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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."
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Also, what is the hardware support like?
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.
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.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
--
pants ahoy
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?
---
Open Source Shirts
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!
What is it that makes darwin any different from the other FreeBSD kernals? Without Aqua in front of it darwin just isnt that cool..
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.
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! >:(
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.
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:
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"?
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
OK, I'm not the original poster, but...
:)
:) Honestly, I wouldn't kill myslef rather than use Linux, but I sure do like FreeBSD (come on guys, ipfw2... see the light!).
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
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
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.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
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.
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].
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"?
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.
In large friendly letters
Fact: Darwin (and Mac OS X) supports multi-button mice.
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
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.
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
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.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
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.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
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.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
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.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
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
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net