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Usenix: Darwin Welcomed by BSD Community
An anonymous submission tells us that
MacCentral has a story about the start of the annual Usenix conference, where Apple's Darwin Open Source OS reportedly received a warm welcome as a new member of the BSD operating system family.
It would be nice to have an alternative like MacOS X for the Wintel machines. However, it is not likely for reasons like the following:
1) Apple makes money from making boxes, not software: The bulk of Apple's earnings come from the boxes it sells. Making their OS available to Wintel machines would cut into those revenues.
2) MacOS X on Wintel makes Apple compete with MS directly: Ok, they are already competitors in a way, but this will bring that competition to a different level. The Mac relies on MS Office suit to make their platform more attractive by making documents from Mac Office compatible with documents from Windose Office. They cannot afford to lose MS as a developer of their platform. At least now.
3) Maintaining two flavors of the OS is costly: Their R&D budget will pretty much double in order to maintain and develop an Intel version of their OS.
This been said, there are "rumors" that Apple is secretly continuing development of an Intel version of MacOS X Server. This is very likely since until last year there were builds of the OS made for Intel and PPC as well.
The Intel version was quietly discontinued after MS announced their support of the Mac at the famous Macworld keynote that year. I would not be surprised if MS had something to do with halting OS X Server development on Intel since it competes directly with NT Server.
Comments to this posting are welcome...
The kernel is actually Mach 3.0, a 'micro-kernel' architecture, which is also open source. BSD comes in the form of a compatibility layer on top of Mach.
The fuss is more about all of the other parts of the OS they are opening up, like HFS+ (Mac's second generation file system) and others.
no it isn't, not by a long shot. Why do you think an S/390 with half a dozen CPUs is so much faster than a top-end AlphaServer 8400? and the more recent PA-RISC jobs are very close in performance - I'd rate a K-class against the equivalent Compaq kit anyday.
However, Mach is derived from 4.2BSD.
The future is RISC. Intel knows it. What do you think MMX is, it's a coprocessor that pre-reduces multimedia instructions before they are sent to the main processor. Why dosen't the PowerPC have a MMX like coprocessor... It's RISC and ALL the instructions in are reduced. ergo it can realtime 3d model of DNA just as "easy" (notice the quotes) as it balances the federal budget, or you personal checking account.
Thus is the inherit superiority of RISC. And since it is doing less instructions than a similar CISC, it uses less power and generates less heat, even at "equivalent" processor speeds. The PPC G3 uses 1/3 the power and generates 1/3 the heat of a comperable Pentium II. And recently IBM figured out how to use copper and all the PPC 750s (G3) they make are copper-based. Copper is more conductive than aluminum which means even lower power consumption and even less heat production. Gee wouldn't it be nice to put you laptop on you lap and not get Pentium-tan???
> It's cheap, but that's -all- it has going for it.
Um, no. It has a code base that OS X could be built from: FreeBSD. It also has Windows: people are more likely to try OS X if they can dual boot into Windows when they need to--good way of converting the WinNT folks. And there is a really, really large x86 market, which means more customers.
x86 does suck, and many people would like to see it dead, but it isn't about to happen, and it would be stupid to throw away that market because you prefer Alpha's.
(BTW, following sql*kitten, I'm going to fall for the flamebait and point out that while the Alpha may be the 'fastest' (for now), it isn't the most powerful. Right up there though, and probably the most common chip in the 'fastest' catagory.)
Mach is actually a microkernel, which acts as an
abstraction layer between the hardware and the OS
kernel. In other words, for Darwin, your programs
run on top of the BSD kernel, which runs on top
of the Mach microkernel, which runs on the actual
hardware.
My Web Page
And this is exactly why I prefer the BSD style license over the GNU style license. With the BSD license, people or companies are free to do whatever they want with the code. Now, many GNU advocates will argue that evil corporate empires will come sweeping in and steal BSD-style licensed code and not give anything back. But in my opinion, what we are seeing is that companies *ARE* giving back, as in the case of Apple. Remember that the situation is sort of a "self correcting" system because companies don't want to fork a successful development project and pay a lot of people to maintain a separate proprietary version of the code unless it is absolutely necessary.
I heard that too, supposedly, NT is based on Mach, but after they tried to make it more "windows-like" it ceased to be Mach anymore... (like Like A. Skywalker--after turning to the darkside, he ceased to be A. Skywalker and became D. Vader.)
