks when they'll be able to use it on x86 hardware, and someone else responds and says, "Never!"

And every time there's an article on slashdot telling of the latest Darwin release, someone posts a question very similar to yours:

So here we have "the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X". Huh? Is it just the user interface part of OS X that there's no x86 version of? And exactly how much stuff does this "FreeBSD-based core" contain? Is it just a kernel, filesystem, and some basic utilities, or what?

It's basically the kernel. Nothing on the level of the user-friendly OS X.

Re:I'm confused...

[lemkebeth]

Not entirely true.

Darwin includes the *entire* BSD layer.

This means pretty much all of your comman dline stuff.

An install of XFree86 is also provided (not a window manager though)

On PPC Darwin would make a pretty good server for serving stuff up.

On i386 there isn't enough hardware support for that. If someone really was interested in that they could fix some of that hardware support for i386.

The truth is that most people who decide to work on Darwin are people who work on PowerPC.

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin != OSX. This is just the kernel.
NO gui. No docbar. No fancy desktop.
Nothing. Just the kernel.

Re:I'm confused...

[John Siracusa]

MacOS X is then everything else - not just Aqua as some suggest, but Quartz, Aqua, all the utilities/programs (finder, mac ui, control center), the iApps, Cocoa, Carbon etc. In fact, virtually everything that you need to have a useful OS.

Linux lacks Quartz, Aqua the Finder, iApps, Cocoa, Carbon, etc. Both Darwin and Linux can run all the expected command-line Unix apps (emacs, apache, Perl, GNU utils, etc.) as well as X11 and the assorted window managers and GUI toolkits. So what is this quote saying? Is it saying that Linux lacks "virtually everything that you need to have a useful OS"?

Re:I'm confused...

[g4dget]

What he means is that Darwin lacks a GUI and GUI apps. Obviously, Linux has plenty of those.

Re:I'm confused...

[ciryon]

Darwin is not really a full featured distribution. It does not contain desktop apps like KDE or Gnome. It's a scratch UNIX distribution.

But I do wonder if drivers for say printers and cd-burners and digital cameras or included with Darwin or on a higher level in OS X?

Ciryon

Re:I'm confused...

[schwanerhill]

I'd say it means that Darwin lacks most of the stuff that sets Mac OS X apart from all the other Unixes.

Re:I'm confused...

[anarkhos]

KDE and Gnome are being ported by Open Darwin and FINK.

If you want to burn CDs you can compile cd-record or cdrdao which have their own drivers. IOKit provides the CD and DVD classes of devices which cdrdao and cd-record communicate with (in user-space).

Unhelpful answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Run it if you like BSD and microkernels.

Some people like the technical approach; some people like it because it's "fun" to play with/develop what will be the basis for a true consumer product; some people like it for the same reasons others prefer penguins over platypi.

Myself, I'd rather run *BSD (in Free/Net/Open forms) over RH8 for a number of reasons- a few technical, a few based on rational-self-interest (the BSD tools and system layouts seem more 'intuitive' - always a dirty word - to interact with vs. some of the GNU-scene counterparts, but that's just personal preference), and some political.

I couldn't say how good it actually is, because I've been prejudiced against it by hearsay (QNX6 gets love from me, if I want to enjoy a microkernel OS), but that's why someone'd want it.

Re:Unhelpful answer.

[nconway]

Myself, I'd rather run *BSD (in Free/Net/Open forms) over RH8 for a number of reasons- a few technical, a few based on rational-self-interest

How is a "technical" reason (by which I assume you mean "using the best tool for the job") not based on rational self-interest?

Re:Unhelpful answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

"How is a "technical" reason (by which I assume you mean "using the best tool for the job") not based on rational self-interest?"

An MCSE recommending a *NIX?

(Not that it'll ever happen.)

Re:Unhelpful answer.

[edhall]

Who said it wasn't? On the other hand, there are non-technical reasons that may rationally be in his self-interest. Using the same OS at work and at home is one example. The freedom to mix open-source and proprietary software and legally redistribute the result is another. These may not be reasons for you, but I don't think that it's hard to imagine them being someone else's.

-Ed

Re:Unhelpful answer.

[anarkhos]

But Darwin's kernel, xnu, isn't a microkernel.

Pictures Anybody?

[ccollao]

Does anybody has screenshots of Darwin X86 Running?

Also performance stats would be appreciated.

Re:Pictures Anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/screenshots/

Re:Pictures Anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some Darwin XFree86 screenshots on this site:

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Re:Pictures Anybody?

[guroove]

Those are screenshots of XF86 running on a Mac. Look closely at this picture and you'll see the processor type is Power PC.

Anyone actually use Darwin?

[ryochiji]

Just out of curiosity, is anyone actually using Darwin? If you do use Darwin, why do you use it?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I'm using it. The reasons I'm using it will get me modded down, though.

Quite simply, I think Linux sucks, and I choose not to run it on my x86 boxes. Almost all of my x86s are FreeBSD machines, but FreeBSD gets pretty boring after a while. Set it up, it runs, you're done.

So I play with Darwin now and again, just for the change of pace.

I don't know if 'change of pace' is the kind of answer you're looking for, but that's mine.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it because my operating system, Mac OS X, runs on it.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[jdh28]

Care to say why you think Linux sucks?

(Not a troll, just interested.)

john

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

> but FreeBSD gets pretty boring after a while. Set it up, it runs, you're done.

Boring....hmm....try FreeBSD on a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. Put a D-Link DWL-650 wireless card in it. That can be fun to figure out (can't read the mac address from the card). If you try doing in on the developers preview of 5.0 it instantly (and consistently) crashes the machine.

You could also try getting the NVidia Geferce2Go working on it to. That's as fun as a barrel of monkeys.

You don't have to switch to Darwin to get a hassle with hardware configuration - you can do it just by getting the right hardware for FreeBSD. :-)

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[IamTheRealMike]

Why do you dislike Linux so much? I haven't tried FreeBSD so I don't know why its users are so loyal. Considering it's lack of hardware support/ease of use compared to Linux, what makes it so much better?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

Its all down to personal choice really. I prefer FreeBSD to Linux because I like the ports system, I like the cleaness and I've had some bad experiences with Linux in the past.

It all comes down to what you like in the end really, I duel boot Windows 2000 and FreeBSD 4.7, both of which I prefer to Linux, but thats me. If you're interested, I would suggest you give FreeBSD a try - you might like it.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

i find the view: bsd/darwin=good/interesting

but linux sucks.

coming from mac/dos/windows world....i'm neck deep now in redhat, and last month put myself through freebsd bootcamp, teaching myself how to install, configure, ports...i got samba,apache, kde, pan, and a whole bunch of other stuff running. kde actually seemed a little faster in freebsd then in redhat.

freebsd seems more regimented and controlled...i found that appealing and contrasted in linux.

but surprisingly, i found more in common between the two (bsd & linux).

someone who hates one and loves the other...should be suspect of mental inbalance.

forest for the trees would be an understatement to apply to such an individual.

you know the kind i'm talking about...doesn't matter if you are talking about food, movies..politics....they LOVE IT...or they HATE IT.

very opinionated, and expect people to stand up and notice that they are opinionated.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[SirSlud]

We have a box at work serving anywhere from 20 to 40 requests per second, 24/7 .. its been up, no reboot required, for over 2 years. Its been through software upgrades too, so its not like we havn't touched it in this time. (Warning: Thats just one example. I'm not looking to get into an 'uptime' pissing contest. I'm sure Linux can do this too .. or at least I think it can. :)

There are lots of differences between FreeBSD and Linux that are more esotaric in nature, but to me, FreeBSD represents the best balance between a stable, time tested code base and active development.

I have to imagine there is a reason why FreeBSD is used in so many ISPs and server farms (like Yahoo.) For us, the choice has been well worth it, save for a few troubles, like the lack of native threads.

To me, FreeBSD is the OS of choice for sysadmins who're well past the 'gee wizz aint this cool' phase of their computing life and just want something stable and tidy; even if its not bleeding edge with respect to hardware support. To me, FreeBSD is an experienced performer that does very little complaining, even if it can't do *all* the tricks Linux users might wish it did.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you dislike Linux so much? I haven't tried FreeBSD so I don't know why its users are so loyal. Considering it's lack of hardware support/ease of use compared to Linux, what makes it so much better?

You must be a Windows user then. It has more hardware support and it is easier to use than GNU/Linux.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Arctic Fox]

I agree. Going offtopic though. It's stunning how FreeBSD works. It's all there. No futzing with anything. After battling the Debian installer, installing Mandrake (8 maybe? been a while) and Redhat 7.x and fighting with it to no end to get the volume buttons on my no-name laptop working, I gave up.
FreeBSD 4.6 just worked. Take that back. I had to uncomment # device pcm in the kernel, and recompile and buttons worked!! I think 4.7 comes with that already compiled. DVD support through MPlayer kicks tail. Only reason to dual boot to XP is for games. Except the buttons dont work in XP! >:(

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Boring....hmm....try FreeBSD on a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop

Why in the world would you do something like that? FreeBSD is an exceptional server OS, and an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel desktop OS. You'd be better off-- much, much better off-- with Windows XP.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Huge Pi Removal]

OK, I'm not the original poster, but...

I'm a FreeBSD person, I use it on my various servers (from web to mail to router to NAS). (Oddly, the thing that first got me into *BSD was that MkLinux wouldn't support the ethernet card on an old 68K Mac, so I put NetBSD on it instead.)

Now not that I've used Linux much, but I once heard the phrase "FreeBSD is an operating system, Linux is a kernel with some stuff attached". Certainly the way FreeBSD *feels* coherent, and is very natural to work with, makes that statement possibly true for me.

Linux doesn't suck. As such. It can just seem like a goddamn mess at times. In the same way that skins designed by people used to Windows never ever look as good as those designed by people used to Apples (just look at www.kaleidoscope.net), apt-get or RPMs just aren't as nice as ports (www.freshports.org). Where things get installed, where the logs are (fair play, RedHat's pretty good at logs as well), all sorts of stuff... whenever I've nearly put Linux on a server (because I want some bit of hardware that only has Linux drivers):

1) I look at a Linux distro, with its docs, and think "Oh my God, wtf...", and

2) Suddenly someone writes a driver for FreeBSD, and I am saved :)

There endeth the entirely xenophobic ramblings of Huge Pi Removal :) Honestly, I wouldn't kill myslef rather than use Linux, but I sure do like FreeBSD (come on guys, ipfw2... see the light!).

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[axxackall]

Almost all of my x86s are FreeBSD machines, but FreeBSD gets pretty boring after a while. Set it up, it runs, you're done.

Do you mean that nothing interesting can be done with FreeBSD besides setting it up? That's really boring. One day you should try Linux one more time - try to do something different then just install it by default and you'll find that will be interesting, while it will still run.

So I play with Darwin now and again, just for the change of pace.

So, whatever you try to do to set Darwin up - it doesn't run?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I guess I'd better answer that, since my original post is being regarded as flamebait. I don't really want to get into why I don't like Linux for the same reasons I don't go to Mass and talk about what and asshole Jesus was.

One reason I've been largely uninterested in using Linux is that I see no compelling reasons to leave FreeBSD for it. All my FreeBSD boxes are headless/gpu-less, so I don't care about KDE, Gnome, etc. Linux may have the advantage there, I don't know. I don't care. If I want to work on a desktop, I have OS X.

I've tried many distros, and I've never found one to be as straightforward and simple to manage as FreeBSD. I'm looking into building a Gentoo box soon, though. I hear their ports system isn't half bad.

So, Linux sucks for me. As a server, it's far too complex for my needs. As a desktop, it's far too not OS X.

By the way, moderator types,it really sucks bad when one can't express a contrary opinion without getting marked as 'flamebait'. It's not a crime to think Linux sucks.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Man. My own little heresy time.

I will start another little blowtorch battle here, but... Here goes.

I grew up with Berkeley /etc/rc. I used to look at SysV init and think "God, how complicated! Why'd you do all that?"

Well, several years pass, and I start running some SGI's. I start building Debian and RedHat installs... I am slowly converted.

Everytime I look at OpenBSD or the like, I keep thinking: "Man! I dig this... But what an uncontrollably unmanageable init!"

Every freaking admin has their own way to hack another startup into the main .rc, and every one of 'em names their own .rc's what they like, and stick 'em in /sbin, or /usr/local, or god knows where! It's all legal.

I don't want to fault the OS for lack of policy adherence on the part of its operators, but heck - I just don't run into this in SysV land.

I always fantasize about hacking a Debian SysV init into OpenBSD, then reality re-schedules my free time.

Someone with the time to re-package the ports not to break should fork a system and do this. There was a "Debianized" FreeBSD port, but I think it's dead...

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[dvdeug]

I had to uncomment # device pcm in the kernel, and recompile and buttons worked!!

So you said the magic words and it worked. Is there are reason to believe that your troubles in Linux were any more than not knowing the right magic words?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Arctic Fox]

I suppose you are correct.
However, the magic words where documented. So I could find them. ;)

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Fweeky]

I always fantasize about hacking a Debian SysV init into OpenBSD, then reality re-schedules my free time.

You're obviously very ill. I prescribe large quantities of NetBSD's (and now FreeBSD-CURRENT's) rc_NG, maybe with a dose of slaming your head against a brick wall until the desire to use SysV init goes away :)

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[RealityThreek]

You were modded as flamebait because you expressed a fairly strong opinion without backing it up.

In this later post you did indeed say why you enjoy using FreeBSD, but again there was no stated reason to lead us to believe "linux sucks" for everyone. Many people take this type of posting as trolling.

To avoid such a rating, you could have said "I disagree with the ideology of the Linux community." Or "FreeBsd does everything I need it to, and I get the benefit of saying that I don't belong to the all-too-trendy group running RedHat's latest release."

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Timmeh]

Why was Jesus an asshole? I'm a nontheist (atheist, agnostic, whatever you wanna call it) and that seems to be christianity's only saving grace. While I may not like what chrisitanity has become and what has been carried out in god's name over the centuries, I always thought Jesus was sort of a cool guy (if he was really a guy or just a myth, I dunno, I'm not exactly read up on this.) It seems (to me, perhaps incorrectly) that Jesus was a left-wing radical hippy guy. Is there a reason I should think Jesus was an asshole?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Z4rd0Z]

Every freaking admin has their own way to hack another startup into the main .rc, and every one of 'em names their own .rc's what they like, and stick 'em in /sbin, or /usr/local, or god knows where! It's all legal.

I can't speak for every freaking admin out there, but by default, no scripts go into /sbin, ever! Always /etc. The only ones that go into /usr/local/etc are for third party packages, i.e., they aren't there by default. Also, you might check out NetBSD's beautiful rc system which runs an individual script in /etc/rc.d for each service. You still configure your services in /etc/rc.conf like before. There are no runlevels. FreeBSD 5.0 will be using this same system.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Cowrad]

There's reason to believe that he was a jerk like you and I. You've got to figure that if you and your cronies think you're the son of god, that's going to go to your head. Maybe history has intentionally forgotten about all the cool Evil things Jesus did. Who knows?

The one thing I do know is that Jesus was a human being. Human beings are messed up complicated things. Nobody's perfect. Since I don't believe that Jesus was the son of god, it follows that he was a "sinner".

Oh, and don't trust left-wing radical hippy guys. Sure, they might be the son of god, but they're probably just a loony. Charles Manson was a hippie. David Koresh, too.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[orasio]

He was modded as flamebait only because he thinks differently from the moderators. The guy was just answering to a question of why he uses Darwin, "I think Linux sucks" is a concise answer, in fact, stating why he doesn't like Linux is fairly OT. You have to support your opinion when it is the main concept in your post. If you had to back up recursively every statement you made in a post, it would be quite a long post, and OT too.
And in an ideal slashdot, people should not worry about avoiding bad moderation, but about the quality of their post, good moderation should follow. Don't change the way you post, educate the moderators.
Well, maybe I should be modded OT anyway. Feel free.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have never used FreeBSD, how do you know anything about its ease of use? Try using FreeBSD someday. Its easier to get things working, and its "lack of hardware support" really comes down to FreeBSD supporting hardware that are actually in servers and linux supporting everything

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[aardvarkjoe]

You were modded as flamebait because you expressed a fairly strong opinion without backing it up.

Hey, watch this:

Windows sucks!

And watch the karma roll in ...

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Zhe Mappel]

"...FreeBSD is the OS of choice for sysadmins who're well past the 'gee wizz aint this cool' phase of their computing life"

Listen to the man, young whippersnappers. After you've printed out a stack of Fortran cards, carefully taped them up on the wall, and kept stepping backwards until a nude Farrah Fawcett Majors smiles back at you....well, that kind of magic only happens once in your life.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

if this is true it's one of the coolest tales in the annuals of o.g. hacking
and i mean that

any snapshots or "how-to's" of/for it?

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[PinkX]

RedHat IS NOT Linux. Nor will ever be. If you like *BSD, try Slackware Linux (http://www.slackware.com). You'll LOVE IT and will never want to come back.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[benedict]

It's impolitic and rude to say "Linux sucks",
especially when what you mean is "I see no reason
to switch to Linux from FreeBSD."

I've been a FreeBSD weenie since 1996 and I get
totally frustrated when I try to use Linux. But
I'm not going to disrespect the Linux community
by tossing schoolyard insults at Linux. It's just
not necessary.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[benedict]

FreeBSD doesn't lack "ease of use".

