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An Introduction To And History of Darwin

Posted by timothy on from the evolving dept.

proclus writes "Roberto Donhert of Aqua icon theme fame (screenshot) has written a concise review of Darwin OS. The article covers the origin and evolution of Darwin OS, as well as the various Darwin distributions that are available for PowerPC and x86 architectures. OSnews has the story. The only thing that I would add is the contributions of Torrey Lyons of XonX, who created the XDarwin Xserver that made so much of this possible. BTW, Roberto also has a commentary about the SCO situation running at OSnews."

8 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. What I really want.. by dadragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I really want is documentation on how to do Darwin system calls from assembly on the PowerPC.

    I know that you fill certain registers and then use the "sc" call, but which registers do what?

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  2. Common Mistake by dhovis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Roberto made one common mistake in his writeup on Darwin. Darwin does not use a pure Mach kernel. It uses a kernel called xnu. Xnu is a hybrid kernel containing Mach message passing code, but also a lot of BSD stuff. Xnu isn't quite monolithic, but it isn't a microkernel either. The BSD stuff was added into the kernel space to improve performance over pure Mach.

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    The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.

    1. Re:Common Mistake by dhovis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I believe that Apple's long discarded "Copland" next generation OS had a kernel that was called NuKernel. Some of that code was probably merged into the OS X kernel, hence xnu. Remember that Apple used to sell Macs with NuBus expasion slots.

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      --
      The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.

  3. I swear to Jesus that I am not trolling. by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whether or not I get modded down, I implore the gnu-darwin folks to give me a listen:

    What is the advantage to gnu-darwin over FreeBSD or GNU/Linux? No, really, what's the advantage? If it's IOKit & Mach that give you a hardon, then what's the advantage of gnu-darwin over GNU/Hurd?

    I understand and identify with the desire for a free operating system, so I understand why y'all don't like Open Darwin 'n' the APSL. So... what's the draw?

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    1. Re:I swear to Jesus that I am not trolling. by proclus · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Many people are interested in the technical advantages of Darwin, which is certainly part of the equation. I thought that GNU-Darwin would be an exciting way to do my work.

      http://www.apple.com/scitech/stories/cornell/

      We are also about the freedom part, which is why we are so excited to bring software freedom to Apple users. That is why we make sure that our software works with OS X, and we help newbies with it.

      Finally, there are problems with the APSL from a free software perspective. If you already have a free OS, and you are happy with that, then you should stick with it.

      Regards,
      proclus
      http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

    2. Re:I swear to Jesus that I am not trolling. by Sentry21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What is the advantage to gnu-darwin over FreeBSD

      You can run the same OS (theoretically) on x86 and PPC? It's a nicer system (opinion)? FreeBSD sucks (opinion)? The FreeBSD 'help' is usually more abusive than helpful (experience)?

      or GNU/Linux?

      Linux has all kinds of problems (every time I try to compile Linux, it gets about 30 seconds into make bzImage and errors out). Don't want to be associated with Linux zealots? Linux can be a pain to run on PPC? You can run the same (command-line) apps on GNU-Darwin as on OS X?

      If it's IOKit & Mach that give you a hardon, then what's the advantage of gnu-darwin over GNU/Hurd?

      Darwin doesn't use Mach? Darwin's actually usable at this point? Darwin has drivers for hardware supported by OS X? Darwin works on PPC (does Hurd)?

      Hack value?

      Just some ideas. Personally, I'd use Open Darwin, but there's always reasons. The question people should be asking isn't 'Why?' but rather 'Why not?'

      --Dan

    3. Re:I swear to Jesus that I am not trolling. by Ranger+Rick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      GNU-Darwin just happens to be the best-selling UNIX on the market today mostly because of the Mac OS X GUI layer running on top of it.

      No matter how much the GNU-Darwin people want you to think otherwise, Apple (more specifically OpenDarwin and people in the BSD group at Apple) are the ones doing all the work on Darwin.

      It's amazing Shantonu even bothers making the OpenDarwin distribution anymore when the GNU-Darwin folks immediately start reselling it at a $15 premium (check the timestamps on those e-mails...).

      --

      WWJD? JWRTFM!!!

  4. Re:Ugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    OpenStep was developed much later by developers at NeXT. Had nothing to do with CMU. It is a development library...
    Follow-up to myself. OpenStep both referred to a standardized API co-designed by NeXT and Sun, and to the rebadged NeXTSTEP library NeXT marketed as compliant with the API.