Darwin, Fink Updates

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Posted by pudge on Thursday November 20, 2003 @08:37AM from the for-the-mac-super-nerd-inside-you dept.

BSDForums writes "The Darwin team is pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD. This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers. The version of Darwin installed by this CD corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.3. Check out the release notes for more information." dmalloc writes "The Fink team has announced that their binary distribution versioned 0.6.2 is ready for use now. It is a bug-fix release to alleviate issues that came up in 0.6.1. Along with the bug fixes, it introduces an enhanced package manager which is now capable of using the finkmirrors.net-supplied rsync and distfiles mirrors."

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x86?! by neosake · 2003-11-20 08:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers.

Does this mean that it's available pc's now, and when "certain" is mention, what are the conditions?

Yeah, i rta, and could'nt find this nfo.

--
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
1. Re:x86?! by kayen_telva · 2003-11-20 08:47 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  opendarwin
2. Re:x86?! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-11-20 08:53 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  OpenDarwin.org maintains a database of x86 hardware that has been successfully used with Darwin.
  
  http://opendarwin.org/hardware/
????hmmm??? by falcon5768 · 2003-11-20 08:48 · Score: 1

think of me as clueless, but what does Darwin actually look like installed on a x86 box?

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"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
1. Re:????hmmm??? by ZackSchil · 2003-11-20 08:51 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Like a computer running a command line version of Linux or Unix with no GUI. Hold down command-option-s while your Mac is restarting to get a good idea. You'll notice what's different
2. Re:????hmmm??? by baka_boy · 2003-11-20 09:10 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Have you used a normal BSD installation? Think console/shell at startup (nice full-screen framebuffer-based one, though, at least on PPC), and XWindows for your choice of desktop environments.
  
  Of course, you've got effectively the NeXTStep/OpenStep/OS X system environment, which means Frameworks, NetInfo, etc., are all in there, along with a Mach-based kernel-land environment, which is fairly opaque at the user level.
3. Re:????hmmm??? by falcon5768 · 2003-11-20 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  see thats what I figured, might have to try to install it to see how it runs. I would love to use it at work.
  
  --
  "Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Impact for Panther/Jaguar users? by MacGod · 2003-11-20 09:53 · Score: 1

Excusive my Unix newbie-ness, but what effect would installing this have on a typical jaguar or Panther installation? ie: With one of these OSes installed, could I proceed to install Darwin 7.1 on top, and gain all the new benefits, while still preserving the rest (ie: Mac-specific) part of my OSX installation?

--
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
1. Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-11-20 10:08 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  AFAIK the opendarwin release cannot be installed over the top of Panther. You will get all the benefits when Apple release 10.3.2 in the next few weeks so don't worry too much about it at the moment.
2. Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users? by mrgeometry · 2003-11-20 11:35 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I'm no expert, but it seems to me that Darwin is kind of like the thing running "under" Jaguar or Panther.
  
  Roughly, Darwin is the underlying part of the operating system; the rest of Jaguar/Panther is mostly user interface stuff. This is what Apple charges money for---Darwin they give away, and the user interface part is $129 (per year :-) ).
  
  So you wouldn't install Darwin if you already have Jag or Panther. Only if you have another computer that you want to set up with a free OS (and you don't mind installing user interface stuff like X windows), or maybe if you want to set up a "dual boot" thing on a single computer. I could imagine this latter setup being useful for testing, or for servers (normally don't need GUI, but every now and then reboot into GUI?).
  
  Presumably every update that's made to Darwin is also released for Jaguar/Panther via Software Update. At least, I hope so. (Insert here standard comment about Apple being taken seriously in Enterprise.)
  
  zach
3. Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users? by WatertonMan · 2003-11-20 11:53 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I don't think you can do this. Almost certainly things would break. Wait for Apple. They'll have it out shortly. (I'm actually surprised Darwin updates are coming out before the OSX update - isn't it usually the other way around?)
  BTW - one place Darwin is interesting is in competition for PPC Linux. If you just have a server then you have a lot more consistency if you install Darwin rather than Linux. Further you can test a lot of things on your OSX box. Had I an old 300 MHz or slower Mac around I'd probably install Darwin/X11 on it and then control it from my OSX box. It'd make a good NAT server, file server or so forth.
  One problem I have on my OSX box are various searches that run as cron tasks. (Mainly downloading episodes of 24 and Smallville) However when I start up my Mac it is slow at getting the threads prioritized properly. Thus it is about 2 minutes before it feels "normal." If I offloaded all those perl scripts to a separate box that wouldn't be an issue.
Re:Darwin and Fink. by Orien · 2003-11-20 09:53 · Score: 1

Doesn't iTunes come with OSX?

