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Apple Businesses Operating Systems BSD

Apple to Include BSD in WWDC 168

Posted by michael from the taste-of-the-fruit-of-the-tree-that-is-knowledge dept.
Chris Coleman writes "Apple has just announced their annual World Wide Developer Conference to be held May 21 - 25, 2001. If you find yourself wondering why you should attend, let me see if I can help. In addition to the regular Mac OS application development, this year Apple has added conference tracks for BSD UNIX and Darwin."
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Apple to Include BSD in WWDC More

Apple to Include BSD in WWDC

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  • Re:Opening BSD Conference, 9AM, May 21 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How did you guys integrate PDF... You have questions about PDF? You can DOWNLOAD [adobe.com] the spec for free. Apple is trying to please a lot of people. They won't please everyone... certainly not hippydippy GNU purists who don't grasp the point of BSD-style open source licenses. And the Law of Averages states that no Apple employee who actually uses the Frameworks and function calls every day is going to be slick and articulate enough to field questions from the army of developers down to the level of detail that you seem to want. RTFM. You might have to learn something new, God forbid.

  • Re:Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Go to http://forums.macnn.com
    It is a very good resource of OSX related topics.

    The biggest difference in a shell prompt is the directory structure.

    I believe there are some differences in the access of frameworks (libraries/dll + all associated files).

    Every problem (practical and unix design issue) I had with unix was fixed in OSX.

    -Tim

  • World wide? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You have to be pretty sick to call "worldwide" a conference to be held at the San Jose Convention Center. I'm sorry but something isn't worldwide if it doesn't span at least 3 continents, like WWII and the WWW.
  • if the MacOS is the shire then Steve must be frodo, for he has returned to the shire at its time of need and has rebilt it

    that would make Avie == Sam I think...

    interesting
  • I would hazard to guess that the real true wizard is The Woz :)

    BUT, its been so long since I did the entire Tolkien thing (must do it again, after I do the Jordan thing again ;)) that I can't remember the right guy :)

    Probably someone from Silmarillion, as Gandalf altho great, is far more active than The Woz :)


    ---
    Live Long & Prosper \\//_
    CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
  • ...which BSD (and Solaris and VMS yadda, yadda) solved a long time ago.

    Not solaris - solaris (i.e SunOS 5+ - the great BSD->SVR4 switchover) is younger than Linux. At least I'm pretty sure I remember using Linux 0.99p12 at college while the techs were running a single test solaris machine.
  • Steve Wozniak == Tom Bombadil
  • Very compatible.

    On an early-ish OS-X beta that a guy at work had, we installed sharity-light (an early version of smbfs) straight from the FreeBSD ports tree with one modification: I had to add a -DFreeBSD (or something like that) to the CFLAGS, to make the build take the right path through the #ifdef maze. Obviously the open-packages arrangement will make the source patches do the right thing all by themselves.

    But: with that one change, the whole thing built and installed and ran without a hitch. That, to me, is a pretty impressive level of compatability.
  • I'd like to hear from any of the developers working on OSX. How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X?
    I haven't tried building very many additional packages, since most every useful GNU package was already installed. ssh required a small paatch to compile on previous Developer Releases, but is now included with the installation. Most things should compile with no problem, unless they depend on X libraries or something of that sort. I'd also like to point out that the developer tools available from Apple are top notch. ProjectBuilder+Cocoa+Java is probably the cleanest development environment I have ever used. Are there any standard package managers included by default?
    Apple has included their own package manager with OS X, but I almost never use it. tar and gzip are there, so that serves most of my needs. Stuffit Expander, the dominant traditional Mac OS compression utility is also included. Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
    Yes, make, cc, gdb and a host of others are all there, and they work just like they do on other platforms. Native developer tools are a much better interface to these, however. (See above) Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?
    OS X doesn't give you a whole lot of options for tweaking the environment at this time. There are whispers that theme support is built in, and perhaps someone will figure out how to exploit it after the release. A plethora of custom icons are available at sites such as Xicons [xicons.com], and of course the desktop image can be changed. Another rumour is that the toolbar in the Finder will be able to be customized by the user. You don't have to spend any time customizing your environment, save adding a user account for yourself. Apple has produced a quality user environment here. As for libraries, on OS X they are called "Frameworks" and a rich set of standard ones come with the installation. Developers are free to create their own custom Frameworks and ship them with their application. I have downloaded a couple of developer Frameworks from the OmniGroup [omnigroup.com], but they are not needed for a normal user. What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
    The default shell on OS X is tcsh. I don't know about FreeBSD, but I know that OpenBSD also uses tcsh as the default. The main annoyance is the strange directory structure. Much of the standard structure is preserved, however, it is just hidden from the user. For example, in the Finder, I see this as my root directory:
    Applications/
    Developer/
    Library/
    System/
    Users/
     And when in the shell, this is what I get:
    Applications/
    Desktop DB
    Desktop DF
    Desktop Folder/
    Developer/
    Icon?
    Library/
    Network/
    System/
    TheFindByContentFolder/
    TheVolumeSettingsFolder/
    Trash/
    Users/
    bin/
    cores/ -> private/cores/
    dev/
    etc/ -> private/etc/
    mach -> /mach.sym
    mach.sym
    mach_kernel
    private/
    sbin/
    tmp/ -> private/tmp/
    usr/
    var/ -> private/var/

    You often find files and directories with spaces or other strange characters in their name, which can make navigating on the command line hard sometimes, but tcsh's tab-completion solves this problem.

    All clear, wail the sirens!

  • hilarious! certainly not a troll.
  • I'll bite.. Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?

    I guess it depends on when "open firmware" does something that the current market doesn't need. I don't have a problem booting PCs into Linux, BSDs, Win2k, and so on. Tell me what I get that's "better" with OpenFirmware? I'd love to see a meaningful setup (tftp/ftp, telnet, disk formatting/partitioning, and some kind of disk imaging client) firmware, but something like that is hard to work in an environment as heterogenous as PCs.

    [and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.]

    It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.

    I'd argue that they've made it worse through some UI changes that make it act much differently, like the scroll bar gizmos. Then there's stuff like Quicktime where UI common sense gave in to the "skin" fad. And there's still too many modal dialogs, which I guess is fine in a non-SMP OS.

    No it's not. People have been using NT for years. 2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing /new/, just NT for the masses.

    Comparing NT3.51, 4.0 and 2k and calling them the "same" is really stretching the truth. I'd say that each was an improvment on its predecessor, albeit the biggest jump was 3.51-4.0. ADS is loads different than the PDC/BDC domain model, although from a workstation perspective the Win2k improvements were primarily in hardware handling (USB, etc).
  • Agreed. Compared to what was available on x86 circa the IIcx w/7.0 was amazing and orders of magnitude better.

    The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really. The core OS isn't any better than it was nearly 10 years ago and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.