The installer could be slicker, but once you've
used it a couple of times, it is pretty straight-
forward, and it's actually pretty cool in that it
supports installs from CD, DVD, FTP, NFS, and I
think local filesystem, though I've never tried
that one.

Everybody raves about the Ports system, so I won't
go on about it, but it is really quite good. And
the combination of cvsup and make as system
updating tools is quite good too. I updated today
to the latest stable code using just a couple of
short, simple shell scripts that I put together.

People talk a lot about FreeBSD's lack of hardware
support, but in practice, it's not something I
notice. I've only once found myself with a
computer I couldn't install FreeBSD on, and it was
weird, with the CD-ROM and modem both attached to
the sound card. And if I'm actually buying
hardware, I just check the hardware compatibility
list before I buy. It's not a big deal at all.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[benedict]

You should check out the rc system that comes
with NetBSD 1.5 (and will come with FreeBSD 5).
It's similar to SysV rc, but instead of making
the dependencies implicit in the numbers in the
script names, they're encoded explicitly at the
beginning of each script.

% head fsck
#!/bin/sh
#
# $NetBSD: fsck,v 1.2 2001/06/18 06:42:35 lukem Exp $
#
# PROVIDE: fsck
# REQUIRE: localswap

These scripts also pull in a common set of sub-
routines, so instead of having everybody define
their own start and stop routines, you just set
a couple of variables and let the system do the
rest. The routines can be overridden with one's
own when more control is needed.

Mac OS X uses a similar scheme. Within a few
years, monolithic rc is going to be nothing but
a bad memory in BSD-land.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[rixstep]

Yeah, I use Darwin. I use it because it came installed on my computer.

I run a PowerBook.

(Hahahaha.)

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[rixstep]

Things could get very interesting... considering who Apple has on board today... if their BSD tree became as popular or more than the other variants out there, if they became equated with BSD in general.

Maybe they're thinking of this already...

R.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[davet]

I guess that all depends on what your idea of what a desktop OS is supposed to be. I just happen to like the idea of running a reliable operating system on my desktops and laptops as well as my servers.

That's why I run OpenBSD on my firewalls, FreeBSD on my laptop, desktop(s) and x86 based servers. My lone remaining Linux machine is my Zaurus palmtop.

(Hmmm, I wonder if NetBSD will boot on it...)

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are right!

I just checked out the link provided by Fweeky - I am very impressed. I really like the documentation of actual approaches used by the FreeBSD team to arrive at this - and appreciate the use of library shell functions to standardize the format of inits. RedHat has a set of standardized script called as regular executables from /sbin in their scripts, but I agree that this needlesly clutters /sbin. It also reduces portability of init scripts to non-RedHat derived boxes, and does nothing to enforce scripting style by the init system itself.

I will investigate further - but Kudos to the NetBSD folks! You have provided the functionality I enjoy with SysV and bettered it.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[skinfitz]

We have a box at work serving anywhere from 20 to 40 requests per second, 24/7 .. its been up, no reboot required, for over 2 years.

I've got one of those - it's called a toaster...

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

A desktop OS is supposed to be a general-purpose environment for running user-interactive software. Linux, even with eye-candy from such outfits as Ximian and Red Hat, is not an acceptable desktop OS. FreeBSD is not an acceptable desktop OS. Solaris is not an acceptable desktop OS. HP-UX is not an acceptable desktop OS. IRIX is not an acceptable desktop OS.

The only acceptable desktop OS's currently available are Windows XP-- or, equally well, Windows 2000 if you can find somebody to sell it to you-- and Mac OS X. Earlier versions of Windows and Mac OS are acceptable to varying degrees.

Anybody who thinks FreeBSD (or Linux, or Solaris, or et cetera) is an acceptable desktop OS is either not doing very many things with his computer, or is happy using substandard tools and employing workarounds.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Moloch666]

For a dinky webserver, I am running FreeBSD. It's a p233mmx with 96MB of RAM. I just installed X/KDE so my girlfriend can check email and surf. It's a bit sluggish, maybe WindowMaker would be a good choice for it, but I wanted to make it perty. I can't imagine putting WinXP on there. Either way, Win9x/2k/XP, Linux, would not change its desktop speed.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[g4dget]

By the way, moderator types,it really sucks bad when one can't express a contrary opinion without getting marked as 'flamebait'. It's not a crime to think Linux sucks.

Yeah, as opposed to the "even handed moderation" from Macintosh zealots? Anything remotely critical or even questioning of Apple is immediately modded down by the Macintosh crowd.

Ultimately, users will decide, no matter what power trips or delusions certain user populations have.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It's not about speed, friend. It's about what you can do with it. I'd like to see you play a game with FreeBSD, or run a decent word processor (Open Office, AbiWord, and Lyx need not apply), or run an accounting package, or run Photoshop. As I said before, FreeBSD is an exceptional server operating system. It is an unacceptable desktop operating system, unless your needs as a desktop user are so trivial as to be virtually nonexistent.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA, you're never going to moderate again, because you're going to be meta-modded into oblivion!

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[passthecrackpipe]

Sorry, but your post is not consistent. You state the criteria for what an acceptable desktop OS should be. Then you list a bunch of OS'es that according to you do not meet your criteria. You don't, however, state how any of these fail to meet your own criteria.

You then state one that you believe meets your own (rather limited) criteria. Again you do not state how this options meets your criteria. Then you finish by stating that anybody who does not agree with you is either incompetent or an idiot.

I'm not taking the piss, I'm just interested in how you arrive at your conclusions. I mean, you get to set the criteria, and *still* you don't manage to make a convincing case? That leaves me little other options but to consider you not competent to make these kinds of statements.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[a-moll]

I'm a FreeBSD-user who once used redhat, then slackware, then suse. all those had something nice, but none of them had as coherent an userexperience as FreeBSD. I felt like linux was a lot of parts pathced together with tape, while FreeBSD was one thing that consisted of many nice parts. i cant explain it bether than this. Darwin is not my preferred unix, allthough it has more of the the coherent feeling (or had when i tried it 2 years ago) than linux but allso had the comersial-change-the-unix-to-be-more-like-our-comp anystratergy-feeling,
but Aqua is my my preferred gui, and whith a mac running OS X and a pc running FreeBSD as a server i get the best of the best: all the basic things(like the clients, nfs, apache, mail, ++) just works and i can fiddle with what i add (like pgsql, bind, IPv6, dhcp, netatalk, nat, etc.)
So you see not all love-unix-hate-redhat-types like slackware. i admitt it was the best (when it came to machine-controll) linux-distro i tried, but FreeBSD is better, both when you want control and when you want the machine to just work without you having to do everything.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Fitascious]

Gentoo does something similar.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are making a conclusion based solely on your own opinion, then calling it "reason to believe". Not one fact in the Bible has ever been disproven, yet many archaeologists have come to shame for attempting to disprove the Bible and have wound up becoming Chrisitians as the realize where the error was.

The Lord Jesus Christ came to die for you and all of us - all us miserable sinners. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God; we all need redemption since there is nothing we can do to earn our way into heaven. Only by accepting the free gift of grace from God, by believing in his son Jesus Christ, can we be forgiven.

For a better explanation, see here for details.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[timmyf2371]

I wouldn't necessarily say that's true.

Would you agree with the fact that a desktop OS should be vulnerable to viruses, simply by looking at an e-mail message? or by opening a Word document?

I'm not saying that Windows XP/any version aren't acceptable desktop OS's for some people, since at this point in time I wouldn't say that Linux/BSD OS's are necessarily ready for first-time users. (Althought I've not seen Lindows or Xandros yet - I'm basing these assumptions on the likes of Mandrake/Redhat/Suse, etc).

For people like myself, however, who are technically-minded, Linux is a highly-acceptable desktop operating system. With KDE3, it can look both professional and stylish, and the buttons on my panel open my 8 most used programs - any less-frequently used program is just a couple of clicks away on the K menu.

While Linux/BSD isn't yet an acceptable desktop OS for many people, there are equally many who find it perfect for their needs.

Tim

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Aighearach]

come on guys, ipfw2... see the light!

*BSD people often seem to think that the wonders of ipfw2 are self-evident. Compared to historical tools, that would be true. But, none of the people I've talked to who say this, are actually aware of the wonderful features linux people are getting from iptables. With iptables, I can even allow or disallow creation of connections based on the user. I can do SNAT and DNAT effortlessly. Assuming a modern and correctly built kernel (the distro ones are usually fine) I can create a simple traffic monitor in the firewall by creating a rule with no action. The advantage of that is mostly redundancy, so I can really KNOW that my higher level bandwidth tools are working correctly. I can also automatically reject strange packets, SNAT with ftp and irc helpers, and pass locally generated traffic on certain ports through the NAT tables - or not. What is it that I should want in a firewall, green eggs and ham?!

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure someone will inappropriately mod this as a troll...

Or... unless your needs are so vastly different from a general user. I never use a word processor, a spreadsheet or an accounting package. Why on earth would I want to? And if I did want to, there are plenty of open-source alternatives that are more than satisfactory, with OpenOffice.org being at the top of the list. It's much more usable and friendly than MS Office is (in my opinion based on what little I've seen of the two). But, what I use mys system for is pretty typical for the UNIX crowd: scripting and coding custom apps. Web design. And if the need to edit any graphics ever arises, I just fire up GIMP and do what I need to do. Considering that I don't do dead tree publishing, GIMP and OpenOffice.org are just fine. All of mys systems at home are running some variant of UNIX or UNIX-like OSes. No MS software anywhere. Darwin is very intrguing to me indeed. Once someone gets a decent GUI environment running on to of it... I will probably run it as well. Just keep in mind, everyone uses their machines in different ways. There aren't only two or three kinds of users, but multiple types:
1. The boneheads who use their machines for web surfing, e-mail and basic office app stuff.
2. The more advanced user that might serve out some data from their machine either internally or to the internet.
3. The people who like to customize their systems (GUI, case mods, etc...) until they no longer resemble the generic beige box.
4. The guys who like to run light with just TWM over top of X and put all the horse power into custom compiling apps for their system.
5. The people who are really advanced and like to come as close to programming the bare metal.

So... a selection of apps like you listed above might satisfy some basic users, but will never satisfy the true computer user.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Eil]

If you ever think of giving Linux another shot, you might give Slackware a try. It's a very no-frills distro, which is (IMHO) a good thing. You dive in and make things the way you want them instead of wading through layers of GUI and buggy config tools. I've been hearing good things about Gentoo also.

One thing that would make me switch to FreeBSD instantly is a framebuffer console. On my desktop, being able to adjust the console resolution is nice, but on my laptop it's essential. 640x480 expanded to 1024x768 w/o anti-aliasing is extremely painful to look at. Painful enough that I won't use an OS that can't display it's console at the native LCD panel resolution.

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with these comparisons is that often FreeBSD is compared with the likes of RedHat. Excuse me, but RedHat is not linux.

I also have boxes that have been running in the magnitude of years. Only down time is power outages (no backup). Disto: Slackware. Slackware has always waited until the code was stable before including it in their distro. Some people think this is a bad thing because you don't get the latest greatest eye candy. But my boxen are rock solid...

Now they just need better I18N integration...

NR

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Moloch666]

Actually on my main system, I am running Win2k. I can't stand XP. I would love to go for a Linux or FreeBSD desktop. Only 1 thing stopping me, games. Otherwise all functionality can be duplicated, YMMV. Some people wouldn't use anything other than Photoshop. I have no problem with gimp as an alternative. Again this is for my needs. If WinXP works for you, there is nothing wrong with that, use it.
I'm not one of those people that say " is the only OS for anyone to use, even Grandma!"

Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I respect this opinion, but I find it atypical. I know a reasonable cross-section of computer users-- business types, creative types, programmer types, non-computer-user types who just need to surf and do email-- and none of them would find any of the currently available Linux or BSD flavors acceptable desktop operating systems. They each have their own reasons, of course, but the conclusion is the same.

Darwin is BSD

[yerricde]

but surely if you want a PC-based UNIX you'd go for some BSD flavour

Darwin is a BSD flavour. A long time ago, the BSD source forked; on one side, we have FreeBSD and Darwin, and on the other, NetBSD and OpenBSD.

(I could be wrong; corrections are appreciated.)

Yes, but Apple's organic machine code WORKS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, anyway.

If I can get this to work...

[rickthewizkid]

... do I get a "Darwin Award?"

Heaven knows I'll be spending enough time hacking on this that I won't have *time* for kids... :)

Seriously, kudos to Apple for releasing this... it was a good treat for the day my DSL came back to life!

RickTheWizKid

Re:If I can get this to work...

[Aloekak]

Getting a Darwin award and not having kids are not the same thing. The people doing dumb crap and getting a darwin award could have already had children. **patches hole**

*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[Leimy]

Its XNU... mach+a bsd personality in the same address space with some FreeBSD userland tools.

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[AIXadmin]

Since Mach can have multiple personalities, could you create and run a Linux personality and a BSD personality at the same time?

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

not much FreeBSD either dammit if you do the analysis using strings you will find that the major part of the codebase is based on NetBSD not FreeBSD.

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[Leimy]

Normally you would be correct but in this case the personality is not a "mach server" but in the same address space as mach. This just means they both access the same memory regions and the BSD layer isn't as "protected" as it would be if it were a userspace implemented personality.

The reason for putting XNU and BSD together [I bet] is that it reduces the amount of IPC [mach messages and ports] to do Unix things. This should improve the latency of system calls and other things.

Unfortunately the improvement isn't that much from what I can tell. Latency is still pretty high on XNU compared to NetBSD or Linux on the same hardware [I don't know if my friend published his results of some tests he has done so I won't point there]. Anyway I don't know if the version of Mach used in XNU has all the various improvements I have only read about like Mach Continuations [Unix Internals: The New Frontiers Uresh Vahalla] but such things would further improve OS X in general.

The nice thing is if we want to play with this stuff we can. Its !Linux and !FreeBSD so it is good exposure to something else with a slightly different perspective and design. Also if you go to OpenDarwin you can get the source pretty easily and tweak it yourself.... I did a little and ran my own custom kernel on my TiBook for months before I got Jaguar. [UFS implementation logging and exploration... nothing terribly fascinating].

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[Fafhrd]

Since Mach can have multiple personalities, could you create and run a Linux personality and a BSD personality at the same time?

Yes, it would be possible. In fact, Modern Operating Systems (great reference book by Tanenbaum) mentions the possibility of running a MS-DOS personality together with the BSD personality on top of Mach.

Indeed, the first Linux version to run on Macs, MkLinux, was actually a version of Linux adapted to be hosted on top of Mach... a "Linux personality", so to speak. The now usual monolithic PowerPC Linux came later.

Of course, running these two different personalities side-by-side would entail very careful resource management, and would probably not be very practical.

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[benedict]

You're not quite right there. The BSD personality
contains a lot of code from FreeBSD. So there's
FreeBSD in the Darwin userland and kernel.

I'd call it NeXTStep-based before I'd call it
FreeBSD-based, but both are accurate to some
extent.

Re:*not* FreeBSD based dammit

[kcbrown]

XNU/Darwin??

I submitted the above anonymously...

[Anonymous Coward]

...because it's just not all that funny. Why the hell are you people modding it up?! Get a grip!

Re:I submitted the above anonymously...

[Anonymous Coward]

because my self-doubt is a hellish see-saw of conflicting emotions and self loathing. Stop modding me up - I can't deal with the pressure!

15 mins later

[MrFreezeBU]

15 minutes and the reg server is spouting 500 server errors...Are they running X-servs?? j/k

Open Source for Apple

[swagr]

Basically this just means that developers who write console applications, servers, etc can now port and test with ease.

This is good for Apple because they get more for free.

What exactly do you get?

[mcraw]

If I were to install this on my machine, what exactly would I get?

Would it be just a basic BSD-like OS? Would any OS X features be there?

In short, how much of a running Mac OS X install is OS X and how much is Darwin?

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

If you do not like apples fascist control of the darwin sources use the FORK that was made.

There are three forks of OSX : Apple internal (up to date), Apple Darwin site (lags by 6 months or worse at times and not as complete and hostile to building apps on x86 without a few FAQs to sudy, and lastly... THE BEST FORK , the rougue fork made to allow 17 year olds and 16 year olds to be able to code and add without being banned!

Apple banned 17 year olds from their darwin cvs, unlike the spirit of Apple in 1982 when 12 year olds were WELCOME, and 15 year old gods like Mark Harris "the stack" and 13 year olds like Tony Suzuki, who made over a million dollars coding the smash hit "StarBlazer" on the Apple IIe, and uber gods of hacking like 15 year old called "The nova" or Norman Fong who started at 13, and eventually made over 10 million dollars for himself in his late twenties in the software world before bowing out.

Banning 17 year olds from WWDC and from CVS is sickening, though Corel did the same.

That is why you need to use the THIRD fork.

screenshots?

[Anonymous Coward]

screenshots?

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Anonymous Coward]

www.opendarwin.org

is the third and OPEN fork... I forgot to mention it

please support www.opendarwin.org if you want AMD supported, and if you want participation by 17 year olds.

Not quite...

