OpenDarwin.org Releases Darwin With Fixes

An anonymous reader writes "OpenDarwin released a 'fixed' version of the Darwin 6.0.2 ISO (the OpenDarwin-20030213 Binary Release) for both x86 and PPC. It is currently installing, so I can't tell you all what works now, etc. Hopefully I can use my old PC box as a server with this..." Apparently, it is mostly a recompile, without local OpenDarwin modifications. It doesn't include perl, pending integration of perl 5.8 ... could this mean Mac OS X will finally have a current perl in the next Mac OS X release?

Comments

Re:But

[jbarket]

MacOS X has always supported mice with multiple buttons.

Way to ask a stupid question that should be obvious. Why don't you email Strongbad and ask him how he types with boxing gloves on?

Re:But

[spearway]

MacOSX support any number of button mouse and scroll wheel out of the box. It is just Apple mouse that has only one button.

No it doesn't.

[LittleBigLui]

Actually, Apple has recently announced that they will only support Zero-Button Mice in the future.

"You know, we're all so sick and tired of the same old one-button-mouse joke, so we'll get rid of that damn button once and for all", an apple representative stated.

Re:No it doesn't.

[Matthias Wiesmann]

Actually, they already do.
If you look at recent apple mices, there is no button to speak of: the whole shell acts as a button.
The change had a funny effect: my mother did not notice anything missing, she just clicked. While some geeks I know where quite startled and tried to find the button.

Re:No it doesn't.

[slux]

We're of course wildly off-topic here, but how much is there to discuss about just OpenDarwin..?

there is some reasoning behind having just a single mouse button. To us computer literate who've gotten used to being able to right click it may seem very limiting but I believe the original reason (and why Apple still has only one mouse button) was that having a second one that is only of limited use is confusing to new users. I can verify this, having teached senior citizens to use a computer. "What's the second mouse button for?" is a frequent question to which I cannot really give an answer because it has none whatsoever at their level of usage. Another problem is that sometimes they tend to click it accidentally. I'm not saying having a second mouse button is a bad idea (I can't since I use it and the wheel daily) but there are reasons to not have it on a beginner's mouse.

BTW, nother thing that is difficult for senior citizens sometimes is getting double-clicks right and understanding why one has to doubleclick the icons while just a single click is enough everywhere else. What's the reason we have those again? Even KDE seems to have finally decided against defaulting to single-click icons in 3.1 at least on my Mandrake 9.1 beta. A shame, really.

Finally, while I've been forced to teach Windows so far, I feel that GNOME 2 would be a lot easier for beginners. There are all kinds of strange features in the Windows desktop. With GNOME I would not have to teach about My Computer and devices that it contains and there is just one logical place to save the user's files into: ~. In addition, there's all sorts of weird behaviour on the Windows desktop that has no real reason to exist (why does the start menu have to hide part of the contents of a folder if it's a little longer?). GNOME is definitely easier to use. My only wish would be is that GNOME would default to having the user's home directory as the desktop and make it function correctly in every case. Someone wrote an essay about it and I can easily see the beauty. In a way, the GUI's "home" is the desktop so why can't the two be the same?

Re:No it doesn't.

[Oculus Habent]

The problem with the home directory being the desktop is it goes against the filing metaphor. In the truest use of the desktop metaphor, the only things on the desktop should be what you are working on right now.

Apple originally had the best system for this, and it was lost in Mac OS X. You could drag files out of their respective "filed" locations on to the desktop to work with them, and when you were finished, there was a "Put Away" command (Command-Y for you OS 9 and lower users) that would return the file to it's original location.

Put Away really helped the Desktop metaphor by simplifying filing tasks and allowing the Desktop to fulfill its intended function. Unfortunately, it wasn't well documented or pushed in any way, and it was lost.

Returning to the home/desktop issue, if you were to make the Desktop the home directory, clutter becomes a more difficult issue. If I have stuff on the Desktop, I can move it into my directory to organize it, clearing my Desktop for other stuff. If my Desktop is my home directoy, I am always exposed to the filing system of my design - much like always keeping a filing cabinet open in the real world.