    Geeks may complain about Windows, but Windows2K is really fundamentally different and an improvement over the Windows MS sold at the same time Apple sold the IIcx.
  • Thanks for the reminder about Glaurung.

    Could have all the Linux/BSD variants as the Silmarils....
  • Dunno about the odious business practices, but AFAIK the original Cray and Wang are no longer in business.

    Neither, to me seem to have the 'really bad' ambiance a Morgoth type character requires. Even BillG wouldn't qualify for a badass of this magnitude...

    You'd also need some more bad guys/gals
    e.g
    Ungoliant (ancestor of Shelob)

    the big bad dragon in The Silmarilion (forgot his name, ancestor of all dragons)

    Smaug
  • I've wanted to pick up a cheap copy of the
    last version of A/UX (3.0) for a while -- after all, I've got an SE 30 laying around with not much to do. Any idea where I'd do that? Ebay doesn't seem to have anything...

    --
  • I'm a little confused as to why this is being seen as a "new thing" for WWDC 2001 by you guys. Apple has had sessions at WWDC dealing with Darwin and the BSD core of MacOS X since they announced the Darwin strategy. So, this isn't really news...

    That's not to say that this isn't significant for the BSD world though. WWDC is the main developer event for the Darwin project, more people will see Darwin and the other BSD bits of MacOS X at WWDC than at any other time in the year. Through MacOS X, Darwin and BSD are going to be "brought to the masses" like no BSD distribution has ever been before. This could be a very big deal, I think it would be really cool if more people from the traditional BSD and Linux communities came to WWDC and mingled with the the budding MacOS X developers.

    There is potential for a powerful force to grow here...
  • yeah... i was sitting behind you and Mr. Hubbard last year. Your demoes rocked over the Quicktime ones, especially the surprise one you had lined up for us. :)

    Darn Slashbotters... never look past the 3rd post in a thread...

    I hope I can find a way to WWDC this year, I've been lucky enough to go the past 3 years, but my "Student" status is fading away... and $US1500 is hard to swallow even with a good job.
  • On the other hand there is nothing stopping anyone from porting the BSD package manager to MacOS X, though at the same time I feel most people developing for MacOS X will tend to use what's already available. Although MacOS X is not X, there are X programs that are now being ported now that the XonX project is allowing X applications to run on top of Aqua ( the MacOS X user interface ).
  • even on a machine with 96MB of RAM

    How well would a iMac rev B (233MHz) with 96Megs of RAM perform, in your opinion? sluggish but usable? ridiculous?

    For reference, I currently have MacOS 9 on it and find the response times pretty good (...websurfing with IE5 and ~4 windows open, mail, some photoshop).

    I ask this because I really want to try out OSX but the above is the only piece of Mac hardware at my disposal...
  • The number of installed machines of HP/UX and Solaris is still quite high.

    There is a problem with HP-UX installations: it doesn't scale really well downards (i.e. workstations). If you pick the popular HP 712 100 with 128Mb RAM you'll find it is completely unusable with HP-UX 11. With HP-UX 10.20 it is comparable with an old Pentium 133 (or worse). Emacs on it is quite slow.

    Things get better on an HP B 180, which is comparable to a not-so-cutting-edge PC (now IIRC a B is the entry level), but it costs as a small car. Still, a x86 with FreeBSD/Linux/whatever feels definitively better.

    I suspect (but I don't have numbers) that a large base of HP-UX systems run on 712 and B 180 workstations in telco companies (and obviously also companies developing software for telco operators).

    The fact that HP is giving some help with the PA-RISC port of Linux (still in early stages) should lead to interesting considerations. I believe that HP is trying to focus only on big/medium iron (i.e. servers), while leaving its customers with a viable option (PA-RISC Linux) for workstations.

    I also believe the same thing is happening with Solaris: there are several old Sparc workstations out there that can be brought to a new life using Sparc Linux.

    That said, older Sparc and PA-RISC workstations could be an interesting niche for free unices to fill in, since they may help companies to earn more from their former investments in (pricy!) hardware. And once they are on the workstations, they can slowly crawl also to the servers.

    So: after OS/X is "finished", a port of OS/X (the whole OS/X, not just Darwin) to Sparc and PA-RISC for low-end workstations could be interesting for Apple: it could start making inroads to the server market. Until the only hardware capable of running OS/X (again, the whole OS/X, not just the kernel and the *NIX utlities) is the one provided by Apple, the probabilities for OS/X to penetrate the server area (provided that Apple is interested at all) are smaller.

    A port for not-so-popular architectures like Sparc or PA-RISC doesn't necessarily mean Apple cutting itself out of market: just look at the x86 port of Solaris: it helped people to buy the hardware where Solaris runs best.

  • I have spent mush time analysing this scenario. You see, Apple is ambitious like any company - all corporations are natural monopolists. The only thing that is preventing MS's total domination, on the other hand, is Linux and the Open Source way.
    ...
    With the incredible combination of the rock steady core of BSD and the supple, supremely svelte GUI that is distinctive of Apples desktops, and the sublimation of Microsoft into the .NET black hole, I see no reason why Apple should not emerge as a major threat to the Linux/MS hegemony over the next 10 years.

    Wow. That's like... wow. Do you have a program that generates statements like these, or are these beliefs you actually hold? It's one of the most impressive trolls I've seen on /. in awhile.

    On the off chance that you're serious, your statements represent a deep lack of understanding of basic economics and the computer technology marketplace in general. But if you're serious, reply to this post and I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

  • ::sigh::

    I didn't mean it as a personal attack, but honestly, can you remember a slashdot story involving a for-profit company supporting Free or Open software to which no "evil monopolist corporations only want to rape and pillage our resources!" sort of posts were made? They get old really quick.

    I didn't mean to attack you, but do re-read your original post. Can you see how it might be interpreted as assuming that a for-profit company could never respect Free or Open software?

  • Out of curiousity, why would I pay to go to a conference regarding Apple and FreeBSD? Number one, there will obviously be a major bias towards Apple software products (which I don't care for).

    One of two reasons:
    1. You're a Mac developer looking to take advantage of some BSD functionality
    2. You want to see how Apple has used BSD in a consumer oriented operating system.


    - Scott
    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • Next question? When will Apple be truely and totally free?

    When it doesn't have shareholders.

    - Scott
    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • You have to be pretty sick to call "worldwide" a conference to be held at the San Jose Convention Center.

    Developers from all over the world end up there. A notable number of attendees are typically Japanese. There are typically translation services offered, if memory serves.

    - Scott
    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • Apple has their own office suite: Appleworks (formerly known as Claris Works). From all accounts a thoroughly usefull office suite, functionally somewhere between MS works, and MS Office but for only about $100.

