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Apple Businesses

A Quick Look At Mac-On-Linux 271

Posted by timothy from the cute-logos-cool-program dept.
Travis Emslander writes: "They have an article about Mac on Linux over at MaximumLinux.org. I didn't even know this project existed but it looks like you can run any MacOS app (not including MacOS X apps of course) on a PPC machine with it. I'm starting to wish I had a mac to try this stuff." Here are some more screenshots. I saw MoL demonstrated over a year ago (when OS X wasn't really an issue) and was amazed at how quickly it ran. Anyone out there using it on a day-to-day basis?
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A Quick Look At Mac-On-Linux More

A Quick Look At Mac-On-Linux

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  • This is why... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by jacobcaz ( 91509 )
    Mac's rock so hard. This is wicked-cool and I can't wait to get my G4 to try this now! 8-)
  • When you emulate one OS, to another and then back again. In truth, any emulator should be able to provide enough services to run another emulator under it :)

  • Linux, Mac, Windows - it's all good now (Score:4, Funny)

    by illusion_2K ( 187951 ) <slashdot@dissolv e . ca> on Saturday September 29, 2001 @03:59PM (#2368818) Homepage
    Great, now I can run Linux, MacOS and Linux all at the same time [maconlinux.org]. Is there anything greater?

  • very neat... some questions, though (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stego ( 146071 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:00PM (#2368820) Homepage
    • why won't it run OS X?
    • how does the speed compare to Classic under OS X?
    • can you drag+drop between desktops like w/ Virtual PC?
    • Hi... Well -> MOL is NOT emulation! It runs MACOS8x/9x in a memory bubble (like OSX runs MACOS9.x in a memory bubble) -- therefore it runs at native speeds... MOL pre dates OSX... & it works especially well if you switch between Linux & MacOS9 in full screen mode)... It is open source so go check out the code if interested. Its a great hack!!! Cheers GregH
    • why won't it run OS X?

      Because Samuel hasn't gotten that handled yet. There's nothing that strictly prevents it, however. It's doable, just requires a bit more work (probably a slightly more complete OpenFirmware implementation will be required, but ask Samuel to be sure).

      how does the speed compare to Classic under OS X?

      Pretty similar. They both run Classic MacOS in a similar fashion - using the PowerPC's designed-in virtualization capabilities to run a full OS in a process context. (Something that takes a lot of dirty trickery on e.g. IA32)

      can you drag+drop between desktops like w/ Virtual PC?

      No.

  • elite (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i think this is cool. more info can be found at maconlinux.org [maconlinux.org]

  • The obvious question ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:01PM (#2368826) Homepage Journal
    ... is what niche this fills with OS X around. A year ago, there was simply no way to get MacOS functionality on a Unix (/Linux, etc.) system except with either MOL or that horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs (sorry, can't remember the name.) These days, OTOH, a powerful and MacOS-compatible Unix is, in fact, well, what you get when you buy a Mac.

    To be fair, there are a lot of older Macs out there that don't have the horsepower for OS X but would do just fine as Linux boxes, and I can see MOL being useful for them. With new iMacs so cheap, though, how long will that be true?

    • politics (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stego ( 146071 )
      I am a Mac user, but this is how I see this might be important: one of the great things about Linux is the approach and attitude of the developers - the community, the very nature of open source, the difference from the 'closed' operating systems (including my beloved OS X). If you run Linux as your primary OS because using anything else seems like an intolerable sell-out, having the ability to emulate another OS that provides otherwise unavailable functionality is a way more viable solution that giving up your freedom just to be able to see Quicktime movies and run Photoshop. I don't feel like I have stated this very well - can someone that uses Linux add to this?

      • Re:politics (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        MacOS X is not "closed" source. Darwin, the core part of the operating system is open source. What are closed are the graphics and gui subsystems that sit on top of Darwin.

        • Re:politics (Score:5, Insightful)

          by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @05:20PM (#2369013) Homepage
          Because Darwin does not add much value to the Unix/BSD world from an application developer's standpoint, the really key components of OS X are the GUI and Openstep environment (Aqua, et al.) which are closed source. Therefore, most Linux users approach OS X as a closed, proprietary system with a few open components.

