FreeDarwin Pre-Release 1 Released

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 16th Mar 2006 18:56 UTC, submitted by anonymous

FreeDarwin is a project started to create a BSD-like OS based on Apple Darwin. It uses the NetBSD pkgsrc system, and hopes to replace the DarwinBuild build system with a BSD like build system for the base system, as well as replace many of the Apple and GNU userland tools with BSD userland tools. The first pre-release was released today.

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Weird motivation

by kamper on Thu 16th Mar 2006 19:26 UTC

Member since:
2005-08-20

So their basic reason for existence is to create a bsd well suited to powerpc? Lovely intentions, but it seems incredibly ill-timed as there just won't be that much in the way of desktop systems around any more.

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RE: Weird motivation

by Ronald Vos on Thu 16th Mar 2006 19:45 UTC in reply to "Weird motivation"

Member since:
2005-07-06

I don't really understand it either.

I understand NetBSD on the XBox, or contiki webserver on Commodore64's, but this I don't understand.

Unless they use GNUStep+Window Maker as default in order to provide some form of compatibility of course..but that's not the stated goal of this project. The stated goal is to make a form of BSD for PPC that requires less technical expertise to install. I don't know if starting a new project from almost scratch is the right way to do that though.

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RE[2]: Weird motivation

by alexbl on Thu 16th Mar 2006 20:44 UTC in reply to "RE: Weird motivation"

Member since:
2006-03-16

Reply Permalink Score: 4

RE[3]: Weird motivation

by kamper on Thu 16th Mar 2006 23:13 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Weird motivation"

Member since:
2005-08-20

That's not the intention. The intention is to leverge a system that already exists that has excellent support for PPC hardware, and to build a clean BSD-like system on top of it. I don't want to emulate OS X, I just want something that works really great on PPC hardware that is free and a BSD.

And that's all fine and good. It just seemed to me like they were geared a bit towards desktops and I thought the market for ppc desktop machines was just in the process of disappearing. I'll admit, I don't know a whole lot about the ppc market.

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RE[4]: Weird motivation

by alexbl on Thu 16th Mar 2006 23:20 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Weird motivation"

Member since:
2006-03-16

The bit about the email kiosks in high traffic areas was just a bit of background, about why the project was started. The other BSD ppc ports are often just a little too unstable to be put into the kind of conditions I needed to put these macs into. Just like any BSD, the hope is for FreeDarwin to work great in the server world, as well as in the desktop world.

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RE[3]: Weird motivation

by Janizary on Fri 17th Mar 2006 07:44 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Weird motivation"

Member since:
2006-03-12

Use OpenBSD.

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RE[4]: Weird motivation

by alexbl on Fri 17th Mar 2006 08:12 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Weird motivation"

Member since:
2006-03-16

OpenBSD would not do X11 with higher than 8bpp, it locked up console hard, and even with X11 running at 8bpp Xorg would periodically crash without any reason.

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RE: Weird motivation

by alexbl on Thu 16th Mar 2006 20:50 UTC in reply to "Weird motivation"

Member since:
2006-03-16

It seems like it's almost a tradition to installl <insert free os here> onto old hardware you have sitting around the basement, so perhaps this is the best time to do it!

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Maybe PPC...

by fithisux on Thu 16th Mar 2006 21:39 UTC