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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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...

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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"?

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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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.

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

*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

[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].

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.

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?

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.

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.

Byte compares linux and ox s performance

[mojorisin67_71]

Byte released a comparision of linux and OS X at here

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...

[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...

[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.

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...

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.

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: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....

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.

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.

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

PC to Mac

[u19925]

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

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"?

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.

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: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: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

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.

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.

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: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: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...

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: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