[ryochiji]

>it boils down to the fact that Simpler means Stupider

Not when you also have access to a CLI (through Terminal.app), on top of the "elegant and beautiful" GUI. Or perhaps you're actually saying that the free development tools (IDE, GCC, GDB) bundled with MacOS X are somehow "Stupider" too, and that anyone who happens to use this highly-usable version of UNIX is somehow "Stupider" than you?

Re:Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you have to sign up and download the developer tools to get the IDE, gcc, and gdb?

Re:Not quite...

[pythas]

Here's what I do:

1. Insert CD
2. Install developer tools

Hope that answered your question.

Re:Not quite...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No. They're included with new computers that come with Mac OS X, and they're included in the retail Mac OS X box. The only time you have to download the tools is when new releases of them become available.

And signing up for the Apple developer program is about as tricky as signing up for Slashdot. If you want to do it anonymously, get yourself a free email account and go for it.

But where is the source code to the Carbon libs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having Darwin to play with is cute and all. But it would be really nice if **Carbon** was a platform independant library. Apple keeps complaining when OSS programmers emulate the look and feel of a Carbon application instead of calling the real thing. But if you want your application to not be tied specifically to MacOS X then your better off using winelib or wx for your widget set. If Apple wants OSS programmers to use the real thing then they should provide the real thing to OSS programmers.

Re:Er..

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in luck then. Darwin x86 doesn't come with any graphical interfaces, so you don't have to worry about your 'Beauty' being 'dumbed down' with 'elegant and beautifal' [sic] things.

Although, watch out. I find the command-line interface to be pretty simple, and word has it that 'Simpler means Stupider'.

CD-ROMs?

[bongholio]

Also from the release notes it looks like you're lucky if you can get a CD-ROM to work at all...

* SCSI CD-ROM drives are not supported

* IDE drives may not work on x86...

Re:CD-ROMs?

[bogie]

A Unix which doesn't suppport SCSI cdroms?
Truly bizarre.

Re:CD-ROMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Mach kernel written from scratch. Only the userland is FreeBSD.

It takes days to get an image iso , plus its not

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes days to get an image iso from apples stingy ftp seervers, plus its not opendarwin.org

we need to suppor the FREE and OPEN non apple controlled non-fascist cvs tree of openDarwin.org

At OpenDarwin.org 17 year old coders are wecome, not banned, and AMD chips are not hated and disabled (at least in spirit).

lets hope fork #3 of darwin (os x is private fork 1 of freebsd only at apple) stays relevant and quickly diffs apples slop into their tree.

SUPPORT THE CAUSE! Support www.OpenDarwin.org

Clickwrap + broken registration == no download!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else notice that it requires you to register, click through a EULA, and enter some info before (presumably) you can download it.. except that the registration form is broken. Lovely, thanks Apple.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[lemkebeth]

You may disagree with Apple decision but, they were justified to ban that 17 year old (as you call him) from the CVS.

The Apple Darwin CVS is current.

OpenDarwin.org is just a more public CVS that others can commit to that is headed by Apple employees.

Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Charles Dodgeson]

Due to the viral nature of the GPL, any software compiled using GCC could be considered a "derivative work" of the GCC, thus forcing that software to be open-source under the terms of the GPL

I find it remarkable that anyone could actually read the GPL and believe this myth. See the GPL FAQ which specifically addresses this question:

Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?

Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it remarkable that anyone could actually read the GPL and believe this myth.

Actually, it's not a myth. I'm a secretary for one of the Free Software Foundation's lawyers, and it's pretty well-known around here that using GCC is precisely what led to several threatened lawsuits against companies for "stealing" GNU-licensed code controlled by FSF. The companies tried to point to the FAQ section you note, but the FSF simply threatend to submit a note to known Linux-zealot hangouts like Slashdot and certain mailing lists unless they either pulled their (good) products, or released the code and handed the FSF a big chunk of change.

The FSF is a dirty, dirty organization, and I intend to out everything when I quit here.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[atrowe]

Youre entire argument is based upon a technicality and does not hold true for real-world users. While code compiled using GCC does not include any derivative code from the GCC compiler itself, it will almost certainly include code from one of the many libraries which are distributed with GCC.

Any software project larger than "Hello World!" is going to be dependant upon libraries which are liscensed under the GPL. While the LGPL was created to address some of these issues, not every library is liscensed under the LGPL, so the problem still exists. This includes the very prevalant C++ library which includes the cin and cout operators which I'm sure every programmer has used at some point in his or her career.

Please see here, here, or here for documentation supporting my claims. The last link goes to an article written by Stallman himself addressing this problem, so please don't try and tell my that my information is based on Microsoft FUD.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[ChaosDiscord]

I'm a secretary for one of the Free Software Foundation's lawyers,...

What a coincidence! I'm a secretary for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (it doesn't pay well, so I work two jobs), and it's pretty well-known around here that all three like to drown kittens and push grandmothers down stairs.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[mindstrm]

Which of the standard C or C++ libraries are those?

And your original statement "Due to the viral nature of the GPL, any software compiled using GCC could be considered a "derivative work" of the GCC, thus forcing that software to be open- source under the terms of the GPL"

Is still totally wrong. Any software including GPL libraries that come with GCC, yes, they would be restricted by the GPL... but you quite clearly stated that all software built with gcc is automatically GPL, which is BS.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Jason Earl]

Yes, RMS wants to phase out the LGPL, especially in those cases where Free Software has created a library that doesn't have a commercial software equivalent (libreadline). So far he hasn't been particularly persuasive. However, it simply isn't true that the GNU C++ libraries are GPLed, at least they aren't on my machine.

In fact, libreadline is the only example I can think of off hand of a GNU library that is GPLed. Even the Gnome and GTK libraries are LGPLed (as opposed to QT which is GPLed).

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

using GCC is precisely what led to several threatened lawsuits against companies for "stealing" GNU-licensed code
You are smoking crack. Including GPL'd source code and compling 100% origional code with GCC are completely different. I don't think M$ would even claim that they own a piece of software compiled with VisualStudio (but then again...)

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Charles Dodgeson]

Any document written with MS-Word is going to contain bits of the Word program used to create it. But not even MS would try to claim all documents written with Word as "derivative works."

I do agree that the LGPL is a much needed addition to explicitly deal with libraries. But the intent of the GPL is still clear.

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Arandir]

as opposed to QT which is GPLed

Qt is dual licensed under the QPL and GPL. The dual licensing means that it is NOT viral.

Re: Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Black Parrot]

> > Due to the viral nature of the GPL, any software compiled using GCC could be considered a "derivative work" of the GCC, thus forcing that software to be open-source under the terms of the GPL

> I find it remarkable that anyone could actually read the GPL and believe this myth.

And I find it remarkable that you think anyone actually reads their software licenses!

Re:Myth: Viral nature of the GPL

[Jason Earl]

What planet are you from? Have you actually read the QPL. Not only does it require that you distribute source code with your derivative works to the people you distribute binaries to, but it also requires that you make this software available to TrollTech should they ask for it. In other words the QPL is even worse than the GPL in that reguard. I can write a GPL program and sell it to a client and only myself and my client will have access to the source code. However, if I use QT with the QPL then TrollTech can demand a copy of the software as well, and they could theoretically resell this software to my client's competitors.

Here's the relevant clause:

If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial developer of the Software [TrollTech] requests a copy of the items, then you must supply one.

The QPL also requires everything that the GPL requires. If you choose to use the QPLed version of QT then you have to distribute your work with source, and you have to license your software in such a way so that the people receiving your software are also allowed to distribute the software (as long as they distribute the source code as well).

In short once you distribute software linked against the QPLed version of QT then it can never be closed again (much like the GPL).

Now, you can buy a commercial license for QT and then distribute commercial software based on QT. However, the QPL is every bit as viral as the GPL. In fact, it's worse.

OS x86?

[Q3vi1]

So, how long before someone's going to put together the Aqua package of x86 and have OS X applications able to run on x86 architecture?

Re:OS x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple would have to do it. Otherwise you'd have to reverse-engineer Aqua and Quartz.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Apple eventually releases an x86 version of OSX for the consumer market. Moto and IBM are obviously having problems keeping up with Intel and AMD in the CPU race, and it is very, very easy for Apple to do a cross-compile to x86.

Free as in...

[intermodal]

*cues up canned RMS speech* The views expressed in said canned speech are not my views. More power to them. Now if only they'd port the whole OS for more hardware, Microsoft might start losing sleep...

Re:Free as in...

[MalleusEBHC]

Now if only they'd port the whole OS for more hardware, Microsoft might start losing sleep...

For the billionth time, they would lose more sleep than M$ would. Yes, M$ makes a good chunk of money off OS sales, but they also make an assload off other sales (especially Office). Apple makes 90%+ of their money from hardware sales last time I checked. For Apple to release an OS X build for generic x86 hardware would be economic suicide. Steve knows where his bread is buttered.

older version

[nuttyprofessor]

Must be an older version than the binary
that ships w/ 10.2.

% uname -a
Darwin *.*.*.* 6.1 Darwin Kernel Version 6.1: Fri Sep 6 23:24:34 PDT 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.2.obj~2/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc

They do it to maintain the balance of power

[Ilan Volow]

The name of the game is deterrance. It's like cold war.

• Apple works on a partial x86 port of OS X (Darwin x86). Not that they are ever going to deploy a full x86 OS X, but they want to let microsoft know they can do so at any moment.
  
• Microsoft keeps "re-evaluating" whether they should be releasing Mac versions of Office. Not that they are ever going to cancel Office for Macintosh, but they want to let Apple know they can do so at any moment.
  

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[mindstrm]

Apple works on a partial x86 port of OS X (Darwin x86). Not that they are ever going to deploy a full x86 OS X, but they want to let microsoft know they can do so at any moment.

They very well may release it; if intel processors get far enough ahead, apple will most likely make a new mac based on an intel processor. It won't be a version for the common PC, but it will be a box with an intel chip in it.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful. If there should be any problems delaying the IBM PowerPC 970 it even becomes a likely scenario, although nobody should bother thinking it will become something that runs on generic x86 hardware.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) :)

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[sparkz]

Same as Solaris_x86 was developed way before it was ever released, and continued to be developed after it was announced that it would no longer be available ... keep your options open, make stuff, and if it suits the business, then make it available, but whether you currently want to make it available or not, you need to keep working on it.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[SmittyTheBold]

They very well may release it; if intel processors get far enough ahead, apple will most likely make a new mac based on an intel processor.

I suppose they could release x86 Macs, but they will NOT replace the PPC line. To do so would be suicide.

Think of it this way: Developers tagged along with Apple on the PPC transition somewhere around seven years ago. The same developers followed the OS X transition, but they took more time with that move - some bog houses don't have 'real' OS X ports out yet.

Now, both of these were rather simple transitions for developers to make. Somewhere on the order of a 5-15% code change for most apps, last I knew.

A move to x86 is a BIG move. A lot of software will have to be rewritten. AltiVec instructions have to be replaced with SSE (, MMX, SSE2, etc) blocks.

Even worse, there is no clean-cut way to interoperate with older PPC code. The PPC is relatively good for emulationg other architectures, but the x86 is rather poor at emulating anything modern - if for no ther reason than an astounding lack of general-purpose registers. Macs have a way of runnign even your old software in a satisfactory manner. I can run games from 1993 on an OS X PPC machine, and it still runs pretty well.

If Apple released the OS X x86 machine, it would run NONE of the old Mac software, nor would it run new OS X software that hadn't been expressly recompiled yet.

Apple got developers to transition from 68k to PPC, then they got developers to transition from OS 9 to OS X. There is no way the same developers would transition again a mere two years later.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[slantyyz]

Apple has nothing to fear from Microsoft. If Apple drops the bombshell that they are moving to commodity x86 hardware, dropping Office for OS-X will be moot.

I would say that there would be a version of VMWare or Virtual PC in the blink of an eye, and products based on WINE (i.e., CrossOffice) that run the Win32 binary of Office in OSX would be imminent as well.

Microsoft has no bargaining chips in this situation. Dropping Office will not eliminate the availability of running Office or IE for that matter on an x86 based OS-X.

That is of course, assuming Apple doesn't release OS-X on a proprietary x86 platform.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[sql*kitten]

Apple works on a partial x86 port of OS X (Darwin x86). Not that they are ever going to deploy a full x86 OS X, but they want to let microsoft know they can do so at any moment.

More likely it is to keep Motorola/IBM on their toes. They could have Apple over a barrel because they control the PowerPC supplies. Apple screwed Motorola royally over Mac clones, and Moto would love to get its revenge.

Re:They do it to maintain the balance of power

[Anonymous Coward]

> That is of course, assuming Apple doesn't release OS-X on a proprietary x86 platform.

Yep. If Apple ever did release an x86 version of OS X, you could bet your house that it would use an Apple motherboard with special Apple copyrighted/patented/whateverneeded chips not found on regular x86 boards such that the "OS X86" would only run on those Apple boards.

Apple's a hardware-based company, and wants their profit margins to stay where they are. No commodity-based systems for them. Noooooo, sireee.

Re:bobbing for apples

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that emotion

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Jezza]

Wasn't there some legal reason for this? (I'm pretty sure there was) So while I agree with you, I don't think Apple are to blame.

As I remember it was something about someone under that age could be held to the licence or something?

Someone help me out here.

Byte compares linux and ox s performance

[mojorisin67_71]

Byte released a comparision of linux and OS X at here

Re:Byte compares linux and ox s performance

[soellman]

great article. I was surprised that osx even approached the performance of linux, and it seemed to be consistently about 75-90% as fast. Now of course, that comparison only tested osx 10.1.5, and there has been significant work on darwin since - I'd love to see an updated shootout.

500 internal server error !!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is bad !!! their registration server is not giving a healthy first impression .if they go on like this they are never going to get that small portion of the intel based M$ and linux users base they they are hoping .

DSS supports open formats

[benwaggoner]

Darwin Streaming Server can stream MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. It can also stream with codecs like H.263 that are compatible with open source solutions. And QuickTime streaming itself is based on RTP/RTSP/SDP, etcetera. The only thing propritary is QuickTime specific codecs, and DSS doesn't know from codecs and clients.

As Charles Wiltgen says, "Darwin Streaming Server is the Apache of Streaming."

For the freaking 10,000th time...

[maggard]

Darwin is not MacOS X.

It is much of the core of MaxcOS X but it lacks many of MacOS X's layers and services like Carbon, Cocoa, Quartz, and of course Aqua.

If you don't know what those mean don't post the same damn lame question to /. asking for these to ONCE AGAIN be explained. There's a search function: Goddamn use it as the topic has been discussed NUMEROUS times on /.

Or show some minimal level of initiative and look it up for yourself (hint: World Wide Web) where it's all well detailed in ways even the lamest "explain-this-to-me" poster would get in a dozen places online.

Next, yes, there is an x86 port of MacOS X inside Apple. Will it ever see the light of day? Not likely (sorry PC fanboys).

Does this mean Apple plans to use MacOS X'86?

Yes, they use it every day to make sure that MacOS X remains true to the portability of it's predecessor Openstep (which was on 5 platforms.) Undoubtedly Apple figures if MacOS X can be kept running on the very different PPC & x86 platforms then they're good for about anything.

Why x86 over some other processor? First off Openstep (or whatever you want to call/capitalize it) was updated by Apple as part of their aborted "Rhapsody" strategy to both PPC & x86 so it was little effort to keep it going to MacOS X. Furthermore this helps keep Apple from getting caught in any PPC-isms in the future. Cross-porting helps show up any problems early, keeps everyone honest, provides valuable insight into many problems.

What good is Darwin? Well, it does run a lot of code, including things like Apple's free streaming media server. It gives MacOS X developers a look into the heart of MacOS X. That it comes out for x86 just lets that many more folks play with it.

Finally, to respond to the next half-dozen whinges that come up every time:

• Yes Darwin is Open Source.
• No Apple isn't going to give away the rest of MacOS X. As much as many folks go gimme-gimme-gimme-for-free Apple's management has fiduciary responsibility to keep the company profitable; giving away MacOS X in its entirety will not further that goal.
• No QuickTime does not lockout Linux or any other users. QuickTime is a file-format and some libraries, not a codec (clue phone ringing!) Yes Apple licensed a codec, you want access to it find someone willing to pony up the cash like Apple did. That other folks use that codec is lovely but there's no gun to their head preventing them from using any of the other codecs.
• No Apple would not do well selling or giving away MacOS X'86. If you think you've got some novel bit of reasoning that makes this a good strategy for Apple go pitch it to their board, don't bleat about it on /. again where nobody well-informed is buying it.
• Is Darwin "better" then XYZ? Who knows, depends entirely on for what to whom with which criteria.
• Do PPC/Mach/micro-kernels/aesthetics/etc matter? Well as Apple seems to be one of the few PC vendors doing well and MacOS X is now the best-selling Unix then yeah, apparently Apple is doing something right.
• Last, but not least, love 'em or hate 'em Apple makes waves and does interesting things. None of the other vendors constantly do as interesting things or generate so much controversy, gotta love 'em for that.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[g4dget]

No Apple isn't going to give away the rest of MacOS X. As much as many folks go gimme-gimme-gimme-for-free Apple's management has fiduciary responsibility to keep the company profitable; giving away MacOS X in its entirety will not further that goal.

Well, what will further that goal, then? Do you really believe that software developers are going to switch in droves to a proprietary, single platform set of APIs that requires the use of a 20 year old unsafe programming language? APIs that are only implemented on the hardware from a single company, which ships a very limited range of machines?

