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Darwin 8.0.1 Available
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Apple's finally released binary versions of Darwin 8.0.1 for both PowerPC and x86 (Apple ID required to download from Apple mirrors). ISO (for x86) and CDR (for PowerPC) images are available for download. This comes a few weeks after Apple posted source code for Darwin 8, which you can get from here."
How does Darwin differ from Tiger and why the hell should I care?
Darwin is the UNIX core of OS X, without any of the GUI or applications.
Not that Darwin on x86 is a speed demon, but I think you'll find the slow 'ls /' is actually just the framebuffer driver.
Is releasing Darwin just a feel-good thing for Apple, to show support for the open-source world?
Kind of. When you consider that with BSD, they don't have to release jack -- it's a pretty nice thing for them to be doing.
What do they get out of it? Free labor, to some degree. People do actually hack darwin for fun, and Apple gets to incorporate that work into Mac OS X, according the Darwin's license.
There *isn't* much reason to downgrade from Mac OS X to Darwin-only. But that doesn't mean people won't run it where they can. It's just another verson of BSD, actively hacked-on, and tailored for PPC hardware. If that excites you, go for it, if not, meh -- there's always FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, a million versions of Linux, etc, etc.
ASOTV can probably knows better. Ask him next time you his his posts.