    I don't know about them porting that to x86, they might make money at only $100 a pop and via reputation alone, but the apps would of course have to read MS Office documents.

    Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
  • ...is, are the daemon babes going to be there? :-)
  • The biggest difference that I have notices is the flexibility. The are many other changes as well, dir structure, shell options, program invocation, etc.. but as I seid the biggest difference I noticed was flexibility. With BSD it is "you" BSD and you can make it do what you want. With OS X it is Apples BSD, designed to do one thing and allow only limited functionality if that one thing is not what you are interested in.

    Bullcrap! With the developer tools installed (a free download, mind you), I have de novo developed and/or ported software to do a whole host of UNIX-based DNA sequence manipulation tasks. These were traditionally big-iron programs in the past but with 500 Mhz of processor and 256M RAM, I can crunch genomes with the best of them. I don't think Apple had this task in mind specifically when they sent me the OSX beta, but nevertheless, it seemed to be readily adaptible. How was it you were defining "flexible" again?

  • Usually, it's fairly easy.
    The problems I've had with the public beta have centered around the fact that Darwin was missing a few libraries and had sort of a goofy threading implementation. Also, a lot of config scripts don't recognize the darwin-1.2-powerpc machine/os type so sometimes I have had to tweak that manually. However, most of these problems are already fixed or will be fixed real soon now.
    As for the shell prompt.. it doesn't use bash by default (since bash is GPL). However, there's nuthin stopping you from using it.
    All in all, it feels like a pretty clean, pure UNIX. When starting Darwin development, I had experience using NetBSD and OpenBSD, and it was a pretty easy switch for me to make.
  • Okay, I'm not a BSD knowitanything, but I've used shell environments in the past, and had a bit of a time adapting to the shell in OSX until I realized that it had, much like other critical elements, been "Macified".

    The only major item of note is this: While in everything else one would use CTRL+Break, ALT+F4 or Escape to eject from something [which I tried using], the default command to halt a process in the Classic Mac OS is Command + Period. This, I was happy to discover, applies in full to the shell.

    This and the environment is very drag-and-drop friendly, as you would expect. I haven't the capacity to test it on a BSD or Linux distro at this time, but I was quite pleased to see that rather than type a hideously long path to navigate to a file in the shell, you can simply drag that file onto the shell from the desktop window that it's chilling out in and the correct path is displayed automagically.

    All in all, pretty satisfactory.
  • Why would Apple want to release a PC version? As has been regurgitated untold times here and other places, Apple make lots of money selling hardware, and I would imagine that the majority of people buying it are buying it for the ability to run MacOS. If this was available on PC's then it would kill Apples hardware sales.
  • Don't you think that people who release under the BSD liscence realise what they're doing?

    If they were as fanatical as the GNU lot, then they would have released under GPL.

    Also, how can they 'rape' BSD? How on earth will anything that they do influence in the slightest FreeBSD etc.

    Do you understand free software? It's not about a jihad against microsoft. It's about sharing of knowledge in an open process.

    In your line of thinking, then perhaps the BSD people should have kept their code under a proprietry license so that Apple couldn't 'rape' them.
  • Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.

    This technology has indeed been around for years. It was invented by NeXT.
  • apple = turin, felled by their own pride, tried to come back, make things right...but again pride took over and in the end they lost. what would the simarils be?
  • what about the sword that killed turin and beleg (and many orcs), anglachel. would that be the gpl?
  • Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development (not that I'd be adverse to that)?
    • How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X? Pretty much a complete pain.
    • Are there any standard package managers included by default? Nope.
    • Does it come with all of the build tools Nope. No gnu tools
    • Do you have to spend a lot of extra time... You bet.
    • What are the biggest differences? Capital letters in standard directories (User vs. usr)
  • I figure if he's not willing to go read any online docs, he deserves it.
  • How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X?

    Quite easy unless it require X or anything depending on it.

    Are there any standard package managers included by default?

    Apple's (inherited from NeXT). Pretty limited in fact.

    Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?

    You need to get the SDK. But when you have it, ./configure ; make ; make install mostly work. You may need to replace config.guess and config.sub with the one provided.

    What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?

    Some path are weird for a UNIX.

  • who asked you to go?
  • Ignorance? or Troll?

    The BSD license is written explicitly to allow this to happen. No one who understands BSD is crying foul over this.

  • hahahaah .. oh Lord this is funny. have you even tried OS X? that is a classic amount of FUD. i can assure you that you're 100% wrong on every point, but thanks for the laugh.

    - j

  • right. i could see Apple supporting x86 in the future, but it would only be on x86 boxes that they make. they would gain the advantage of cheap parts and fast clockspeeds, but would still be able to make their money off of hardware. of course geeks could hack Darwin to support other x86 hardware, but none of this would be supported by Apple.

    of course i also don't think Apple should sell OS X for x86. the G4 is a great chip, and everything that Apple is focusing on (graphics, multimedia, DVD burning) takes full advantage of the Altivec engine, and makes the G4 a cost-effective solution. what i'd really like to see is limited OS X on Intel licenses to companies like Compaq so that OS X-native (Cocoa) apps could run on some real server hardware (as an alternative to NT). ie: absolutely no support for consumer-level machines on x86, but allow others to take advantage of OS X's power in the server market--a market that Apple doesn't have the resources to invenst in themselves (the G4 "servers" are a joke).

    but at any rate, opening up OS X to bargain-basement x86 computers would be a stupid move for Apple.

    - j

  • he One Ring = OSX (one ring to rule them all... and in the darkness bind them

    The one ring corrupted all those who used it (except for the hero's of the story, but even they were corrupted a bit by it), and it twisted even the best intentions into bad evilness. Also, the one ring was forged by Sauron himself. I don't think the One Ring should be OSX. It looks sweet and all (I'm getting it as a tattoo) but it's evil at the core.

  • Apple is not going to be the next Microsoft because Apple is a hardware company and Microsoft is a software company. It's the SOFTWARE that open source is a "threat" to because you can get for free what Microsoft charges you for. But you still have to buy the hardware. If the day comes when Apple has no choice but to give away the Mac OS for free, fine. Just so long as you have to buy an Apple machine to run it on, Apple won't care. (this, btw, is another reason that Apple putting its OS out for non-Apple hardware would be a Bad Thing for Apple)
  • BSD developers will get nothing in return

    Really?

    Apple submitted patches to back to OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreBSD, depending on which code they say needed the patch.

    Most open source developers don't get anything in return when their code is used. It is the nature of the beast.
  • Yes, like the linux kernel has done. The code admits to being from BSD, yet the copywrite noticed is scrubbed.
  • The thing is that Apple buying up NeXT to get MACH+*BSD+OpenStep shows that Apple knows the old MacOS is an evolutionary dead-end. Eventually the old MacOS will be phased out (5 to 10 years, tops) and the OSX (or whatever they will call it, I wonder if version 11 will be OSXI?) model is the new way to do things.