          It will be interesting to see how far GNUstep gets in emulating OS X (and to watch Apple turn loose the attack lawyers once they're close).

          • Re:politics (Score:3, Insightful)

            by raju1kabir ( 251972 )
            Because Darwin does not add much value to the Unix/BSD world from an application developer's standpoint...

            It does stand to add one rather crucial thing: A doubling or tripling of the user base. This means more people using the software and more people contributing to the software.

          • Because Darwin does not add much value to the Unix/BSD world from an application developer's standpoint, the really key components of OS X are the GUI and Openstep environment (Aqua, et al.) which are closed source. Therefore, most Linux users approach OS X as a closed, proprietary system with a few open components.

            Ironically it's been my experience most MacOS X developers consider Quartz & Aqua to be a pretty face but get really excited about the Cocoa development tools [apple.com]. Without these MacOS X is just another BSD with a special kernel, tweaked directories and a new IO model (and some other nice features.) With these it has one of the most powerful and praised development environments ever created.

      • for me, it's the software. (Re:politics) (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dangermouse ( 2242 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:56PM (#2368966) Homepage
        Well, for me, it's like this...

        I'm more comfortable in my Linux distribution of choice than I am in OS X. I know where everything is, I have absurd amounts of software already installed (including a toolchain I didn't have to register online to obtain), and I have little need for MacOS apps. I also prefer KDE over Aqua; Though I recognize Aqua has some bells and whistles that KDE and XFree86 lack, KDE and XFree86 have far more of the bells and whistles that I use and appreciate. I'm pretty much just happier with the software on the Linux side.

        As for Mac-On-Linux, I could see using it for the occasional MacOS app... sometimes such functionality is handy. And really, if it works, why not have it around?

        I've seen a lot of posts on this thread asking what "the niche" is for MOL, questioning whether Linux has any value in the Mac "market" because OS X is available, etc. My only reply, really, is that maybe those posters should stop thinking like Official Linux Salesmen and Market Strategists... if it's not your thing, fine, but trying to determine the "market" for everything (especially something that's so obviously built and supported by its "market"), as if you own a piece, is silly.

      • I don't feel like I have stated this very well - can someone that uses Linux add to this?

        No, I think you stated it perfectly.

    • Flexibility is what it is all about. Not having to reboot to enjoy both Linux and MacOS is a big selling point, just as being able to run Classic, OSX and XWindows apps at the same time.

      BTW, this is posted using OSX10.1 It is a vast improvement over 10.04. As they say, it rocks.
    • The niche this makes sense for is all the current Mac PPC users (this includes the 603, 604 series machines) who would like to run OS X, but don't want to pony up the bucks to buy a new system. This would seem to be a good way to achieve many of the benefits of OS X (plus better performance, since YDL does not have the overhead of OS X's overkill GUI layer).
      • In spite of what Apple says, OS X runs fine on a lot of 604 hardware, and with 10.1 it's even reasonably snappy.
      • What's overkill about the OS X GUI? It makes as much sense to build a GUI on PDF now as it did to build one on plain bitmaps in the 1980's. All of today's publishing applications are building in PDF support, and Apple saved everyone time and trouble on the Mac by building PDF into the system, so that it's "free" for any application to use. There's a PostScript interpreter built-in now, too, as of 10.1. It's not overkill for Apple's customers, and it's not slow. The clarity and sharpness of graphics on this system is amazing. They wrote the graphics system from the ground up to be what it is ... it's not window dressing on an old system.

    • Re:The obvious question ... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The ``horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs'' you're thinking of is probably A/UX, Apple's implementation of SVR3. This ran native on the 68030/040 Macs, but it could also run Macintosh applications right alongside X11 apps.

      The product most similar to MOL was Macintosh Application Environment (also from Apple), which let you run System 7 in an emulated 680x0 in a window on RISC workstations, e.g. Solaris on SPARC and a couple of others

      Both of these are quite out-of-date and, to my knowledge, no longer sold, though A/UX still has some fans.