Also, Microsoft is responsible for Xenix, one of the first ports of Unix (system V) to the x86 platform.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
From http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/darwin/ contributors.html we see the following:
Carnegie-Mellon University
The Mach Microkernel, which provides the hardware abstraction layer in the Darwin kernel, was originally developed by Carnegie-Mellon University's Project Mach.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is one of three continuing BSD development efforts and is our primary reference platform for current BSD kernel development.
NetBSD and OpenBSD are used for a large portion of user-space programs and security, respectively.
"Didn't M$ invest in Apple? This doesn't bother anyone here? "
--Microsoft's investment in Apple is trivial and non-voting. It was done more to keep Apple alive (the vote of confidence from Microsoft began turning around the company, which is obviously good for Apple and also good for M$ cuz it might be an argument against the DOJ).
If MacOS X is going to be basically a unix variant with the MacOS user interface (and none of the crappy underlying old MacOS code) Will there be a port to x86?
Well, Microsoft bought their networking code from BSDi, instead of taking it directly from FreeBSD/NetBSD (was OpenBSD around then?). Lord knows why.
One of the prime reasons that Apple agreed to share patents and bundle IE with the Mac OS (despite the fact that Mac users overwhelmingly preferred Netscape) is that Microsoft had said they would stop developing Office for Macintosh.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzt
Microsoft got caught stealing Apples patents so Steve held Microsoft over the barrel for a while to get Office 97 and some money!
BTW Turner Network Television will have a movie based on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates called "Pirates of Silicon Valley" on this month. Watch for it!
What I heard is that Windows NT is actually more VMSish than anything else. The guy responsible for most of the design of NT was ex-DEC, and one of the original VMS programmers.
-lee...oh, and Microsoft didn't write Xenix, they paid SCO to do it. PS: VMS + 1 = WNT.
The GPL is the license that keeps people from forking the code. The BSD license allowed the code to fork like crazy (BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) before.
You said companies are giving back but didn't Linux and the GPL "Open Source" movement give them a push in that direction? Would they have done that without us? BSD people are always complaining about the "GPL virus" but just watch Microsoft screw up Perl with their embrace and extend. They sure will give you something back!
"How much has Apple donated to *BSD projects?"
However much it cost them to develop Darwin. I'd rather they keep donating man-hours to open source projects rather than money.
Darth Binks
How wude!
Have you ever used OS X? The client is nothing special GUI-wise. It actually looks a bit like Win3.1. The server, although decently stable due to a BSD kernel, is a hodgepodge of NeXT apps, and Mac apps on the same system, completely devoid of any graphical consistency, long the one strong point of the Mac.
OS X is a good example of how to hack stability into a system, and how to allow the world to once again enjoy the bliss of boinkout (I remember boinkout on my old NeXT, needless to say it rules), but a poor example of how to make a GUI. It ranks far behind Windows, KDE, GNOME, the old Mac, the old NeXT, ect. in that regard.
Apple already did this on the 68K archictecture -- A/UX. It was a BSD-ish OS, with lots of GNU tools available too. It had a pre-MacOS 7 style GUI. It bootstrapped out of MacOS and had preemption, memory protection, a decent filesystem -- the works. Way outperformed the MacOS servers well into the PowerPC era. Technically, way ahead of NT in that era, IMO. They should have ported A/UX to the PPC and left MacOS behind.
I'm reserving judgement on OS X; Apple has a long and ignoble history of developing innovative products and abandoning them due to marketing ineptitude, technical glitches obstinately ignored, and just plain corporate inertia. Frankly, I don't see why they're getting the buzz they are on this project. The basic OS doesn't seem to do anything special (Mach microkernel with BSD 4.4, Java).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah... 1.0 versions have these tendencies... ;u)
:u) ) and I bet there is some way to adapt them more or less...
I had a look into it and overalll it looks pretty good... But as you just said... there are a few glitches... but.. but... We got the code for most of these tools (the ones you named are fairly standard I think
As I said... this is version 1.0....
MANY software companies base their code off of
BSD-related things. If you've ever had to add
winsock to windows, it calls it "BSD Sockets"
It's nice to see open source working its magic yet somemore in the industry, and when M$ realizes that Open source is the way, then we the creators can modify windows, and possibly make it a decent os...once we remove explorer, kernel...
well hell, remove everything and leave solitare. then it'll be a good os!! hehehe
>Have you ever used OS X?
No he hasn't and neither have you.
You have used either Mac OS X Server or a beta veriosn of OS X. In either case it's unfair to judge the eventual consumer version of the OS from it's 1.0, first to market Server version, or from it's current beta.