    Face it, the thought of running both Unix and Mac programs on the same box has potential. I was about one of the hardest Apple Critics as they came, but I must say that moving to Unix may be the right thing to do. At least they allowed Darwin and *BSD Developers at the latest conference. Maybe next year they can invite Linux and BeOS developers? ;)

    Anyway the only way for Apple to get it back, would be to develop at least a version of OSX for other platforms. Or at least give Darwin more features like OSX has. Once Apple's OS goes multi-platform, they can get back the marketshare that they keep on losing.

    Someone offered to sell me a used Grape iMac for a reasonable price. I might just take them up on it, upgrade the RAM, buy OSX, and see what the fuss is about.
  • Apple should just release an OpenStep implementation for Darwin. Remember NeXTStep for Intel systems? Sort of base it on that. Either that or work with the GNUStep [gnustep.org] people to couple GNUStep with Darwin to get a Pseudo-OSX type OS for WINTEL systems minus Aqua and other OSX-only features. Let the GNUStep people enhance the GUI to Apple's guidelines.
  • If Apple wants success they'd better just get the thing ready for release--along with the PC version. Microsoft's new OEM licenses are likely to spur a lot of consumer interest in alternatives. Linux won't compete well, because commercial organizations can't sell software that still works on updated versions of Linux three months after product release. The pace of change and lack of concern for backward compatibility is killing Linux on the desktop.
  • >Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in
    >time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    oh my god! why didn't you tell apple!?

    If "Major marketing surveys" are your only concern when choosing OS, there's no need to guess what you are using.
  • They will figure out some way to screw it up, they always do. They're kinda like Wile E. Coyote that way.

    Blame Acme. They're the real culprits. ;)

  • surely the reason apple uses BSD and not Linux is because OSX is based on NextStep and they wanted to use the best underpining OS for the job, not the one with the most hype
  • UNIX didn't exist until 1969, according to this page [alphanet.ch], which matches what I though was true. No seeding of AT&T UNIX in the 1960s, thank you very much.
  • I saw an interesting graph of OS usage last year. Installed base of HP/UX and Solaris were ~50 times as big as Linux, and bigger than NT. Linux still has a small market share. The problem was that they were succumbing to the terrible Redmond OSs.

    That being said, I see a bright future for UNIX, because of Linux (and other free Unices). Now highschool and university graduates (often) come out knowing UNIX, knowing it is good, and wanting to use it. Employers will listen to their suggestions and choose against Microsoft. But it is false to say that UNIX was anywhere near gone before Linus released Linux. The number of installed machines of HP/UX and Solaris is still quite high.

  • I have some questions for attendess to WWDC. Has anyone tried the new builds of OSX? If so, what do you think?

    I've used builds through 4K33. Much faster and more stable than both the beta and the 4K17 build Jobs showed at Macworld - even on a machine with 96MB of RAM. It's shaping up to be a fun and unbelievably customizable OS.

    Will the dock be able to be viewed vertically with out a hack?

    Unknown as of yet. But it's a very easy hack, and I'm sure instructions will be all over the web come March 24. I actually prefer it pinned to the left side of the screen.

  • How well would a iMac rev B (233MHz) with 96Megs of RAM perform, in your opinion? sluggish but usable? ridiculous?

    I have run it on just such a machine, and it runs surprisngly well -- Quicktime movies can play flawlessly in the dock, while dragging them around, etc. Hasn't seemed as stable as it is on higher MHz machines with more RAM, but it's more than usable. I haven't run too much on it, it's just a test machine at my work, but IE is no problem.

  • Re:Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have compiled several GNU and UN*X programs on MacOS X. Its fairly straight forward. The GNU development tools are available from Apple, they're a free download off their site. (Members of Apple's paid developer program received two CDs, one with Mac OS X Public Beta and one with the developer utilities.) The only issues I have run into are two. First, sometimes you have to replace the config.guess file with the new one from Apple,. Otherwise config scripts don't know what Mac OS X is. The other is for X Window based applications. The Mac OS X GUI is NOT based on X WIndows, however X Window ports are available, both commercial and free. In regards to the other aspects. Apple has renamed some directories, for example user directories are located in Users, with a capital U. Much of the other directory structure is present but hidden from the typical Mac user. For example, /etc and /usr are visible only from the command line. This is consistent with Apple's goal of hiding the Un*x underpinnings from typical users, but making it available to power users.

  • Re:Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X?

    Traditional Unixen use libraries, MOSX uses frameworks. As such (and most of my time doing this has been during the MOSX Server days), some libraries are not there, but are there in the form of Frameworks. You link a library with -ldude, you link a framework with -Fdude. That tends to be a pain in the ass.

    However, there's nothing stoping you from downloading libraries and installling them yourself so everything does work. And I think it was Wilfredo Sanchez who said they're just going to change it so the BSD stuff keeps using libraries.

    Are there any standard package managers included by default?

    Again... frameworks. Frameworks is part of a much larger, more modern system with its roots in the NeXT way of doing things. There is a system-wide installer and package system, and it is really, really good. Frameworks are a single bundle that contain all the headers, binaries, and version handling of a library. Frameworks are good.

    I strongly recommend that you read: http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/SystemO verview/SystemOverview.pdf [apple.com]

    If you're not impressed, there's something wrong with you... Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?

    I remember donig this in the old days (MOSXS) and getting told "My, you really ARE on a NeXT!" by configure :P

    I did build AfterStep on MOSXS without too much trouble, but that was after trying to get it to build on Solaris, which was pure hell.

    Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?

    MOSXS has two distinct application layers. There's the BSD one, which isn't really used, and the OpenStep one, which kicks ass. I tend to spend more time in the OpenStep-based one. People who are looking forward to porting OS X apps to Linux should pay more attention to GNUstep...

    I do it, but I don't spend a lot of time doing it.

    What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?

    MOSX uses zsh instead of sh. This totally rocks.

    I do use FreeBSD all day, and that's what I notice the most :) I ended up making zsh my login shell on FreeBSD.

    All of the other utilities tend to be pretty old though, like more and ftp. These are pretty nice on FreeBSD compared to OS X.

  • the only real problem i can see is that OS X doesn't have an X-Server. this obviously makes buiding X-applications an impossibility (realistically).
    however from what i understand, work is going well on an X-Server running side-by-side with Aqua.

    Well, you can download a trial version of the side-by-side X-server from www.tenon.com (they're here in S.B., and a few of the people who work with me worked there). However, the 'real' version won't be free as in beer, or as in freedom. They've got introductory pricing of $199, instead of $250, and for commercial X-servers that's pretty reasonable, but still expensive for students and people used to free (in both senses) software.

  • The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really.