I certainly don't: I think Cocoa and Quartz are a dead end, with no prospect of widespread adoption by software developers, outside a die-hard community of Mac developers. Calls for Apple to open source the GUI have nothing to do with "gimme-gimme-gimme", they are simply a reflection that most developers and companies don't want to commit a lot of time and effort to a set of APIs that stand and fall with the fortunes of a single vendor. Open sourcing Cocoa and Quartz wouldn't make the APIs technically more attractive, but at least they would ensure their continued existence.

In any case, I don't actually want Apple to open source Cocoa and Quartz--I think it would just prolong the agony. I think Cocoa and Quartz will have to be replaced within a few years with something very different--unless Apple goes out of business first.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[alannon]

Several replies to this:
Do you really believe that software developers are going to switch in droves to a proprietary, single platform set of APIs that requires the use of a 20 year old unsafe programming language?
1) I can only assume by '20 year old unsafe programming language' you refer to C. Since you talk about only Cocoa for the rest of what you say (not Carbon) I can only assume you are referring to it when you say 'single platform set of APIs'.
Since the 'standard' for Windows programming is in C++ (arguably LESS safe than C, since you can over-ride operators), and the 'standard' API is MFC, I fail to see your point, when compared to Windows.
Since the 'standard' programming language for Linux is C, and OSX and Linux share the vast majority of the basic API's and the rest (X11) are available as a free download, I fail to see your point in comparison to Linux/BSD.

I think Cocoa and Quartz are a dead end, with no prospect of widespread adoption by software developers, outside a die-hard community of Mac developers... Open sourcing Cocoa and Quartz wouldn't make the APIs technically more attractive, but at least they would ensure their continued existence.
2) You state that Cocoa and Quartz are a dead end, with no prospect of adoption software developers outside the 'die-hard' community of Mac developers. First, Quartz is rarely accessed as an API on its own, unless you are doing eye-candy. Usually it is called by the application-level API you are writing in (Cocoa or Carbon). You are really only showing your lack of familiarity with these APIs by mentioning it in the same context.
Second, the Cocoa API is more or less source-code compatable with GNUStep. What is GNUStep? It's an open-source implementation of the Objective-C OpenStep APIs on top of X11. What's OpenStep? It's the open standard that NeXT released and implemented and eventually became Cocoa. You can write full-fledged OSX applications that cross-compile for GNUStep on Linux TODAY.
Third, as a professional developer who is experienced on (Classic) MacOS, OSX, UNIX/Linux and Windows, I will state my opinion that I find the Cocoa APIs to be the most attractive to use. If these APIs were unattractive to use, why would anyone have gone to all the trouble to do a complete re-engineering of them in the form of GNUStep?

In any case, I don't actually want Apple to open source Cocoa and Quartz--I think it would just prolong the agony... unless Apple goes out of business first.
Damn! I've been trolled.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[iSwitched]

alannon -

Thanks for taking the words right out of my mouth! I was working up a response myself, but you said it better than I could, mine closed with:

"...unless Apple goes out of business first."

If I had a dollar for every anti-Apple rant that ended this way, I could buy Apple!

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really believe that software developers are going to switch in droves to a proprietary, single platform set of APIs that requires the use of a 20 year old unsafe programming language? APIs that are only implemented on the hardware from a single company, which ships a very limited range of machines?

If those machines are sufficiently popular, then, yes. Unless they're developing highly specialized niche software (and thus can dictate choice of platform to their customers), software developers choose target platforms based on the ROI they expect from selling software for that platform. While the technical qualities of the target platform do play into an ROI calculation, they're quite unimportant compared to other factors.

(Of course, I'm ignoring the fact that your technical criticisms of OS/X aren't well-grounded.)

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Cowards filtered. If their words aren't worth so much as a pen name why should I value them any more?

If a Mac OS programmer for Apple wanted to post some interesting thoughts, using his own name would not be the wised choice. AC is a way for people to post without the fear of thier employers. Many people work for the same companies that the topics are about. In fact, at lunch today people where talking about the Saddam Inbox story from slashdot.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[tialaramex]

"Yes Apple licensed a codec, you want access to it find someone willing to pony up the cash like Apple did."

My understanding (and so this is 2nd hand, but I don't see you doing any better) is that when you call Apple they say "Ask Sorenson" and when you call Sorenson they say "Ask Apple".

Yes, they can /legally/ give everyone the run around like this, but I don't think it's /ethical/ for them to do so. It may even be bad business.

Worse, experience suggests that if a better alternative is developed and made free Apple AND Sorenson will do everything in their power to discourage their users from accessing this improved technology.

The duplicability versus scale problem hits big for this kind of stuff. Everyone hiring one or two academics, making them sign NDAs and keeping them apart is not the most effective way of delivering improved compression to real users. That's why we have a dozen competing "next generation" streaming audio codecs, none of which are universally available. [It would be nice to think that MS & Apple will see sense and ship Vorbis but don't count on it]

This /is/ rocket science and if Apple were serious about delivering for media people they'd put their codec money together with other people's and have the technology developed in the open. They can differentiate elsewhere without wasting all these resources on duplicated effort.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[g4dget]

I fail to see your point, when compared to Windows. Since the 'standard' programming language for Linux is C, and OSX and Linux share the vast majority of the basic API's and the rest (X11) are available as a free download, I fail to see your point in comparison to Linux/BSD.

I didn't make that comparison between OS X and Linux, BSD, or Windows. And I agree with your analysis: all three systems, OS X, Linux, and Windows, are based on roughly the same 20 year old technology.

The difference is that many Linux and Windows developers have no illusions about that. But Apple claims that they have a system for the future and don't show any intention of wanting to move forward to something better.

My question to Apple is and remains: where are you moving forward to in terms of software architecture; Cocoa/Quartz/Objective-C is not a satisfactory answer to me.

You can write full-fledged OSX applications that cross-compile for GNUStep on Linux TODAY.

Yes, and the miniscule use that GNUStep receives today should tell you something about the desirability of the GNUStep/OpenStep/Cocoa APIs--even when people get it for free, they don't want to use it.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[benedict]

> Well, what will further that goal, then?

Exactly what they're doing. No, it's not a
strategy that's going to let them take over the
world. I doubt that there is any such strategy.

If Apple gave away all of their software, what
would they sell? The hardware? Give me a break.
It's nice hardware, but PC hardware is faster and
cheaper. Of course, it is worth something to be
free from 20 years of questionable architecture
decisions.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[g4dget]

Of course, it is worth something to be free from 20 years of questionable architecture decisions.

Macintoshes are mostly PC hardware (PCI, AGP, IDE, USB, etc.) with a PPC processor. And the Macintosh software is mostly NeXTStep with an OS9 and BSD compatibility layer, all of which go back to the early 1980's. So, what is Apple actually "free from"?

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[benedict]

I like not worrying about IRQs. I know it's not
the biggest deal in the world, but I just don't
miss 'em.

I don't particularly miss ISA slots, RS232 serial,
or floppy drives, either -- I know I don't reap
any benefit from their absence, but it gives me
warm fuzzies not to look at that stuff when I'm
not at work.

Re:For the freaking 10,000th time...

[Lars T.]

Sorenson gave Macromedia basically the same codec for Flash MX. AFAIK there is no version for Linux yet. QED.

whats the diff?

[Pan_God_of_Gods]

What is it that makes darwin any different from the other FreeBSD kernals? Without Aqua in front of it darwin just isnt that cool..

Re:whats the diff?

[otuz]

What is it that makes darwin any different from the other FreeBSD kernals?

Everything except the userland stuff (/bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /ib....)

Re:whats the diff?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it that makes darwin any different from the other FreeBSD kernals?

What is is that makes people always misspell 'kernel' as 'kernal'?!???

Off-Topic?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is the parent post off-topic? Shit, the original was OBVIOUSLY a troll. It's even been moderated as such MULTIPLE TIMES for Christ's sake! So a post with a simple plea to avoid a bunch of FUCKWITS taking the BAIT and it's OFF-FUCKING-TOPIC?! Holy shit, you guys.

God, slashdot sucks! Not long now 'til it's on FC.

Now THIS post...THIS is OFFTOPIC. Can you see the fucking difference?

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Anonymous Coward]

ANY good engineer can download and upload approved code to OpenDarwin.org... regardless if they are only 17 years old.

That is why people should only support OpenDarwin and spurn apple and apple's fascist control

Re:Darwin is BSD (not a correction)

[guroove]

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, as you can see here but for the most part, you're right. OpenBSD started as a fork off of NetBSD, and Darwin was a fork off of FreeBSD 3.2. All the BSDs took code from both BSD4.3 and BSD4.4. NextStep which became Rhapsody, then later OSX was somehow left out of the bsd family tree, I found, but I'm not quite sure how that fits in the picture anyhow. I think it was based on BSD4.3 somehow, and might have been the first use of the mach kernel in a BSD based operating system.

Something only Apple could do?

[CathedralRulz]

I wonder if the reason that Apple is willing to make it's core OS open source is because, as long as software developed with it is running on a Mac (that's the idea), and they are the only folks selling Macs, the more the merrier.

Apple started doing this in 1999 at great expense and effort. In this time, has it paid off? I really don't know, so please enlighten me if it has or hasn't.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[kin_korn_karn]

There is no fork.

er... that's not right...

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get the source here.

It's Obvious to me...

[maccroz]

Okay...maybe this has already been posted and I missed it, or maybe I'm way off...but here's my take on the situation.

The reason Apple is releasing Darwin for x86 is because Motorola has very little incentive to keep up in the processor wars. Granted, the PowerPC chipset is fantastic, it's just not a big player anymore as Motorola has better things to do than to cater to Apple's whims.

Just as they released an infantile Darwin for PowerPC, they are releasing it now for x86 so that people can port their drivers to Darwin. Once Apple has enough hardware support, they are one step closer to porting Aqua and all the higher layers of MacOS X towards the x86 architechture and having a way of escaping the sluggish Motorola chips.

MacOS X is a fantastic operating system and unfortunately it is far from living to its potential due to inferior and expensive chips from one provider. This is one step in the direction that people have been encouraging apple to make for the past 15 years. We all know that Apple is slow to respond, they like to take their time and make sure it is the right decision before they do anything drastic.

Imagine how much cheaper an x86 Mac would be and how much of a heavyweight they would finally be if MacOS X became an option to the other 95% of the computing population. I believe that this is just Apple keeping all their options open with a miniscule investment on their part.

I'd still like to see two buttons on the iBook, or heaven for bid they put a wheel on their stupid buttonless mouse. I love Apple, but sometimes they just have their thumbs up their asses. Hopefully this is a move in the right direction.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Once Apple has enough hardware support, they are one step closer to porting Aqua and all the higher layers of MacOS X towards the x86 architechture and having a way of escaping the sluggish Motorola chips.

Given apple's preference for closed hardware, they could do this already now with the limited hardware darwin runs on. Just use an x86 chip and proprietary motherboard, and only let OSX run on that hardware.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[screwthemoderators]

I'd think Apple could work with IBM, who also make PowerPC chips. Granted, IBM's chip division isn't too healthy, but is Motorola really the only player? And what about 64-bit chips like Itanium? Might this also have something to do with Apple's decision?

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple already works with IBM, sometimes. A large number of the G3 chips (possibly all of them, i can't remember) were manufactured by IBM.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[AnamanFan]

Well, Apple seems to be weaning away from Motorola and going to IBM for the IBM PowerPC 970 (A nice tech-spec here). Yet it's still a PowerPC architecture.

Something tells me there are more actions at play here than simply changing processor manufactures in this x86 release. What exactly, I don't know. But still, there's something more here than meets the eye.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[Methuseus]

The reason Apple went with Motorola is that Motorola's chips were on average getting I think 20% higher clock speeds, and also they were about 25-50% faster per clock than the IBM PPC chips. The most likely reason Apple won't go back to IBM is that IBM uses their own chips more now than they used to and they don't want the competition. As well as the fact that, clock for clock, x86 is now faster than PPC architecture, unless they somehow make another jump.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[benedict]

It seems to me that that's the only way Apple
could move to x86. It's a tired refrain at this
point, but once again, they make their money on
hardware sales, and if they went head-to-head
with Microsoft by going to a software-only model,
they'd get eaten alive.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[Lars T.]

Motorola recently released a PDF (which it has pulled since then) with info about the new integrated processor MPC8245. This PDF also includes new processor roadmap wich shows a "7457 (0.13mu Cu SOI) 867-1833 MHz" to ship in (early) 2003, and a proposed "7457-RM" (with integrated DDR interface) 1.3 - 2.0+ GHz later.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[ThaReetLad]

I agree. Mac should ditch their hardware arm and concentrate on becoming a software company.

Any company selling stuff depends upon having any barriers to entry into their market as low as possible. For example Linux does better than Unix because of the huge number of x86 machines available as a potential market. x86 machines are cheap and numerous.

Mac's hardware arm relys upon its hardware being better to sell it at a premium. These are conflicting priorities which tend towards keeping Mac users in a minority, could be the death of Apple.

If I were Steve Jobs, I would stop making hardware, or maybe keep the designer PCs for posers as a sideline, and concentrate on selling MacOS X to the masses and their x86 machines, maybe concentrate on x86-64 or something. Overnight Apple could become a major threat to M$ in the desktop market. They have a big name, a good stable secure base product, and a reputation for easy to use software. Some proper competition for microsoft on their home ground could really force M$ to get their act together to make secure, reliable software.

Such a move could only be good news for the general public and mr Joe Newby computer user who would finally have a real choice to make, forcing him to decide whos Eulas he wanted to sign up to.

Re:It's Obvious to me...

[Into The White]

Actually, an x86 Mac probably would not be any cheaper. The Pentium 4 is more expensive than the G4 now...unfortunately I can't remember the prices, all I remember is that the G4 is the cheaper of the two CPUs.

What governs Apple's high prices is their need for high profit margins to support their R&D budget. Apple moves very small volumes relative to their cost of development, and only a dramatic increase in market share will enable Apple to lower their hardware prices.

As for OS X on x86, I wouldn't hold your breath. With the advent of IBM's PPC 970, it's clear that Apple will be using PPC for quite some time. In fact, a dual PPC 970 Powermac promises to be FASTER than any x86 hardware! A single 970 will perform as well or slightly below a Pentium 4 at the time of the 970's release, but unlike the Pentium 4, the 970 is perfect for multiprocessor configurations. It's low power, low heat, and fully SMP ready, and with it's FSB running at half-clockspeed, the 970 promises to excel at SMP. The only question is the 970's cost...it will probably cost more than the G4, but not much more. Put two, or even four 970s together and you've got a Mac with superior performance to any Pentium-based Windows machine.

This is yet another reason why Apple is loath to use x86: it removes any differentiation in performance between Macs and Wintels. Although currently this seems like it would be a good thing, if you look back on the last decade or so, Apple has had superior multimedia performance over x86 most of the time. Altivec is the best SIMD unit on any desktop computer, and if PPC performance is near that of x86, then any altivec optimized code will run faster on a Mac. A year from now, this will once again be true, and Apple will be able to advertise, honestly, that a Mac is faster at Photoshop and other Altivec based programs.

OS X to be on x86 in 2003, according to Giga

[cweiblen]

Giga predicts Apple will offer OS X on x86 next year:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0210/28.intel. php

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[lugonn]

"What? I'm supposed to buy this shit! 2,000 clock cycles and you can't find an OS to fit the bill? Come on Dave...you must be doing something seriously wrong."

Apple is a OEM. Why would they build OS X to run on a x86? To make 50,000 geeks happy, or to show Billy how to make a real OS from a BSD kernel? Where is the capital gain for Apple to switch Hardware platforms?

TROLL Damnit!

[screwthemoderators]

He didn't ask why HE or even linux-users should switch. He pitted RH Linux against Darwin asking why "anyone" would. Your question is different. You would consider it if you were using Darwin or MacOS X already and wanted to add an additional box to a network or test stuff on. Its probably not going to get anyone to switch.

And among other things, it's not multiuser...

[Stinky Boy]

Here's a snip from the FAQ:

Q. What can I do with Darwin, and how do I log in to it?

A. Darwin currently includes the Apache web server, sendmail, and some other services. By default, there is only one account (root) with no password, as with most UNIX systems. You can create additional accounts using standard UNIX tools.

Re:And among other things, it's not multiuser...

[Stinky Boy]

Oooppps...it IS multiuser, just not until you change it from the default of "root, no password" and add a few more users.

Hehe...sorry...I guess I'll read my own posts from now on.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[mindstrm]

I was just thinking this today....

How is an eula enforceable if the person installing it is not of legal age? Certainly they are allowed to buy the software, and to install it....

Re:And among other things, READ YOUR OWN POST

[veddermatic]

Yup it's not multisuer. Until you read the last part of your own post and "...create additional accounts using standard UNIX tools.

Dunno if you are attempting a misguided Apple bashing, or didn't bother to read what you copied and pasted, but golly....

not to mentions ports is slow

[Anonymous Coward]

source compile for everything is slow

Re:not to mentions ports is slow

[Anonymous Coward]

then use pkg_add?

Re:And among other things, READ YOUR OWN POST

[Stinky Boy]

Yup, what you said. I intended to make a clever comment about them saying "other UNIX releases don't use root passwords", but my fingers were going faster than my brain.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fuck about "17 year olds"? Nobody over 17, that's for sure. Wait a year and you'll find it's very hard to care about them.

