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Apple Businesses

Darwin 1.3.1 Released, x86 ISO Available 177

Posted by michael from the for-masochists-only dept.
marmoset writes: "Apple has released a new Darwin (the open source foundation of Mac OS X) snapshot. The new version is 1.3.1, which brings the Darwin packages up to the level released on the Mac OS X CD. The big news this time? There are both PPC and x86 disk images available."
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Darwin 1.3.1 Released, x86 ISO Available More

Darwin 1.3.1 Released, x86 ISO Available

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  • READ THIS BEFORE POSTING DUMB QUESTIONS! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Darwin is a BSD-like OS (BSD over Mach). It doesn't include aqua. I repeat: it does not include Aqua, so don't think otherwise.

    If you like to play with OSes in development that don't support much hardware, go for it. Otherwise, stick with tried and true (FrreBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Windows, BeOS, NextStep/OpenStep x86 etc)

  • Re:Darwin Server, not worth it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are an impressive number of confusions in this troll/post.

    1. We're talking about the Darwin OS, not the Darwin Streaming Server, so the whole post is completely off topic.

    2. The Darwin Streaming Server is a UNIX application (MacOS X, Solaris, etc.) with an NT port. It doesn't run on MacOS (unless someone has ported it since I looked).

    3. Windows Media Services isn't free, it's part of Windows 2000 Server, which has substantial per-seat charges ($1,999.00 for unlimited user internet license, per machine). Sure, you could ignore the license terms of the product (i.e. steal it) to save money, but that's not something I'd advocate.

    4. Real is only free for trivial applications. If you care about more than a few streams, brace yourself to pay $10K+ for the license. It is the most mature streaming server (kicks the sh*t out of MS or QTS) but costs around 450/stream (depending on volume pricing).

    5. You can run QuickTime Streaming Server on BSD and Linux, among other OS's. I don't know what a cheaper alternative would be to a rack of $995 Sun or Linux boxen running QTS. The Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Internet Connector English North America Unlimited Clients license alone is $$1,999.00, and Real costs $50 per peak stream, on top of hardware costs. Darwin Streaming Server costs nothing but raw hardware costs (aside from third-party encoding tools), so it's far cheaper than Real or MS.

    So, given that the Darwin Streaming Server is open source, unless you really want to give oceans of money to Real or MS, the smartest thing to do is to contribute to the project -- fix what you don't like, and everyone benefits.

  • Re:Here's the thing-- (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:40PM (#293015)
    Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS/2 for x86, everyone says "IBM'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.

    But if they released OS/2 for PCs...

    (1) They could STILL sell the ibm hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, IBM designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the MCA platform. I'd continue to buy it.

    (2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.

    So.. ibm releases OS/2 for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?

  • OSI Approved. & Reapproved. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13, 2001 @04:08PM (#293016)
    Not approved by OSI? So what's this?

    OSI Press Release [opensource.org]

  • C'mon...like it was that difficult to manually edit the floppy boot sector when you wanted to use something other than the first primary hard drive partition.

    These damn kids nowadays with their fancy LILO's :)
  • So, what IS his role in the big picture?
    You make an interesting point.. What do you propose?
  • OS/2 is/was actually very user friendly. The object oriented user interface was incredibly powerful for power users, and easy to learn for ordinary users. The first time you started OS/2, you got a nice tutoriel guiding you through files, folders, properties, drag-and-drop, object menus and all the other stuff. None of this "click Start to begin" crap.

  • No, it's not sarcasm, it's here (Score:5)

    by Watts Martin ( 3616 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @02:58PM (#293020) Homepage

    I'm stunned nobody else responded to this by pointing to the GNU-Darwin Project [gnu-darwin.org] homepage. So here it is.

    No, this isn't a joke.

  • D'oh! Try backing up to http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/ [apple.com].
  • It doesn't include a GUI. However,you can install XFree86 4.02. More info is available at Darwinfo [darwinfo.org].
  • Try here [utopianet.net].
  • From the release notes, there seems to be no implication of a GUI - am I wrong?
  • thank you.

  • Link update (Score:5)

    by boinger ( 4618 ) <.boinger. .at. .fuck-you.org.> on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:14PM (#293026) Homepage
    Nice try, kids. Look here [apple.com] if you want the release info.

  • Good answer - I had to check the username to see if it was one of my college roommates (big Mac guys) and got a good chuckel. That was quite an informed answer for a user by the name of AIX admin. . .

    -"Zow"

  • That Apple will allow people to build darwin boxes? How well will they support it on the x86? Has anyone tried yet? Please tell me how it is.
  • Or maybe this one....

    http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1. 3/release.html [apple.com]

    ok, ok, its the same link, Im just a karma whore.
  • neither solaris or os/2 were/are known for their ease-of-use and user friendliness like Apple's OS. If people could have a Mac experience on their x86s, I could easily see them bailing on Windows.

