Slashdot Mirror
Hard Drives Preloaded With GNU-Darwin
proclus writes "A 40 gig Maxtor 3.5 inch, ATA/EIDE hard drive ready to go with GNU-Darwin
OS pre-installed, plus GNU-Darwin Office, plus a full ports tree and
select distfiles. This bundle includes Darwin-6.0.2, GNOME
desktop, AbiWord, PyMOL, The GIMP, gdFortran, parallel computing, and
much more. A triple CDR set is also included.
Available now for ppc and x86 computers. The PPC version includes
OpenOffice-1.0.1 and Mozilla-1.0. Compatibility is as specified for
our OS installer CDs. Check out our updated ordering web page.
(Mirror one mirror two.) You want it."
This doesn't even attempt to not look like an ad! A hard disk filled with (mostly) free software? How is this news?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
What's the current rate for slash-er-tisements?
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
And I though Microsoft was pushing it's operating system.
But who's it for? The type of people who build their own PCs are also the type who shun all things pre-installed.
Unless there's a strain of pure hardware geeks out there...
I am a Karma Library.
Wow, didn't anyone see this coming? Sorry we can't ship an OSS system with a computer (thanks Microsoft) but we can ship it on an HD?
Of course, Aunt Em is gunna be pissed when she upgrades and looses everything on her machine and now has to log in to it...
'What's this root crap? I just want my Yahoo!'
Hmmm. I tried to figure out what they actually offer. It *sounds* like it includes apple's desktop-on-top-of-unix, a kernel, tools/programs around it, etcetera.
But I can't find any real info on their site. I'm suspecting it to be just a collection of those few programs mentioned (gimp, fortran) that can be gotten from other locations too...
Darwin OS on the x86? I don't remember apple doing that...
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
I suppose we can justify Mozilla as being part of the firmware.
There is some use for disk-based OS distributions: eventually, external USB2.0/FireWire drives may become a reasonable choice. You plug them in and boot from them, and you get your complete environment. However, unfortunately, most BIOSes don't support that yet, so the best you could do right now is to use a DOS or Windows chain loader.
What are you, some kind of heterosexual?
- Went out and bought a new hard drive.
- Downloaded and installed a linux distribution.
This hard drive/OS bundle reduces that to one step... right? That seems kind of cool.Sex - Find It
Well actually it seems like a waste to me. I mean the type of person who would actually know how to use Darwin is going to want to do a custom install anyway. Also I'd rather support FreeBSD anyway since I consider Darwin more a novelty and Apple pet project anyway.
Actually scratch that. I'd rather support a linux distro like Debian so that at least I know the code will remain open forever. Why should I donate so that some big commercial company like Apple who clearly doens't need support can benefit? Alright how's this, I'll start donating when Aqua is opensource.
All New World Macs boot from a firewire drive
Note that this is GNU-Darwin, not Apple's Darwin.
;).
It's a shitty distro with ripped off GUI graphics.
I hope they are based in China, because Apple's lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.
It is Linux with a reskin.
Let's all have a party and download the tarballs from them for a week.
That ought to put them under
No. No, I don't want it.
For intel boxes, I have FreeBSD.
For PPC boxes, I have OS X.
This does nothing better than either of the above in either hardware situation. Well, it does add "GNU" to everything. Woo. Be still my beating heart.
Hippies smell.
Last time I checked, x86 darwin only supported a very limited set of hardware.
And now GNU/Darwin developers are marketing their products directly, for use with the considerably less expensive x86 hardware. An attempt to hedge their bets in the face of a sluggish tech market and Apple's precieved weakness? Interesting times....
There has to be something more newsworthy than this - maybe an IE exploit? Something cool built out of Lego? A really kerazy case mod?
This site is going downhill......
News for Morons. Stuff that's pointless.
It seems we have another distro based around GNU tools plus the other usual suspects. The only main difference I can see here is that it is running on Darwin instead of Linux or (Net|Open|Free)BSD.
