OpenDarwin 7.2.1 (which corresponds to Mac OS X 10.3.2) has been released for both PowerPC and Intel x86 architectures: complete release notes are available here.
OpenDarwin 7.2.1 Released for PPC and x86
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Is anyone running OpenDarwin on a x86 machine? I’m interested, but the install document says that IDE drives probably won’t work.
Patrick
does Darwin run Mac OS X apps???
As long as the application doesn’t utilize Aqua, Carbon, Quartz, or Cocoa.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it will, because OS X uses a proprietary user interface for its OS as far as I know. Darwin only is only OS X’ underlying backend.
In which OS I can use opendarwin kernel? Linux? BSD?
WTF?
We have Mac OS 10.3.4 with 10.3.5 on the way, and _now_ the source for the 10.3.2 kernel is released?
That’s not exactly a great publishing policy…
ehm, not linux, maybe gnu/darwin
has apple ever incorporated any of the contributions of the OSS community made to Darwin? (or technically XNU)
> We have Mac OS 10.3.4 with 10.3.5 on the way, and _now_ the
> source for the 10.3.2 kernel is released?
The OpenDarwin team is independent from Apple: Jordan Hubbard is one of the few Apple engineers which actively contributes but only in his spare time. This is a binary distribution made mainly by Felix Kronlage, a new member of the team.
Its an operating system.Like linux.You dont run it on linux and linux doesnt run on it. t’s like the difference between windows and linux.
This os does look interesting.Will have to get around to trying it soon.Looking forward as always
“Does it run Linux? Does it run on Linux? Where can I download the RPM for it? Is it GTK+? I can’t sync it with portage.”
You could test it out with a VM. Bochs for example. Because its an OS, not an application. You can’t “run an OS on Linux” because “Linux” (plus userland etc) is already an OS, which is running. Solution is to install this OS on a different partition or to use a VM to run in “on Linux”. The OS can’t run Linux because its not Linux. It has its own kernel named Darwin.
I forgot the [sarcasm] tag, sorry.
Yeah, I was a little confused when I saw this as uname -r returns 7.4.0 on my iBook. You can download the source for Darwin 7.4.0 and build it using the Darwin build scripts. It’s all on this page here:
http://darwinsource.opendarwin.org/
Why use OpenDarwin?
Does it have a GUI?
Is OpenDarwin better than any current Linux Distro or *BSD ?
What software can you run on OpenDarwin?
“Why use OpenDarwin?”
Why use Linux, why use BSD, why use _blank_? Any number reasons…Maybe someone wants to use/experiment with a microkernel/BSD.
“Does it have a GUI?”
Windows managers and GNOME/KDE on X etc., etc. It will run any of the open source GUI’s.
“Is OpenDarwin better than any current Linux Distro or *BSD ?”
It is a *BSD. The main difference is that it uses a microkernel. As for an answer to your question: Not likely. For reasons like say, lack of good hardware support on PC’s, and the fact that OS X, which is the same thing, but with more features, already comes with Macs.
“What software can you run on OpenDarwin?”
Just about anything Linux or BSD can run (i.e. FOSS)
I tried to install it on my Athlon XP but the IDE didn’t work
What a pitty.
What exactly is included? X11? Darwinports?
is it possible to .. say if you were running and older version of os X with an older version of the XNU/DARWIN kernel, to compile the latest version of the darwin kernel and replace the outdated one OS X is based on? my powerbook comes next friday so i cant test it for myself
Hmm, I hope the above comments don’t reflect the actual intelligence of the OSNews readership ;-).
Go to http://www.opendarwin.org and you can find out all about OpenDarwin. It’s basically a FreeBSD userland on top of a Mach kernel; and with a unique Apple-oriented driver architecture. So while it is a loosely Unix-like OS, it is quite unlike Linux, which is a monlithic kernel (and a mongrel GNU/SysV/BSD crossbreed API). Seems like Linux is the only OS some folks can relate to – strange. Darwin looks pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to boot on any of my x86 machines which all have IDE drives; even a machine which has run FreeBSD since 4.7 won’t boot Darwin. There’s X Windows and Windowmaker wm. I subscribed to a few of the mailing lists but they carry a fraction the volume of FreeBSD lists. I surmise from this, the Darwin hacker community is very very small and only exists because of a few motivated individuals and some support from Apple (who have to keep the appearance of open source OS alive). But the project has potential. Now if I could just install it….
This is all well and good, but why haven’t they fixed the IDE problems? Who out there doesn’t have an IDE based x86 machine?
I only have one machine with SCSI and it’s an old DEC AlphaServer.
Has anybody successfully gotten the x86 version of Darwin to work with a purely IDE-based machine? Otherwise I guess PearPC is the only chance I have of trying this OS out.
It is a *BSD. The main difference is that it uses a microkernel.