    W

    -------------------

  • Here's the thing-- (Score:4)

    by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:28PM (#293031)
    Every time someone mentions the possibility of OS X for x86, everyone says "APPLE'S A HARDWARE COMPANY" and this would be the worst thing for them because they rely primarily on hardware sales, etc.

    But if they released OS X for PCs...

    (1) They could STILL sell the apple hardware. Some people might defect to cheaper hardware, but c'mon, Apple designs hardware like nobody's business, both in terms of form and feature-set, and I love the PPC platform. I'd continue to buy it.

    (2) I think there's a company out there that makes a ton of money selling an operating system for x86, though the name escapes me. And they make plenty of $.

    So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?

    W

    -------------------
  • "I did some testing and playing around with large (hundreds of users) streams set up a few months ago, and Darwin was barely able to break 35 connections. I'm sure part of this is because Darwin was originally written for the Macintosh, and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac! " Funny, I know Apple has been able to server a 1000 times that using Darwin streaming server. Oh yea, and the Mac OS had a web server right after NCSA was released. It was called MacHTTPD , now known as WebStar. Now there are three or different options, even a commerical Apache port.
    Cheers,
    Tomas
    ===========
  • I don't think the original poster was talking of Unix variants that run on Power PC chips and Macintoshes... Bur rather webserving applications. Of courrse he's still wrong - there's personal web sharing (a joke, i know), mac HTTPD, WebTen, WebStar, etc... Ton's

    WebTen can duke it out with the best of Linux machines, or at least it could a while back, i haven't looked into it recently. WebStars a stable and quite secure platform for serving webpages, since it's run on a Mac with no command line and no remote administration abilities...Sometimes simpler's better.
  • With OS 8 - Apple finally managed to untangle the OS from the ROM's in all shipping macs at that time. I don't think they want to go back to that.
  • 1 - They had enough of a problem competing against clone's that paid them into the hundreds of dollars in license fees per machine. Remember that period, when they almost went bankrupt? What happens when they have to compete against $500 PC's? How much will OS X have to cost in order for them to feel comforatable releasing it for x86? $400? $500?

    2 - Yes, one company makes good money selling operating systems for PC's. They're also an established monoplist. Kinda hard to compete against them, it was found in court. Look at BeOS, OSX's nearest equivalent on the PC. What other OS's are there for the PC? Do all the linux distro's in the world generate as much profit as apple does selling hardware? probably not...

    OS X for intel just isn't a sound strategy, no matter how you try to slant it.

  • Re:The plot thickens (Score:4)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @04:41PM (#293036) Journal
    They'ed have to release thier OS ahead of any available apps... Meaning it would flounder. No one's going to pay their developers to port applcations to an unreleased platform, and Apple would lose out big time by releasing OS X on intel without any apps. Look at how "successful" Be's been - releasing a cool OS with very little app support.
  • You need to register before you can download. It prompts me for a password. Now if I could only remeber what mine was....

    Now if they port the rest of OS X to Intel I'd be interested in getting it. But whats the real difference of getting darwin vs BSD or some other UNIX for intel or Linux?

    It might be nice to try Darwin with X and see how stable that would be vs Linux or BSD.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • hey this is good

    when you are doing your dev work you dont want a GUI in the way so you have a machine dedicated to the BUILD !
    and that is dawin for the apples you just set up you mozilla tools and do your master builds each night !

    thank you apple for our new build machine
    DP4 was a nightmare to build on because of the differances in the build between it and darwin

    $makeworld -sunsparc -linuxi386 -darwinppc

    (-;

    regards

    john jones
  • Right. Just like IBM isn't going to ditch OS/2.

    OS/2 wasn't the crown jewel of IBM. You could arguably say that the Mac OS is and always has been the crown jewel of Apple.

    If IBM suddenly ditched the server business and decided their future lay with digital camera's, then we'll talk.
  • I'd argue that, at least the "always has been" part. Apple became huge just selling Apple ][s.

    If you want to pick a nit, you are right, the Mac OS didn't come out until '84. :) But minus the "always" part, I think my point is still valid.
  • OS X is case preserving but case insensitive
  • Which can be a problem if you have a source tree with a Makefile and a makefile

    I know its a problem with python and Zope.

    But there is a work around for the last two examples
  • Well, we always like new toys.


  • Speaking of genius, Darwin is an OS, not a kernel.
  • and that's about it. you can run x-windows on it (which isn't all that easy to do on OS X), or whatever you want


    Actually, it's just as easy on OSX, just head over to xfree86.org and download the 4.0.3 binaries and install them just like you would on any other unix system. Then you can go get Xaqua to run X apps in tandem with the OSX window system.


