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NetBSD's COMPAT_DARWIN Adds XDarwin Support
Dan writes "NetBSD's Emmanual Dreyfus says that COMPAT_DARWIN is now able to run Mac OS X's XDarwin (this is, the X Window server for Darwin). The server is fully functional: display, keyboard and mouse work. He says that running Darwin has no interest in itself, but having it working ensures that NetBSD's IOKit (1) emulation is good enough to be used. Darwin is Apple's Mac OS X core. A fully functional Darwin binary compatibility on NetBSD/powerpc & NetBSD/i386 will imply getting MacOS X libraries to run any Mac OS X program, just like NetBSD is now able to run binaries from Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and many other OSes."
So in plain English this means that Mac OSX programs will soon be able to run on BSD and eventually Linux?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I'm not a complete tech-idiot, but this article made my head spin. Can someone explain what this means and what the impact of it is?
The apps which will work will be the ones that only use the BSD core and not the entire Aqua graphics layer where the majority of popular MacOS X application run. But it is conceivable that an emulation of Aqua could be created for NetBSD which could replace X11. And since X11 is really show its age, I think a replacement for the graphics layer on Unix-like system is long in coming. Emulating the Dock and other MacOS UI features would be great. Just ask the developers at WindowMaker.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
Although the post by Emmanual Dreyfus indicates that XDarwin is essentially a test case, this is a rather important test case. If you can run XDarwin, you're just a short hop away from having all of the X11 apps along with it. Also, imagine a package system like the fink working equally well on OSX and NetBSD. You could develop on OSX with its comfortable GUI and deploy to NetBSD with its comfortable price.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Knock yourself out, but I can tell you right now that it won't be nearly as impressive as it sounds. X86 cpus really look bad when they try to emulate PPC/SPARC/Alpha and the like. You'll be a hell of a lot better off just buying a PPC box.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
while it would be very nice, this DOES NOT let you run OSX apps on linux, not on and i386. This simply lets you run binaries for the PPC processor from OSX on netbsd running on a PPC. Not just any binaries too, just those that dont use the Aqua GUI. Dont really see the point of it aside from it being a nice technical achievement, kinda like running darwin on an i386.. no real point just cool :)
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The point isn't "free" as in "free-OS". The point is embracing open standards.
Apple might have a proprietary OS in Panther but it is based on standards that allow for easy networking and integration into existing frameworks.
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity."
Funny, I thought BSD's popularity was skyrocketing.
After all, all those MacOS X boxes... 3% market share... millions of people... plus, since Macs from back in 1998 can run the latest version of MacOS X (I'm typing on one now), and lots of people do that, probably significantly more than 3% of the installed base.
BSD sure isn't in any danger from where I'm standing, although who'd'a thunk that Apple would be its saviour?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Yep. As others have pointed out, it's also a shortcut to letting the Quartz server binaries from OS X run on NetBSD/PPC (just like X11 needs to be built to talk to the hardware through standard UNIX APIs or direct rendering modules, Quartz needs to be able to talk to the hardware through IOKit), but Apple's EULA probably bars that, so I don't see that as bragging rights. Drivers are third-party code, so they're not governed by Apple's licensing. :)
However, there may be a loophole - as I understand Apple's EULA, they don't care what you do with the software, as long as you only run it on their hardware. So Mac-on-Linux, which is more of a VMWare type deal, is perfectly legal under Yellow Dog or whatever -- *if* you're running it on Apple hardware, and have a license for your seat of OS X -- and Quartz atop NetBSD should equally be fine. (It could even be useful, depending on your opinion of NetBSD versus xnu. I gather a few people actually use Linux+MoL for improved stability; NetBSD+COMPAT_DARWIN+Quartz would offer the same, but with even fewer virtualization overheads.)
However, since Apple doesn't sell any version of OS X permitting use on non-Apple hardware, users of the new 'alternative' PowerPC boards are left out in the legal cold. (In the USA; if you live in a jurisdiction where EULAs don't hold and software is sold on copyright alone, go wild... but don't expect Apple to tolerate it any more than Microsoft tolerated DR-DOS or post-partnership OS/2.)