      If you want to go the *nix on Mac route, Tenon Intersystems still sells MachTen [tenon.com], a 4.4BSD/Mach implementation that runs as a process under Mac OS 9 and earlier on PowerPC and 68K.

    • That "horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs" is named "MachTen" and was made by Tenon [tenon.com].
      Once Machten reached version 4.1ish, it wasn't that bad. I could use a unix mach kernel at blazing fast speeds on my mac's PPC processor WAY before OS X.

      Just my two cents.
    • What you're really asking here is, "OS X supports both Posix and Mac apps. So what's the point of a Linux/MOL setup?" Which is similar to the question, "Windows supports both Posix and Windows apps. So what's the point of a Linux/WINE setup?" We already know the answer to that one.
      • Well, cygwin is now to the point where you can run KDE under it. Within a few years just about every app will have a cygwin port, and there are plans for a whole cygwin distro - to my mind this would be a lot simpler way to run the linux apps I like.

        -josh
  • The post says you can run MacOS apps on Linux on a PowerPC, doesn't this defeat the purpose of running linux on a powerpc? Why not just dual boot if you're going to have it on a powerpc anyway? I can understand Mac-On-Linux if it was an x86, but this is Mac-On-Linux-On-Mac.

    • Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ghoser777 ( 113623 ) <fahrenba@ma c . com> on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:06PM (#2368843) Homepage
      I think the idea is that you can have both OSes running at the same time without rebooting. The other idea (and why it's so fast) is that it's not emulation of hardware. That will always be slower than if it was on PPC.

      F-bacher
    • I think its the point that you don't have to take the time of booting into the other OS. If you need to go to the other OS for 5 minutes of work, and it takes 2 minutes to reboot, you are wasting alot of time.


      Then if you prefer to use linux again you'll have to spend the time booting back.


      Of course this doesn't help if M-O-L doesn't help for games... then you really have to boot into OS-9 anyway.

    • Well for once you can have a linux will a apache server, mysql, modperl, all the nice things that are so easy in linux and then open a macos window just to check who it looks on the mac...
    • Why not just dual boot if you're going to have it on a powerpc anyway?

      I've never understood this dual booting thing. I cannot imagine, ever in a thousand years, dual booting. What could be more annoying? Get 40 or 50 windows open, all sorts of tasks underway, and then have to shut it all down just to do one more thing? What on earth is the appeal of that? Absolutely bizarre.

      I mean, I guess if you want to experiment with some operating system once in a blue moon, and don't have the 30 minutes it takes to find a free spare PC, it might be vaguely acceptable. But as part of any sort of normal routine, ugh!

  • I have been running OSX since the beta. Considering how bad the Classic layer seems to work (though I hear it's much improved in 10.1), maybe someone should try to port this over. Then I could run Mac on Linux on Mac's Unix. =)

  • A lot of the questions about "what's the point?" and "is it emulation or not?" can be answered by thinking of MoL as like VMware for PowerPC.
  • And aside from a few niggles (like, sound not working and other minor stuff), it is very fast and works very well. I use it daily to test PHP generated pages for if they look good under Icab, Mac IE, and mac netscape/mozilla amongst others.

  • there is a need for this... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    just look at the yellow dog BRIQ hardware. These use a G4 processor, but are not Apple hardware. With the official Apple Clone market closed, anyone with a G3 or G4 processor based system should be able to run Mac software as well as Linux software. Fantastic!

  • I use it daily (Score:5, Informative)

    by KmArT ( 1109 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:22PM (#2368886)
    I use MOL on my Lombard Powerbook at work. It has to be one of the most clever and most useful PPC linux apps that was ever written. It is _extremely_ fast with respect to emulation because it isn't really emulation at all; the PPC calls are all native. No need to translate PPC calls to x86 like you would when running VirtualPC on a Mac.

    The only problem I've had of late is that the network device stops working after about three hours but I just kill MOL and restart it. From past experience with MacOS, rebooting every three hours is often necessary anyway :)

    All in all, an excellent program. And its not so much that it allows you to run MacOS programs under Linux, ala MacOS emulators for Windoze - it is a complete virtual PPC machine within a PPC machine.