    And Apple hardware rocks now.
    The newer stuff is so much like UNIX workstation hardware it's not funny -
    PeeCee hardware is archaic by comparison.
    (Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware
    and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?
    I know it's possible (SGI's Intel boxen had it), but peecee
    users and manufacturers are too stuck in the 80s to change.)

    and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.

    It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.

    Windows2K is really fundamentally different

    No it's not. People have been using NT for years.
    2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing /new/, just NT for the masses.

    Sure, NT is fundamentally different than 9x, but NT has been around for years...2000 is just NT in an incrementally prettier package...
    It's still NT tho. The same NT APIs, the same blue screens, and the same flaky 3rd party drivers.

    --K
  • Tell me what I get that's "better" with OpenFirmware?
    A box that has basic intelligence even when there's no OS installed +more.
    It's pretty cool stuff. [openfirmware.org]

    I'd argue that they've made it worse through some UI changes that make it act much differently, like the scroll bar gizmos. Then there's stuff like Quicktime where UI common sense gave in to the "skin" fad. And there's still too many modal dialogs, which I guess is fine in a non-SMP OS.

    I'm not sure what you're talking about with the scroll bars, but I will give you that QT4 was a major cock-up for Apple UI design.

    Comparing NT3.51, 4.0 and 2k and calling them the "same" is really stretching the truth.

    Never said they were /the/ same.
    But the core OS in each is basically the same, be it 3.51, 4 or 5 (2k).

    MacOS 6, 7, 8 and 9 are basically the same between verisons, but with incremental updates in each major version.

    It's the same phenomenon on a vastly different system.
    Until a product is scrapped or rewritten, the releases are similar.

    I'd say that each was an improvment on its predecessor,

    That's usually what warrants bumping the version number up. :P

    --K
  • Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development (not that I'd be adverse to that)?

    From what I've seen, Obj-C is pretty intertwined with the NeXT technologies...
    I'm starting to learn it tho, and so far, I like it better than C++.

    Project Builder also has an option for Java development, which I still have to try out, soon as I have time.

    --K
  • I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.

    Not to mention the NeXT development tools on OSX are really slick.
    I'm amazed by just how fast GUI development is with
    Project Builder, compared to, well, anything else.

    I've disliked GUI development for a while, simply because dealing with positioning, alignment, layout managers, and such by hand is so tedious...
    Interface Builder lets you graphically lay out your GUI[1],
    and 'draw' connections between controls, classes, etc.
    Then you just open the skeleton file it produces, and add your code for handling GUI events.
    Way cool. It's painless GUI design like VB has, but without the icky BASIC coding.

    [1]Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.

    --K
  • in the latest "available" build (4k46) the XML .plist file for the Dock still includes all the options to set the orientation (left, right, top, bottom) and pinning (front, back, center) of the Dock. However, the ability to change it using the "Defaults" CLI hack has been taken away. I'm sure Apple will include these options in the final... otherwise it would be stupid to have them just sitting in the .plist file.

    PPPoE support is in there, yup.

    Current builds of OS X use SSH1 or 2 for Telnet access by default (you have to go turn on remote access and ftp in the "Sharing" preferences panel though, it's off by default). Hopefully, in light of the recent vulnerability found in SSH1, APple will simply use SSH2 exclusively to get around that hole.

    I would go to MacWeek and check out the "PowerBook Diary" review... great series on the new Titanium 'Book.
  • If Apple wants success they'd better just get the thing ready for release--along with the PC version. Microsoft's new OEM licenses are likely to spur a lot of consumer interest in alternatives.

    Um... or not.

    There is very little (read: no) market interest in alternatives to Microsoft on PC's. That's because MS has a monopoly on the PC operating system, which it leverages to do several interesting things:

    • Bolster its monopoloies on business/offices software and internet browser software.
    • Keep PC hardware makers from coalescing power. This keeps PC hardware as cheap commodity products.
    • Keep Intel in check.
    MS divides the PC hardware makers by controlling the standards (actually, they do most of their monopolizing by controlling standards; embrace and extend). For example, USB 2.0 exists almost entirely because MS doesn't control the FireWire standard. Since MS controls the hardware platform, any other OS company takes a huge risk running on PC's; they never know what MS will do to the hardware, which drivers will be closed, which specs will be difficult to implement.

    Solve this and you go a long way to breaking the MS stranglehold. This business model is, however, the one real way they have innovated.

  • Just a quick question - have you ever had any interaction with, or have you witnessed interaction between Apple and Free developers? Do you work with any of the library of code that Apple has given back to projects like BSD, Apache, egcs, and such? Which of the mailing lists are you on?

    Or did you just assume that Apple must be the enemy of Free software?

  • Think about it. In many respects Apple is far more evil than Microsoft.

    What a tactful thesis statement.

    Apple wants control of the software and the hardware.

    It's called user experience. This is the only way to do it right. Dell and Compaq are at the mercy of Microsoft's implemenation. There's only so much they can do to improve the computer since they can't really touch the OS. The hardware/software intergration is also why USB, FireWire and AirPort could be available instantly in new machines.

    Steve Jobs has an open hostility to open source code

    That's a fairly odd statement.

    and he has never given anything back to the community that wasn't already there

    Umm, what? QuickTime Streaming Server, NetInfo, and OpenPlay/NetSprocket spring to mind. I'm sure there are others.

    He hijacked Mach, and he's trying to do the same with *BSD.

    This doesn't make any sense. Avie Tevanian was one of the key people behind Mach at Carnegie Mellon. It was later donated to the FSF. Jobs hired Avie for next, where they used Mach. I don't know if the Next modifications to Mach were made available to the public at the time, but they are available now in Darwin.

    The BSD comment doesn't make any sense. How could Apple be hijacking it? All of their BSD stuff is part of Darwin, and the most recent revision to the license appears to have appeased just about everyone.

    - Scott

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • There is one reason Apple is using BSD for OSX. ITS FREE TO STEAL.

    The reason Apple is using BSD is that it was part of NextStep. And how are they stealing it? All of the BSD stuff is redistributed under ASPL. I though everyone was relatively happy with this license now.

    If Apple was interested in an "Open Source" or "Free" (libre or gratis) they would likely have chosen GNU/Linux because of its momentum and (justified) hype.

    How is Darwin not open source?

    Apple can no longer keep MacOS current and powerful - they saw themselves as quickly becoming the odd man out in the coming Linux jihad against M$ and decided they needed to align themselves with what will likely be the 'winner' 15 years from now.

    That's interesting speculation, but unfortunately it has nothing to do with reality or history. At the end of 1996, Apple was looking to purchase a company to supply the foundation for their next-generation operating system. A lot of people though they were going to buy BeOS. They bought NextStep instead. I doubt this had anything to do with Linux.

    What I would like to stress is that BSD is enabling Apple to exploit the 'grunt' coding done by thousands of BSD hackers - offering them a significant subsidy. OSX is the GUI, API and Object Model. BSD/Mach is the foundation.