Aqua isn't a library. It's a specification nobody seems to follow.
Quartz isn't necessary to run most Carbon apps. I'd start there.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
The NetBSD pkgsrc collection works on Darwin.
I agree that you'd be a little nuts to bother, but please don't cloud the issue. Software availability for both NetBSD and Darwin is really pretty good; the reason to pick one over the other should be based on the kernels, if you want to be technical, or licenses, if you want to be political. (Technically: NetBSD is NetBSD, monolithic but proven; Darwin is xnu, a curious hack on Mach. Some people dig it, some people don't trust it.)
If you're a UNIX neophyte, you might want to stick with OS X or something 'friendly' like Yellow Dog, at least until you get accustomed to basic concepts. (Personally, I liked a text-only 486 with OpenBSD as a learning tool, but I'm a masochist.)
Apple might have a proprietary OS in Panther but it is based on standards that allow for easy networking and integration into existing frameworks.
This is just an aside, and doesn't directly relate to MacOS.
For a long time, I used to think "standards good, propriatary bad". I wanted everything I used to be standards compliant.
Then I got into the industry, and ran into some of the standards-setting folks.
The good news is that generally folks involved with setting standards are reasonably (not necessarily the best) competent. It's not as good a situation as the brutally harsh meritocracy of Linux development, where code with vast amounts of time and effort can get thrown out because someone else came up with a better/faster system, but it ensures some degree of sanity.
However, politicking involved in standards committees is horrible. Generally, standards are set by industry consortiums, a recipe for disaster. Everyone has their personal pet features they want in, for starters. They then have to advance the interests of their company, so they try to exclude things that might benefit their competitors, and include support for things they're working on (even if they're technically inferior -- so if IBM is making a worse system than Dinky Company, Inc., it's likely that the technically inferior method gets used.). People are under pressure to finalize standards in time for products based on them to come out -- if there are still issues, too bad. Because different companies may prefer different methods of doing something/have different methods under work already, standards need to include support for both. Standards are frequently bad about exluding redundant methods of doing something. Finally, standards are frequently designed for companies doing a product implementation. They often cost money, and while complete they may not be particularly clear. This compares poorly against the RFCs that provide specifications for traditional Internet protocols today (yes, traditionally RFCs weren't final specs, but they are today).
I've come to realize that "open" is more important than "standardized". If you write a good specification for something, distribute it freely, and you've done a good job with designing the system, others can (and will) adopt the system (if it's better than the alternatives). yEnc, gzip and png were originally "open", though not standardized, and (perhaps more crucially) none were produced by industry consortiums.
May we never see th
Nonetheless, you are left at the mercy and whims of Apple. You saw how they cracked down on PPC clone builders, destroying many livelihoods in the process.
Firstly, all PPC clone makers were using Apple's ROM under license, it's not like Apple went out and found people making compatible computers and squashed them. These people willingly put themselves "at the mercy and whims of Apple". In much the same way as PC manufacturers grease and prostrate themselves before Microsoft.
Further, management changed at Apple, and so did the outlook on the 'clones', which had not served to increase the market share of MacOS compatible computers in the two years of their existance. Apple were getting an ever decreasing share of a shrinking market.
All of the people who licensed the clone technology from Apple must have been able to see the big black shadow of change looming well before it happened due to the big management shake-up in Cupertino.
Apple could have gone two ways, dumping the hardware business and going software only, or dumping the clones and hoping to be able to compete with Dell and H[compaq & DEC]P. But they would have been foolish to sit around and wait for their company to go down the gurgler which seemed to be Gil Amelio's management strategy.
With Apple moving to OpenStep, they put themselves in a position to support multiple architectures by porting their version of Mach to a new CPU and adding a new target architecture into the app bundle via the old NeXT development tools.
In a few years time most applications will be Cocoa (OpenStep) based and that will open up the possibility for Apple to become a software only company and supply OpenStep X based technology to any platform if their last ditch effort to stay in the hardware business fails.
All in all, not a bad business decision, apart from the 'soft costs' of bad PR and thousands of pissed off customers and a few pissed off business partners. Something which may well come back to bite them in the bum, especially with people like you spreading misinformation about the whole cloning episode.