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Running Mac OS X Binaries With NetBSD

Posted by Hemos on from the making-it-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article about an effort to add a Mach and Darwin binary compatibility layer to NetBSD. The project has evidently already made a fair amount of progress, currently working to stabilize the WindowServer emulation portion that will then allow NetBSD to run Mac OS X graphical applications."

3 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What about... by LizardKing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Running Gnustep on NetBSD? It has most of the NEXTStep/OS X libs already ported over to Linux (And therefore easily ported to NetBSD)...

    GNUStep is already in the NetBSD packages collection, in several packages split across devel and x11. Install it along with WindowMaker and you've got a convincing NeXT clone ...

    Chris

  2. Re:Linux port? by KAMiKAZOW · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mac-On-Linux

    What Is Mac On Linux?

    Mac-on-Linux lets you run MacOS under Linux/ppc. MOL runs natively on the processor, i.e. it is very fast. Unlike most mac emulators, MOL can run MacOS 8.6 and later WITHOUT A ROM IMAGE.

    Feature List

    - Supports MacOS 7.5.2 to 9.2.2, 10.1 and 10.2
    - Linux can be booted inside MOL
    - Full screen video
    - MMU accelereaded X video
    - Audio support
    - Block device support (Ide, Scsi, Zip, Jaz)
    - ADB & USB support for mouse and keyboard
    - Ethernet
    - Runs natively - good speed!
    - Very compatible
    - Idle sleep (8.6 or later)
    - Session save and restore (temporary unavailable)
    - AltiVec support
    - Multi-session support


    OK, it's not binary compatibility, but unlike COMPAT_MACH and COMPAT_DARWIN it does already work. But COMPAT_MACH and COMPAT_DARWIN are very interesting and worth keeping an eye on it.


    Oh, BTW.... From the MOL-FAQ:

    Q: Does it run on i386 hardware?
    A: No, MOL can only run on PowerPC hardware since no emulation is performed. However, adding a PowerPC emulator for x86 is under consideration.

  3. MOL by dmaxwell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Um...I use MOL and have found it to be far from pointless. I use MOL mostly to run a FirstClass groupware client. The reason why I run Linux on a Pismo Powerbook is that I have an environment mostly identical to my x86 Linux machine at home. This means Linux largely frees me from worrying about underlying architecture (Wine and so forth aside). I have not found OSX to be so insanely great that I should blow away my Linux partition. Believe it or not there are good reasons to prefer Linux over OSX.

    I have also found MOL to be far more reliable than Classic on OSX. Classic is much slicker in that OS 9 apps run directly on the Quartz desktop and one can cut and paste between apps. This also means it is more complex and therefore failure prone. My boss has no end of trouble with it. Classic icons go missing or change themselves into another apps icons. Some Classic apps will lock and won't release control to the Aqua UI. This means the machine is locked up for end user intents and purposes. Classic inflicts HFS metadata problems and some instability on OS X and kills much of OS X advantages if one has to make heavy use of OS <=9 apps. On the other hand if the OS 9 in my MOL sessions screws up then I can kill it and restart without affecting my Linux session. Since I boot my MOL session from an image I have an advantage normally only associated with virtual PC. If that boot image gets messed up, I can replace it from a backup quickly. Incidentally, MOL is very close to running OS X acceptably...eye candy and all.

    MOL is can also be used as a user mode Linux. One can boot another acceptably fast Linux inside a virtual machine. This is useful for things like kernel development. MOL is far from pointless.