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Nokia N900 Linux Smartphone Running OS X
Rovaani writes "There is a video floating around of a Nokia N900 smartphone running the full desktop Mac OS X 10.3. From the author, Tomi Nikkanen: 'I believe this makes the N900 the first smartphone ever to run a full version of Mac OS X (at any speed, slow or otherwise). As you can see from the heavily edited video, it took almost 2 hours to reach the "About my Mac..." window. Keep your eye on the time display as that will give you an impression of just how uselessly slow it is.'"
What's with the "uselessly slow" commentary. The guy did it just to prove it could be done, which is pretty cool. I don't think he ever made any assertion that it would be a usable OS alternative for the N900...
Maybe uselessly slow, yes, but this is the kind of tinkering that any device should allow if it is to be called a computer.
There's a direct link to a free information society from these kinds of experiments -- something that is very much endangered by the current trend towards unmodifiable devices and appifization.
I find it somewhat ironic that iPhone's competitor can run Apple's OS and iPhone/iPad most probably will never be able to run Mac OS.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Come on, if your going to do worthless things why not go for the whole enchilada?
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
Do you not see the difference between Mac OS running under emulation and Mac OS running natively?
I think the processor architecture is also being emulated (notice the "pearpc" bit at the top of the screen).
OsX native to the Arm architecture would probably be an order of magnitude or more faster.
Now if I could just get Windows Vista booting on my TI-82!
That ghetto netbook probably isn't an ARM processor emulating a PowerPC.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I hate to sound like the eternal nuthugger, but I'm having so much fun with my N900. Just threw on the cifs-mounting stuff, and that combined (alternated, really) with sshfs means I can take my entire music collection wherever I go. 1.5TB, ripped to flac on a server in my basement, so why would I want to have to choose what albums I take with me to the gym or work or wherever? Just mount the thing and play. Plus, there's an FM transmitter built-in, so I can just plunk it down next to (~15 feet) a radio, and fire it up.
:)
The "it's so slow" comments are kind of silly. This is obviously a POC, and a pretty nice one. Any phone that can run Asterisk, Apache, nmap and OSX is cool in my book.
Haida Manga
OsX native to the Arm architecture would probably be an order of magnitude or more faster Just wonder, only 12 minutes to "About this Mac"... sweet!
My photography
. . . now get *that* running on your Nokia N900 . . . I see your enchilada and raise you a chimichanga . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Though this isn't directly related to running OSX on the n900, I just wanted to add that.. I'm not surprised.
A while back I posted a story that was rejected, asking if any fellow /.'ers had any experience with the n900 from a Unix admin's perspective. To me it seemed like a dream-come-true device: high-res screen, fast CPU, lots of ram... and most importantly, running Debian.
I had to find out, so I bought one about 3 weeks ago. It really, truly is a dream-come-true device.
I swear I'm not affiliated with Nokia in any way; I'm a Unix admin for a largish web firm. But if anyone else is wondering, yes it runs a Debian-derived OS. Yes, you can SSH into it as root, over 3G/GPRS, even if the phone is "off." Yes, crond works. Yes it runs native X11 and you can run your X11 apps (ie. directory manager, xterms, vncviewer, pidgin, openoffice/koffice, etc). Yes it's stable. The keyboard is usable, the UI is quick, and task switching is a breeze. The filesystem layout is mostly sensible, and you can apt-get dist-upgrade to get updates directly from Nokia (and other repositories)!
That blew me away when I first saw it so let me say it again: Nokia is using apt to send updates OTA to the phone! Proper version tagging and dependency management, on a phone!
It doesn't suspend like the crappy Zaurus did... when you hit the power switch, it shuts off the screen and (I believe) encourages the processor to drop to a very slow cycle rate (unless something heavy is running). So your apps continue to run. Battery life is ~16-24h with a constant GSM data/wifi connection, so you must charge every night. But it's so worth it.
Everything about it is done the way this 15-year Linux/Solaris admin thinks it should be done.
So, back (slightly) on-topic.. it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got OSX to boot under an emulator. The n900 is quite literally a pocket Debian workstation that happens to have a GSM radio onboard.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Yes it does.
Essentially, the iPhone runs a scaled down version of MacOS X optimized for a handheld device -- although Steve Jobs is insistent that it runs "real OS X" (Specifically, crashlogs indicate that the original iPhone ran "OS X 1.0" build number 1A543a.) -- but no iPhone models can run MacOS X applications regardless. On March 17, 2009, upon unveiling a developer's preview of the third version of the operating system, Apple started referring to it as the "iPhone OS".
http://www.everyipod.com/iphone-faq/iphone-runs-os-x-not-macos-x-cannot-run-macos-x-applications-skype-or-ipod-games.html
If you jailbreak an iPhone, you can open a terminal window running bash. If you type "uname -a" you'll see that iPhones run Darwin (the actual OS behind OS X), just like Macintoshes.
> Each of those versions would require separate FCC approval.
Not quote. There's no technical reason why a single phone approved by the FCC couldn't be used on both Sprint and Verizon, or on AT&T and T-Mobile... it's mainly the carriers' fault.
