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."

Comments

seems pretty pointless

[g4dget]

Installing a 40gig hard drive is supposed to be less work than installing GNU Darwin from an installer CD? The only thing that suggests to me is that the GNU Darwin installer CD needs work.

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.

Re:No faq, no real info

[lvdrproject]

Actually, Apple did do that.

As for "desktop-on-top-of-unix"... if you meant by that that it comes with the Aqua GUI, i don't believe it does. That's proprietary, if i'm not mistaken.

I actually tried installing Darwin 6.0 on a laptop i got lying around here, a few weeks back. But, because the disc wouldn't boot (i made the mistake of using WinRAR to unzip and un-ISO the image), i can't really offer anything more specific about Darwin. I believe other people on Slashdot, however, are indeed running it (for x86, that is).

For all intents and purposes, it's just a BSD distro, i guess.

:Lav

Should better be done by hardisk manufacturer

[Joseph Lam]

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.

A Slight Discrepancy...

[whiteranger99x]

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???

BSD^H^H^HHurd is Dying

[RAMMS EIN]

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.

Maybe ;-)

[RAMMS EIN]

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.

Re:HURD != Darwin

[RAMMS EIN]

From the acronym expansion, I would think you have it backwards. HURD is short for Hird of Unix Running Daemons, which suggests to me that it is indeed Unix inspired. The part that isn't Unix is _Mach_, the microkernel that Darwin and HURD (and NEXTSTEP and Lites) are based on. As I see it HURD could (theoretically) run concurrently with (for example) a win32-compatible personality, which is _not_ the same as running that personality under HURD; both HURD and the win32 personality run as servers under Mach.

You are right in saying that HURD and Darwin aren't equivalent. HURD is equivalent to a bare Unix kernel (like Linux without GNU), whereas Darwin is a full operating system distribution (like any BSD flavor, and like GNU/Linux).