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OpenDarwin 7.2.1 Released

Posted by timothy on from the true-to-their-word dept.

Ed Waldmire writes "I am pleased to annouce to the /. community that the OpenDarwin community has released OpenDarwin 7.2.1. This release corresponds to Mac OS X 10.3.2 and includes many bugfixes and additions. Most notable are ncutil, YUM, and a tulip NIC driver."

15 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Re:POSIX? by cremes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's as POSIX compliant as OSX 10.3.2. If you find that out, then you've answered your own question.

    cr

  2. Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by MikeCapone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How's Darwin on x86? Does it have any advantages over other BSDs or Linux? Does it do things much differently? Is the hardware support lacking?

    I'm very curious about it.

    --
    Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
    1. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by cremes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There is no advantage to opendarwin on x86 over the others mentioned. It's maintained primarily to act as a way to validate that code is written correctly (by compiling for two different architectures and verifying it doesn't expose any bugs).

      OpenDarwin isn't intended to be very speedy and reliable on x86 hardware. We have FreeBSD for that.

      OpenDarwin isn't intended to support every x86 motherboard or weird peripheral. We have NetBSD for that.

      OpenDarwin isn't intended to be the most secure OS out there. We have OpenBSD for that.

      OpenDarwin isn't intended to form the center of a large and growing religious cult. We have Linux for that. :-)

      Use OpenDarwin if you want to check out the foundation upon which OSX is built. It has some very cool technologies that other OSs do not.

      For example, it replaces rc.* scripts (BSD) and run-levels (SysV) with SystemStarter. Second, the driver model was designed with OOP in mind and has been branded I/OKit. Third, instead of littering the filesystem with lots of "dot-files" it uses the SystemConfiguration framework to store configurations.

      Using OpenDarwin-x86 + GNUStep + WindowMaker (or AfterStep) gets you a machine that looks like OSX on x86.

      Take a look. You might like what you find.

      cr

    2. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm with you on this one. I installed Darwin on an x86 box a year or so ago to have a look at it. Seeing that Apple logo come up on a PC screen was a moment I'll savour. Is there anyone out there trying to get an aqua clone to run on top of it? I'd pay some good money to have apple software on PC. PDA too.

    3. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by Orick · · Score: 5, Informative


      The problem is that you just get the base OS, which isn't any better than say, FreeBSD, but not too much worse either, but you don't get the GUI, which after all is the difference (from FreeBSD, Linux, whatever) that you'd want from Apple in the first place.

      --
      Kirby Reviews

    4. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3, Informative
      For example, it replaces rc.* scripts (BSD) and run-levels (SysV) with SystemStarter.

      Given that SystemStarter is run by a command in /etc/rc (and that there are rc scripts for various run levels in SV-style inits), you presumably meant "augments rc.* scripts with SystemStarter".

      There's documentation on the developer.apple.com site for the startup process in OS X.

    5. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by cremes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      True, but I believe the "unwritten, no promises" plan is for even that rc.* script to go away. Shouldn't take much more to eliminate it altogether.

      cr

    6. Re:Darwin on x86 -- QUESTIONS by evilviper · · Score: 2, Informative
      How's Darwin on x86?

      Umm... Not something anyone would really want to use much. It might be interesting if you wanted to have maybe OS X front-ends and x86 machines for a cluster. Not sure how that would work, but that's the only real use for it I can think of.

      Does it have any advantages over other BSDs or Linux?

      Nope. It's mostly just FreeBSD, with a different kernel (tcsh and all).

      Is the hardware support lacking?

      Most definately! You can't even get text-mode working unless you have a supported video card, because there is no text-mode, only frame-buffer, and very few video cards are supported in the first place (I tried a dozen, before I found that an old ATI 128 PCI card worked).

      May God have mercy on you, if you want to get your network card working.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  3. Is BSM implemented? by alangmead · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The other day, I was looking around the Darwin kernel code and I saw references to BSM support in kern_audit.c and the like. But I couldn't find any userspace utilities designed to enable or extract information for the kernel's audit log. Am I missing something? or is this just a stub that is being filled in as they go along?

    1. Re:Is BSM implemented? by Starfire · · Score: 3, Informative

      BSM auditing is implemented in the Mac OS X 10.3.4 kernel (Darwin 7.4). OpenDarwin 7.2.1 is based on an older version of Mac OS X, and does not have this support

    2. Re:Is BSM implemented? by alangmead · · Score: 3, Informative

      Never mind, for Darwin 7.4 I found bsm-2.10

  4. Re:Can somebody test it under vmware3? by cremes · · Score: 4, Informative

    I haven't verified this myself, but I hear it hangs under vmware because opendarwin requires VESA 2.0 compliant video. Apparently vmware doesn't emulate VESA 2.0 and is not quite fully compliant which causes the framebuffer code to choke.

    I ran into a guy at WWDC who was planning to rewrite the framebuffer code to work with vmware. I've got his card around here somewhere...

    cr

  5. Re:Can somebody test it under vmware3? by Nermal6693 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't tried under VMware, but a see that this new version of OpenDarwin includes a tulip driver. I find that interesting because Virtual PC emulates a tulip card. So maybe it works under Virtual PC.

  6. Re:Comments, anyone? by commodoresloat · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's just that Darwin users are so much smarter than other PC users; they don't have time to comment on slashdot.

  7. Re:Question by cremes · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, OpenDarwin is a usable OS all by itself.

    There is no default GUI other than X and whatever window manager you decide to install. You can use fink or darwinports to install a whole bunch of different ones (AfterStep, BlackBox, twm, etc.).

    The Finder is not included. This isn't MacOS X; just the UNIX bits underneath it.

    cr