  • GNUstep [gnustep.org] is a GNU project to create an open source set of frameworks that conform to the OpenStep (now Cocoa) API. Core foundation is 99% complete currently, and very usable. AppKit has a way to go yet. Basically, at best GNUstep will one day give you source compatability (meaning don't hold your breath for those proprietary closed source mac apps). Currently, it's not there yet for several reasons.


    First, AppKit has some work to do on the more advanced controls (like the text model). Second, the GNUstep folks are trying to catch up to a moving target (Cocoa). Third, there's an amazing lack of interest in the GNUstep project so it is not moving all that fast. Finally, Cocoa apps used a completely different makefile format and also store interfaces in nib files which are in a semi-proprietary format. This means to build OSX apps, you'd have to rewrite the makefiles (pretty simple), and either convert the nib's to something your app can use (conversion is very rough, doesn't work well) or rewrite your interface by hand.


    So one day I hope things will look better, but right now anything with a complex interface would be a pain to port to GNUstep.

  • [...]THE SOFTWARE IS COOL AND SUPPORTED BY SOMEONE I KNOW WILL BE THERE TOMORROW, versus OS projects that can disappear if the maintainer decides to ditch it. Apple's not going to ditch the core of their OS.

    Right. Just like IBM isn't going to ditch OS/2. None of the other huge computer companies (Apple, MSFT, etc) are as bull-headed as IBM when it comes to supporting and maintaining forgotten things, but OS/2 is (by their own admission) quite dead.

    Did I mention that it is closed-source, and thus the few nagging bugs which persist will very likely never be fixed at any point in the future?

    Or, the Amiga OS (what was it, Workbench?). Commodore is at least six feet under right now, but at one time was seen as having no danger of folding, with one of the most competent desktop operating systems in existance to their name, and killer hardware to match. Much like OS/2, nobody can modify the OS to any genuinely useful extent, and so it has been stale for years.

    I suppose it's nice that Darwin sources are available, but if Apple kicks the bucket, all the code in the world won't change the license restrictions into something which allows people the freedom to work independantly on the software and share their improvements with the world. It is therefore no better than the aforementioned worse-case closed-source scenarious.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I have a Darwin 1.2 machine that has been up for over 70 days now ;-)
  • http://www.opensource.org/press_releases/osi-clari fies-APSL.html
  • it's quite possible for Apple to run on x86 _without_ running on your cheapo PC box. just add proprietary ROM...

    why? to continue to make their money with [cool] hardware while at the same time taking advantage of cheap and fast x86 processors.

    so, yes, it may run on x86. but, no, that doesn't mean you can just install it on your Dell.

    nik
  • the point is that Apple, a company that makes money selling Hardware, *could* continue to do so using x86. Apple is not interested in becoming Microsoft - nor would they likely succeed (=> next, BE OS, ...).

    if, say, motorola continues to suck as it does, and intel/AMD continue to get better all the time, that may just happen.

    but back to my argument: if Apple were to switch to x86 _at all_, they would be better off with non-cloneable machines. they probably come up with a better concept than the proprietary ROM, but the point is, it's easily possible to make a proprietary x86 system.

    more likely, though, is that apple switches to multiple processors, sort of trying to bridge the MHz gap that way. the MHz gap is hurting apple, and it looks like it will continue to get worse.
  • How long will it be before Debian makes a GNU/Darwin distribution to go along w/ GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd? This is sarcasm, but wouldn't it be great if Mac OS X shipped w/ all the GNU utilities installed?
  • Ummm... sorry to break it to you, but the OSI found the APSL to be compliant with its open source definition. ESR has also publicly supported the APSL since the beginning.
  • You might have said the same thing about Linux in the early '90s.
  • >>From the release notes, there seems to be
    >>no implication of a GUI - am I wrong?

    Congratulations genius... you've figured out what the word *KERNEL* means...
  • a better link is <a href="http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/dar win/1.3/release.html">http://www.opensource.app le.com/projects/darwin/1. 3/release.html</a>
  • well said, thanks for the info. i'll be sure to do some more reading on microkernels.
  • Check out http://www.openpackages.org/ [openpackages.org] (hope this link prints correctly this time). There's already a project to unify the ports/packages collections across the various BSDs. Note that by ports/packages I mean FreeBSD-style ports and NetBSD-style packages (which are the same things, different names).