    I don't really see where you're going with this. I think most people reading this topic is aware of where BSD comes from. But to suggest that Apple is reselling free BSD software is just insane. OSX/Darwin uses BSD for the process/permissions model, threading, networking and the tools. This is not the majority of the code in the OS.

    Avie Tevanian was one of the key architects of Mach, and he's Apple VP of Software Engineering. I think he has some right to use it if he chooses.

    But I am not ready to accept that Apple isnt completely operating in their own best interests.

    Apple is primarily operating in their own interests. They are not Debian (you know what I mean). They are a for-profit company that is releasing some open source software under a good license.

    I think IBM is a better example of someone who 'gets it'.

    Because they're contributing to Linux? Big deal. What's the point of Apple doing that? Linux makes sense on IBM's hardware, it really doesn't all that much on Apple's machines. IBM hasn't open sourced AIX, have they?

    Apple is hoping to rape BSD to sell hardware.

    Right, BSD is going to sell the hardware. That's it.

    If anything, OSX is going to give an emormous boost to BSD concepts.

    If all of OSX was "COMPLETELY" Free Software (and free to be completely ported to other architectures) I would be more enthusiastic

    In which case OSX wouldn't even exist. The reason Apple could justify to the shareholders the idea of pouring three years of development time into creating OSX is because there is payoff at the end. If there was no potential for a substantial return on investment, then OSX wouldn't even exist, and Unix evolution would feel the effects.

    - Scott

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • Why are all BSD people blind to the fact that Apple and anybody else can steal all they want from software under the BSD license and contribute back little or nothing of any changes/ehancements they make?

    Why are you blind to the fact that every Apple does with BSD is released under ASPL?

    - Scott
    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • ok, let me get this straight. You would not run apple on a server because it is bsd and open source. Then, by the same token, you would also not run linux on a server. But, on the other hand, you would run windows and other microsoft products because they are closed source and have no outside developers. I'm not quite sure of the understanding behind here, because we all know that the core BSD code is not junk, not written by incompetent programmers (imo) and stable enough to be run in most environments. And best of all, its not Windows.

    Well, perhaps Microsoft is a bad example because they do farm out a lot of technology work to outside consulting firms, which may or may not hire incompetent monkeys and or midgets to do their work.

    I think that i'll continue to run the risk of supporting bsd/*nix instead of putting my life on the line with windows (which for the record, i think their luna interface needs some work).

  • i was going to respond to this message myself, but you covered just about everything i wanted to say. after running OS X for a while i'm amazed at how familiar i am with things just from my BSD experience. the two are very similar.

    the only real problem i can see is that OS X doesn't have an X-Server. this obviously makes buiding X-applications an impossibility (realistically). however from what i understand, work is going well on an X-Server running side-by-side with Aqua. when this happens, OS X will definitely be my UNIX workstation OS of choice.

    I did build AfterStep on MOSXS without too much trouble, but that was after trying to get it to build on Solaris, which was pure hell.

    this made me laugh, because i remember thinking this the other day. i've had way more problems compiling applications for Solaris (especially opensource applications) than i have for OS X/Darwin. i'd say that makes it pretty compatible :).

    on a somewhat related topic, has anybody had any luck compiling BIND 9.1 on OS X? there seem to be issues with OS X and the ssl library that i'm definitely not qualified to fix. has anybody had any luck with this?

    - j

  • Correct. There has been a "BSD in Mac OS X" session at WWDC for the past three years, mostly about the userland side of things. I demoed at the first and presented the last two of them, and even invited Jordan Hubbard to do past of the talk last year, to give us all an update of what FreeBSD is up to and how that might related to Darwin. I even came up with some cool demos, and QuickTime demos can be a hard act to follow. There are typically also related sessions on other parts of Darwin, including one on the kernel, which includes material on both Mach and BSD; another on filesystems, which are based on the BSD VFS layer; another on I/O Kit which is Darwin's driver model, different from BSD; and also one on Networking, which also lives in the BSD side of the kernel. WWDC is about Apple technology. Mac OS X is the big thing, and BSD is most decidely a part of the picture.

  • nah, their hardware is still not really competitive with the utter cheapness of x86 stuff outside of niche markets. If you beleive some figures as to desktop share, for every mac sold, 10 x86 boxes are (probably more than that becuase not every x86 box is destined to run windows (just the vast majority of them)). If they want to compete they need to offer a functional machine for <= $500-600 (becuase I can build or buy a perfectly reasonable machine for that much from any of a dozen or more places off the top of my head).

    Say whatever you want about Apple software, but realize that they are and always will be (more than likely) a hardware company. It's not "Buy OSX, it's great!", it's "OSX is great! Buy a mac...".

    So they have the mindset (Jobs is just as much a monomaniac as Gates is, he just trys to appear nicer while I don't think Gates cares one whit), and potentially the software (if they write their own office suite becuase as soon as MacOS was a threat to MS...), but they'd have to port to x86 for any monopoly plans to work. I don't see this happening any time soon, for political reasons more than technical ones.


    --
    Fuck Censorship.
  • I could have sworn the title said apple to include BSOD.... I mean, I know apple wants mindshare from winblows, but that would be going too far.

    guess I gotta go get more coffee before I read slashdot in the AM..

    --

  • > Steve Jobs has an open hostility to open source code, and he has never given anything back to the community that wasn't already there.

    Wooov. That is a pretty ridiculous statment. The sources of NeXTstep are almost fully avalaible, under the sweet name of the first (early last year) darwin distribution. There are a lot of thing there. netinfo, for instance, is a crude counter example of your troll.

    Sure, NeXT did not donate a lot to open source, but more than what they really had to.

    Can you point me to the source of obsolete Microsoft products ?

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • BSD Userland is in MacOS X, but the kernel is Mach. I think if you look at the records, you will find that Avie Tenanian had a part in the development of that kernel. Darwin is very BSD like, and it is open source. This is a win/win scenario as far as I can tell :)
  • Not so. As with the FreeBSD and all the BSD projects there is a CVS tree, and only a select few have commit rights to the tree, so just because any schmuck off the street can send updates, that can and should be rejected if they are suspect.
  • *rolls eyes*

    There are quite a few True Believers on the macosx-dev list that will flame you relentlessly for wanting to write in Java, yes. We just had a big fight over that, and the moderator stepped in with

    "This list is provided so that developers can help each other write software for Mac OS X.

    "Mac OS X has a wealth of APIs, and they're not at all exclusive: a single application may use OpenGL for drawing, Cocoa for input, BSD for networking, and Carbon or CoreAudio for sound. Questions about all of these are welcome on this list, along with any other Mac OS X APIs like IOKit, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, SecurityCore (the updated Keychain API), and Java (and that's by no means an exhaustive list). Questions about the development tools provided with Mac OS X such as ProjectBuilder and cvs are also quite welcome. As long as your question is specific to Mac OS X development, you're in the right place."