(I think that's one BIG reason Apple hasn't trumpted OS X Server the way could/should. They know it's not pretty but it works - the year+ bewteen the rollout of X Server and the consumer version will be ALOT of beating the Unix bits with a shovel and painting them over with nice high gloss paint. I beat there won't even be a CLI access for the consumer OS when it ships - although some one will add one in about a day... 8)
I'd agree that some of your points are valid but as a server environment goes it's WAY ahead of about everything else in terms of GUI friendliness. Some people will grumble that Server OSs _shouldn't_ be friendly the same way I grumble that, "I used 8.5 inch floppies that lost data all the time. And I was _grateful_, not like you kids today with your 2gig removables...." when I'm in that mood.
Trust me Apple's painting and spackeling as fast as they can towards the roll-out. It may not be perfect when it hits the streets but it'll be alot better than OS X Server from a GUI point of view.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
Isn't the Daemon News' mascot named "Darwin"?
How much has Apple donated to *BSD projects? It hasn't given anything to OpenBSD. I suspect similar tallies for FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Hooray for free advertising.
...There's even an easter egg which lets you use the Mac GUI, if you care to. Or Win98, or even AmigaOS...
Forking the code has worked rather well with the BSD kernel though hasnt it? FreeBSD is rather portable and in several ways more powerful than the linux kernel. NetBSD is one of the most portable OSes I have ever seen, it will run on nearly everything. OpenBSD is damn secure. If the people responcible for for the various BSDes werent able to fork code, everyone would have to use the original BSD kernel. Perl isn'y going to be screwed up by Microsoft, they just are putting money into it because it beats the hell out of ASP. More people use perl because it will run on anything with an interpeter or CGI, ASP only works with NT and properly patched Apache.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
It's the same as MKLinux that use the Mach Microkernel to abstract the hardware.
Would it be possible to reboot from MKLinux to darwin and vice versa by coming back to tehe Mach level and not to totally reboot like we do today??
would it be possible to do this to do speedy soft reboot between the two or between two Linux/BSD kernel???
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Wasn't it SCO that paid royalties to MS until recentely because they were using some Xenix source code???
VMS+1= WNT
I did know this one, it reminds me of HAL+1=IBM (HAL of 2001, a space odissey of course)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
So many idle opinions, always expressed with such adolescent hostilty.
Post fewer comments, please.
btw: check out this site.. You can get refurbed NeXT equipment, though I don't recall if it comes with a full development kit..
I recall the folks at NYC's MindVox used NeXT..
MacOSX Server decently stable?
;)
Two words: CGI scripts.
I have hardcore Mac'ers here twitching apoplectically about this, particularly when I show them my CelticGreen KDE laptop..
FWIW, the changes Apple makes will get folded into Darwin, and they've got a bunch of skilled Unix kernel hackers from NeXT, so maybe it'll be good for the existing BSDs too.
>so maybe it'll be good for the existing BSDs too.
If you look at older coverage, you'll find that apple sent gaggles of bug fixes to the netbsd base they borrowed from.
So if the kernel code is open anyway (BSD), what's all the fuss about opening it?
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
Such an OS already exists -- it's called 'Mac OS X'. It is Darwin + Mac-ish/NeXT-ish GUI (or rather, Darwin is Mac OS X without the GUI components). I expected great things from it, but so far, I am not very impressed. My NetInfo database got corrupted a few days ago, and recovering it is a pain. vi does not work in single-user mode, and single-user mode terminal does not do with VT100 or XTerm emulation, so I cannot use Emacs in full-screen text mode. I am editing files with echo, cat, and sed!!!
(curses OS/X dirtily and stalks away)
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
Comparing the BSD community to the Linux community I get the impression that BSD people seem to be more mature and relaxed. How would the Linux geeks react if Apple used Linux kernel code for their OS?
I hope this is the beginning of a long and rewarding partnership between the BSD and Apple communities.
Deja-vu?
Long long ago in a galaxy far far away Steve Jobs actually did this.
It was a consistent, well designed, object oriented UI on top of a Mach microkernel with a BSD subsystem. It also came with one of the best development environments ever, and was a testament to superior design. It had cd quality sound, publishing quality graphics, built in networking, even pre-emptive multitasking. All of this in the days of MS windows 3.0. NeXT's hardware was even easy to use. One screw undoes the case, almost no internal wires, the case is cast magnesium and acts as it's own heat sink. They just dont make 'em like this anymore.
It's interesting to note that MS put them out of business by the way of compaq and dell selling ultra-cheap crapfests, and vendors being lured away by economies of scale.
