A FreeBSD "Spork" With Touches of NeXT and OS X: NeXTBSD

There are a lot of open source operating systems out there; being open source, they lend themselves to forks, clones or near clones, and friendly offshoots. There are even services to let you customize, download, and (if you choose) bulk-install your own OS based on common components. Phoronix notes a new project called NeXTBSD that might turn more heads than most new open source OSes, in part because of the developers behind it, and in part because of the positive thoughts many people have toward the aesthetics of NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X. (And while it might be a fork of FreeBSD, the developers would rather call it a spork, instead.) NeXTBSD was announced last week by Jordan Hubbard and Kip Macy at the Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group (BAFUG). NeXTBSD / FreeBSD X is based on the FreeBSD-CURRENT kernel while adding in Mach IPC, Libdispatch, notifyd, asld, launchd, and other components derived from Apple's open-source code for OS X. The basic launchd/notifyd/asld/libdispatch stack atop their "fork" of FreeBSD is working along with other basic components of their new design. You can watch a recording of the announcement as well as a longer introduction linked from Phoronix's story.

Comments

Hmm...

[EmeraldBot]

Kind of interesting. From what I gather it's supposed to be the unstable rolling release branch of FreeBSD (-CURRENT), which presumably some Apple enhancements? Maybe the interface? I don't know, they're rather vague with what their ultimate goal is. The progressive part sounds like they intend for this to be something like Arch for Linux, but -CURRENT is not exactly a bastion of stability. It's the beta branch. Users won't want it because it's too unstable, and all the extras are going to make it unappealing for testing, I think. A neat idea, but I think this would be much better off if pulled from -STABLE or better yet, -RELEASE. THEN we'd have something quite interesting on our hands.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

The targeted usecase is FreeNAS, and previous presentations by Jordan Hubbard made clear that he want to restructure the project to better manage daemons and configuration. Don't expect any graphical display stuff, they are from the proprietary stuff from apple, the only things that can be imported are bits from Darwin. Expect at some point wayland port depending on how much upstream is deep in their little linux world, but I don't think that'll come from a iXsystems. Expect maybe some graphical stuff from the lumina project, but not a complete DE like KDE, Gnome or MacOSX (more likely a nice "lightweight" Qt desktop).

Re:Hmm...

[wkcole]

Ohhhh so its going to be systemd for BSD?

Yes and no.

Some of the legacy Unix issues that systemd is supposedly intended to address have been attacked by Apple in the tools NeXTBSD is adopting: ASL, LaunchD, GCD/LibDispatch, NotifyD, etc. Note that unlike systemd, the Darwin replacements for traditional init, cron, & syslog aren't monolithic and are relatively mature. LaunchD & ASL have been evolving for over a decade in mass-market OS releases and it is apparent to anyone using them attentively in MacOS over that time that Apple has been working to make them actual improvements for admins and developers interacting with them over the legacy tools, rather than merely replacements. They were both problematic in their earliest releases, but they both have been developed over time to the point where they no longer seem like the products of CS theoreticians who've never managed real systems.

Beyond that, I think it is safe to assert that there is MUCH more well-earned community goodwill towards Hubbard & Macy than there ever has been or ever could be for Poettering, so the social drama isn't preset for tragedy in the event that the project is unremarkable for a while.

Would love a modern NeXTstep

[jregel]

I'd love to see a desktop OS that builds on what NeXT did. I know Mac OS X is that to some degree, but I'm thinking of something more like the original NeXTstep GUI.

It's somewhat ironic that when GNUstep first started, one of the reasons why it didn't get much traction was the use of the "non-standard" Objective-C. As a result, effort was instead spent on KDE and then GNOME. If GNUstep became the standard, it could have changed Linux on the desktop as porting Mac OS X apps over would have been much easier. Of course, no-one knew that then.

Re:Would love a modern NeXTstep

[laffer1]

That's why I started MidnightBSD. I just didn't keep enough developers around after the initial push to finish it.

I've been looking at their code for a few weeks (it was in the trueos repo on a branch) and it's rather interesting. The Mach IPC layer is actually a port from code in NetBSD up to around 5.0. Then they've brought in patches for libdispatch workqueue support and a bunch of apple code.

Re:Use-case?

[Anonymous Coward]

NetCraft wanted to confirm a fresh, new BSD corpse.

adding Libdispatch, notifyd, asld, launchd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Systemd can replace all of that.

Re:launchd not as bad as systemd

[drinkypoo]

Um, ever heard about containers, cloud images, disposable VMs, instant-on embedded appliances, etc. ?

None of which require the full suite of services which cause boot to be so slow. None of which will boot faster with launchd because the limited set of services depend on one another and so have to be started serially anyhow. None of which we are talking about right now, since we're discussing a desktop OS. None of which is relevant right now, so why did you bother?

Re:Use-case?

[Eunuchswear]

systemd envy.

Re:OpenSource NeXTSTEP == Apple Darwin

[Bing Tsher E]

Apple killed Darwin. I ran it for a little while, though I prefer NetBSD. Darwin wasn't very interesting compared to an OS that has a vibrant active user/developer community.

Re:Will it include systemd?

[armanox]

No systemd - they're using Apple's launchd instead.