It doesn't actually say so on the site, but given the software they do list, it is pretty clearly just running X like everybody else. Not that that is bad thing.
It would be nice if they could make it very Windowmaker/GNUStep centric for nostalgia sake though.
Anyway, it is good to see other kernels making it into new Distro's. It bodes well for the future.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You can get it from Apple's site or from www.opendarwin.org
Nope. No desktop, apart from XFree86 I'd imagine. Apple are not going to open-source their GUI layer (and quite right too IMHO - god knows how crap it would end up if the bad GUI designers of the current Linux desktops started 'contributing' to the design). Darwin is Apple's FreeBSD/Mach 3.0 hybrid operating system and works on PPC (naturally) and on x86. You can get the source code from Apple's Public Source Site and at OpenDarwin set up by the Internet Software Consortium and Apple.
This is just a bad advert for someone's cobbled together install, and an out-of-date one at that. I doubt it's based on Darwin 6.0.2 (basis of Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar), the Mozilla included is old and so on...
Finally, one big gripe. The operating system is not called GNU-Darwin! Apple will be very pissed off (as will GNU I hope) at this rebranding of the operating system. Sure, there is a GNU-Darwin Ports structure, but the actual OS has nothin to do with GNU. It's under a BSD-style licence from Apple.
Instead it will be a good idea if IBM, Maxtor, WD, etc...are distributing their hd with free OS preloaded. The volume will be huge!
Also, the large capacity of current HD will allow preloading a couple of free OSes together.
GNU-Darwin is Apple's Darwin. Or at least a binary compatible re-distribution of it. At least a fork. Frankly, their website isn't completely informative on this issue, but there seem to be three Darwins:
Frankly, I'm a little unclear on the differences but either way calling it a "shitty distro with ripped off GUI graphics" is a stretch. GNU Darwin seems to me to be a GNU operating system built on an Apple-modified BSD kernel. Which sounds kind of perverted, but not necessarily "shit." Hey, they've ported it to x86! It's got to be at least important to x86 as NetBSD.
Apple's lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.
The source is open. Read all about it at Apple's Darwin page. There's nothing to sue anyone over, although Apple can via their license simply "revoke" the source and keep all of the outside changes.
Actually, according to the license, when you take any source covered by the APSL, you're required to register with Apple. If the developers didn't do that, Apple would have a valid case to sue them over. If they did (and I'm positive they did, since they link to the damn license off their page), then Apple really doesn't have anything to get them on, unless they're keeping changes private. If they were doing that it wouldn't be GNU either.
I think your reaction is a little uninformed. A simple websearch turned up quite a bit of information on this topic, even a nice rant from the FSF about the APSL.
--
Daniel
Yellow Dog was there first ! I thought their distro was up and running on the PPC quite some time back....I guess they forgot the hard-disk part :)
The MacOS of the future.... a Linux/BSD variant with a unified snazzy theme (ala redhat's bluecurve) .
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Thanks for the clear info. I *was* messing up the difference between apples darwin and aqua.
Reinout van Rees
Because the PC has no HD, it has no OS and no tax can be paid. The users then simply purchase the HD (with stuff preloaded) and drop it right in. You could just provided them with the HD to install themselves, but that would require users opening up the computer - which could cause complications and also end up with warranty issues.
Of course, the far better way would be to get rid of this pointless MS tax in the first place - but until that happens, this is as good a start as any.
(subnote: Can anyone point me to a resource that describes the history of this MS tax, how it came about and why? I'm not really up on the whole thing)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The Free Software Foundation.
Bringing you your daily dose of ranting and whining since 1983.
This is silly, why don't they package this software on CD instead and let people decide how and where to install it? You know, I could make a copy of my PC hard drive (currently running RedHat Linux) too, image it, and clone it on identicall disks. Not very impressive..
You are not in breach of the license if you don't provide the source code on the CD - you just have to make the source code of any modifications available.