    My laptop has YellowDog Linux 2.0 on it but I also ran MOL on Debian unstable for awhile with good success. I also run it at home on my Apple Network Server - I was able to install MacOS from scratch using MOL by setting the boot device to the CD.

  • Well this is going to cost me another G4 tower... I just got OS 10.1 up and happy (yes, it does rock, no. it doesn't suck) but now I want Mac on Linux running up next to OS X not instead of it.

    Talk about a horse race? here is in opportunity to run both classic apps (read: applications that get me paid) on *nix environments. One on a BSD based system supported by a huge ass company with a huge ass budget (and stake). The other, Linux based and supported by the Screaming Linux Jihad.

    I choose to exploit everything and see what works best. zealously is for jackasses.

    • Re:This is going to cost me. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sorry, but you get paid for the end product, if you do graphic arts, then gimp can do it for you (just take a weekend of your own time and learn it, it's so close to photoshop now it aint funny) as for webdesign if you dont code your html by hand then I am agast and wonder what webhouse would allow people to use crappy-code-generators (although that would explain the vast amount of overly artsy and really crappily written pages out there.)

      you can do everything (except non linear video editing) on linux that you do on your mac... so what's your excuse again?
      • > Sorry, but you get paid for the end product, if you
        > do graphic arts, then gimp can do it for you

        Why is it that it's never a graphic artist saying this?

        > (just take a weekend of your own time and learn
        > it, it's so close to photoshop now it aint funny)

        It is so close to Photoshop in ways that a hobbyist can appreciate. GIMP is not on the cutting-edge of graphic design and publishing.

        > as for webdesign if you dont code your html by
        > hand then I am agast

        That opinion is about five years out-of-date. These days you mock it up in Dreamweaver and then customize the code as required by hand or with another tool, and Dreamweaver leaves the hand-written code alone. I'd rather write scripts that automate Dreamweaver than write Web pages. The people who make Dreamweaver have researched a lot of common browser bugs and Dreamweaver takes steps to work around them. Why would I want to keep up with the lastest bug in IE just so I can code everything by hand instead of just the important stuff?

        The first music sequencers only produced robotic music, and the first design-oriented HTML editors only produced crappy code. Both of these things have long since changed. If you get robotic music out of Cubase 5 and crappy code out of Dreamweaver 4, it is your own fault. The tools are advanced enough now that you have control over things.

        > you can do everything (except non linear video
        > editing) on linux that you do on your mac... so
        > what's your excuse again?

        Pro audio, QuickTime authoring, Flash authoring, DVD video authoring, easy drag-and-drop data CD and DVD burning (I make lots of big files, so a $6 4.7GB DVD-R that burns in 20 minutes with no effort to make it is very important), print graphics (no CMYK color in GIMP), and huge, huge, huge workflow advantages that come from common key shortcuts, application conventions, support for all common audio, video, and graphics formats, the best clipboard on a personal computer, scriptable/recordable GUI and high-level interapplication communication, PDF as a common format between all apps, drag-and-drop of one icon to "install" an app, or drag-and-drop to the Trash to "uninstall", amazing hardware support with drivers included in the OS so stuff just hot-plugs and you go (like a graphics tablet, or a precision mouse as a second mouse, or a whole USB/FireWire audio interface, camera/camcorder, or a hard disk).

        All of this stuff saves me lots and lots of time and provides very important functionality and capabilities. A Mac is a very important tool in many industries ... it would take years of work to make Linux competitive for those users, and why should the people who are making Linux want to do that when Apple is doing a good job of it already? This stuff will appear in Linux one day if the people who use and make Linux want to build it in, but it is not there now.

        Coders and geeks can go ahead and make their own operating system that's optimized for coders and geeks. When Apple says that they make systems for "the rest of us", they mean people who aren't coders and geeks and can't make their own operating systems, or don't want to. Apple's customers are more interested in the fact that Mac OS X includes color-matching throughout the OS and hardware, and supports every type of font out of the box (including Windows-formatted TrueType fonts) than whether the compiler is free enough or whatever. That's for coders and geeks to worry about.