It's unfortunate that Mac community has forced Apple to water down the superior technology they bought from NeXT with Mac compatibility layers instead of an incremental update of the great OS they had. NeXT really only required incremental upgrades to bring it into 2000, but Apple has spent most of it's time trying to keep Mac developers happy rather than updating the OS they bought from NeXT.
-Rich
Can you imagine what would happen if someone put a fully implemented GUI like Apple on a UNIX box (not talking about kde's mac look either). Make a *nux box as easy to use as the Macs are supposed to be. Not only would it have the stability of UNIX but it woud have the ease of use of Mac. If there was software to go along with that, software that would be able to read M$ formats correctly, it would have a chance at putting M$ out of business.
Only 'flamers' flame!
It's also good for M$ because that stock they bought is now worth 3-4 times as much.
Maybe that'll almost make up for the undisclosed sum M$ paid Apple to settle the patent disputes Apple was privately threatening to sue them over.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I think it's already been decided, except for the timing. What do you think would happen to Apple's stock price (hinges on profitability) if they ported their crown jewels to x86? They'd get HAMMERED, and then they'd be suck supporting the tired poor hardware that's so common in x86 land.
;-)
There IS a version of Mac OS X for Intel - I've seen it run and I wasted a whole week trying unsuccessfully to get it to run on spare work PC's (prior job).
I think once the hardware sales took off they didn't need OS X Server/x86... this was "plan B".
PowerPC has it all over x86 for elegance and engineering but not price. They'd be completely stupid if they did not have a migration path laid out, but first they have to win developer trust and prove they can move us onto a UNIX base and do it much more quickly than moving us off Motorola 68000's took. Once their customer base is secured they can think about opening the hardware up to competition again.
The difference between offering OS X on x86 and BeOS's move to Intel, is Apple *actually* has a chance to pull it off, especially in light of Microsoft's troubles (post-Y2k, DOJ). Apple gets to tap into the "alternative" development, since they're really just another UNIX, meanwhile Microsoft further isolates itself on the crappy NT kernel (yeah, can't wait for "Consumer NT"
I mean, obviously all the *bsd variants... and some commercial unices are bsd based. but i've heard rumors that some m$ code is bsd based too. do they belong to the family?
in other news, i'm jealous. rich got to go to usenix, and i had to stay in indiana. and it's really humid here these days... ugh.
From what I've read/heard about OS X Client that's exactly what Apple's in the process of doing. It's based on a Mach Kernel and it has a MacOS GUI with all the smiley prettiness and ease of use that entails.
We'll have to wait for betas to be released before we can see how good a job they do, but if OS X Server is any indication of the direction they're headed I think it looks very promising.
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"--Kosh
>MacOSX Server decently stable?
;)
;)
;)
>Two words: CGI scripts.
Yes, the binary of Apache that was bundled with OS X Server 1.0. How quickly Apple responds to this and fixes it will be a good test of Apple commitment to Servers and Serving in general.
That being said I'll put it up against both Linux 1.0 and NT 1.0 for a stability test.
>I have hardcore Mac'ers here twitching apoplectically about this, particularly when I show them my CelticGreen KDE laptop..
Is that a thinly disguised sexual reference/threat?
"Oh my god! Mr. Burns is coming onto me!"
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I've been using BeOS since R4 was released, and I haven't wandered across it...perhaps I'm not looking in the right places ;-)
Ah well, you probably belong to the usual suspects who also post to comp.sys.next.advocacy incessantly whining about Apple and the demise of the YellowBox/Objective C. Get it through your thick skull that we don't care about your endless tirades!
It's interesting how Linux has devolved into a rallying place for bitter people with an axe to grind. First it appealed to the Anti-Microsoft clique, now they get the Anti-Apple people too. What a lovely crowd.
Has come to the conclusion that with various $0 OSes out there, its a race to the bottom ($0) for ALL OSes in price.
He also knows that the Mac API has no OpenSource Clones, unlike the NeXTSTEP->OpenSTEP->YellowBox->Coda(?) API.
(Think www.openstep.org)
So he's moving the OpenSTEP API to Java, where there is no clones.
IF Apple wants to swim with the sharks, they can make X86 MacAPI and finish development on NeXTSTEP->OpenSTEP->RhapsodyDR1 to create a X86 Mac-esque environment. But right now, Apple doesn't have to work AS HARD to compete with X86 vendors.