If the guy hasn't modified the GIMP source, then it suffices that the same source is available at www.gimp.org.
Woo-hoo! And then your brand new $2000 computer would, at least in principle, be like $40 (2%) cheaper?
Today I realized that .cn actually stands for China and not for Canada.
Would anyone like to tell me what Darwin has that (Free|Net|Open)BSD doesn't... and the BSDs are under an even less restrictive license. Not to mention that they have a serious history behind them, and they (primarily FreeBSD) have been used extensively on the desktop.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
that devil OS installed on some brand new HD, I will not buy that HD. Simple as that. I really hate this kinda forcing. They are trying to force me to use that Devil mascot OS. This is really bad marketing and it will backfire right on their faces.
With at least one musical note (presumably it will ship with at least one multimedia file), there won't need to be a payment to Canada's RIAA equivalent.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
It might be my imagination,but doesn't the $250 price tag strike anyone as being ludicrous???
I mean, looking at pricewatch, a similar 40GB Maxtor HD costs around $70-$80 (give or take, street value)
And supposedly, the 3 disc set of Darwin costs $15 per disc...how does that equate to $250???
Join the TWIT army now!
So let me see what we have here...the GNU system running on Darwin? And Darwin is Mach based? So what's that other GNU/Mach system again? Ehmm...GNU/Hurd, that's it. I love microkernels, and I love Mach, and I would liked to have seen GNU Hurd thrive, but it seems there really isn't much reason for it to survive now. Linux currently works a lot better (and has for a long time), and if you want a Mach based system, you can get Darwin, which is more stable, backed by a computer giant, and runs on more hardware. Or am I wrong here?
GPL-purists might argue that the APSL is not a Free license. This brings up a very interesting argument. [puts on flame protection suit] Apple's use of Mach illustrates the core of the liberal (BSD, MIT, public domain, etc.) licenses vs. GPL issue. Apple could use Mach as a base for their own non-Free product because it wasn't copylefted. GNU hard-liners will see this as a Bad Thing because the hard work of the Mach-developers is now being used in a non-Free product. On the flip side, this move keeps Mach alive, and will probably benefit Free Mach implementations as well. Increased interest can result in more developers for those implementations, and software developed for Apple's kernel might also be easier to port to other Mach-based systems than, say, software developed for Linux or the NT kernel. Plus the contributors to the Mach kernel Apple used can be proud that their work is featured in a product of a renowed company, and used by millions of people every day.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Hi,
this is a really honest question. Why would anyone want a GNU/Darwin system? OS X is a Unix (arguably the one that is the nicest to use), and the few of tools it lacks can be gotten with Fink. And if you really really don't want anything non-free, get FreeBSD. Where is the need for any effort on Darwin? I'd really like to know.
And please don't tell me "it's so Apple can port Aqua to x86". You can't honestly believe that's going to happen.
You want it.
I want it? While shipping out hard drives pre installed with Linux is a way of saving a user time, sparing the internet's bandwidth, and making their hard drive a more attractive product, they'd accomplish all these goals twenty-fold if they filled up the rest of that 40GB baby with free pr0n! Then we'd really want it. Can you imagine how much fun the hard drive manufacturing business could be?This is an attempt to clarify some issues. Correct me if I'm wrong, Darwin's histroy is complicated and I might be off here and there. In my opinion, the question if GNU-Darwin is Apple Darwin or not is the mirror image of asking if Linux with BSD toolchain instead of GNU toolchain is Linux or not. Darwin is an operating system developed by Apple, which serves as a basis for OS X.
Apple's Darwin distribution is a BSD flavor, with a kernel based on CMU Mach, and most of the utilities taken from FreeBSD. It is released under the APSL.