The biggest problem the Desktop/Filing metaphor faces, in my opinion, is the inability to leave it. We don't usually keep filing cabinets on our desks, but we can't leave our desktop, so we have to. Microsoft tucked it all under Start in Windows XP, which is simply a clumsy way to make it look more organized while actually adding layers of inconvenience to the interface. My Documents used to be on the Desktop. This is as close to a valid implementation of a filing system metaphor as possible, and they decided it was better under the Start menu.

The Filing metaphor suffers greatly from the lack of transparency in applications. Plenty of different groups have tried to produce an Open Document Architecture (ClarisWorks, Apple's OpenDoc, Microsoft's OLE) that allows you to create a new document and then determine it's contents, but getting people on board was difficult because no one could guarantee the supremacy of their products when it was completely possible to have two different companies software interact. Making software on the basis of cost and quality didn't appeal to many (j/k) so that died quietly... OLE is only really alive within Microsoft's own Office suite.

Microsoft tried a different tactic to start handle the Application problem - the "New" submenu on the Contextual menu. While some people put this to good use, its placement and function was difficult for some to grasp, especially with many users having difficulty with the the nebulous nature of the contextual menu. The New submenu can be a great tool, but it take time to get used to it, and many forego the learning curve in favor of the Start button, which houses all your programs.

Anyway, I'm rambling now, so I'll stop. Basically, I think using home as the desktop would cause more confusion for the typical user, as it breaks the separation of filing and working. While this may not be a problem for Joe SuperUser, it could seriously impair average users.

Also, how do you handle multiple desktops? Will they have the same content? If you have too many files in your home directory to be displayed on the Desktop, will a scroll bar appear? Will you be forced to open a windowed copy of your home directory to conveniently browse it while other windows are open, or will you have to minimize everything? Will the desktop contents flow around docks?

Like I said a minute ago, I'll stop.

Perl version

[Draoi]

My TiBook (w/vanilla kernel 6.4) tells me this;

[dhcp1i174:~] pcassidy% perl -v

This is perl, v5.6.0 built for darwin

Copyright 1987-2000, Larry Wall
[blah snipped]

So, when I check with perl.com, I see that the latest, stable release is 5.8.0. It's not *that* far removed, so why imply that MacOS X is 'finally' getting a current release of perl?

Re:Perl version

[Ranger Rick]

5.6.0 has a number of nasty bugs that (at the very least) 5.6.1 fix, especially in unicode support. Also, Apple built their perl in a way that makes their perl modules go into an essentially unversioned directory, which makes it harder to upgrade perl as time goes on.

The longer they wait, the messier the upgrade is going to be...

Re:Perl version

[pi radians]

Ummm, do you mean this upgrade?

Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Znonymous Coward]

Which is better? Darwin x86 or BSD?

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Gropo]

Depends on what you need it for... If you want a personal file server for a predominantly Mac household, you might appreciate the NetInfo abstraction Darwin offers.

Other than that, you might get better performance out of one of the tried-n-true BSD's due to the lack of overhead taken up by the message-passing microkernel.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[zangdesign]

BSD. Definitely BSD.

The primary reason for releasing Open Darwin on x86 is as a check for cross-platform coding. The reason it is public at all, is that it generates publicity with the /. crowd and costs them little or nothing in the process. While some Apple developers are putting time into stabilizing the sofware on the x86 platform, very little is being done to actually advance the project in it's current form.

It is not very stable and you would gain no advantages in networking between x86 and Macs by using OpenDarwin, since there is NO gui whatsoever.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[TheCrazyFinn]

Darwin is a BSD

FreeBSD and OpenBSD probably better on x86 though.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Halo1]

Although I agree that Darwin-x86 is only really useful if you want to do Darwin development or use it as a netinfo server, you are wrong about the microkernel piece. It's quite possible that the Darwin kernel is slower than that of the other BSD's, but that won't be due to its message passing microarchitecture. The reason is that the Darwin kernel runs in one address space (even both the Mach and BSD personalities run the same address space).