        Really, Linux and Mac OS X both exist for different reasons, and they're quite complemetary. I use Mac desktops and notebooks, but my Web server is Linux. If you're doing something for which Linux is well-suited, and you have the expertise and time to set it up, it's a no-brainer. Especially when you are in a situation where you set it up once and replicate it on box after box after box with no licensing fees or associated paperwork (that is a huge advantage). It's not going to swap one-for-one with a Mac box for most users anytime soon, though.
  • - "It probably was your JVM. Macs and Java don't mesh. They sometimes seem to be meshing, but there's no real rapport."
    - "I thought Mac Oh Yes Sex was supposed to solve all that."
    - "Have you installed MacOS X?"
    - "Well, no, but - "
    - "Then I think I see your problem."

  • http://www.maconlinux.org/sshots/pic10.gif [maconlinux.org]

    Okay... so they are emulating DOS emulated from Windows emulated from Mac and emulated on Linux?


    *head explodes*

  • MOL isn't an emulator ... and it IS way cool. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jobe_br ( 27348 ) <bdruth&gmail,com> on Saturday September 29, 2001 @04:34PM (#2368911)

    Mac-on-Linux is akin to VMware - it runs Mac code natively on PPC processors by virtualizing the underlying hardware. It is amazingly powerful and the last I was hearing on the MOL lists is that OS X support will be back soon (yes, it was there when OS X was in its infancy, since then, a few changes in OS X have broken things in MOL). With Mac OS 9.x (and earlier), however, MOL is solid as a rock. I can run days, even weeks without any instability - eventually, though, Photoshop or something else will cause me to reboot MacOS.

    If anyone's been scared to try out Linux on a PPC machine, for fear of losing MacOS, check out Mac-on-Linux ... you'll have it to fall back on in case you get stuck in Linux. Most PPC Linux distros that I know of ship with Mac-on-Linux, so getting it running should be a snap. If you have any problems, the MOL mailing lists are amazingly helpful, often times Sam Rydh, the creator/maintainer of MOL will post responses himself.

    FYI - sound works great, but video acceleration is lacking (much like VMware). USB support is also not there (yet) - but, if your device is seen in Linux, you can use it in MOL.

  • MOL is good but (Score:2, Informative)

    by nallen ( 458389 )
    I installed LinuxPPC on my iBook last year (which ran great I might add) but I still needed to boot to OS 9 to use the mac programs, so I played with Mac-on-Linux, it worked great with out a lot of bloat. My only difficulty was networking the emulated MacOS through Linux, it was a bit challenging, as well as printing, but these are problems every emulator faces. I remember something a while back comparing MOL and the classic enviroment. The Classic enviroment of OS X is smoother, but I remember MOL being faster.
  • I've had MOL running a LONG time ago, but I ended up removing it as I found no need for it. Same reason I find vmware completely useless. I have no reason to run MacOS or Windows software from my linux boxen, the Linux boxen can do everything I require.

    I guess stuff like this could be useful for some..

  • Cool Stuff (Score:2, Informative)

    by zarathustra93 ( 164244 )
    I can see where this would be a major help to those that are still running older macs, (beige g3, 604.) Even though the machines are old, linux would probably fly on them, while still maintaining a suprising amount of compatability for Classic MacOS apps. Taking a look at this really makes me wish that wine supported as many applications (though it has been a long time sice I've played with it.)

    Where this project will go in the future is the big question. With 10.1 (yes, this is the obligitory "it rocks" comment,) you get the same ammount of Classic MacOS support, with all the modern goddies that you could want.

    • Re:Cool Stuff (Score:2, Informative)