GNU-Darwin is a distribution of Darwin with some favorite GNU software ported to it, as well as the FreeBSD ports tree. It is not Free Software, as the Darwin part is APSL, and thus considered non-free by the FSF. Despite its name, its not a GNU package either. Nor is it GNU/Darwin, as that would imply that it is the GNU system on a Darwin kernel; AFAIK GNU-Darwin is a BSD system.
I don't know anything about OpenDarwin and am too lazy to go find out right now. Hopefully I have managed to enlightened some of you who were wondering what all this is.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Apple's Darwin IS gnu. OSX is the Aqua themed, Quartz GUI, running on top of Darwin, which is BSD and GNU apps and tools running on a Linux 2.4 Kernel.
> A 40 gig Maxtor 3.5 inch, ATA/EIDE hard drive ready to go with GNU-Darwin OS pre-installed, plus GNU-Darwin Office, plus a full ports tree and select distfiles.
What about it? Where's the predicate?
Why in the hell would I spend 250 bucks on a 40 gig Maxtor harddrive with free software on it!?!
I can go to CompUSA, get robbed at 85 bucks for a Maxtor harddrive, order the stinking CD for 15 bucks and save myself 150 bucks!
If I want to get taken to the cleaners, I'll go buy Windows!
-ANobody is forcing anything on you, jackass. It's not like they're saying "Hey, you can't buy a hard drive without Darwin". Rather, they're saying "Hey, if you're interested in using Darwin as your operating system, here's a hard drive pre-loaded with the system; you don't have to download any CDs or mess with the installation, it's all right there for you".
I don't know what the Hell your deal is with "that Devil mascot". It's a cartoon devil. If you're implying some sort of Christian, anti-Satan, whatever... that's pretty retarded. It's a CARTOON.
There is no "bad marketing". This stems from your incorrect belief that they are forcing you to use Darwin. This is merely an attempt at getting people to try Darwin in the easiest possible way. Darwin is FREE; if you did purchase one of these hard drives and decided that you did not like Darwin, you would be more than able to format the Hell out of it. You would not lose a single penny; you would simply have yourself a new hard drive.
PS: The mascot for Darwin isn't actually a devil (or daemon, as BSD people seem to prefer). The devil is the mascot of BSD. Darwin, while built on BSD, is not exactly BSD. Rather, Darwin's mascot is Hexley the platypus (though he does where a devil costume).
So when did advertisements become slashdot articles?.. I mean sometimes stuff come close to adverts.. but this ones a pretty blatent sales pitch.. Hope slashdot or at least timothy is getting some sort of cash for it.
Who makes you Sig?
New Mozilla distribution, preloaded with slashdot as the homepage!
If you think that just because Darwin works upon Mach it is somehow equivalent to Hurd, you are sadly mistaken. Hurd is not a Unix clone. It is as far away from Unix as VMS was, or as MacOS is. The reason why you can even talk about them in the same sentence is that Hurd can and does sport a unix personality. But Hurd can sport any personality, a Windows personality, a MacOS personality. Because basically its not Unix. It has a much more general API, over which you can host several OS personalities. A Hurd task can be a Mach task, but you can't do that either on MKLinux (Linux on Mach) or Darwin (Basically FreeBSD on Mach). There may be different reasons why Hurd will not thrive but being run of the mill won't be it. Hurd is and will be different.
So they're selling one version for IA32, and one for PPC. I seem to recal that the basic instructions for the PPC CPUs are taken from x86, meaning that at a basic level PPC CPUs are x86. This makes me wonder if it would be possible to write a boot loader that works on either architecture, detects which one it's running on, and then loads the right OS accordingly. Of course, having a disfunctional OS on a hard drive would be a waste of space, but it's still interesting. How about CDs that boot on both architectures?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Read more about why GNOME starts to suck on this link .
GNU/GNU/Darwin
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's just as well they're doing this... it's the only safe way to install GNU-Darwin, since their shitty installer does nasty, unrecoverable things to the base system. Don't install GNU-Darwin on OSX without a backup first, you can't go back once they overwrite all your system utilities. :P
Surely /. can do better than this. A new OS is always interesting, but how about a review that clarifies (a) what is special about this OS, (b) why the combination of HD+OS works, assuming it does, (c) how his can be used in combination with existing OSes , (d) etc.