    And that would be about the best words on the subject.
  • BSD UNIX
    The kernel architecture of Mac OS X includes operating system services derived from FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. In addition, new technologies, such as the I/O Kit and Network Kernel Extensions (NKEs), have been designed and engineered by Apple to take advantage of advanced capabilities such as those provided by an object-oriented programming model.

    Looks like its not so much about BSD Unix, but more about the Apple extensions on the BSD level, specifically drivers. Which is a good thing since few seem to be writing drivers (or at least releasing them) for OS X yet.

  • I would suggest a few changes/additions

    Larry Ellison == Saruman -- he wants so badly to rule the world, but he just isn't powerful enough to replace Sauron.

    Steve Ballmer == the Mouth of Sauron

    Linus Torvalds == Celebrimbor, forged Linux on his own, out of the watchful eye of Sauron. Therefore Linux was not contaminated by Sauron's evil. Sauron hates Linux and wishes to destroy it and all who benefit from it.

    Novell == Osgiliath, fell in the war with Mordor. Now just a ghost town between the warring parties of Gondor and Mordor.

    Steve Wozniak == Tom Bombadil, extremely powerful, but prefers to sit in his own little corner as the events of the outside world unfold.

    if you don't min bringing in the Silmarillion:

    Morgoth == chairman of IBM (whoever it was circa 1981). He was a greater evil than Sauron ever was, but banished to oblivion by the Valar (the US Govt.). He fostered the evil which became Sauron.

    Bill Joy == Feanor, created vi, the most wondrous tool ever made, but was excessively proud. Sun == the Sons of Feanor, forever fighting the behemoth of Redmond, but never to conquer.

  • Hate to tell you this, but Apple isn't using the BSD kernel...they use Mach. Of course, all the rest of the BSD binaries are there, but not the kernel...

    Next time spend "mush" more time analysing the scenario...
  • Out of curiousity, why would I pay to go to a conference regarding Apple and FreeBSD? Number one, there will obviously be a major bias towards Apple software products (which I don't care for). But besides that, there is a TON of information online on the nuances of FreeBSD, a TON of mailing lists, and a TON of people willing to help out for free?
  • Mach is derived from BSD too, although it's an
    offshoot of an earlier ancestor than FreeBSD.

    PS You can't 'steal' BSD licensed code - it's
    written with the intention that it should be used
    by other people (as long as they adhere to the license).

  • Intellectual property rights are a complex issue as there are so many different areas that it has to be applied to. Each area has to be looked at differently. For example, there is a big difference in claiming an algorithm is your intellectual property and that of claiming a medicine is your intellectual property. Similarly, to claim that certain strings of words are your property is again completely different. Personally, I feel that the arguments for having intellectual property rights are insignificant compared to that of not having them.

    There are enough examples of stupid claims to intellectual property that I don't really need to back up the argument. Even the arguments for intellectual property that people bring are usually weak. For example, peolple claim that it wouldn't be worth researching medicine if it they couldn't protect their findings. Since when has medicine been about making money out of the sick and needy! The companies then go out and exploit the poor countries that are desperate for the medicine and prevent them from making their own. Mean while you have people dying around the world of horrific diseases becuase they couldn't afford the medicine that the big medical companies are protecting behind their intellectual property rights. Just last week I read in the paper about a 8 year old Iraqi boy who died because he couldn't afford the $6 medicine becuase it was more than his months wages.

    Meanwhile, you want to celebrate the greatness of the US. You should travel the world and see it for yourself. Okay, the US may have technology but you will find that the other cultures and countries have other things to offer that are much better than can be found in the US. But go ahead, point your finger and shout communist whenever someone disagrees with intellectual property. One day however you might see the other side of the argument. It is not about not liking people being rich. I have no problem with rich people. It is how the rich become richer by using things like intellectual property rights to maintain their monopoly in a market. This is always at the expense of the poor and needy and always against the general good of society. Both inside and outside the US.

  • >They clearly want to promote a free Unix to remove the amount of money they have to spend themselves. They don't clearly want to promote Unix to get free developers. Don't forget, many in the Mac community don't have Unix knowledge or Unix programming skills so with OS X coming in a month, it'd be a good idea to start promoting the lower level abilities of the OS.
  • ok, normally we just ignore you posts, but this?

    and, yes, I know, don't feed the trolls, but really, just what is this?

    What is Apple's market share? Who are their core users? What "evil empire" handed them a big chunk of cash a few years ago?

    I'd really like to hear some elaboration on just how you came up with this beautiful fantasy theory.

    don't get me wrong, I've got macs (from an SE to an old powerbook, to a PPC601/G3 mutant box), I love my macs. My G3 runs MkLinux, too. But as far as Apple becoming the next evil empire, well, they missed that boat a while back, and they know it.

  • Berkely Software Distribution & Ma Bell. (Score:3)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:22AM (#430479) Homepage
    Its not Sun or Solaris.

    The 'purity' problem dates back to when AT&T seeded universities with Unix back in the '60s when the first Minis were making their appearance.

    They had to rewrite all their code to be clean of any AT&T code.

    BSD has been at it a very long time.

    Linux is a "purity problem" free OS thanks to Richard Stallman but its still trying to solve some problems which BSD (and Solaris and VMS yadda, yadda) solved a long time ago. Still the 2.4 kernel is good enough to propell it forward into the next decade or two.

    After that we may not be able to recognize the kinds of hardware we'll be playing with.

  • WOW! FUD BS from NOT M$! (Score:3)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:30AM (#430480) Homepage
    Congratulations. You have just reiterated M$ argument about Linux.

    You can trust Darwin/FreeBSD for the same reasons that you (and IBM and Oracle and ... ) can trust Linux.

    Do you seriously think that anybody can corrupt the OS willy-nilly? Without review? &lt sigh&gt

  • Re:Apple lost it in the 80s. They never recovered. (Score:3)

    by f5426 ( 144654 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @08:09AM (#430481)
    > Anyone who ever wrote a mac application in the 80s or early 90s will tell you, their style guidelines made it IMPOSSIBLE to write an inconsistant gui

    > What do others think ?

    That you take your dreams for reality. Consistant Mac gui ? I saw so much applications that missed the TrackGoAway() call that it isn't funny (note for the uninformed. The original Mac toolbox was [and still is] a b*tch. Even windows is easier to deal with.). Apple guidelines were very restirctive and were blown away by apple itself numerous times (Hey, who would pretend that HyperCard followed the User Interface Guidelines ?). I was so disgusted of my Inside Mac User Interface that I trowed it in a fire.