Practicality: Anything else vs. HURD or Darwin

[intermodal]

I'm not saying that's incorrect. I'm just saying that it's not exactly going to convert anybody to be able to run OSX with dubious results on a PC. Running a Darwin kernel is like running the HURD kernel. Either way it's going to be a pain in the ass. Sure, it may be decent and viable. But until it's working on more hardware (esp. AMD/VIA) then it's a really niche thing, and not something that can be done without great efforts to find the right hardware unless you're very lucky (think modems on Linux)

true

[Anonymous Coward]

linux on mac is nothx. all the UIs are designed for a 2 button mouse,and my iBook has a 1 button mouse. and emulating the 2nd button is a pain.

one last thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

• You're a dick.

Correct me if I'm wrong..

[mindstrm]

But the parent poster didn't mention anything whatseover about the GPL or the license on compiled code.. he was referring to performance issues of the resulting code.

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[mcc]

I'm not going to address the question of whether Apple should be open-sourcing more than they already have-- i don't feel like arguing right now-- but let me try to clear a couple things up.

it would be really nice if **Carbon** was a platform independant library

I don't think Carbon is what you mean.

Mac OS X natively supports three APIs:

1. Cocoa, OS X's "standard" API. Cocoa is basically a newer version of NeXTStep with a new name. It consists of an extremely elegant object-oriented GUI application API sitting on top of POSIX. This is what Apple wants people to program new applications in.
2. Carbon. Carbon is a "transitional" API, that basically consists of an updated version of the old Classic Mac OS Toolbox, with anything related to unprotected memory, cooperative multitasking, or such things removed, and a lot of API cruft in general cleaned up. Apple estimates that about 20% of an average classic mac os program will have to be changed in order for it to work under Carbon. The recommended use for this is that if you have an existing codebase written for the Classic Mac OS Toolbox, you won't have to rewrite from scratch-- you can just carbonize it. Writing new applications in Carbon makes Apple sad, and it isn't as pleasant as writing in Cocoa, but people do it anyway becuase unlike Cocoa programs, Carbon programs can run under both OS 9 and OS X.
3. Java 1.4.

A program can have different components from each of the three groups above. Anyway, while i am not altogether certain abotu this next bit, it's been implied that due to some slightly legacy code, Carbon will NOT be supported away from the PPC or even if apple releases an x86 OS X. At any rate, unlike NeXTStep, Carbon was not designed as a platform-independent API, it's full of a LOT of macintosh-specific idiosyncracities, a small number of incorrectly-constructed Carbon apps will actually break if you put them on a non-forking filesystem, and it just wouldn't work very well on other OSes, i don't think. And besides this, it just isn't as good an API as Cocoa. You don't want it.

That said, Cocoa actually is available as a GPLed, cross-platform API! GNUStep is a third-party reimplementation of NextStep/Cocoa that follows Cocoa closely enough that porting between the two is somewhat trivial. There is no reason why you cannot use this right now.

Apple keeps complaining when OSS programmers emulate the look and feel of a Carbon application instead of calling the real thing.

No, apple keeps complaining when skin developers for other OSes copy the exact textures of the skins in Mac OS X. They also complain if people release applications whose interfaces are straight copies of iApps. I haven't seen them complaining about "Look and Feel" in a long time.

But if you want your application to not be tied specifically to MacOS X then your better off using winelib or wx for your widget set

Umm, why not use Java 1.4 and Swing? That's about as crossplatform as it gets. Wx would be ok too but Winelib doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

If Apple wants OSS programmers to use the real thing then they should provide the real thing to OSS programmers.

While it would be really cool if Cocoa were a cross-platform API like it once was, Apple really doesn't seem concerned with exploring that avenue right now. They seem to be of the opinion that if you want to write an OS X application and have it not tied down to OS X, that's what Java's for. Sorry.

ignore that.

[mindstrm]

For some reason the slashdot interface was directing me to something else as the parent...

How confusing.

FLame on. he deserves it.

Shouldn't that be GNU/Darwin?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

And I'll be ready to try it out when Debian-GNU/Darwin comes out.

Re:Shouldn't that be GNU/Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Debian, but it's GNU to me

Re:Shouldn't that be GNU/Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Darwin doesn't really have all that many GNU programs. All the familiar shell utilities come from BSD (some of the man pages say NetBSD, others say FreeBSD. Apple's site says the BSD layer comes from FreeBSD 3.3).

So while GNU is not unix, Darwin almost certainly is.

Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

When you leech Darwin, you get the BSD core, a few services, an apache webserver, and some modifications and tweaks that apple has done. That's about it. So, if you think you're going to load it up with a beautiful looking GUI with all the pretty buttons, realize that the CARBON toolkits (as i understand it, carbon powers all the pretty buttons and all the nifty crap that makes OS X so attractive) don't run at all.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

was/is it free to download?

Re:Darwin

[Zen Programmer]

Yes, but it only works if you buy its upgrade pack, currently codenamed 'Jesus'.

Re:Darwin

[Zen Programmer]

Goddamn that was witty.

And they say 17% marketshare is a bad thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's been already said but I couldn't find it. Apple's doing exactally what it wants. Think about it, if Apple was really giving M$ a run for it's money, Jobs would loose all control of where his pet was going. He would have to open his projects to anyone who wanted to clone it. Not to mention that the hardware control would disappear (and along with it most of Apple's funding/profits (depending on how you see it). I doubt that Apple's going to release a full version of OSX onto the x86 anytime soon. And the day that happens is the day when Apple looses its splender.

NOT FreeBSD -based!

[otuz]

Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X

The core is NOT based on FreeBSD. The userland is a port of the FreeBSD userland, yes. It would not be based on Linux, if the default userland were GNU-utils.
The core of Darwin/MacOS 10 is a Darwin (or NeXT Step) -based kernel/"core" running on Mach-nanokernel.. more alike GNU/HURD than FreeBSD (or Linux).

Re:NOT FreeBSD -based!

[karlm]

Good post, you just missed one small point: Mach is a microkernel. It's a big dirty-old man of a microkernel at that. Mach is a big reason GNU/HURD isn't performing as well as hoped. OS X gets reasonable performance out of Mach by using a monolithic server (as opposed to HURD's more modular multiserver approach) and running the server in the same address space as Mach itself (thus it's not a Machsever in the strictst sense).

I've run some fast microkernel/nanokernel OSsses on my x86 machine (BeOS, QNX, L4Linux) that all use much lighter-weight kernels and servers that run in user space. L4 and the QNX kernel each weigh in at about 1/10th the size of my maximally pruned Linux 2.4.18 kernel (everything compiled as modules, except IDE and ext2 support). Mach itself without the BSD personality probably is slightly bigger than my Linux kernel. I nuked my GNU/HURD partition last weekend, so I can't tell you for sure. L4-Hazelnut and the QNX kernel each have about 32k of compiled assembly and 32k of C++ code. Hopefully OS X will eventually migrate to a nanokernel and/or runing multiservers in userspace.

BTW - I wouldn't recomend L4Linux, at least a year agoit was less stable than Mac System 7. I think it was due to a poor job of making linux into a monoserver, as the debugging counters would keep rolling in the corner of my screen and there were no L4 panics/ Maybe in a couple of years L4-HURD or L4-Linux will be up to par. There are some reeally nice things going on in that area of research.

Re:NOT FreeBSD -based!

[karlm]

I neglected to mention a side benefifit of a nice clean nanokernel : good cache utilization. I had to run some memory benchmarks on several different architectures as part of a systems engineering class. Just for kicks, I ran the tests on both Linux and QNX on my home machine. Linux transitioned much more smothly to higher latency L2 cache and main memory usage. QNX had very rapid and clear transitions at higher thresholds. In short, QNX thrashed the cache less than Linux. It certainly helped that half the kernel fit into my L1 instruction cache. If you hand-linked and rearranged the Linux kernel, you could probably get close to the same effect by increasing locality of reference, but your time is better spent doing other things.

This is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Darwin supports ACPI?

Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[AIXadmin]

Darwin is no longer a true micro-kernel. Maybe people will stop bitching. Apple has taken the best of both worlds and combined them.

Read Apple's Docs on there developer site:
"The core of any operating system is its kernel. The Mac OS X kernel is also known as XNU. Though Mac OS X shares much of its underlying architecture with BSD, the kernel is one area where they differ significantly. XNU is based on the Mach microkernel design, but it also incorporates BSD features. It is not technically a microkernel implementation, but still has many of the benefits of a microkernel.
Why is it designed like this? Pure Mach allows you to run an operating system as a separate process on the system that allows for flexibility, but can also slow things down because of the translation between Mach and the layers above it. With Mac OS X, since the desired behavior of the operating system is known, BSD functionality has been incorporated in the kernel alongside Mach. The result is that the kernel combines the strengths of Mach with the strengths of BSD.

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Darwi n/ PortingUNIX/additionalfeatures/The_Kernel.html

Re:Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[Aqua OS X]

Interesting... mod this guy up.

Re:Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

'Enhanced' microkernel...sounds awfully similar to NT.
Then again, MSFT has all but admitted to taking FreeBSD code for at least the networking stack, so who knows if the similarities aren't the result of both Apple and MSFT copying things from FreeBSD?

Re:Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[Profane Motherfucker]

Admitted? What the fuck? That makes it sound like they tried to hide the fact. Fact is, they include the California Board of Regents copyright shit when applicable. Reading over the changelog for one of the service packs the other day, I noticed the thing, in teensy fucking print buried at the bottom mind you, of the presence of BSD code.

While they don't necessarily advertise the fact that it isn't homegrown, it's just as well. A shitload of unix-like OSs, including the obscure 'linux' use it, so why fuck around and create some crappy shit when what's there is kosher?

Re:Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[Lars T.]

Cough!

Re:Darwin is no longer a micro-kernel

[anarkhos]

Finally somebody gets it right.

Also IIRC Apple suggests against using mach services directly so IOKit drivers are more portable (in case Apple wants to use a different model than Mach)

PC to Mac

[u19925]

I downloaded Darwin and loaded on my computer. Upon reboot, it evolved into Mac.

Re:PC to Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

finally, someone who has actually installed this.
tell us about it!

Ports, Linux Emulation, Layout but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried various Linux distros and I always miss the FreeBSD ports. Ports blow away rpm, apt and others (for now).

I also prefer the way system config files are layed out in FreeBSD but that is really subjective so this doesn't imply FreeBSD is better in this.

And I really like being able to run Linux binaries (yes, binaries) under emulation with only a couple percent overhead (sometimes *underhead* for certain apps--meaning emulation is faster than native Linux but this doesn't happen often).

Only one thing prevents me from using FreeBSD: its HORRIBLE support for Java compared to other operating systems. Both Linux and Windows blow away FreeBSD in terms of Java support.

Something that prevents newbies from using FreeBSD might be the installation. It is harder than several Linux distros like Mandrake but similar or easier when compared with distros like Debian.

If there's a Linux distro with the FreeBSD ports system, I'd be the first to jump onboard.

Re:Ports, Linux Emulation, Layout but...

[friedmud]

One word:

Gentoo

I actually have a friend that switched from FreeBSD last year to Gentoo Linux.

It is a complete ports system (compiling everything from source, with auto-dependency resolving). It also has a very cool init system (with dependency checkin and resolving) along with other cool features.

Give it a try - it is GREAT, I simply can't use anything else now.

To install KDE X and everything they depend on you just do:

emerge kde

It then downloads the source for KDE, X and everything they depend on, compiles them for your hardware (mine are all athlon-tbird optimized), then installs them.

All very nice and tidy.

Check it out - you will be amazed.

Derek

Re:Ports, Linux Emulation, Layout but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So who switched - you or your friend?

> Check it out - you will be amazed.

Thanks but no thanks. I've had enough of all this weary Linux stuff.

Re:Ports, Linux Emulation, Layout but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I recently switched to Gentoo, and I'm extremely satisfied.

Most of the apathy and dislike torwards Linux, it seems to me, is generated by the mess produced by the use of rpm's, which have had their day.

Gentoo is great, you get the usability of the BSD ports system, but with Linux. Which is useful for me, as a number of third party closed software applications I use, won't run and/or aren't supported on BSD (to be fair, they aren't supported on Gentoo either, but I can at least lie and claim its RedHat over the phone).

Re:Ports, Linux Emulation, Layout but...

[friedmud]

I already use it. I was saying that I know someone who used FreeBSD but now uses Gentoo - and is very satisfied with the move.

But I do use it on a day to day basis. It is my desktop at home and at work - and runs all of my servers. It is a great multipurpose distribution because you install exactly what you need and no more.

Derek

woowoo

[Anonymous Coward]

guess who cares? : mac people
guess who doesn't care: smart people

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[NetGyver]

50,000 Geeks * 99$ OS copy = 4.95 million dollars. How's that for capital gain?

At any rate, there's probably more geeks than that out there willing to spring for a x86 version of OS X and apple will probably charge a bit more. So the milage may very.

It's not just geeks either mind you. Apple has some serious skills when it comes to the GUI department, and could attract A LOT of joe-sixpacks if it'd move to the x86 platform.

I don't like to compare Apple to Windows, because, well it's like comparing apples to oranges (pun included), but IMHO Apple has just as much intuitiveness and ease of use as windows does, if not more.

Hypothetically speaking, if Apple moved today and pushed OS X on to the x86 and seriously worked on it, If they did their marketing right, i seriously believe Apple would have bitchslap privledges on Microsoft and could widen the playing field.

However, Apple seems to be fixiated on hardware sales, the OS itself it just a "tool" to push hardware. So who knows? It doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon though.

Although i'm a serious newb to linux, i did take the inituitive and download Red Hat 8, and i'm having fun learning the more technical aspects of it.

However I do sometimes long for the OS that is drop dead easy to install and use, stable as a rock, tons of apps and works great. All at the *same* time.

switch to x86 makes sense if...

[MacAndrew]

...Apple has serious problems with Motorola over the PowerPC chips. Its future is hazy. So porting OS X to x86 machines manufactured by Apple makes a lot of sense if they are going to abandon PPC. I don't see why they'd want to produce OS X simultaneously for both chips, but then one should not underestimate the lord Jobs.

I have heard many times over the years that Apple has ported their OS to x86, only to have so many incompatibilities as to make the endeavor worthless. Apple has benefitted a lot from publishing an OS that runs on machines it designs itself with precision.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[tyler_larson]

Only reason I can see for running Darwin is for Mac hackers who want to enhance the OS -- but that poses another question: does Apple accept patches?

This is a serious question -- what are the benefits of Darwin being open?

A little research reveals that Apple does in fact accepts patches and hopes to see real real help and real results from the open source community with their kernel.

So the real question about their open-source philosophy is, Does it actually work? In other words, are they actually seeing results, and are we really trying to contribute.

I know for a fact that I don't ever plan to contribute to Apple's open-source projects because:

• Darwin is relatively useless on x86
• I can't afford to waste that much money to buy a mac just to play with it. I can build a quality x86 box for just a few hundred bones.
• All of the fun Apple projects (Aqua et. al.) that I would be interested in tweaking are closed-source.
• There's already another high-quality open-source UNIX-compatible kernel that's much more widely supported and understood. If I want to do any hacking, I do it with Linux.

I realize that Apple has reasons for not opening their other projects, and I don't expect them to change their minds any time soon. But how much help can they really expect when they don't give us any incentive to work with them?

Did Apple decide to take this road because "open source" was just one of those buzzwords that translated to "free labor" in the minds of management? Do they really have any intention of listening to what hackers want, or do they just expect us to work on anything that calls itself "open source"?

Irreuptable proof that Apple is porting OSX to x86

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X was a step, the next step is OS X86

Why else would they name it OS X instead of OS 10 or some other equally trendy name?!?!?

Apple's new slogan: "OS X, the X is for x86!"

Karma Whore

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!
Say it again -
Karma Whore!
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

There's a reason for this...

[tomthebomb]

There is a reason behind why OS X has not been released for PC. In fact, there is probably many, but the biggest thing is is that Microsoft would pull Office for Mac if they started to compete on the same hardware. Microsoft x86 or Apple x86? Office is the most used business suite availible on the market. If it gets pulled, Apple will be dead in the water.

Re:There's a reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not that microsoft would pull office:mac, but that office:mac wouldn't run on OS X for x86. Neither would Photoshop, iTunes, Dreamweaver, Tropico, etc.

They're all carbon apps. Carbon doesn't exist on x86. Carbon has never existed on x86. Why do you think Apple's making such an effort to shove everyone onto Cocoa? Cocoa is running on the x86 version of OS X (which does exist, it's just a small skunkworks project in apple. don't believe me? go search through macslash.com).

Re:There's a reason for this...

[spitzak]

Actually there is nothing stopping the Carbon emulation layer from working on x86. It just needs to be compiled and the programs using it recompiled. I think you are thinking about the OS9 *emulation* which actually runs programs that are compiled for the PPC, that probably won't be ported. But all the sample programs you list are actually compiled on OS/X.

Most people think that if Apple made an 86 version, they would also make their own hardware. So I don't see how that would be different to MicroSoft than the current situation. Then again, it might be easy to get a Wine-like emulator on the system, so maybe MicroSoft would be worried about it.

Re:There's a reason for this...