  • Re:"Open Source Foundation" (Score:4)

    by q[alex] ( 32151 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:23PM (#293060) Homepage
    From what I've been able to gather from the FAQ and other stuff, you get:
    a mach kernel
    a bsd subsystem - regularly synched with freebsd (libraries, object interfaces, etc) and netbsd (some user commands)

    and that's about it. you can run x-windows on it (which isn't all that easy to do on OS X), or whatever you want.

    the directory structure isn't all that important (to me, anyways)... what is important is that you're getting an OS that's binary compatible with Mac OS X (except for the carbon and cocoa toolkits, Apple's GUI frameworks), and also happens to be very close to a FreeBSD reference platform. Pretty damn cool.
  • If it was DR1 or 2, then it was just before Apple dropped x86 support. My hunch is that they stopped development at that time also, or moved it well underground. I'm not certain, but I believe that pre-dated Quartz and Aqua, as well.
  • X on X [mrcla.com]
  • it's kinda sketchy on hardware support right now, but i have it running on a celery 333 (overclocked to 375, behold my speed!!!)

    looks alot like *BSD, nothing super special.

    got a 3com card that's not supported yet, going to try to fix that, then it's on to cramming X on X [mrcla.com] on dis mofo.
  • fix, develop, whatever. sorry about that.
    i'll look into IOKit after exams
  • >this is a company who has, since it's inception, sold only proprietary software and hardware

    Perhaps you are forgetting that when you bought an Apple computer in the 70s, the schematics came with it.

    ...or so I've read, I wasn't even alive;)

  • Re:"Open Source Foundation" (Score:4)

    by nphinit ( 36616 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:27PM (#293066)


    It's a bare-bones BSD-like OS. If you want XFree and goodies like that, you need to download them yourself.

    Ok, so why use Darwin at all?

    1.) It's *painless* to install on a Mac. Absolutely painless.
    2.) It's small and lean.
    3.) An Apple-branded opensource BSD variant? Count me in! ;)

  • Umm, it would probably take a bit of patching, and some other diddling around in other obscure text files to get FreeBSD ports working on Darwin.

    Kind like, oh:

    http://elisa.utopianet.net/~rlucia/devel/darwin_ po rts/
  • This, like other intelligent comments in this article, has not been modded up.

    Doing an x86 oprt is indeed an excellent way to ensure the OS code is kept as hardware independent as possible. It undoes all the lazy things programmers do to get things done on time - they make assumptions and avoid abstractions because it saves time. Once you've ported Darwin to OS X, it can be taken anywhere, which gives Apple real leverage in terms of what chips they intend to use.

    That and a few demos of OS X running on PC hardware just to demonstrate its superiority to Other Operating Systems in trade shows and the like. It slices, it dices, it has a BSoD emulator!

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • With the x86 release of Darwin a complete OS X release for the x86 platform wouldn't be far away.

    Now it will mostly be a marketing decision if Apple would like to take on Microsoft on the PC platform.

    I'm not sure it will happen unless M$ licenses OS X from Apple.

    //Pingo

  • "I can modify and submit changes to the source code for free."

    Except, I believe that the Apple license does not give you *ownership* of that code. You can make the changes and submit them, but then they're *theirs* not yours. That is the big difference. I may be wrong here, but that's the last I heard on that license. Nobody says you don't have to like it. More companies allowing people to view their source is great. Just don't bless it as "Open Source" or "Free Software".
  • I fully advocate the free & non-rigorous use of the term "Open Source", which RMS would like to use as an endorsement of his fanatical ideals in the name of freedom.

    RMS would not like to use the term "Open Source" at all, he uses the term "Free Software". There is a huge difference. RMS created Free Software back in ~1984, several people (ESR, Perens, etc) created Open Source in ~1998.
  • Holy crap, there sure are a lot of people who (apparently) don't understand what Open Source is.

    For everyone who flamed me, I will say a couple things:

    -If the OSI had not started using the term "Open Source" then it would not mean anything more than it did before 1998. Apple would most certainly not be using it today. So, since they are using it because of the OSI's actions, it would be nice if they could even try to get OSI's license approval.
    -Code that you can download and look at without paying money is not Open Source. A key ingredient in Open Source software is the ability to modify and distribute the code. There is a massive difference between 'Free Beer' and 'Free Speech'.
  • Hmm... RMS indeed does not care if anything is Open Source. He cares if software is Free Software (not 'GNU/Linux'...that's not a 'movement', license, or method of development...it's a software package...Free Software is a movement, as is Open Source).

    It is true (are you trying to say this?) that RMS (and the FSF) does not have anything to do with Open Source or the OSI; I should have made that clear. But RMS's evaluation of the license is informative.

    My question to you is this:
    Why would you want anyone to assume that for a company to be Open Source means that it has to be part of an Open Source Organization such as the Open Source Initiative?

