Emmanuel Dreyfus recently noted that progress has been made with NetBSD’s Mach and Darwin binary compatibility layer.
NetBSD: Mach And Darwin Binary Compatibility
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Eugenia Loli
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Why did apple not use a LINUX kernal?
Linux is licensed under a non-free licence. They would’ve been forced to release other stuff under the GPL too. It was totally up to them to release Darwin as Open Source.
Perhaps issues of stability and forkability too? Linux is Linux, or perhaps Linux with a few modifications. Creating a whole new OS out of it isn’t a Done Thing. On the other hand, forking BSDs is the normal way of doing things.
“Why did apple not use a LINUX kernal?”
Other than the problems with GPL and what Apple wanted, Apple also apparently wanted a microkernel for OS X, since that’s what they ended up using. (Note that OS X does not use a BSD kernel. It uses the MACH microkernel). Linux of course, is a monolithic kernel. (I’m sure a lot of people here remember the argument one USENES between Linus Torvalds and his former CS professor about the benefits of microkernels vs. monolithic kernels. For those who don’t, basically, Torvalds is very much against microkernels.)
USENET even…. Can’t type today.
“Note that OS X does not use a BSD kernel. It uses the MACH microkernel”
That’s plain wrong. MacOS binaries issue BSD system calls as well as Mach system calls. For instance, in MacOS X, there is no way to open a file using Mach system calls, you do this with a BSD system call.