[sukottoX]

Do you really think Apple would be dead in the water if they did not have Microsoft office? I think they could actively promote openoffice as an alternative, bundle it for free with all OS sales, and become a leading business OS. i think they could do it, but will they?

Good idea...but could hurt Apple

[nullhero]

What makes Apple so good. Is it the operating system? is it the hardware? Or how about both? What made Microsoft rich was that they didn't care about the hardware - what has that cost M$? well, the fact that tons of geeks have left M$ in favor of a more stable operating system one that has less drivers than M$ but much more reliability when it comes to actually getting work done. Apple has had a pretty stable OS but not because it produced anything better than M$ (until now I like the UNIX tools that OSX supports) but because it controlled the hardware and was able to get both working together. Unfortunately, that has also hurt Apple making their systems way expensive compared to the INTEL/M$ system. Hopefully, the OS is as stable on x86 as on their own hardware. But if it isn't they can either a) enlist those geeks that hate M$ to help them make OSX work on x86 as good as Linux which then helps Linux (we all know anything learned will be taught back to the bazaar NDA or no NDA). b) do nothing - hey Jobs loses on the hardware end why should he bother if he can't get a percentage of the hardware sales too.

Time will tell if Apple begins to market this idea of his OS on every INTEL box. Maybe that's why we've heard some talk that IBM and Apple might get into bed soon. IBM supplies the hardware and cuts Apple in on it and Apple becomes the next M$ with a superior GUI design than M$ xxxx??? whatever it's called.

Time will tell indeed....

What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if apple decided to create OS XI on top of linux? That way, you would have the hardware support of linux, plus the very slick interface of Aqua. Sure, it's a snowball's chance in hell, but what would you think if they did that?

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

That's exactly right. People under 18 (in the US; varies in other jurisdictions) can't legally waive their copyright-derived rights over their works. In order to release software under a license like the APSL or the GPL requires that the licensor waive certain rights that would ordinarily be protected by copyright. (I'm not sure if this is true of the BSD license, but I don't believe it is. The BSD license doesn't require the licensor to give up any rights, as far as I know.)

The important side-note to this is that any GPL'd software that includes contributions by persons who are or were under 18 at the time is being distributed illegally. By the letter of the law, anyway.

gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

... and stuff ...

stupid geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder you guys can't get laid!

Get off the dayum computer!

Osiris, now going off to hang with his fellow jailbird niggahz!
http://www.askheartbeat.com/cgibin/ultim atebb.cgi

Kensington release touchpad with 2 buttons and

[Anonymous Coward]

scroll gear towards geeks!

Is this is a troll? Maybe

Darwin

[Zen Programmer]

Only Apple would have the balls/ingenuity/vanity to name their product Darwin.

In other news, Windows has released a competing OS codenamed 'God'.

An Intel CPU does NOT mean PC hardware!

[pauljlucas]

Hypothetically, if Apple were to switch to using Intel CPUs, i.e., x86s, that does not mean that you'd be able to install and run OS X on any old PC box.

All it would mean would be that Apple would unplug the PowerPC CPU from the motherboard and plug in an Intel CPU (plus whatever other motherboard tweaks were necessary to make this actually work: the pin-outs are different, for example). The G4 towers, iMacs, PowerBooks, and iBooks would all look exactly the same. You'd still be buying Apple machines.

Apple is in the business of selling hardware: their hardware. Plus, you can bet that Steve would never let OS X run on anything as aesthetically unpleasing as a typical PC box.

Re:An Intel CPU does NOT mean PC hardware!

[scrod]

The G4 towers, iMacs, PowerBooks, and iBooks would all look exactly the same. You'd still be buying Apple machines.

Heh, no they wouldn't. They'd be a lot thicker, bulkier, and noisier due to the extra fans they'd need.

Apple is able to develop these unique designs because of the efficiency of the PowerPC processors they use.

Re:An Intel CPU does NOT mean PC hardware!

[Anonymous Coward]

All it would mean would be that Apple would unplug the PowerPC CPU from the motherboard and plug in an Intel CPU (plus whatever other motherboard tweaks were necessary to make this actually work: the pin-outs are different, for example).

You're an idiot. Are you aware that the PowerPC uses a completely different architecture than x86?

And "architecture" doesn't mean "pinout". The motherboards would have to be *REPLACED*, not re-socketed/slotted. Apple would have to rewrite a significant portion of their software, as much of it probably depends on PowerPC-exclusive stuff. Not to mention that *everything* would have to be recompiled for x86.

Sheesh. Swap a chip? Where the fuck did you get that idea?

Re:An Intel CPU does NOT mean PC hardware!

[g4dget]

Well, except for the CPU, what's different? Macintosh uses the same bus, the same graphics cards, and most of the same I/O ports.

Re:An Intel CPU does NOT mean PC hardware!

[pauljlucas]

Well, except for the CPU, what's different?

The case design, obviously.

So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[BladeMelbourne]

Am I correct in assuming that this Darwin ISO will not install the pretty GUI associated with OSX?

Last Saturday I played with my RedHat 7.3 distro, to make it look a little like MacOS. This was accomplished with a Sawfish theme, a GTK 2 theme, an XMMS skin and a Nautilus theme.

Three screenshots within GNOME: http://opax.swin.edu.au/~137591/linux/

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[eadier]

This is looks so stupid. It might look like a apple computer but it sure doesn't perform like an apple. Why are you running IE on linux, that is just stupid..

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore the trolls - that looks really nice!

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[BladeMelbourne]

I am not running IE on RedHat Linux (although as a web developer I wish that I easily could). It is just a Mozilla theme. It may be downloaded here: http://themes.mozdev.org/themes/ie.html

The only memory intensive applications I use are Mozilla, OpenOffice & the Gimp. Performance is not an issue (on my Pentium III 450 MHz with 384 MB RAM). Services such as Apache and MySQL also run well.

The way it looks is purely for aesthetic reasons. Something new and different. Something fun to play with, whilst learning where to put themes/skins, how to tweak them, etc.

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[Anonymous Coward]

darwin doesn't come with the Aqua GUI, nor any of the quartz/cocoa/quicktime/carbon layers associated with OS X. It is only the BSD-based core OS. You could have read the article description to know that.

Plus, your screenshot is not very impressive because sawfish has run on Darwin for quite a while now. One could very easily use OS X to emulate your computer emulating OS X.

Also, what the hell are you doing running a window manager as root?

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Potato head! It's not IE, it's a Mozilla theme!

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[BladeMelbourne]

>Also, what the hell are you doing running a window manager as root?

I did a fresh install on Saturday, and was still installing programs that require super-user privs, and I prefer not to use sudo.

I don't actually want Mac OSX, just a GUI as close to it as possible.

Re:So this doesn't have a pretty GUI?

[ottothecow]

>I don't actually want Mac OSX, just a GUI as close to it as possible.

and I dont want sex, just something as close to it as possible

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[BinxBolling]

50,000 Geeks * 99$ OS copy = 4.95 million dollars. How's that for capital gain?

For a company the size of Apple, not very good. That $5 million probably wouldn't even cover all of the development costs. Good engineers don't come cheap, and the engineers are just one part of the process of making a real software product.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[jaoswald]

All of the fun Apple projects (Aqua et. al.) that I would be interested in tweaking are closed-source.

Hmmm. Perhaps Apple is keeping all these things closed source so you CAN'T indulge your interest in "tweaking." Perhaps these elements are fundamental enough to Apple's core goal for OS X that they don't want to be distracted by hundreds of amateurs submitting what they think are improvements. Instead, these tweakers will proliferate yet more useless "skins" for Linux desktop environments.

The kind of thing I'm sure Linux hackers would love to add: X window "compatible" cut and paste behavior, various redundant widgets with unpolished appearance and behavior, font rendering "optimizations" that gain 10% in throughput while adding 100% in butt-ugliness, etc. Thank god you can't add those to Aqua.

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[Anonymous Coward]

And to both of you these are the GPL lovin' sure I'd pay for OS-X right after it's done downloading from my Kazaa session which translates to 0$(NOTE, not all 50K geeks fit the above description, just the 10 that post on slashdot, because you did know that 90% of all slashnerds are bots controlled by these 10)

GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[cpeterso]

Second, the Cocoa API is more or less source-code compatable with GNUStep. What is GNUStep? It's an open-source implementation of the Objective-C OpenStep APIs on top of X11. What's OpenStep? It's the open standard that NeXT released and implemented and eventually became Cocoa. You can write full-fledged OSX applications that cross-compile for GNUStep on Linux TODAY.


I've been researching GNUSteplately and wondering why it doesn't get more high profile attention. The GNUStep framework seems to solve many of the same problems that GNOME and KDE are trying to solve. However, instead of reinventing the wheel, GNUStep uses a time-tested API design that is source compatible with Mac OS X (a platform many people consider the pinnacle of user-centric Unix). What can GNOME and KDE do that GNUStep/OpenStep cannot?

I believe the biggest problem for GNUStep is that few people use Objective C. That is a big speedbump to people adapting their legacy code.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[int69h]

I believe the biggest problem for GNUStep is that few people use Objective C. That is a big speedbump to people adapting their legacy code.

Not really. Objective-C is a superset of C, so C code is not a problem. You can also instantiate and use C++ objects from Objective-C, so C++ code is not a problem. As a matter of fact, you can instantiate and use Java objects in Objective-C code. Anyone who's familar with Java or C++ should be able to pick up Objective-C in an afternoon.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[cpeterso]

cool, I did not know you could call C++ code from Objective-C. Is that true of all Objective-C implementations or just Apple's Cocoa environment?

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[mcc]

I've been wondering the same thing for a really long time. It seems like GNUStep could be fantastic for The GNU World, but they seem continuously resource-strapped and unable to get public attention. I really don't know what gives, but i think the best possible answer, you've already said:

I believe the biggest problem for GNUStep is that few people use Objective C. That is a big speedbump to people adapting their legacy code.

You really probably have hit on about 90% of the problem right there. We will just have to see what happens with this and projects like it-- i mean, it looks very promising, but then you have to compare it with Cocoa, where objects written in Objective C and Java (and now, due to third-party efforts, i think even Perl and Python are 100% supported) can interact with each other and the OS APIs seamlessly and without any fuss.

Come to think of it, ProjectBuilder, the thing that links all those Java and Objective C thingies together when you're coding for Cocoa, supposedly is just a front-end to the GCC. Supposedly all the backend stuff is open-source utilities that are part of Darwin. Hm. Is Apple's Objc-java bridge open-source or no? If it's part of the closed-source Cocoa stuff, how does that work out? (And won't even cocoa services run in Darwin as long as you stay in the Foundation and don't touch the AppKit where all the GUI stuff lives? What about if wrote that service in Java?) If it's open-source, then why hasn't GNUStep integrated it yet? Why haven't they integrated the Perl/Python bridges to Objc? Is this just the whole continous GNUStep-limited-resources problem, or what? Isn't there some thing going on where GNUStep doesn't use objc_msgsend(), it just pretends to? Is that a problem here?

I dunno. I really think if more people could get over their intense fear of the [square brackets]; they would fall in love with NeXTStep :) The ability to write in multiple languages would at least make people feel more secure about the thing..

I keep meaning to try to port a couple of the open-source Mac OS X apps, probably one of the excellent GPLed AIM clients, to Linux using GNUStep as a proof-of-concept, or something, but i keep not getting around to this. Hopefully i'll be able to give it a try in a couple weeks, after the mononucleosis gets a little better :(

Does anyone know if the InterfaceBuilder analogue in GNUStep is anywhere near as good as Apple's? The whole nib-file concept is i think the most brilliant and useful thing about Cocoa.. eh.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[g4dget]

I believe the biggest problem for GNUStep is that few people use Objective C.

That, and the fact that its imaging system is based on Postscript.

That is a big speedbump to people adapting their legacy code.

Why should they bother? Gtk+, KDE, and X11 are much more widespread, and they give you a much wider variety of languages to program them in.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[radar_love_lizard]

I've always wondered if cross platform Cocoa fell victim to one of those "Knife the baby" backroom deals with MS to keep Office. A fully supported, commerical Cocoa is to me a much better stick for Apple to use on MicroSoft than the idea of actually porting OSX to Intel (mind you, I don't think that MS should be overly afraid, but unreasonable paranoia is hard-wired into their personality).

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[bnenning]

Hm. Is Apple's Objc-java bridge open-source or no? If it's part of the closed-source Cocoa stuff, how does that work out? (And won't even cocoa services run in Darwin as long as you stay in the Foundation and don't touch the AppKit where all the GUI stuff lives?

The Java bridge isn't open source, and unfortunately neither is Foundation, so even Cocoa command-line tools won't run on a stock Darwin install. That's unfortunate, and Apple really should release Foundation, especially since most of it is apparently a thin wrapper over CoreFoundation, which is open source.

I really think if more people could get over their intense fear of the [square brackets]; they would fall in love with NeXTStep :)

I agree completely. I too had an irrational distaste for Objective C based on the "weird" syntax, but after using it you realize that it does a lot of things right that most other languages do wrong. It's interesting to compare it to Java, where Sun made some design decisions that were technically inferior but probably necessary to get developers on board, such as:

• Method syntax. Java had to look like C and C++ so as not to frighten anyone, but Objective C is more readable once you're used to it. "[table setObject:foo forKey:bar]" is much more self-documenting than "table.put(bar, foo)".
  
• Factory methods vs constructors. Java continues the inane tradition of treating object creation as some mystical act that requires its own operator and syntax, while to create an object in ObjC you just send the appropriate message to the class object. Compare "new Integer(1)" with "[NSNumber numberWithInt:1]". Java requires you to name the exact class to be instantiated, as well as hard-coding the act of allocating a new object. The ObjC method can return an instance of a private subclass and/or a cached object, and is much cleaner from an OO perspective.
  

I could go on for a while, but I'll stop there. And in fairness there are some things I'd like to see ObjC take from Java as well, specifically namespaces, garbage collection, and lack of header files. But overall Objective C is a great language, and Cocoa is an even better API.

I keep meaning to try to port a couple of the open-source Mac OS X apps, probably one of the excellent GPLed AIM clients, to Linux using GNUStep as a proof-of-concept

My game Gridlock runs on Mac OS X and GNUStep. I think there are 3 "#ifdef GNUSTEP" occurrences in around 5000 lines of code, all to work around minor GNUStep UI and Gorm bugs. It doesn't look nearly as nice on GNUStep as on Mac OS X, but like you I wanted to do the port as a proof of concept.

Does anyone know if the InterfaceBuilder analogue in GNUStep is anywhere near as good as Apple's?

Gorm looks and acts very similar to IB, but the last version I used was very buggy. In particular, it had an annoying habit of corrupting files when it saved them such that it could no longer open them, even though they would load fine at runtime. There's a new version out that I haven't tried yet.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[anarkhos]

1) GNUStep Foundation has been 100% complete for a long time. There is no reason to use Apple's implementation.

2) CoreFoundation isn't 100% open source. The closed source version supports the extremely useful FSRef data type while the open source version does not.

3) There is an open source implementation of a JavaGNUStep bridge so there is no need for Apple's bridge.

4) Java sucks. It's amazing how Sun got everything wrong considering how hard they tried to copy OpenStep.

Re:GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[BlueGecko]

That, and the fact that its imaging system is based on Postscript.

The DPS backend hasn't been used for over a year. The current backend is raw Xlib; no PostScript involved.

GNUStep versus GNOME/KDE?

[cpeterso]

I've been researching GNUSteplately and wondering why it doesn't get more high profile attention. The GNUStep framework seems to solve many of the same problems that GNOME and KDE are trying to solve. However, instead of reinventing the wheel, GNUStep uses a time-tested API design that is source compatible with Mac OS X (a platform many people consider the pinnacle of user-centric Unix). What can GNOME and KDE do that GNUStep/OpenStep cannot?

If people truly do write new Mac OS X apps in Cocoa, then GNUStep could easily give those developers cross-platform support for Linux (and other GNUStep supported platforms). Don't Linux users want more "native" apps?

I believe the biggest problem for GNUStep is that few people use Objective C. That is a big speedbump to people adapting their legacy code.

Re:Byte compares penguins and apples

[Anonymous Coward]

neener neener penguins are faster...

wait, maybe is because apples don't have legs

its all about the libs..

[AlbanySux]

But I believe if you link to GPL'd librarys you have to release under the GPL. Striaght form the GPL FAQ:
If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.

Re:its all about the libs..

[Arandir]

This is actually a myth. Yes, the FSF believes it. No, no one is willing to challenge them in court. But dependency does not define derivation.

Re:its all about the libs..

[AlbanySux]

but if you remove the library how useful is a program that can't run? If a programmer doesn't like the fact that they would have to open src their project they can use a different platform or library. no one HAS to develop for Gnu/Linux, they don't like the terms they can go to some other OS or library..

Re:its all about the libs..

[Arandir]

but if you remove the library how useful is a program that can't run?

Completely irrelevant. Dependency != Derivation. If there is no derivation then copyright law, and thus the GPL, does not apply.

Re:(815) 272-0670

[yomegaman]

I got your number on the wall...
I got it, I got it...
For a good time, for a good time call!

Let's be nitpicky, Titanic-style!

[Anonymous Coward]

Platypi?

Look at this:

http://pealco.net/archives/000113.htm

"You need to get out. Even more." :-P

The parent post is insanely funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Please up-mod, or just read it and giggle. It's really damn funny! I don't know what it would take to mistake such a funny post for a troll, but brains ain't on the list.