Apple didn't just pick up the Mach kernel and used it, they improved it a lot and one of the things they did was to rip out all that message passing stuff, while still retaining the modular design of the kernel. The result is that they more or less get the best of both worlds: a modular design with the speed of a monolithic kernel. Of course they did lose the ability of a true microkernel where the whole kernel doesn't crash if one of its modules does.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[JordanH]

• The reason it is public at all, is that it generates publicity with the /. crowd and costs them little or nothing in the process.

Not to mention the fear it inspires in Motorola. I'm sure this goes a long way toward helping keep PPC prices low (for Apple) and pushing PPC performance higher.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Leimy]

The reason is that the Darwin kernel runs in one address space (even both the Mach and BSD personalities run the same address space).

Actually the fact that they are running BSD + Mach [the XNU components] in the same addreess space is a speed optimization to reduce context switching for every message from BSD to Mach. This isn't a cause of slowness but a reduction. Can you imagine how bad it would have been if they hadn't done this? This is documented on Apple's website in Kernel programming so I am not just making it up. Its in the section where they clarify that XNU itself is not a proper microkernel.

Apple didn't just pick up the Mach kernel and used it, they improved it a lot and one of the things they did was to rip out all that message passing stuff, while still retaining the modular design of the kernel.

The message passing stuff still exists and is still useful [while it may not be used in the kernel space... I haven't verified this yet.] Walking through the source of CFMessagePort stuff shows you that it calls mach_msg a lot actually. It's also super fast due to out-of-line memory transfers etc.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[geniusj]

Darwin currently has better threading (read: true kernel level threading) in SMP machines than any of the other stable releases of BSD do. But I'm not sure if that's available on Darwin x86 or if it's only ppc. I'm going to guess the latter.

-JD-
(waiting for KSEs to be finished . . .)

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Halo1]

oohoo!!! Why didn't I think of that??? Just rip out message passing!

I know you're just trolling, but for other peolpe that might be interested: in the original Mach kernel, every subsystem of the kernel talks to the rest by using message passing (which is obviously quite slow, but otoh allows you to keep every subsystem in its own address space). Apple changed this so that every subsystem lies in the same address space, so they don't have to use the slow message passing interface, but can use function calls instead to let different parts of the kernel communicate.

Obviously, the message passing interface is still there and e.g. can still be used to have kernel space code communicate with userland code.

Re:Darwin x86 or BSD???

[Halo1]

In fact, getting rid of message passing doesn't give you anything from both worlds, it gives you a monolithic kernel, plain and simple.

Fortunately, that's not true. I would suggest you to read this and this message posted quite a while ago on the darwin-development mailing list (use archives as both login and password).

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin is composed of the Mach kernel and the BSD subsystem.

Use PC as a server?

[YetAnotherName]

Hopefully I can use my old PC box as a server with this

And if that doesn't work, you might want to take a look at FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD, amongst others. I understand they're fairly popular.

Re:Use PC as a server?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think, that may be the problem.

I'd rather suggest Plan 9.

Re:Use PC as a server?

[Frymaster]

I'd rather suggest Plan 9.

now if we could only get seemail and vwhois on darwin we'd be set!

Re:But

[grub]

Sig: I can't understand why people who hate Linux and Apple read slashdot.

Microsoft pays them to. It's called astroturfing or sandbagging
Now where's my tinfoil hat, I'm going to miss my bus.

Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think it means that they are about to do a sensible thing and remove Perl from the base, just like FreeBSD has.

Current (6.4) Darwin kernel ?

[snowtigger]

Is the latest kernel included ? The one included with 10.2.4 is the following:

uname -a
Darwin computername.local. 6.4 Darwin Kernel Version 6.4: Wed Jan 29 18:50:42 PST 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.26.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc

However, the darwin kernel you download from Apple is only version 6.0. Does anyone know where to fetch the latest kernel ?

Update your Perl. It's easy

[acomj]

I downloaded and built perl for OSX. Perl Version 5.8.? built without a hitch.

Now you don't even need to build perl yourself. Get Fink Macos X version of Apt-get and get a perl binary. (I'm pretty sure one is available). Fink is a great tool for keeping all the gnu/opensource software up to date.

Re:Update your Perl. It's easy

[pi radians]

Or if you want to forget all about fink you can take an even easier route.

Re:Update your Perl. It's easy

[jameshowison]

There is one wierdness.