What I've seen so far is one very thin infomercial followed by an uninformed discussion about useless details. Has anyone actually tried GNU-Darwin?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
$250 for a 40 GB drive, what a rip-off. $122 for 40GB notebook drive on PriceWatch.... I suggest all steer clear of this get rich quick scheme.
-]Phreak Out[-
Interesting idea. A strange one, but interesting.
But, it isn't for me. What I love about my Mac OS X is that it actually works, and works well. The GUI and applications of Mac OS X are thought through, there are Human Interface Guidlines that people actually follow, and it "just works".
Gnome has Human Interface Guidlines that either aren't followed or aren't very good. I know I'm picky here, but why is there, for example, no visible difference between a single and double click on a Gnome desktop icon? You have to wait until the application (maybe) starts to determine if your second click went through. That can take a very long time. Surely the Gnome HIG should (maybe does) say that the immediately visible change from a single- and double-click should be different? This is a small picky detail, the kind that IMO Gnome is full of and OS X has just a handful of.
Really, I'm just trying to illustrate that IMO, Gnome/GNU are miles behind when it comes to GUIs. I don't see who would actually use this. Running Gimp is nice because it doesn't cost anything, but you don't need to buy a second harddisk to do that. People that will benefit from this disk run OS X. What could there possibly be to make them interested in switching to Gnome? "It's free and therefore better, I don't care if the GUI sucks!"?
Any insights into why people that run OS X would want to switch to Gnome would be appreciated, 'cause I don't get it. ;-)
Is that the free "o/s" that supports 64K of RAM, 5Mbyte hard-drives and 8 inch floppies, or have they updated the design since then?
Uh ... I've been over all the arguments regarding why Linux should be GNU/Linux and all that, but I think the GNU folks need to realize that now they are fooling around with the name of something connected to Apple Computer - a company that does not take such matters lightly.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
There are hard drive slots that fit in a 5 1/4" drive bay. The slot has a removable tray that will accept desktop hard drives as well as laptop form factor hard drives. Once the drive is bolted into the tray it just slides into the drive bay.
Our hypothetical multisystem vendor could just equip their PCs with these bays with various flavors of preloaded hard drives mounted in the pullout trays. It's literally plug-n-play that way.
The MS Tax was the natural result of Microsofts old OEM agreements. Basically an OEM could not sell the same hardware model numbers or SKUs with both Windows and non-MS OSes. An OEM would have to actually change the hardware config slightly to sell non-Windows versions of it's PCs. Since non-Windows represent small potential sales, this condition sufficed to keep them from bothering. OEMs were probably also reluctant to offend MS since a raise in their privately negotiated price for Windows could be fatal. Microsoft is now legally prohibited from imposing that condition on OEMs but their 90s+ desktop marketshare largely works to accomplish the same thing. Most OEMs still won't offer non-MS or bare PCs, especially laptops. Their are some cracks in this like the Wal-Mart Microtels but their success is not assured.
Great idea mirroring the ordering page. Too bad you didn't mirror the requirements page, too
Another alternative to Windows, Linux, BSD and OSX. Good. The Darwin method of kext's for drivers is much more flexible than the one for Linux in my opinion.
Wonder how many devices are supported though?
I feel the need to correct your signature line.
10 are the only only numbers you'll ever need.
2)Unlike fink which stays out of the way of the operating system direcories like /bin and so forth. This think has all the worst chararistics of unix installs, spraying its files everywhere wiht no warning mechanisms, road maps, and no unistalls.
3) The installation interface and its dependency checking is only for the advnaced user, unless you want to just install it all. Then watch-out. Updating or selectively updating or patching is a nioghtmare in my opinion--wehn compared with FINK
I suspect this last property is the reason they are offering (forcing) people to get the whole install pre-done.