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SCO.com uses Linux
I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days by gsdali · 2003-11-20 10:09 · Score: 1

and it appears to be not perfect. It wants me to install the XFree86 package, whatever I try to install. I'd rather it didn't. I'm very happy with Apple's X11 and the system-xfree86 package that represents it. Severeral things were broken by the update to panther, or rather the parallel fink update, things were fine till I started fiddling. I may wait a while before fiddling again, let fink and panther, or rather fink and gcc3.3. To settle down.

(PS I'd normally take my whines elsewhere but I can't seem to post on the fink-general list at the moment)
1. Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days by jpkunst · 2003-11-20 10:21 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Try installing the X11 SDK from the Panther Xcode CD. I installed the X11 SDK and Fink 0.6.2 (in that order) and I haven't been asked by Fink to install XFree86.
  
  JP
2. Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days by gsdali · 2003-11-20 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately that didn't work, I had installed X11 SDK when I installed panther but I ran the installer again bu to no avail.
  
  Anyway, here's not the place for whining and fink is an excellent project and should be applauded for all it's great work.
3. Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days by dimator · 2003-11-20 11:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  There is a FAQ about this, I don't know if you tried it, or if it applies to 0.6.2, but it worked for me a couple weeks ago.
  
  --
  python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
4. Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days by benh57 · 2003-11-20 18:39 · Score: 1
  
  You need the X11 *SDK* (from the XCODE disk, not 'when you install the OS') and the X11 *USER* (from the OS disk). Both have to be chosen custom in two different installers.
Darwin is a great project by Anonymous Coward · 2003-11-20 10:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

I really think that it has potential, if more people would take an interest in it. Mach/FreeBSD based kernel, FreeBSD userland, your choice of Netinfo or regular /etc, an OpenStep API, and full source code. I mean really, this thing kicks ass!

The only one issue that I have with it is it's lack of x86 drivers, which is not a fault of Darwin itself. If it supported my hardware, I'd run it exclusively, as every experience that I've had with it on PPC hardware has been nice...
fink is kde-centric by Anonymous Coward · 2003-11-20 11:05 · Score: 1, Insightful

fink would be great if it weren't so kde-centric. i for one would appreciate a little more focus on other desktop environments...like gnome, for example.
their kde stuff is up to date at 3.14, while their gnome is still on 1.4.2? i mean, how many years behind is that? they aren't even testing anything in unstable over 1.4.2. cmon guys...
1. Re:fink is kde-centric by Ranger+Rick · 2003-11-21 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  Most of gnome2 (well, 2.0) is in fink, and gnome 2.4.1 is being wrapped up right now. "Unstable" is not for testing, Fink unstable means "it's been tested by the developer and is ready to be supported by him/her." 2.4 is being worked on in "experimental" which is the playground for packagers to work on things without having users complain that [foo] isn't working.
  
  "Fink" has no stance on desktops, but Gnome's packager has historically been insanely busy and didn't have much time to keep up with things very quickly... That's recently changed, Gnome is going to be maintained by a group of people (since it's so big) and things should get updated in a more timely manner.
  
  No one's out to get you. ;)
  
  --
  WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
2. Re:fink is kde-centric by MikeTRose · 2003-11-21 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  Gnome2 is also available through DarwinPorts, FWIW.
Re:x86 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-11-20 12:29 · Score: 1, Informative

No, because the non-Darwin part of OS X is only available (publically) compiled. Compilation is the process of converting processor-independent high-level-language code to a lower level, in this case processor-type specific, form.
In order to get the non-Darwin part to run on x86, you'd need the source code to it so you can recompile for the Intel architecture. Apple's not likely to give that out any time soon.
Re:x86? by xtermin8 · 2003-11-21 02:35 · Score: 1, Insightful

Its still experimental and buggy. Unless you want to spend serious amounts of time tweaking and toying with it, don't bother. Then again, its also a quintessential challenge for "hackers." If you're tired of working on monolithic linux, go for it.
Confirmed: need X SDK from XCode disk by MikeTRose · 2003-11-21 05:09 · Score: 1
I ran into the same problem but it cleared up after:
1. reinstalling X11 via download from Apple (Fink attempt to install the GIMP had wiped it out)
2. installing X11 SDK from "Packages" folder of Xcode install CD
3. wiping out & recompliling Fink & Darwinports installs (including the /sw and /opt/local target directories, which had some ownership issues)
  I then proceeded to happily & peacefully install the GIMP 1.2.5 via DarwinPorts -- smooth sailing all the way. I am officially a DarwinPorts fan now; not as much detailed feedback as Fink but it "just works" (after two days of hair-pulling).
Panth-Wire ?? by EccentricAnomaly · 2003-11-21 05:21 · Score: 1

Or can you install the Panther Darwin version on a Jaguar OS X machine and get some sort of hybrid monster OS ?

--
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This was the one that worked. by gsdali · 2003-11-21 07:00 · Score: 1

Thanks