    Btw, the holy grail of UNIX/GUI was not A/UX, but, of course, NeXTstep. And rejoice, as Mac OS X is basically NeXTstep 6.

    And writing an inconsistant AppKit application is really difficult. Writing a consistant Mac application was a nightmare.

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • Re:Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:3)

    by cplater ( 155482 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:24AM (#430482) Homepage
    I'd have to assume that Apple will wait for The Unified BSD Package Collection [openpackages.org] to be implemented before including any packaging scheme.

  • Re:Apple and BSD - The Microsoft of the future. (Score:3)

    by TheOutlawTorn ( 192318 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:16AM (#430483)
    They will figure out some way to screw it up, they always do. They're kinda like Wile E. Coyote that way.
  • I got to see A/UX in about the 1989 ish time frame. (Don't remember exactly when.)

    I was working for a company that developed a screen-sharing application, similar to VNC, that run on Mac. We wanted to make it work on Windows, and even be able to control Mac from Windows and vice-versa.

    One of our guys was to prototype some code that could convert Apple's QuickDraw calls into GDI and vice versa. He did it under A/UX. When he demoed the code to the rest of us, it was under A/UX on a Mac II.

    It was a Mac II box I had personally ran Mac OS on a couple years prior. I couldn't believe the performance of this old machine running A/UX. It was unbelievable! It practically made the hardware sing and dance.

    It was at this point that I was impressed enough with Unix to realize that I wanted to learn more about it. Something that remained out of my reach (both time and cost) for a few years until Linux came along.

  • Re:Apple is the enemy (Score:4)

    by i, Mac ( 1975 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @06:26AM (#430485) Homepage
    Yes, he hijacked Mach from the guy who wrote a large chunk of it. Oh, wait. No, he hired the guy who wrote a large chunk of it. Made him a VP, too. Go figure.

    You probably don't spend much time on Darwin development lists, or you don't know that Apple does contribute its work back to open-source projects such as Apache (they made modifications to support Mac OS X, for example)...

    Perhaps you don't understand that due to the BSD license that if Steve Jobs really hated open source that much, he wouldn't HAVE to share back if he didn't WANT Apple to do so. If this were so, Apple would not have anything called Darwin, or the APSL, or any of its other released code.

    I imagine he feels there's a place for free code and a place for proprietary code.

    I don't know about the Steve Jobs of old, but the man at Apple now seems different. Perhaps the years in between gave him a little maturity in how he handles things. This isn't Steve Jobs I or Steve Jobs of NeXT.

    I can see why you posted as an AC. Almost all of your statements are inflammatory and unfounded.

  • Re:Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:4)

    by Angelwrath ( 125723 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:53AM (#430486)
    I've tried neither FreeBSD or Darwin, but I follow the two closely. In terms of compatibility, Jordan Hubbard did a review of OSX here:

    Salon Article [salon.com]

    However, his technical assessment and comparison of OSX to FreeBSD is on the second page, here [salon.com].

    To quote some of his comments:

    "But as a portability benchmark -- a criterion with which to judge how easy it is to get foreign software running in Mac OS X -- this was certainly not bad at all and I had much the same good results with TCL, another popular open-source application. Porting Unix software to OS X is clearly far less work than trying to port it to Windows 2000 and with OS X providing such a high degree of Unix-compatibility, something like the FreeBSD ports collection (which highly automates the process) would make the third-party software situation pretty close to ideal."

    Also, Apple is making some contributions to the Open Packages project [openpackages.com]. Fred Sanchez, the former technical lead for Darwin, is a developer on the project. Fred recently left Apple, but that is moot - he will still have a lot of involvement with Open Packages, Darwin and BSD from what I am to understand.

    All in all, it looks like Darwin is as close to a BSD as one could expect from a proprietary company like Apple - certainly, within one year of March 24th, OSX/Darwin will have a large installed base of users depending daily on BSD code, and Apple will be one of the biggest distributors of Open Source software, as well as software available under its own APSL license. Cheers.

  • This ties in to Bill Gates == Sauron (Score:4)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:22AM (#430487) Homepage
    A few days ago, someone was trying to map Tolkien characters to Software personalities, starting with Bill Gates == Sauron.

    Someone suggested Steve Jobs == Gandalf. Close, but not close enough. Might I suggest a different wizard, one who started out with the best intentions, but was then snared by evil into remaking his world into a child's imitation of Sauron's, yes, Steve Jobs == Saruman.

    Then it starts to fall into place:

    Mordor == Redmond
    Orthanc == San Jose (or wherever Apple is located, Cupertino maybe?).

    Denethor == some OS/2 executive, ensared by Bill Gates evil plan, as Denethor was ensnared by the Palantir.

    That leaves Gandalf, might I suggest UNIX == Gandalf, for UNIX was almost dead, until Linux came along and created a resurgence.

    Which leads to NT == Balrog, something almost good enough to kill UNIX.

    And RMS == Galadriel, as they both helped rejuvanate their peers, and both wear green tights.

    Of course, Linux == Aragorn
    ERS == Boromir
    Allan Cox == Gimli
    Steve Ballmer == Mouth of Sauron

    and howabout

    Commander Taco == Frodo
    Hemos == Samwise

    Any more?

  • Compatibility with FreeBSD (Score:4)

    by osgeek ( 239988 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:17AM (#430488) Homepage Journal
    I'd like to hear from any of the developers working on OSX.
    • How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X?
    • Are there any standard package managers included by default?
    • Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
    • Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?
    • What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?

  • Do your own research (Score:5)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:55AM (#430489) Homepage Journal
    Invariably when a topic like this gets posted a half-hundred folks post the same questions about the topic, another half-hundred rush off to make fist-post without bothering to read the material and the rest of us get stuck wading through much redundant material.

    Here's some answers

    So please, before guessing or making wild-assed assumptions or making statements based on the *beta* how about just doing a reality-check first.
  • As a one-time avid mac fan, I think Apple reached its technical peak with the Mac IIcx series, and System 7. Up until then, the mac had a really consistent user interface, and look and feel which was due (in my opinion) to the almost facist-like control Apple had over their API.

    Anyone who ever wrote a mac application in the 80s or early 90s will tell you, their style guidelines made it IMPOSSIBLE to write an inconsistant gui. (unlike X11, and to a lesser extent Windows9X).

    But what must remain the alltime best OS ever, the 'Holy Grail' that both open source zealots and capitalistic monopolists alike have yet to achieve was reached by Apple with A/UX 3.0.

    Here was an OS that combined the ease-of-use of a a mac (brain dead point and click) with the powerful sophisitcation of a full blown UNIX implementation. It was quite simply a technical tour-de-force that has not been equalled to this day.

    Apple now realise this is the way forward, and hopefully with darwin/OS10 whatever they have found the path they so sadly lost in the early 90s.

    I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.

    What do others think ?

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