    Because the OSI made the term Open Source widely known. Apple would not be using the term if the OSI had not made it widely known in ~1998. So Apple clearly is talking about the OSI's Open Source (or are you saying they are not talking about the OSI's term, they just made up the term now?).

    If I followed YOUR ERRENOUS judgement completely bias one could not be a "real" Computer Engineer unless one is registered at the IEEE +_+?

    Uhh...no, I'm saying software is not 'Open Source' without being licensed under a OSI-approved license. If you mean that someone is not a 'real Computer Engineer' without a college degree, I agree, and in fact I believe it is illegal to represent yourself as an engineer if you are not one; if it's not illegal it's certainly not right. But the IEEE is not responsible for the term 'Computer Engineer' (or Electrical Engineer). And I am a Electrical Engineer, not Computer. IEEE stands for "The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers"...

    Peace fellow slashdoter,
    from a peaceful and compassionate slashdoter.

    Peace. ;-)
  • Geez who moderated that FlameBait? That's not FlameBait...?
  • Aha, I stand corrected. Thanks.

    However I don't see it on their license page [opensource.org]; I guess they're busy.
  • I am pretty sure that in at least my state (NC) you must be either a registered EE or work for a company that is registered. You can't just work as an EE without being registered (and a prereq. for registration is a 8-hour test).

    But I could be wrong. I lost most interest in EE when I got (heavily) into computers, too late to switch majors.

    Doh. ;-)

  • Darwin isn't Open Source!!! (Score:3)

    by ddstreet ( 49825 ) <ddstreet.ieee@org> on Friday April 13, 2001 @02:15PM (#293078) Homepage
    Why does everyone simply believe Apple when they say Open Source [apple.com]?!?

    The Apple Public Source License [apple.com] is not approved by the Open Source Initiative [opensource.org] nor the Free Software Foundation [gnu.org]. In fact RMS gives reasons why [gnu.org] it is not acceptable, even their new 'version 1.2' APSL release.

    They really need to stop erroneously using the words 'Open Source'.

  • Re:How long before GNU/Darwin? (Score:4)

    by ddstreet ( 49825 ) <ddstreet.ieee@org> on Friday April 13, 2001 @02:01PM (#293079) Homepage
    No, sorry, GNU/Hurd uses the Mach kernel; it would be GNU/Darwin (not GNU/Mach).

    'Hurd' refers to the (userspace) device drivers, as does 'Darwin'. Both use the Mach microkernel.

    You need to understand the difference between a monolithic kernel and micro-kernel to see the difference between Hurd and Mach (or Darwin and Mach).

    A monolithic kernel (like Linux) has all operations and device drivers in-kernel; they all run in kernel mode (ring 0 on x86).

    A microkernel (like Mach) only has the basic operations, but doesn't do everything you need. You need userspace 'server processes' which complete the kernel and run in userspace (ring 2 on x86). Thus, you have GNU's Hurd (play on words, it's a 'herd' of server processes) and Apple's Darwin.

    But they BOTH use the Mach microkernel.

    See history of FSF and GNU [gnu.org] (scroll down to 'The GNU Hurd") for a better explanation.
  • Look real close and take note on the max uptime for the flagship Darwin server: .5 days uptime, at best.


    That is because with all the internal builds, they are rebooting, adding, testing, rebuilding the kernel, trying new things etc. That may be why the uptime is only counted in the single digit days. Personally, I've had uptimes much longer than 5 days. Right now I'm at 24 and I may reboot with a new kernel soon.
  • OSX on Intel is a long way away. As others hav said, there's many other components and issues that will prevent any kind of OSX on Intel machine in the next few years.

    OTOH, what Apple could do is release Darwin with the GUI of Mac Classic with Darwin underneath. It woudl make sense, because the timeframe to implement it would ensure that OSX is the default PPC version. You'd not have the Java or Aqua support so you're not endangering your core market.

    I'm not sure Apple would bother making any apps beyond server apps, which would doom the thing to obscurity ala Be, but if the open source crowd picked it up and took advantage of a good GUI (and followed the interface guidelines, which I doubt) then Apple could have a "back door" into low end servers.

    But this is Apple we're talkign about...
  • I purchased it but I didn't register... You must be talking about the Admin Password before it installs. It's just the security features of the OS. Not much different than logging into Linux! Actually... What are you doing running OS X if you haven't gotten it yet? Actually your whole message doesn't make much sense. If you actually had the hardware to run OS X you probably wouldn't be talking about getting an Intel machine. If anything, you would want to run it on an AMD Athlon. Better yet, just wait for the 1Ghz PPC7400 and DDR RAM.
  • Nevermind, I just realised that you are talking about registering to download Darwin... Not install the new OS X update... I'm not sure what I was thinking.

    In any case...
    All my base are belong to you.

