OpenDarwin.org Releases Darwin With Fixes 151
An anonymous reader writes "OpenDarwin released a 'fixed' version of the Darwin 6.0.2 ISO (the OpenDarwin-20030213 Binary Release) for both x86 and PPC. It is currently installing, so I can't tell you all what works now, etc. Hopefully I can use my old PC box as a server with this..." Apparently, it is mostly a recompile, without local OpenDarwin modifications. It doesn't include perl, pending integration of perl 5.8 ... could this mean Mac OS X will finally have a current perl in the next Mac OS X release?
Perl (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No it doesn't. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you look at recent apple mices, there is no button to speak of: the whole shell acts as a button.
The change had a funny effect: my mother did not notice anything missing, she just clicked. While some geeks I know where quite startled and tried to find the button.
Re:No it doesn't. (Score:3, Interesting)
there is some reasoning behind having just a single mouse button. To us computer literate who've gotten used to being able to right click it may seem very limiting but I believe the original reason (and why Apple still has only one mouse button) was that having a second one that is only of limited use is confusing to new users. I can verify this, having teached senior citizens to use a computer. "What's the second mouse button for?" is a frequent question to which I cannot really give an answer because it has none whatsoever at their level of usage. Another problem is that sometimes they tend to click it accidentally. I'm not saying having a second mouse button is a bad idea (I can't since I use it and the wheel daily) but there are reasons to not have it on a beginner's mouse.
BTW, nother thing that is difficult for senior citizens sometimes is getting double-clicks right and understanding why one has to doubleclick the icons while just a single click is enough everywhere else. What's the reason we have those again? Even KDE seems to have finally decided against defaulting to single-click icons in 3.1 at least on my Mandrake 9.1 beta. A shame, really.
Finally, while I've been forced to teach Windows so far, I feel that GNOME 2 would be a lot easier for beginners. There are all kinds of strange features in the Windows desktop. With GNOME I would not have to teach about My Computer and devices that it contains and there is just one logical place to save the user's files into: ~. In addition, there's all sorts of weird behaviour on the Windows desktop that has no real reason to exist (why does the start menu have to hide part of the contents of a folder if it's a little longer?). GNOME is definitely easier to use. My only wish would be is that GNOME would default to having the user's home directory as the desktop and make it function correctly in every case. Someone wrote an essay about it and I can easily see the beauty. In a way, the GUI's "home" is the desktop so why can't the two be the same?
Current (6.4) Darwin kernel ? (Score:4, Interesting)
uname -a
Darwin computername.local. 6.4 Darwin Kernel Version 6.4: Wed Jan 29 18:50:42 PST 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.26.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
However, the darwin kernel you download from Apple is only version 6.0. Does anyone know where to fetch the latest kernel ?
Re:Use PC as a server? (Score:1, Interesting)
Right, but a tiny shred of security through obscurity never hurts. I would bet that clueless script kiddiez trying out their latest h4cker software wouldn't be as successful against yet another unix flavor (system calls won't work exactly the same under Darwin as they do under the other *bsds). Kiddiez probably won't bother learning darwin internals just to crack
Re:Darwin x86 or BSD??? (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary reason for releasing Open Darwin on x86 is as a check for cross-platform coding. The reason it is public at all, is that it generates publicity with the
It is not very stable and you would gain no advantages in networking between x86 and Macs by using OpenDarwin, since there is NO gui whatsoever.
Re:Darwin x86 or BSD??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to mention the fear it inspires in Motorola. I'm sure this goes a long way toward helping keep PPC prices low (for Apple) and pushing PPC performance higher.
How about using Hexley for Darwin's topic icon? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Use PC as a server? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd rather suggest Plan 9.
now if we could only get seemail and vwhois [bell-labs.com] on darwin we'd be set!