Darwin does not use a microkernel. The kernel is based on Mach 3.0 (which *was* a microkernel) and FreeBSD 5.x, and still retains everything that made Mach a microkernel, but the entire thing runs in a single addres space, has the FreeBSD bits folded in (allowing it to make direct fuction calls to the Mach bits), and is therefore a monolithic kernel.
Technically seen, XNU is not a microkernel (mainly because the BSD subsystem is in the kernel). But still it is much more microkernel than Linux or FreeBSD. So yes and no at the same time.
The difference for the user is that you don’t have to compile the drivers against the exact kernel version you’re using.
I don’t know why people are saying that it dosn’t work on IDE based machines – it certainly does on some. I’ve installed OpenDarwin 7.2.1 on a XP2000+ Athlon machine on a IDE Seagate 40Gb disk drive and it’s running nicely. I’ve even got XDarwin to work. It’s dual booting nicely with Linux Fedora Core 1 – the only gotcha I found was that the Dawrin partition needs to be marked active. On first boot you need to specify ‘rd=diskxxx’ since otherwise it won’t see it’s partition – you can change one of the bvootup parameter files after that and spcify the disk to avoid having to do that each time.
I found getting networking going a bit tricky – the existing networking docs didn’t seem to apply , in the end I added /etc/rc.local to the /etc/rc script and put commands to setup the IP address, hostname and run SSH in that. It’s a kludge but I can’t seem to find documentation on the right way to do it.
Does OpenDarwin have an installer? Does anyone actually run this on its own and not as part of OSX?
On a final note: Steve – Apple is the iPod company now. You can safely release OSX for x86 without shipwrecking the firm. This software would sell.
Apple’s primary revenues are still tied to their computer platform not the iPods. While iPods do still represent a growth oportunity, Apple can not safely decouple the OS from their hardware until such time as it becomes a footnote in their earnings page.
I’ve had Apple’s Darwin 7.0.1 installed on an AMD Athlon XP running on a Abit KR7A-Raid. The primary IDE controllers were fully functional. Unless the OpenDarwin release breaks something it should work on the two year ago generation of x86 hardware.
I didn’t use it much since the docs are very dated and I already own a Mac so didn’t see it worth the effort to turn Darwin into a usable desktop.
I had it installed on my Dell Laptop Inspiron 8200, I did notice it using a lot of CPU when idle so I removed it. What I thought was cool was right before it loaded the graphics card stuff, it flickers quickly a white screen with an apple in the middle, had to load it up like 6 times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. It would be kicking ass if they would put their window system on it, but then the would be more of a software company than a hardware company. I think it would bring competition into the market, Microsoft would start to get scared, here is a Operating system that has some of the coolest software, plus it has the office suite Microsoft did for them, and their browser, and a tight look, that allows easy themeing.
Video:
You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards.
video cards known to work:
(…)
SiS 6326
Now that’s weird, as I have that video card, and it does not seem to be VESA compliant! But then that can also be because of broken firmware in my PC, as there seems to be an updater available that could be used in case of VESA problems…
Anyways, do you really really need a VESA compliant video card? Is there no way to use the thing in text-mode or normal VGA mode?
darwin really lacks of documentation. if it boots, installing is easy but using it afterwards is not a piece of cake !
if some people have urls, i’m interested
It’s not yes and no, it’s no. OpenDarwin isn’t any more of a microkernel than Linux. There is no message passing between kernel components, and everything runs in the same address space. Windows XP is more of a microkernel than OpenDarwin!
@Anonymous: More properly the kernel is Mach 3.0 and 4.4BSD, with bits of NetBSD and FreeBSD. The userspace utilities come from FreeBSD 5.x.
There seems to be too many Darwins choices for me..
Open Darwin
GNU-Darwin:
http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/
Official Apple version Darwin:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
X on X is also a related project
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/
Yes, Julian, et al, are correct, and I withdraw my comment that Darwin is based on a “Microkernel”. Darwin is based on Mach 3.0. This is a less-than-monilithic kernel. This is in contrast to monlithic kernels you find in Linux and BSD. True Microkernels are things like L4.
I am far from convinced that true microkernels are impractical for commercial designs … I don’t believe threads are a good idea either, but that’s a whole other debate ;-). The fact is there are NO mainstream microkernel OSes today.
“The difference for the user is that you don’t have to compile the drivers against the exact kernel version you’re using.”
I’ve always wondered why with Linux you have to compile drivers for the exact version of kernel you have installed… I mean, let’s assume the kernel version changes from x.yy.zz to x.yy.z+1. What is so radical in this change that it makes binary drivers from x.yy.zz unusable? If it is only some tags and directories, can’t we have an installation program that automatically adjusts them without recompiling so the kernel would believe that they were compiled specifically for this kernel?
Can anyone explain this to me clearly?
Depends on what you call mainstream. Btw, I suppose, given the context, that you wanted to say that you are far from convinced that true microkernels are practical for commercial designs…? What about QNX, for example?