  • You basically answered your own question. If you have a low to medium volume server (let's say a military unit alumni association) that really needs to be secure (maybe you got tired of being 0wn3d), then Mac's the place to be.

    The % of PPC code v. emulated may have been right at one time but I don't think this is true anymore.
  • I can think of another Software company that wouldn't be in a world of hurt today if they didn't have that bloody hardware company soaking up resources up until recently.

    But I won't mention Sega's name, lest I offend other Dreamcast fans.

    I think it would be in Apple's absolute best interest to open up the Apple design spec, sell off their hardware business, and go into the OS Market.

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
  • I'm curious -- what fraction of MacOS X does this comprise? Before I go and DL and try it -- if you install it, what sort of system do you get? I see from the Darwin page that it's the BSD/Mach basis for MacOS X. Do you basically get a BSD operating system without the MacOS X interface? Does it have all the changed directory structures/user management/etc (not saying they're bad) of MacOS X?

    I'd read it in the release notes, but the "released" link won't let in. Any summary/link would be appreciated.

    -Puk

  • I am not an Apple die-hard so I have not been following the development of Darwin. The part of the x86 announcement that is interesting for me is the possibility of a Mac applications getting ported to open/free alternatives to the proprietary Mac UI.

    Is this a pipe dream? I know there are probably some hardware issues to resolve (nothing a few programmers and a few long nights can not solve...). The issue in my mind is if there is a desire to get the entire Mac applications running on x86 by using Darwin & an free/open UI interface. (Or is this part of Apple's long term plan?)

  • This post titled 'Why OSX on Intel/AMD CANNOT WORK' [macworld.com]
    is somewhat amusing a I dig down to figure out a bit more regarding OSX on x86 and alternates to Carbon/Cocoa (should the term Aqua be attached to those two?). Funny how things change, it is only from Oct of 2000 also.

  • A more direct link: (Score:3)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @12:04AM (#293090) Homepage Journal
    For those who wish not to register with Apple's crazy crazy system:

    user: goatsecx
    pass: goatsecx

    Direct Link to the [apple.com]
    x86 gzipped image.

  • Try telling that to your average x86 lamer. Apple paid $400 mil for Next that quarter... somehow i don't think that they were in dire need of funds...

    not to mention the fact that Apple had five billion dollars in cash and short-term investments at this time. that $150 Million from Microsoft was peanuts. Microsoft got off scott-free from that deal. the biggest thing they gave in that deal was the agreement to provide Office for the Mac, and they make loads of cash off of selling Office to Mac users these days! give me a break.

    of course, things are different when you run an illegal monopoly. fuck Microsoft pisses me off.

    - j

  • When OS X Final was released, a lot of folks with dual processor Macs reported kernel panics when getting online via dial-up. A Darwin developer (Louis Gerbarg), who is not an Apple employee, tracked down the bug in an open source kernel extension, and fixed it [macnn.com]. No big deal in the Linux world, but possibly a first for a commercial OS (again, this was a kernel level bug!)

    End result: Lots of happy OS X users (who paid upto $129 a pop to buy the software), without any involvement from Apple! Talk about a win-win...

  • But, why in God's name would you EVER want to run a webserver on MacOS? It's a single user, single address space, non-protected operating system. Only 50% of it is even native PPC code! The rest is emulated 68k. The only thing it has going for it is the fact that it's very secure(basically because it has no concept of ports, services or anything... everything has to be implemented manually). I've heard of WebTen but I'd be skeptical of any claims to that kind of speed.

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • Mac OS 9.0 has no more than 60% native code. In any case, a large portion of the OS is still emulated.

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

  • Re:Darwin Server, not worth it (Score:3)

    by naasking ( 94116 ) <naasking&gmail,com> on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:52PM (#293095) Homepage
    and there isnt even a web server platform that runs on the mac!

    Really? Then what's this? [linuxppc.com] Oh, and how about this? [yellowdoglinux.com] And then there's this [debian.org], and this! [netbsd.org] Don't forget this. [openbsd.org] And finally, there's this! [apple.com] Now I figure either you meant to say something else, or you just don't know what you're talking about. If it's the former, perhaps you should clarify. If the latter you just lost alot of credibility in my mind.

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • In fact RMS gives reasons why it is not acceptable, even their new 'version 1.2' APSL release.
    In fact RMS fails to explain why 1.2 is unacceptable on the GNU site. The commentary is primarily about the APSL 1.0 which is not relevant to Darwin as released this week.

  • Get your facts straight (Score:5)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Friday April 13, 2001 @01:50PM (#293097) Homepage Journal
    First - Windows Media Services is a great way to go if you want to continue Microsoft's hegemony on the desktop. Competition is good.