It's the funniest thing I've read on here in weeks.

be Very careful with this release

[commodoresloat]

yes it will please all you multi-boot fetishists, but there is a downside. Darwin will disable all your mouse buttons except for one.

Re:be Very careful with this release

[sysrequest]

it comes down to the same thing, but i'd express it as "darwin will only support one mouse button". disabling sounds like darwin is going to reprogram and break my mouse or something.

Re:be Very careful with this release

[MouseR]

That's so miss-informed it's not funny anymore.

In large friendly letters

1. Fact:
2. Macs ship with a one-button mouse.
   
   Fact: Darwin (and Mac OS X) supports multi-button mice.

Re:be Very careful with this release

[DJPenguin]

but it *does* break your other two mouse buttons!!

Hint - the other poster was joking too...

Re:be Very careful with this release

[commodoresloat]

uhhh, yeah, I know. Sorry, it was a dumb joke, based on the fact that every time someone mentions Macs, somebody whines that they want another button on the mouse. But, yeah, it wasn't very funny, I suppose. Oh well, back to clicking my one button.

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't like to compare Apple to Windows, because, well it's like comparing apples to oranges (pun included), but IMHO Apple has just as much intuitiveness and ease of use as windows does, if not more."

And how does Microsoft compare to the Mac OS?

You were comparing a company to an operating system.

This is a clue. You should get one.

Mac OS X 10.2 uses a custom GCC 3.1

[truth_revealed]

Mac OS X 10.2 uses a custom version of GCC 3.1 according to this GCC mailing list announcement.
It was apparently tweaked to accomodate the GCC 2.95 C++ ABI for certain drivers and libraries.
I, for one, hope the GCC steering committee will allow them to add Objective C++ to the GCC main branch.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[lemkebeth]

Um, Apple created OpenDarwin.org

Re:Irreuptable proof that Apple is porting OSX to

[Anonymous Coward]

[Joe Average Consumer] "Dur, what's an x86, I have a Pentium 4, I guess I have to buy Windows since Linux users are evil godless Commie penguin worshipping terrorists."
* JAC clicks past EULA without reading it.

Congratulations!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats the gayest looking desktop I've seen in years!

OT - Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[little_fluffy_clouds]

Hey you like, stole my .sig :]

Re:OT - Re:Anyone actually use Darwin?

[Anonymous Cowrad]

Sorry bout that :P

Rhapsody X86?

[mbourgon]

Time to go back a little in the Wayback machine. I have a set of Rhapsody CDs, which (as I understand it) was Darwin + Mac_goodness, basically NeXTStep + Mac stuff. Now, I don't have the floppies for it, so I've never been able to test it. But, would anyone like to comment on how well it works, the state of Pre-Aqua on X86, etc, etc?

Re:Rhapsody X86?

[anarkhos]

Rhapsody had zero "Mac_goodness". Rhapsody was basically OPENSTEP with different menus and a Mac virtual machine to run Classic apps (which only ran on PowerPC Macs anyway).

It has no Aqua either.

If you want OPENSTEP for x86 then get OPENSTEP for x86.

Apple Doesn't Give Anything Back

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple seems to give anything, it's only because they expect to get more in return. In the case of Darwin, it's quite plausible that some out-of-work X86 developer will find and report a bug back to Apple, thinking Apple will want to hire them in return. The availability of Darwin for X86 also serves notice to Motorola and IBM that they had better reduce their microprocessor prices or else Apple will jump ship to Intel. I'd guess that the timing of this release coincides with some rather heavy negotiating going on behind the scenes for which processor(s) to debut at January's MacWorld Expo and beyond.

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[Ponty]

50,000 iMacs at $1100 = 55,000,000.

Mac OS X for commodity PCs = no Office for Mac = dead Apple. It's that simple.

Want an OS that is drop dead easy to install and use, stable as a rock, tons of apps and works great? Get a Mac.

Java? Swing?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"About as cross-platform as it gets", maybe, maybe... but we won't know for sure until next year when a program written with it finishes loading.

Java took a catastrophically wrongheaded approach to cross-platform GUI programming. They wrote all the libraries in Java, right? Right. As if it were a relatively low-level, relatively efficient language like C or C++. So you've got Java code calling Java code calling Java code, way on down in there. Now, Java as a language is a bit more "high level" than C++, but it's in the same general range. But that doesn't make it efficient. Not if you're interpreting your "machine code" in a JVM.

GUI programs written with Python/Tk are more responsive than Java programs. Why? Because just about all the time-critical parts are written in native code, with a very high level scripting language present just for the "end programmer" (why the hell would you need to write your tree-view widget in Python? You don't, and they didn't). Writing Swing and the AWT and whatnot mostly in Java may have saved Sun a little development time, but at the cost of completely destroying the value of the product. If Java, with the marketing push and hype that it got, had been anywhere near quick enough to use for real applications on the desktop, Sun would own the desktop and Bill Gates would be hiding under a goddamn rock in Wyoming right about now. Why'd Sun do it wrong? Ideology, I suspect. They drank their own Kool-Aid and it killed them: "Look, our marketing materials say you can use it do do anything! It's the only programming language we need now!" WRONG.

Of course, we'd still be fucked, because Scott McNealy is just as evil is Bill Gates is. But Sun has nobody to blame but themselves for fucking that one up.

But the death and irrelevance of Java aren't exactly news any more, are they?

Actually

[slendle84]

I remember reading that Apple keeps an x86 version of OS X up-to-date in case they ever have to switch architectures.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[timster]

I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that the GPL requires the licensor to "waive rights" where the BSD does not. Can you give some sort of rational explanation for what you said?

In the meantime -- the GPL doesn't require you to waive rights, as it doesn't prevent you from doing anything with the work (licensing under other terms, etc). And if people under 18 can't waive their rights to SOME extent then it's not legal for them to distribute their works at all (which makes the copyright pretty pointless...)

My understanding is that the Apple thing came about because someone who is 18 cannot enter into a legally binding contract, and therefore they could not agree to _Apple's_ license.

FreeBSD rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD rocks! It even got me my current girlfriend, who's a FreeBSD groupie :-)

Re:FreeBSD rocks

[vga_init]

I've made several attempts to use FreeBSD, but it never worked out. ;_; I will never give up on the OS and still insist that it rocks, but no matter what I do X-Windows does not configure right for me whereas in all linux distros it does. Hmm...I guess because linux is more often geared towards the more inexperienced people (that would be me).

If I were a guru I bet I could make it work, but alas, woe is me...

Re:FreeBSD rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a kernel. It's free and it's geared towards anybody that wants to use it or develop it. I bet I could set up a desktop environment in Windows XP that is damn near identical to the one you're using now, because I'm guessing that almost every application you think makes up "linux" has been ported to the win32 platform.

FreeBSD on the other hand is not just a kernel. It is the kernel and the applications that come with it, kind of like Solaris, MacOS/Windows, Minix, QNX, etc. Anybody can make a Linux distribution any way they want to because they are distributing applications and packages with the Linux kernel.

I don't doubt that you are inexperienced and in some way trying to "stick it to the man" by using free UNIX-like operating systems as opposed to commercial ones.

Re:FreeBSD rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's gross, you have no standards if you go for girls who can't brush their teeth and weigh 600lbs.

Will Linux EVER support HFS+?

[The Faywood Assassin]

Didn't Apple release the source code to Darwin a few weeks ago?

Does this mean that we can finally expect to see HFS+ support in a future Linux kernel?

Or are the two licenses too different to that that from Darwin and drop it into Linux?

Thanks,

Beny

Re:Will Linux EVER support HFS+?

[90XDoubleSide]

The FSF doesn't like this part of the APSL:

(c) You must make Source Code of all Your Deployed Modifications publicly available under the terms of this License, including the license grants set forth in Section 3 below, for as long as you Deploy the Covered Code or twelve (12) months from the date of initial Deployment, whichever is longer. You should preferably distribute the Source Code of Your Deployed Modifications electronically (e.g. download from a web site)

Whether that stops other people from using the code is another question.

Re:Will Linux EVER support HFS+?

[anarkhos]

You don't need Apple's code. HFS+ has been fully documented:

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.h tm l

I actually use Darwin...

[z-kungfu]

... with large Macintosh or Cross Platform clients where I need better filesharing than netatalk allows. It'll run pretty much anything the BSD boxes I have on other sights but with true Apple Talk and a better implementation of CUPS.

atheist!=agnostic

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an off-topic off-topic side note, but atheist and agnostic are different. Very much so.

Agnostic = "I don't believe in God."

Atheist = "I believe that there is no God."

It sounds like just semantics, but it's important.
Atheist's believe, in the sense that they have faith in, that there is no Creator of any sort. Agnostic's don't believe anything. They aren't sure one way or the other.

Re:atheist!=agnostic

[Snocone]

Actually, you've got it wrong too, agnostics DO believe something: They believe in unknowability.

Agnostic = "I believe is impossible to know whether there is a God."

Some modern commentators call this 'strong' agnosticism as opposed to what you think it is being 'weak' agnosticism, but that's silly.

Re:atheist!=agnostic

[D iz a n k Meister]

I saw this on a bumper sticker:

Militant Agnostic:
I don't know and I'm sure you don't either.

Re:atheist!=agnostic

[Groganz]

Actually, agnosticism is not about belief in any way at all, it's about "not knowing" without evidence. Thomas Huxley, the original agnostic:

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

So many idiots since that time have twisted "agnosticism" into many new meanings.

Re:atheist!=agnostic

[Anonymous Coward]

Even further off-topic, but "it's important." You have it completely wrong!

Atheist = lacks a belief in a god (not a theist)
Agnostic = we can't know if there is a god

One is a question of belief, the other is a question of knowledge. Atheists don't need any faith to not believe in god(s). Every child is born an atheist, and stays that way until he or she is indoctrinated.

Just a tip, you might want to do some further reading on the subject. The common definitions of the words "atheist" and "agnostic" are inaccurate.

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[spitzak]

Apple does not have to work on "installation" so I doubt the result will be that easy to install. On the variety of PC hardware I doubt they can do much better than the best Linux or Windows installers.

In the real world, Windows is infinitely easier to "install" because for most people it is on the machine when they buy it. It is not physically possible to make installation of any operating system easier than that. Apple has this same "easy installation" for their small segment of the market.

Most people here think that if Apple makes an 86 OS/X they will also make their own boxes to run it. You will not be able to run it on Windows pc's.

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, it's Java 1.3, not Java 1.4

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that the GPL requires the licensor to "waive rights" where the BSD does not.

The GPL requires all parties, including the author, to agree not to distribute derivative works under a different license. That's waiving a fundamental right of authorship-- the right to distribute one's works. The BSD license requires no such waiver.

LMBench results for Darwin, NetBSD, and Linux

[cpeterso]

http://clustermonkey.org/~laz/pbook/rob.lmbench.tx t

Here are some LMBench benchmarks that someone did comparing multiple releases of Darwin, NetBSD, and Linux. The general pattern is that (surprise surprise) Linux is the fastest. NetBSD is about 2x slower than Linux. Darwin is about 2-3x slower than NetBSD.

Re:LMBench results for Darwin, NetBSD, and Linux

[Leimy]

You didn't try NetBSD current. I have a friend with other benchmarks showing context switching and pipe performance of NetBSD to be higher than Linux... He has to publish it though. :)

Re:LMBench results for Darwin, NetBSD, and Linux

[Leimy]

NetBSD 1.6 beats linux in some areas [on PPC]... now if I could just legally get those benchmark results :)

Dave

One acronym: API

[mindstrm]

This is one reason apple is so religious about protecting it's APIs and ensuring everyone uses them. It's why they are so picky about 'private' apis as well.

The point of having a really well defined set of APIs is so that developers won't have to change anything to re-target to a new platform... The API stays the same (just as a linux app for x86 builds just fine for sparc).

So.. aside from developers who may be using hand-built assembler routines in their products, there would be no issue.. that's the whole point.

AltiVec instructions being replaced would be the responsibility of the build tools, not the developers themselves.

Who said anything about 2 years later?

And yes, you are right, if they released it, it would run none of the other software. I didn't say they were GOING To release it, or that it would be smart now.. but if they got to the point where the PPC architecture just had nothing to offere anymore, and Intel's products were, say, 10x faster, then switching architectures would make very good, obviuos sense.

Re:One acronym: API

[SmittyTheBold]

The problem is, unless there is a DAMN GOOD REASON, nobody will upgrade to a system that breaks all previous compatibility. People migrated to PPC because their old software would work. People moved to OS X when they could use their old software. Peopel upgrade to new versions of Windows because it usually doesn't break old software. It's not a problem for currently-developerd software, but I sure don't want to lose all the software I've built up over the years. A good portion of it has not been updated recently, and only works now because the last few (major) releases of my OS have not broken compatibility.

Re:One acronym: API

[mindstrm]

And that "damn good reason" would be, as I said, because the PPC platform was for some reason many times slower than current Intel technology.

The whole point is that apple is poised to switch IF THEY HAVE TO.

If they had a 5x or more difference between INtel & PPC to deal with, do you not think there would be enough speed on the intel platform to do a reasonable job of emulating the old software? I do (think 68K emulation on the first PPC macs)

No way.

[mindstrm]

Just one question:
If running on x86 is all it takes to run Office, or IE, then why don't we have those utilites running nicely in Linux? Or OpenBSD? or FreeBSD? Or on BeOS? Why do they only run in windows?

If they build an x86 mac, yes, on a certain level, we can virtualize things a-la vmware and get a good speed boost over pure emulation, but there would still be APIs to deal with, and different hardware to deal with (they won't be using standard PC clones with a BIOS and whatnot.. to be sure. They will have their own hardware)

To a potential software developer, OSX will still be OSX, regardless of the underlying platform: the build tools will remain the same.

Re:No way.

[slantyyz]

From what I've read, CrossOffice runs well in Xandros. VMWare runs well in Linux. I think CodeWeavers and VMWare have done an admirable job (try running Virtual PC on the PPC platform, and you'll know how viable emulating x86 is on a current Mac) in satisfying the market for people who want to run Microsoft software without Windows.

Those utilities aren't running nicely in *nix/*bsd or even BeOS now, but they can. You gotta remember that most of the devs on alternative OS's would rather not run Microsoft software, so there's no major impetus to get WINE high up on the dev priority list.

Apple, on the other hand, would have a vested interest in having something like WINE around. And if they spent a few bucks, neat things could happen.

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[spitzak]

You are mostly correct except for this:

Umm, why not use Java 1.4 and Swing? That's about as crossplatform as it gets. Wx would be ok too

It does not matter how well those work, for any real application development "native widgets" does not work, no matter how much you wish it did. The differences are just too great. Simple things like order (system a needs A before you can send it B, while system b needs B before A) can make it impossible to port your code without the differences percolating directly to the highest level. How else do you explain that virtually all Open Source development uses toolkits (Qt, GTK, FLTK, Mozilla, Fox, Tk, ...) that draw things at a low level and bypass any native widgets.

In any case, GNUStep, if it works, would be a very good idea. I don't have a good explanation as to why it does not seem to be succeeding, I know Gnome was looking for a toolkit at one time and they don't seem to have considerd using it. It may also be that it was too hard to make Windows-like programs using GNUStep.

Possibly the popularity of OS/X will help. GNUStep should make their #1 priority to clone Cocoa as closely as possible in such areas as widget sizes and shapes so that portable programs will work. If they do not do this then it will be just like wx where it is not much use for portable programs except for small demos.

Darwin Switch Commercials

[Oculus Habent]

I don't think we'll see any Darwin/x86 Switch commercials...

I was typing this shell script on my dad's RedHat box, and it was a really good shell script, and I went to save and it was like "bleep bleep bleep bleep" and, like, half of it was gone. And I was like, "unnnh?". And I had to write it over, but it wasn't as good 'cause I had to do it fast...

If for some reason

[madsenj37]

apple HAD to switch and use x86 it would use propriety hardware and would most likely not support other x86 OSs out of the box. This is the same idea that most pc graphics cards cannot be flashed to be used on macs. Cards made for apple have special built in apple roms and things.

Re:If for some reason

[Anonymous Coward]

actually that is not correct. You are probably still thinking of the days when the OS required Apple ROMS on the logic board. This has not been the case for 4 years now.

The main issue is one of "endian-ness". PCs are little-endian and Macs (and many other non-PC platforms) are big-endian. This byte-switch either has to happen in software or hardware. In the case of graphics cards its better to have it happen in hardware for performance reasons. If a manufacturer does not include the appropriate code for the byte-switching then you can't use a PC card on a Mac (and vice-versa). Some however have been able to "flash" the ROMs on certain cards (ATI mostly) since they actually manufacture and write the drivers for their cards. Unlike NVIDIA which only make the chip set, other manufacturers make the cards. Apple is either making the cards for their Macs or contracting someone else to make them.

Make sense now?

Re:If for some reason

[madsenj37]

As for the roms I meant they would probably reimplement the feature. As for the the cards I was just plain wrong.

s/weeks/years

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been awhile.

Excellent, another OS to play with...

[PyroX_Pro]

Linux, BSD, MacOS, Darwin, Minix, as long as it is not a Microsoft crapplication, who really cares?