Basically, the FCC requires any phone with unique hardware and radio firmware to be tested & approved. Sprint won't allow its customers to use Verizon-branded phones, and Verizon won't sell phones that aren't built to be "Uniquely Verizon". Thus, it would almost be beyond pointless for a manufacturer to pay to get FCC approval for a generic CDMA phone, because Sprint wouldn't allow it to be used, and Verizon wouldn't buy a million of them to resell to its customers.
The AT&T/T-Mobile situation is a little blurrier. It appears that right now, AT&T has a company policy of refusing to sell phones capable of 1700/2100 UMTS, and T-Mobile has a company policy of refusing to sell phones capable of 850MHz UMTS. Neither company will actually stop a customer from buying one himself and sticking the SIM card into it, but the market (right now) for unsubsidized handsets in the US is somewhere between "barely relevant" and "all but nonexistent". As a practical matter, there are exactly two American customers that manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Nokia, and Motorola care about: AT&T and T-Mobile.
Need more proof of corporate policy dictating handset frequency availability? Watch the FCC submissions logs. I can almost guarantee that there will be two distinct versions of the iPhone 4 submitted to the FCC -- one that does 850MHz and 1900/2100 UMTS, and one that does 1700/2100 and 1900/2100. What's really sad is that they'll both probably have the same hardware, and differ only in their radio firmware. It'll suck for everyone... Europeans will have to decide whether they'd rather roam on AT&T or T-Mobile when they visit the US, and American iPhones will effectively be locked to AT&T or T-Mobile -- at least, for anyone buying one to use in the US with 3G data.
I agree. The N900 is pretty much the ideal 'phone for the Slashdot crowd. I was pretty surprised that there was not more commentary on the N900 here - it is more open than the Nexus One or the Milestone, with more features than you can shake a stick at.
Whoa! I beg to differ. Open an ssh shell to it. The underlying system is Darwin. It's the same set of core components and kernel that OSX is built from. I've done it and compiled a web server on it, complete with PHP and SSL. It's a base OSX system (think what yellow dog linux is to linux) which you can add any unix software you want to (including GCC). It's just slimmed down. From command line the functionality is identical. The system running on my phone is fully POSIX and UNIX compliant out of the box.
xxxxxxx-iPhone:~ root# uname -a . .. .fseventsd /var/mobile
Darwin xxxxxxx-iPhone 10.0.0d3 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0d3: Fri Sep 25 23:35:35 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1357.5.30~3/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8920X iPhone2,1 arm N88AP Darwin
xxxxxxx-iPhone:/ root# ls -la
total 42
drwxrwxr-t 15 root admin 748 Jan 31 11:46
drwxrwxr-t 15 root admin 748 Jan 31 11:46
drwx------ 2 _unknown _unknown 238 Sep 27 18:34
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 30 Oct 19 12:04 Applications
drwxrwxr-x 2 root admin 68 Sep 26 06:40 Developer
drwxrwxr-x 14 root admin 680 Nov 2 15:03 Library
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Sep 26 04:50 System
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Jan 31 11:46 User ->
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1972 Nov 2 16:26 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 boot
drwxrwxr-t 2 root admin 68 Sep 26 02:04 cores
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 1310 Jan 31 11:46 dev
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 27 18:36 etc -> private/etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Oct 19 11:53 private
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1530 Nov 2 16:26 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 15 Sep 27 18:36 tmp -> private/var/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 306 Oct 19 12:04 usr
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 27 18:36 var -> private/var
xxxxxxx=myname
---about darwin---
Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects.
Darwin forms the core set of components upon which Mac OS X, Apple TV, and iPhone OS are based. It is compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3) and POSIX UNIX applications and utilities.[2][3]
---end about darwin---
And before you ask, yes I changed the root password when I installed sshd so my phone won't get h4X0red. I did it the day I installed it, not when the "sploit" was released.
As well the kernel version is still stamped 2.1 even though I'm on version 3.1.2. Get on the stick Apple!
To use your own analogy, it's still a chevy drive train, but with a 4 cylinder engine and a different body. It's just a different processor with less memory so you can't fit the entirety of OSX on it, and it's got a different UI.
It has chevy pistons, chevy crank, chevy piston rings, water pump, crank, bearings, and even has AC Delco spark plugs. You also drive it from point A to point B, it has a gas pedal, brake, transmission control and steering wheel, so the most important functionality is there.
The interface is different but it's still a Darwin unix system under the hood, same as OSX. Can it go as fast as a Mac? No. Duh? It fits in the palm of your hand.
You could, given enough hardware resources, compile the mac interface on this OSX but I don't think the mac interface supports the screen resolution comfortably and the hardware requirements are a bit steep. They designed a smartphone interface purpose built to do what the iPhone does and run fast on ARM hardware.
However, the GUI does not equal the operating system ;-)
It's just a GUI. You are right that the _GUI_ functionality is not close to the same. Peel the GUI off and they are nearly i
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
The N900 may jeopardize your marriage.
--
Sent from my Nokia N900