    Second - Last I heard, Real was charging $2,000+ for Real Server 8. That may be cheap to you, but it isn't to me.

    Third - Darwin was not written for the Macinosh, it was built on BSD and was never intended to be used solely on PowerPC hardware.

    Fourth - If you're down on apps that are configured through text files, perhaps you're not really very familiar with this thing called UNIX, which happens to use a text files all over the place for configuration. Ever heard of Apache?

    Fifth - Speaking of web server platforms running on the Mac, maybe you've heard of Apache, WebTen, WebStar...

    Sixth - "free with the purchase of Windows 2000" says it all.

  • Without Aqua, Carbon and all that other stuff.. Why would you use this over say FreeBSD? Not like you can run OS X apps on it or anything.

    Please explain to me why I would get this and what the benifit is of it?

    Also, on the PPC side, does it support the G3 Firewire notebooks? And the airport cards? I got Yellow Dog, but I can't get the speakers to turn on.. I havn't hacked around with the Airport card much.>p?
    --

  • Until 3 weeks ago, there was no large shipping operating system supporting OpenSTEP like APIs. Well, that started to change on March 24. If a handful of programmers realize the power of the Cocoa environment, we'll see the sucker improving. However, with NeXT basically dead, OpenSTEP marginalized, and then it completely disappearing while Apply worked on OS X, there was no incentive other than porting old NeXTSTEP code.

    Now there is.

    There needs to be a common API for writing applications for the UNIX workstation market. Within 6 months, the market leader in that space will be Apple.

    Either get Trolltech to port QT to Quartz (and then the KDR extentions), or port GTK+ to Quartz, or port Cocoa (via GnuSTEP) to X-Windows.

    Either way, Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS X are a natural alliance. The combined desktop marketshare is much more worthwhile to port to than any of them individually.

    Alex
  • whoa. i gasped (loud) when i saw this article. doing a bit of research, i found this [apple.com] page, containing the x86 installation notes. Take a look! it appears that you need a specific intel board.
    "emulators such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards."
    ...you can't try this out with VMware!! that's how almost all of us were going to play...

  • And at version 1.3 Linux was any better? It wasn't until 2.0+ that anything useful was supported. This is how an OS grows. People seem to forget that Darwin and Mac OS X (10 that is) are BABIES in the world of OSes. They are just getting started with hardware and application support. Give 'em time and they will refine it. You think Windows 95 supported USB at all? It barely supported good video cards. Given time, however, Win 98 SE did a pretty good job at USB and video acceleration.

    Give Apple some time and don't judge the first releases like this is the final product.
  • I can download Dawrin for free. I can install it for free. I can use it for free. I can get the source code for free. I can modify and submit changes to the source code for free.

    If you mean you can't take Apple's code and use it elsewhere, you might have a point, but, really, Apple is a company. Get your head out of the FSF's ass long enough to see that that the world cannot exist on free software along. SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, has to cost money for someone to make money. Free goes no where. We tried it, the VCs poured money into it. None came out and the stockes crashed. Learn from this. If you want to see Darwin 2.0 then it can never be RMS' idea of "free" because Apple would go the way of VA Linux.

    Whoop-de-friggin-do that RMS and FSF don't like it. I couldn't care less about their opinions of things. This is free as in beer and cool as hell and by God I'm using the damned thing and the entire whiny "Open Source" (with big capital letters) movement can kiss my furry ass if you dislike the license BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE IS COOL AND SUPPORTED BY SOMEONE I KNOW WILL BE THERE TOMORROW, versus OS projects that can disappear if the maintainer decides to ditch it. Apple's not going to ditch the core of their OS.
  • So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company. The software side of the company alone has already been proven to be viable as a money-maker, so where's the problem?

    That no average user would buy any Apple OS anymore because Microsoft Office would promptly become unavailable for it.

    ... you don't REALLY think that they'd ship Office for a directly competing OS, do you??

    Hell, Microsoft wouldn't even let Apple ship Yellow Box for Windows. The whole OS is *so* not on, if you get my drift.

  • Re:Here's the thing-- (Score:3)

    by Snocone ( 158524 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:04PM (#293119) Homepage
    Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like the deal Apple got along with their $150 million.

    Well, there's a few extra twists. Roughly in order of how Microsoft perceived their importance:

    1) Apple agreed not to drag them through the courts for being caught stealing QuickTime source code;

    2) Apple had to kill not only Rhapsody/x86 but also Yellow Box for Windows;

    3) Apple had to give IE pride of place over Netscape in all system releases etc.

    In return, Apple got:

    1) Cash, which they really didn't need

    2) Committment to deliver a new version of office for 9.x (this is office 2k1) and X.x (coming sometime) which is pretty darn important for ANY new OS to get traction

    3) Chairman Bill up on the videowall at MacWorld promising to not kill Apple, really, which was probably the most important part of the whole deal from the analysts' point of view.