And, face it. X86 vendors have it easy, compaired to Apple. Apple has to design hardware AND software. Most X86 vendors buy boards/chipsets from Intel (glue and go) and do NO OS work (Windows, GNU/Linux, *BSD, Pick, THEOS, Be, Thoughrobred, SCO, Solaris, etc ad nausium)
Plus most X86 vendors don't walk into Intel and say "It'll be great when we arn't using your chips in 2 years" like Cartoon Maker Steve Jobs did at Motorola. Way to be a professional, mature CEO Steve!
BeOS may not use unix code, but it is mostly posix compliant and Be is shooting for full compliance in r5. While Mac's may have MacOS X as their next generation consumer OS (the client), the PC platform has BeOS which has all the basic features of good unices like smp, pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, gnu tools (almost if not all of them). Right now on a technological scale Windows can only compete with BeOS in 3d acceleration because BeOS doesn't support it yet. However VERY soon when r4.5 comes out there will be 3d acceleration for those of us who took the plunge to install the flying batmobile (BeOS).
---Got Coffee?---
Darwin is a *very* portable system so eventually we should see it on Sparc and Alpha too. [...] Then Apple can sell the MacOS X GUI on top... and there will be a REAL MS killer ;).
Apple's revenues come almost exclusively from hardware, not software. That means Apple's software R&D comes from hardware. That means every times they can sell the Mac OS (X or otherwise) for less than the minimum $500 premium they see from a hardware sale, they're pissing away money.
Yes, as long as one doesn't post any math one can make the claim that if they sold gazillions of seats, they could make up whatever revenues they would have lost through hardware sales. Well, even discounting the far greater costs of supporting hardware the company didn't build, it's such a wildly dangerous gamble that Apple would be looking at a shareholder lawsuit removing its executive officers before anybody could even say, "I've hacked in a replacement for the Start Bar."
It will simply never happen. The economics are prohibitive.
bumppo
It's funny that you mention the Office thing. One of the prime reasons that Apple agreed to share patents and bundle IE with the Mac OS (despite the fact that Mac users overwhelmingly preferred Netscape) is that Microsoft had said they would stop developing Office for Macintosh. This would have killed Apple: while no one had anything against Wingz and Nisus Writer, it's tough to get into an office environment without compatible apps. To prevent this, Apple got in talks with Microsoft, and, well, you can see what happened. Microsoft got IE on the desktop, and a seat on the board, and Apple got cash and MS Office.
Mainly I'd like to question point 3 --
maintaining multiple flavors of the OS
is only costly at certain levels, i.e.
parts of the kernel, compiler, and drivers. A portion of
the kernel and almost the entire rest of the OS,
at least on Unixlike systems and several other
OS's (like NT, BeOS, etc) tends to be portable.
So while the R&D budget may be somewhat higher, it
should be a far cry from being double that of
being single-platform. A good guess might be
that it'd be an additional 10% of work..
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
IIRC, you have to "setenv TERM vt220" in single-user mode, then vi will work with NetBSD. Did you try this in OS X?
I'd confirm this, but I was running NetBSD/mac68k on a Jaz cartridge and the filesystem got totally horked... so I have to rely on memory.
-- Dirt Road
Sorry, you talking bullshit. Alpha is 'the fastest slab of silicon money can buy'. Lets not talk about multiple chips becuse if you put enough x86 chips together you can have the fastest machine. On a single chip you will not find one faster Alpha 21264. It is even quoted as being the fastest in the 'Guiness Book of Records'. I can't remember web addresss but look it up and you'll find I'm correct. Also the original post was talking about chips not any particular Machine!
Didn't M$ invest in Apple? This doesn't bother anyone here?
The lawsuit against Microsoft points in this general direction. People from IBM have stated that Microsoft forced them to keep OS/2 development/marketing low profile or Microsoft would charge them very high prices for Windows-licenses. Which ofcourse would make it very difficult for IBM to sell their PCs in the mainstream business market.
This might have been the same with Apple: "Don't compete with NT or no Office for you"
I think OS X for Intel might still happen, maybe as Darwin for Intel when Apple decides to open up more of its source. With a lot of open BSD's out there for Intel someone will get it into his/her head to put some Intel hw support in there.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
x86 sux...I'd rather not perpetuate the intellectual monopoly x86 has. It's cheap, but that's -all- it has going for it.
ARM is cheap, fast, and easy on power consumption. Alpha is the fastest slab of silicon money can buy. You can buy generic system boards for -both- architectures. We already have a low-end workstation/PC platform for MacOS X: the Macintosh.
Darth Binks
Meesa gonna bring you to da darkside, yah!