Fink is vastly superior in user experience and now in coverage of useful programs. The fink update experiece is a dream compared to Gnu-darwin. Gnu-darwin is a relic of how not to do things given the fresh start in apple unix.
On the otherhand, I'm being unfair here. Unlike FINK, Gnu-darwin has another agenda. Gnu-darwin is not trying to be compatible with the OSX way of doing things. It is not even trying to be sybmiotic as FINK is. instead GNU darwin is trying to replace OSX. And to do so it needs to put files where it thinks they belong. This does not excuse the crudeness of the delivery and update mechanisms. But if you are going to install the WHOLE distribution as you probably would od if you are using it as an OSX replacement, then it is perhaps not so bad.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Holy Shit"
This space for rent.
I've been told that Linux HFS+ support is dodgy, and may corrupt my HFS+ filesystems. That's bad.
You're one sick puppy. Pink-W-boys are nasty people
If they were spending 5 hours on each hard drive setup, I'd agree. Most likely, one installation was done, and subsequent drives are done with an image utility. This makes it the time worth far less, and the profit far higher /. reader this pricing is insane. but for the average clueless user, its not all that crazy.
The amount of time it takes them is immaterial. The value (if there is any) comes in the amount of time it saves the end user who would otherwise have to do it himself. The vendor is obviously going to use duplicators. That doesn't mean that joe clueless newbie user isn't still going to need 5 hours, and untold frustration to install it.
I agree that for the average
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
That's bestill , actually.
That harddrive (assuming its the 5400rpm) is $67.95 on pricewatch INCLUDING shipping.
$183 is alot to pay for free software that's been imaged onto the disk
I still like the basic idea though.
If I buy a new hard drive will I have to pay a Linux tax now? I want a machine without Linux on it! I want freedom of choice when I buy my hardware! Stop forcing me to use your software with it's restrictive licensing procedures!
/sarcasm
Just replace Linux with Microsoft and you have a standard Slashdot rant.
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
I think it's sad that you know this.
As for booting a Mac from an external USB volume, according to an Apple TIL article I read once, it should work if your Mac model has 'dual channel' USB. My own model (rev. B iMac) was one of the last to only have 'single channel' USB, so I can't boot from an external volume.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
fuck darwin and fuck you all
I just want to give my iBook an upgrade from a 10GB to a 20GB or even 30GB, now if there's ever a *safe and cheap* (college student cheap) way to open my iBook and do it myself, that's news I wanna know :) Perhaps I should just keep holding out hope that one of my friends will hook me up with a brand new 1GHz DVD-R equipped powerbook :)
Sun machines use openfirmware.
I think IBM might use it on some of their machines too.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Knock Knock...
"Who's there?"
GNU
"GNU who?"
GNU want to give me $250 for a $50 drive with $15 worth of CDRs?
GNO!
You really need to quit sucking Stallman's ass before your head implodes. Linux is *NOT* GNU, asshole. Especially not the kernel. Linux distros use some GNU tools, but the kernel and the GUI framework aren't GNU. I'm so sick of all the GNU zealots I'm pulling together non-FSF tools for a GNU-free Linux distro. Go draw a straight line with the Gimp on your GNU-HURD box. Oh wait, it's still not ready for release after 20 years, and uses another kernel that GNU doesn't credit. What a bunch of glory-grabbing assholes.
Actually I can't take the credit, it was Google.
There's more to Darwin then just BSD. If I'm not mistaken, Darwin includes NetInfo and OpenDirectory. Why is this relevant? NetInfo domains are very handy when it comes to sharing users across servers, and it will support LDAP at the same time via OpenDirectory. Now that's a pretty neat trick for a BSD distro out of the box without a lot of painful conifgurations (you just have to learn the NetInfo commandline utilities - that's all...).
Not to mention how handy it is if you happen to have OS X clients....