  • With the x86 release of Darwin a complete OS X release for the x86 platform wouldn't be far away

    Sadly Darwin is a tiny part of the effort required to bring Mac OS X to x86. Above this sit many layers of software, including Quartz, Carbon, Aqua, Classic, Cocoa, QuickTime, Java... Don't forget, Apple has had a team of up to 500 engineers working on Mac OS X for PPC for the last three years or so. Of that effort, only a tiny subset has been dedicated to bringing up Darwin.

    I'd guess that you'd be looking at several hundred man years of effort to get the rest of Mac OS X ported to Intel, particularly if you want it to run on a decent spread of hardware. I wouldn't hold your breath...

  • You're assuming that higher-level code is all written in PowerPC assembly language. I don't think that is the case. I would expect that most of the OS X code is written in C, C++, or Objective C (the object-oriented dialect of C used on NeXTstep).

    Actually, I'm not assuming that Mac OS X is written in PPC assembly language. I worked for Apple as a senior software engineer for four years, up through the Mac OS X beta. I spent a lot of time working on the internals of Mac OS X. Porting an OS written in C/C++ is not a case of recompiling for a new instruction set. It would be a significant amount of work to bring the upper software layers of Mac OS X up on Intel.

    The biggest technical challenges would probably be the Classic environment (which has to run PowerPC and 68K machine code), device support for the millions of different PC I/O configurations, and reoptimization of low-level code that takes advantage of AltiVec.

    Classic would be a major challenge. Not only the technical issues of running a PowerPC emulator on Intel, but also the usability issue that emulation brings - namely your emulated Classic apps would run very, very slowly on Intel.

    But the real reasons you won't see OS X on x86 are business reasons. Apple thinks of themselves as a hardware company -- they weren't willing to tolerate even limited competition from authorized cloners, and so they certainly wouldn't want to have to compete for hardware sales in the x86 world. And Office gives Microsoft a lot of hold over Apple, even if using one monopoly to maintain or extend another is supposed to be against the law.

    I agree, the major reasons for not porting Mac OS X to Intel are business-related, not technical. The technical reasons are huge however. To re-iterate what you said, Apple is a company that does around $8 billion a year in revenue. Of this about 95% is from hardware. So the first year that Apple transitions from being a hardware company to being a software company, its revenues drop from $8 billion to $400 million. Its hard to see how any company could justify that kind of decision. Can you imagine how their shareholders would react?

    Personally I don't think Microsoft has much hold over Apple. That's just a red herring as far as I can see. Its the revenue drop they couldn't stomach.

  • I hope they're not trying to impress us with osx server - it looks like they're slashdotted...

  • In related news.... (Score:4)

    by EricTheFish ( 178660 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @04:58PM (#293126)
    Mac OS X was also updated. Up to 4L13 (10.0.1). This is the official apple sanctioned release version. Check out macnn for tips if you installed an earlier, developer only build (4l5?)

    Get it by running apple software update, letting it update your software update application, run it again (to get 10.0.1), reboot, and run it again (to get updated epson printer drivers) if you want.

    Have fun...

    From Apple:

    Update Now: Use the Software Update feature in your System Preferences to get the latest Mac OS X software. Improvements including better support for 3rd party USB devices, Classic compatibility and overall application stability as well as support for the popular open source Secure Shell service. For Japanese users, an update to the Epson printer drivers is also available.
  • I imagine it would be a headache, but how difficult would it be to bring over the ports collection and the drivers from FreeBSD?

    although I can agreed that in this case it would be better to go with the pure BSD installs for a standard system, and use the darwin setup for a mad scientist rig.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • ---COUGH-- IDE: Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work. Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better. Ethernet: Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported. All PCI based Intel 8255x cards tested worked fine, however the mobile 8255x controllers in laptops are not supported. 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. Successfully tested hardware: All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
  • Huh?

    One, this story is about the Darwin OS, not the streaming server. Two, on what planet does MacOS not have any web servers?

    Yeah, I know it's a troll. I'm just wondering what the idiots moderating you up are thinking. Anyway, when it comes to trolling, Michael has you beat with from the for-masochists-only dept.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Quicktime beats the crap out of Windows Media and Real codec's many times plus some. Go check out http://www.apple.com/trailers/ [apple.com] and if you've got decent bandwidth, check out the high bandwidth videos. I've never seen WMP or Real equivs to that quality, even at high exposure places like atomfilms.com. Even the low-res clips look great.

    Moral: It's an aesthetics thing. Totally different universe from Unix geekdom. ;-)

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