Due to the HFS filesystem not being case-sensitive if you install libwww-perl (which you will probably do when upgrading to 5.8) then it puts HEAD (a tool for manipulating http headers) in /usr/bin which stomps all over the familiar head.

One to watch out for.

Re:Update your Perl. It's easy

[Ranger Rick]

Actually that is not the reason perl isn't in Fink, it's because we haven't found a good way to provide it without screwing things up for people that have already built modules against 5.6.

A couple of people have proposed solutions, but no one has yet had enough time or inclination to come up with a solution that has a halfway feasible upgrade path.

It is true that perl is not yet in Fink, however.

Re:hmm

[Ryan Amos]

Take the mach microkernel, then take FreeBSD and put it on top of that and add what amounts to a central registry (NetInfo) and essentially you've got darwin. Apple essentially took UNIX, made it more like modern graphical OSes by adding functionality (not removing) and out came darwin. OS X is one hell of a sleek OS; insanely modular, everything is XML and embedded PDFs yet you can still run most (read: 99.9%) *nix programs with minor makefile modifications. It's BSD for the 21st century ;)

Re:hmm

[Mikey-San]

I direct you to, no pun intended, /Applications/Utilities/Directory Access.

Authenticate and check "BSD Configuration Files". Now you can start using the BSD flat files, like /etc/groups.

If I'm missing something, it's because it's early and even though I'm at my desk, I'm still at home in bed.

-/-
Mikey-San

Re:Can I run Mac OS on i386 ?

[squiggleslash]

Yes, quite easily as a matter of fact, as long as you have a modern ATX system:

First, open up your case. Look for a jumper labeled JP3 or JP27, it's usually somewhere near the IDE bus connectors. Check next to it and you'll see a capacitor.

If the capacitor has a code on it beginning with a letter X, then unplug the internal speaker and the CDROM from the soundcard. If it doesn't, leave well alone.

Once you've done that, remove the entire motherboard, replace it with one from a modern PowerMac, plug everything back in, and install Mac OS X.

Couldn't be simpler!

Disappointing

[eLoco]

I downloaded this but never installed it because it installs to the /opt directory. I was really hoping for a package that would replace the the perl integrated into OS X (/usr/bin, /Library/Perl, etc.)

Perl 5.8 in Mac OS X default location

[daveschroeder]

Then just use these instructions, provided by Apple, for installing Perl 5.8 in Mac OS X's default location for perl.

Re:What's the point?

[TitanBL]

I think you are missing the point. Darwin is not about competing with Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD... It is about Apple being able to port OS X to x86 if they wanted. I know there is tons of controversy over whether or not this will happen, but it is a possibility. This would not be hard to do either - as long as they keep Darwin updated. Dell selling systems with either OS X or XP pre-installed? Ha, unlikely, but Darwin is what makes it unlikely instead of impossible.

Re:hmm

[andrewski]

Maybe if you weren't a retarded troll you'd realize that Apple has fixed NetInfo so it checks /etc now. Any changes made in /etc (related to stuff that NetInfo knows about anyway) are reflected by NetInfo. I realize that trolling must take up a good portion of your day, but Apple fixed this with 10.2.

Do I think you are Informative, Interesting, or Funny? NO WAY!

update Berkeley DB first

[teridon]

Those instructions note that you'll get an error during "make test" because of the old, buggy version of Berkeley DB included with Mac OS X. If you plan on using perl's DB functionality, upgrade to a more recent version. You can either use fink ("fink install db41") to get 4.1.24, or compile from source (available here) to get 4.1.25. If you compile from source, you'll need to link /usr/local/BerkeleyDB->/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4. 1

Re:Who cares about Darwin?

[MochaMan]

Does this sound like a good license to you?

Wow, you do a fantastic job of taking text completely out of context. Try reading and understanding the entire licence next time. Section 2.2 clearly indicates that you may publicly deploy your code so long as the source is also made available.

Before anyone falls for nonsense like what was posted above, I would encourage you to read the licence yourself.

The APSL is an open source licence. A major difference between it and a BSD-style licence is that you have to make your changes publicly available if you distribute binaries. But hey, there are lots of licences like that... the GPL for instance.