It all comes down to your happiness. If you can use Mac OS X and get everything done you need to, that's wonderful, good for you! *BSD vs. Linux, does it matter? Does what your neighbor use really matter to your productivity or usage?

Both will exist, for a long time, both have a large group of supporters.

The only time to get upset is if your workplace decides to force everyone to switch from a Unix based OS, to an Win/NT solution.

BTW: I am getting Darwin just give support of its availability. I love supporting non-Microsoft software of any kind.

But my preference is Linux, either Slackware, or RedHat depending on Server or desktop.

98% downloaded, time to go play ;)

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[Anonymous Coward]

oh please , what a bunch of retarded shit.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[benedict]

% perl -v

This is perl, version 5.005_03 built for i386-freebsd

Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5.0 source kit.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[Anonymous Coward]

umm it's really about the kernel...

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question talking about java and Mac OS X
Not only does apple have a major memory leak in their java somewhere, but they're java virtual machine is something like 100 times slower than that of it's pc's counterpart. The question is, Is there any decent virtual machines for OS x, or is there any open sourced that can be ported to OS x?
thanks
spencer

Re:"That's Horseshit Jack!"

[Anonymous Coward]

50,000 Geeks * 99$ OS copy = 4.95 million dollars. How's that for capital gain?

That probably sounds like a lot of money if you are homeless and live in refrigerator box. Or you are the CEO of a Linux company.

But, comeon, that's jackshit in the computer industry. Even losers (excuse me /., loosers) like OS/2 made that kind of revenue in a day.

Why I think Apple releases Darwin/x86

[PinkX]

There already is a huge base of x86 users around the globe, and inside it, an ever-growing base of GNU/Linux, *BSD and all sort of *NIX and opensource enthusiasts. That gives them a pretty good testbed for debugging the system, and making it more compatible.

Backporting it to a completely different platform from what it was originally developed (FreeBSD/x86 -> Darwin/PPC -> Darwin/x86) is a pretty good sanity check in order to see they didn't break what was already there, gives them a good shot on portability (think byte order endianness) and gives them a nice try on moving from their current platform (Motorola PPC) to some future versions (IBM Power4). By making the base system more portable, it's just a matter of recompiling the upper layers (think GUI, APIs, etc.) to asure potential future compatibility.

I don't think the Darwin/x86 release is due to enter the *nix market which is already dominated by the various *BSD flavors and GNU/Linux. Besides what I've previously said, it shows commitment from the Apple people to the OpenSource community.

Re:Why I think Apple releases Darwin/x86

[anarkhos]

Well according to the numbers Apple already dominates the *nix market.

One thing I'll note about IOKit is unlike other driver architectures (like Linux), it's relatively easy to write IOKit drivers which compile on both platforms. The open source Intel NIC driver is one example of this. If Darwin/x86 were to become popular they could potentially get a lot of drivers with 3rd party support.

MICROSOFT CONSPIRACY!!!!!

[orange7]

Microsoft's millions of SLASHTROTURFING minions are RUTHLESSLY suppressing the shocking truth REVEALED in the parent post!

The truth is out there! Or maybe in here. Whatever.

A.

APPLE?

[Anonymous Coward]

BWAHAHAA!! Aren't Apples those computers for morons with a GUI and a mouse?

x86? NOO!! it's really IA64

[Nicolay77]

Think about it. They compile their kernel to x86 only to know if the source is still multiplatform.

So we probably have already got everything we could ever get from apple for x86 from OS X.

But if they're going to switch to intel, they better do with IA64. It's better, x86 compatibility means nothing for them, and having the options open means that they can push IBM to offer good prices, same for Intel if ever taken in consideration.

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[Anonymous Coward]

dipshit it's Java 1.3

Jaguar vs. Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

To me this is like inviting everyone to a sumptuous dinner (Jaguar) and then telling the cheapskates they can sit on the floor near the corner of the table and wait for the crumbs to fall.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[snowlick]

All of the fun Apple projects (Aqua et. al.) that I would be interested in tweaking are closed-source.

And thus you've hit upon the main reason open-source stuff survives: someone finds it to be fun. Visual stuff gives the most immediate reward, so it gets the most attention. Other things, like darwin streaming, deserves a good deal of attention too.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[Anonymous Coward]

> quality x86 box

Some might see that as an oxymoron.

Why switch?

[BalkanBoy]

My name is Jeremiah Cohick. I bought my first Mac (an Apple 466 iBook Graphite SE) on January 30, 2001.

I'll be honest. Prior to actually using a Mac, I was a basher (the people who scoff at anything that doesn't say Linux on it). I would probably still be a basher today if my C++ teacher hadn't dared me to deviate from my GNU/GPL world. The first time I used Mac OS X, I wished I had never spoke a single word against Apple. Apple enlightened me beyond Linux and refined my thinking. Java and UNIX *really* are great things. Who knew?! In July 2001, I moved to a Power Mac G4. Now, I'm developing with Mac OS X Server and it is the most phat system in the world.

It doesn't freeze. It doesn't crash. It doesn't require me to reboot when I change network settings. It boots fast. Its sleep function actually works. I don't need virus software. There is no system tray. It lets me run a gazillion media and programming applications without taking a performance hit. And (even though my fellow programmers won't admit it) it is beautiful.

My Mac never requires technical support. It is fast, efficient, and compatible with the rest of the world. Everything is better on the Mac overall.

Warm regards, Jeremiah Cohick

Re:Why switch?

[Anonymous Coward]

what is your point? you've changed the original which says microsoft etc...

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[mbathgate]

Cocoa, OS X's "standard" API. Cocoa is basically a newer version of NeXTStep with a new name. It consists of an extremely elegant object-oriented GUI application API sitting on top of POSIX. This is what Apple wants people to program new applications in.

Can't find the technical document to back this up right now, but I'm pretty sure what you mean here is Rhapsody (the former NeXTStep). This was also originally referred to as the "Blue Box".

Cocoa is the new name for the Yellow Box, aka Java.

Just thought I'd clarify that, esp. since the post is so highly moderated & does clearly describe things, as long as the name substitutions are made.

Foot-in-Mouth Disease

[mbathgate]

Trying to sound smart on Slashdot, should have just shut my mouth. Damn I hate feeling stupid...

Think Drastic.

[mbathgate]

We all know that Apple is slow to respond, they like to take their time and make sure it is the right decision before they do anything drastic.

How about no longer installing floppy drives in any shipping computer and moving to USB (where they almost single-handedly jump-started a stagnant product market)? Ever seen a mainstream PC without a floppy drive?

What about phasing out serial ports and ADB with the introduction of USB? PC's still ship with serial ports and two PS/2 ports standard, even though they have USB & Firewire (an Apple innovation itself).

They also junked 20 years of OS development & refinement in order to give everyone the most beautiful *nix (or non-*nix) GUI anyone has ever seen! (Not to mention the inherent power of Darwin & everything else on top of it.) Let's see Microsoft junk Windows and produce "McNix," or whatever they decide to call it. Pigs will fly first!

Nah, no history of drastic action at all...

O paradoxus, O. fuscus

[Anonymous Coward]

Great link, ac, but you didn't spin it so well. First of all let's get rid of that subject line, shall we? It's oxymoronic and possesses some key elements of humor, hut you're working with some awfully silly material to begin with. Start with that. "Platypi" is funny. Makes the rhetorical point. "Platypodes" is also funny. (So is "Octopodes" for that matter--which is more than I can say for "Octopi.")

Subject: You say Boondaburra, I say Mallingong

Platypi? I was taught that the correct plural of platypus is platypodes.

I need to get out. Even more.

Notice the self-deprecating spin. Until your readers follow your link, they're not likely to actually get your reference. Point to yourself in these cases because it's a sure way to get a laugh :)

Re:O paradoxus, O. fuscus

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, how's life in your anonymous corner of the world? Here (Brazil), everything is fine.

>> Great link, ac, but you didn't spin it so well.

Thanks *bowing*, but I'm not a writer, so don't expect much. And English is not my native language (we speak Portuguese here).

>> "Platypi" is funny. Makes the rhetorical point.
>> "Platypodes" is also funny. (So is "Octopodes" for that matter--which is more than I can say for "Octopi.")

Not in my language... "Octópode" is a singular, "octópodes" its plural. Very dull.

>> Subject: You say Boondaburra, I say Mallingong
>> Platypi? I was taught that the correct plural of platypus is platypodes >> [pealco.net].
>> I need to get out. Even more.
>> Notice the self-deprecating spin. Until your readers follow your link, they're not likely to actually get your reference. Point to yourself in these cases because it's a sure way to get a laugh :)

Indeed a better way to express the idea. I just didn't put enough energy into that post... That phrase "You need to get out. Even more." is one reply to the author of such geeky and elaborate digression.

I chose to reproduce it "ipsis literis", because I found it very funny when said to the author. But your suggestion surely would make more people laugh, as it's less obscure than my original post.

BTW, look at the coincidences (?!?) : "Boondaburra" sounds like "bundaburra" which is literally "dumbass" in Brazilian Portuguese. We don't use the expression "dumbass", so it's meaningless over here, but it is somewhat funny on its own.

Also, are "oxymorons" really considered bad in English? In my language, they're considered a "style form"... a valid way of expression, used to make a text more interesting.

You bet

[Anonymous Coward]

You bet this is the Gates and Ballmer backdoor to Linux. Write for Apple for a few years and when Linux dominance is imminent switch over your BSD-adapted code as quick as possible to Linux.

Re:Supported Hardware - USE THE FORK!

[karlm]

The GPL requires all parties, including the author, to agree not to distribute derivative works under a different license. That's waiving a fundamental right of authorship-- the right to distribute one's works. The BSD license requires no such waiver.

If the author is the original and sole author this is not true. This is only true if the work contains GPLed code written by others. Most of the software produced by the Kompany is dual-liscenced.

I can respect your opinion about Linux, but

[SHEENmaster]

I don't really want to get into why I don't like Linux for the same reasons I don't go to Mass and talk about what and asshole Jesus was.

In or out of church, please don't even joke about that.

Re:I can respect your opinion about Linux, but

[troc]

He's entitled to his opinion - as long as he's not reciting it just to get a rise out of people.

i.e. he's stating an opinion "I think Jesus is an Asshole" rather than the flamebait "Jesus is a Fucking Asshole"

They are both very contentious statements and will result in serious and heated replies but one is valid in that it is constructive - it gives an opinion and a place from which to discuss - whilst the other is simply an invitation to flame back and generally piss people off.

Now I don't actually know Jesus so I personally can't comment on whether he is an Asshole or not. I was just using this as an example.

People taking offence, purely for the sake of taking offence are as bad as flamebaiters IMHO.

Troc

Re:I can respect your opinion about Linux, but

[pianophile]

In or out of church, please don't even joke about that.

I smell a fundamentalist.

Why shouldn't the above poster be able to joke about whatever the hell he wants to? Must everyone conform to your "respectful" attitudes or beliefs? Is your faith in Jesus so weak it can't stand the slightest reminder that not everyone feels the way you do?

Why download this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother downloading this, when you can get the OSX for x86 betas from Hotline? Don't pretend, get the real thing baby.

I can respect your opinion about Flamebaiters, and

[Gropo]

People taking offence, purely for the sake of taking offence are as bad as flamebaiters IMHO.

Ay... 'Tis a strange symbiotic relationship between the 'flame baiters' and the 'fire eaters'
Without each other, the meaning in their lives would unravel...
Yet they loathe each other's vital essences.
I prefer Lichen ;)

and DivX...

[Anonymous Coward]

and DivX components as well... but DivX in QuickTime sucks, because there are three or more codecs, only one of which allows for export. Apple has a page somewhere with a list of third-party codecs.

Personally, I'm sticking with MPEG-4.

Re:Serious question... (serious results?)

[Into The White]

Steve Jobs has been a proponent of open source software since the NeXT days, so I think it's unlikely that Apple saw an open source base for OS X as simply a form of free labor. More likely, Apple used an open source foundation for OS X because it's more stable and advanced than anything they could have developed on their own. They went for open source because it's better, not because it's free. Apple has plenty of money for software development.

Re:Irreuptable proof that Apple is porting OSX to

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do i get the feeling that the person who made the parent post is going to be the future recipient of a Darwin award?

"Hm. A big sign hanging on this abandoned building that says CONDEMNED in big red letters. Red is also the color used in No-Smoking signs. This must mean that i should go in this building to avoid smokers. Why else would they color the letters red instead of green or some other equally visible color?!?!?"

*CRUMBLE*

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[anarkhos]

It is IMPOSSIBLE to write 100% Java apps which behave like Mac apps. It lacks something equivalent to FSRefs or NSDocument whereby the app won't lose track of a file if its path changes. Swing doesn't help at all. All Swing does is make it possible to make Java apps which kinda look like Aqua, but don't behave like Aqua. This is the worst possible combination IMO.

Carbon isn't "transitional" and it isn't any older than NeXT APIs. Want to use FSRefs? Want to use Aliases or FileIDs? Want to use keychain? You have to use Carbon. In fact well written Carbon apps are faster than well written Cocoa apps. he problem with most Carbon apps is they use deprecated APIs like the Event Manager instead of Carbon events. In fact Cocoa is a front-end for Carbon/POSIX/BSD/Quartz (although I wish it were less POSIX and more Carbon).

I actually prefer to code using Objective-C, but I also prefer using Carbon apps.

not the point.

[mindstrm]

Yes, we can run vmware... but that requires windows licenses as well. I might as well just buy windows then.

Your point that they can but don't because nobody wants to is totally off: can you imagine how much more viable Redhat's product would be if you could just go out and grab any old piece of MS software and install it?

These things are purposefully difficult to run on non-ms systems, because MS wants it that way.

Your words are very hurtful :p

[vga_init]

Thank you, my hoity-toity friend, but though I do consider myself inexperienced, I'm very tough on myself, and what you are trying to explain to me is something that I am already well familiar with.

Would have made you feel better if I said "GNU/Linux"? Formally this is correct, but for the sake of brevity, I just say "Linux," as one might say "RedHat Linux" or "SuSE Linux."

Linux, as any kernel, does not function (well) without the rest of the system that comes with it. Every linux distribution I have ever used (and that's quite a few) have always come with the same software packages: GNU. It is almost always assumed that you are using GNU/Linux when running a desktop (with embedded systems and other such truck that may be something different).

As far as "sticking it to the man," I am a programming student thank you, and I am more used to programming in a unix environment than anywhere else. I find the GNU programming tools to be extremely useful, and therefore use them personally for thier true value rather than to satisfy some random act of rebellion. Though Microsoft is not my favorite company in the world, I do respect them, and I do use a few of thier products.

Re:But where is the source code to the Carbon libs

[rpk]

Although Carbon is definitely tied to pre-10.0 Mac way of doing things, the QuickTime API is a large subset of Carbon. In fact, some have surmised that the QuickTime port to the old NeXTStep base and the Carbon port were probably part of the same development stream.

iso mirrors available

[Jean-Pierre]

opensource.apple currently redirects users to opendarwin.org to fetch the iso, but unfortunately opendarwin.org has been taken offline. in the interim the following mirrors are available...

darwin/x86 iso
http://web.mit.edu/darwin/www/darwinx86-602.iso.gz
http://enigma.us.itd.umich.edu/darwin/www/darwinx8 6-602.iso.gz

darwin/ppc iso
http://web.mit.edu/darwin/www/darwinppc-602.cdr.gz
http://enigma.us.itd.umich.edu/darwin/www/darwinpp c-602.cdr.gz

md5 checksums
MD5 (darwinx86-602.iso.gz) = d4e9a94c48d900736fa9f77d42707d50
MD5 (darwinppc-602.cdr.gz) = 07d4614c4e3b417f0022a97cf941ad97

installation instuctions
http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/6. 0/install.x86.txt
http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/6. 0/install.ppc.txt

Re:iso mirrors available

[lain-of-the-weird]

Jean-Pierre et al,
Nothing insightful in this posting, but...

Just out of curiosity, why did they take off opendarwin.org? Was it because of the /. effect?

Cheers,

Re:iso mirrors available

[Jean-Pierre]

the opendarwin project is not hosted by apple (would that make sense?) but rather by the internet software consortium. the problems were network bound not hardware bound and thus we may or may not have used an excessive amount of bandwidth shortly after the article was posted on slashdot. the files that were generating a majority of said traffic, have been mirrored elsewhere to alleviate the opendarwin's local resource consumption. oops.

Crap... preview first...

[Moloch666]

I'm not one of those people that say " is the only OS for anyone to use, even Grandma!"

Should read:
I'm not one of those people that say "(INSERT 31337 OS HERE) is the only OS for anyone to use, even Grandma!"

Don't be sorry sweetie.

[BoomerSooner]

Just don't do it.

(end of Payback reference).

You are correct however, why would you bother developing something for an architecture you don't run? Seems kinda silly to me.

Why did they do this?

[jmanning2k]

Simple. Free testing of their ix86 based code. Rumor has it that they are keeping that option open should PPC architecture fall far behind that of ix86. Making this release just allows them to have it publicly tested and improved.

It's a back burner project anyway, but having to make these releases makes it a bit more formal and forces them to achive certain usability goals. Plus, it helps ix86 development keep up with their main Darwin core.

Re:x86? NOO!! it's really IA64

[DuBois]

What are you smoking? Have you checked current Itanic prices? Currently the cheapest one on PriceWatch is $3,141.01 (includes s&h).