The Darwin team announced the availability of the source code for Darwin 6.7 and Darwin 6.8. These sources correspond to Mac OS X 10.2.7 (for G5s) and Mac OS X 10.2.8 (for G3/G4s), respectively.
Apple Releases Darwin 6.7 and 6.8
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Darwin 7.0 now with GNU software.
Seriously, I like BSD… But I need more flexable commandline tools (buil in please).
darwin get you? Is it apples version of X? More info would be appreciated.
thnx in advance
It’s my understanding that Darwin is the Mach/BSD combo that is the core of OSX.
And it runs on x86 too.
darwin is the unix core / unix system which is used to build MacOS X upon. it’s a BSD like for example Free BSD, just lackin all the Aqua GUI Stuff (Aqua, Carbon, Cocoa, Quicktime, etc). Here’s some nice simple info about the subject:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/
However, i’d like to know if it – since Darwin is Open Source – might be (just for the record) possible to update my 10.2.8 BSD Core to the future Panther 10.3 BSD Core by installing Darwin – keeping the Jaguar GUI elemts, just harnessing the new Panther BSD / FreeBSD features
So – can you just run Darwin without anything else (e.g. on x86)
Basically what I am asking is – is Darwin the OS?
yes. it’s possible to just run darwin – much like one would run any kind of bsd / unix system. it’ll start in commandline and one could install some kind of XFree in order to have a nice GUI interface (kde or fluxbor or whatnot).
so it’d run on X86 too, though i heard that it’s a bit picky considering the supported hardware…
Well, it depends on what you consider the OS.
If you’re talking about what gets the computer up and running and what the programs have to be compatable with, then, yes.
But if you’re thinking about what OSX looks and behaves like, no.
OS X = Darwin+Apple’s proprietary Windowing and whathave you.
Darwin = the rudiments of what you need to get the computer to do something.
Or to make another analogy, remember Windows 3.1? You had to have DOS installed before you could run Windows.
Darwin is the DOS of OS X.
I installed Darwin on an old p200 box a month ago just to have a look.
Even though the install guide says…
“Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.
Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better.”
… the ancient apricot piix mobo and just plain DMA drives seemed to work fine.
The install, and automatic partitioning, boot loader etc went fine, but many problems after it booted.
I kept getting something like “VT100 unknown terminal” when I ran VI, and attempting to edit files like termcap using only cat and grep is not much fun.
There is virtually no hardware support for anything, so no network, and only vesa display works. X is included, and started fine, though I could not get mouse or keyboard working in it. It looked to be much better on the Mac side, with a whole host of drivers.
Still, it’s funny to see it running, and interesting to have a wander around the file system, which, to my inexperienced eyes is very bizzare.
For what it’s worth, I knew a guy who programmed for Darwin. He said it’s a Mach kernel. The BSD part is just a thin interface layer to give it interoperability with GNU.
The guts are not BSD.
yea, its what i like to call a bastard os, because its got many parents… its mainly the nextstep kernel, which is comprised of mach, qnx, & some of all the bsds (free, net, and open)…
so yea, it aint all freebsd…
Answer: Yes.
Apple’s proprietary components run on top of Darwin to give you Mac OS X. Everyone who is running Mac OS X is actually running Darwin with a tonne of extras provided by Apple. You could say that Mac OS X was a “Darwin distro” from Apple. Not quite the same as Linux (since that is only a kernel), but similar enough that you should get the idea.
Can Darwin be installed on an x86 and have KDE on it? Has anyone tried this?
>Can Darwin be installed on an x86 and have KDE on it? Has anyone tried this?
Of course it can, there’s a bianry avaiable for x86, but it’s lack of hardware support makes it quite unusable!
Much better if you try with FreeBSD!!!
http://darwinos.org/
There’s a good FAQ there. For the lazy:
<snip>
Q. How does Darwin relate to Mac OS X?
A. Darwin is the core of Mac OS X. All software built for Darwin should be able to run unmodified on Mac OS X. However, because Darwin by itself does not encompass all of the features of Mac OS X, software that depends on higher-level features of Mac OS X (such as the Cocoa and Carbon toolkits) will not run on a stand-alone Darwin system.
<snip>
Q. Where does Darwin fit into the BSD family?
A. The purpose of Darwin is to provide the core system software for Mac OS X. It is not designed to be an alternative to other excellent BSD options such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Darwin is simply BSD tweaked in ways we think will help Apple deliver the next great version of the Mac OS. We should note, however, that apart from a few architectural differences (such as our use of the Mach kernel), we try to keep Darwin as compatible as possible with FreeBSD (our BSD reference platform).
</snip>