      by sprouty76 ( 523155 )
      Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API using native Linux (or FreeBSD or whatever) system calls. MOL is a virtual machine type affair. The main difference is in things like the way wine can display Windows windows (erm...) as part of the Linux desktop, instead of having one seperate window for the entire Windows desktop (although you can do that as well, if you want)
  • Yes, coleage of mine used mol everyday for about 6 months, he was a mac guy that was kind of forced to use linux (by me ehehe), but he had a few need that only the mac could provide (he had to read a few mac files, and use photoshop, etc) so we just installed linux and mol on his g4.
    It runs very well even, the few problems he had where due to poor support on the X server (no accel) mol ran just fine anda even allowed him to save his session.
    He just quit using it because we decided to try OS/X for his particular setup.
  • ok so i can.... load Linux on my iBook and run MOL and than load virtualPC and load up Linux under VirtualPC to than run WINE to edit that txt file in Notepad?
  • Mike at www.xlr8yourmac.com has a nice article with some MacOS X 10.1 tests. In some your usual 21 photoshop filter test, 10.1 running Classic got like 75 seconds, while MacOS 9.2.1 got 71 seconds. 5% difference. That's pretty damn good. I don't really understand why you would want to use MoL on MacOS X when you can just use Classic, unless it's for shits and giggles.

    But then again, I don't even have MacOS X. What do I know?
  • My school is a Mac heavy school. I wanted to try to introduce Linux on some of the workstations, but the users had to be able to run MacOS applications. I hunted around looking at various dual-boot solutions, and I ended up finding Mac-on-Linux.

    I played around with it for a little while on an old Beige G3 running Yellowdog. It had some neat features, including the ability to run full screen on a separate virtual console. So users could switch between MacOS and Linux with a keystroke.

    My overall impression, though, was that it isn't ready for prime time. The speed was great, but the hardware support wasn't, and there were also several glitches, like the mouse cursor disappearing.

    I hope the group working on this project keeps it up, because I think it is really cool, especially for people with old Macs. It just isn't ready for mainstream implementation.
  • The 4th screenshot says : "Installing Mac OS 9.2 onto Mac OS 9.2", now that's awesome stuff :)

    • Re:Sweet screenshots (Score:2, Informative)

      by stux ( 1934 )
      Something you might not realise is that Mac OS volumes are named... not lettered ;)

      Heheh..

      Its common when you're into running 7 different versions of MacOS on your hardware to name various partitions after the OS on them...

      You don't *need* to use different partitions, but it works better that way :)

      Anywho,

      Installing onto

      heheh

      Installing macos-9.2 onto /vol/Mac\ OS\ 9.2

      :)
  • I am a McPaint erotic artist by night, and desktop publisher by day. I distribute my McPaint art via FidoNet, my screen is monochrome, and my mouse only has one button, so this maconlinux thing is really relevant to me.

    I've always wanted to learn the linux, I hear it runs well on the ibm and compatible clones like the Compaq and the Kaypro. My friend has the Mosaic on his Mac, and he tells me about the linux and WWW all the time. He says the WWW (he's cool, so he calls it the W3), the Archie and the Gopher will be the future, someday we'll have modems that will go almost 4800 baud per second, and the HTML will be the computer language we convert our Pagemaker files to.

    Please send me a fax when this is released, I have to go listen to some LP's on my new HiFi and vote for Mondale now.
    • Excellent! I am at Fido Node WOOF.BARK! Pls convert your PICT format images to XBM and send uuencoded! Over and out!
    • There was a demo at Apple's WWDC last year of a 1983 beta of MacPaint running in Classic on Mac OS X 10.0. Pretty cool that OS X can support an app going that far back.

      MacPaint was quite revolutionary in its time, like iMovie and iDVD are today. Photoshop and similar apps are basically much more advanced big brothers of MacPaint, with many of the same UI conventions and procedures. A lot of digital artists got turned on first with MacPaint.
  • I switched to YellowDog Linux on my beige G3 mac. I was sick and tired of having my Mac crash everytime I used remote access software. (There's nothing more dangerous than VNC and shareware FTP on a mac)

    And there I was. Everything was great. And if I wanted to use those MacOS programs that crashed all the time, I could feel free. I could switch consoles and get some work done while I was waiting for it to boot. I really feel like MOL is better than straight MacOS in some respects. Not video performance, of course.

  • How many OSs can you run at once?! (Score:3, Informative)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Saturday September 29, 2001 @08:18PM (#2369346)

    Here's an idea... there's User Mode Linux [sourceforge.net], a Linux kernel designed to run within another Linux kernel, rather than directly on the hardware. This permits all sort of debugging, security and other wonderful things.

    From the 'uses' page: [sourceforge.net] This is more a potential use, since UML only runs on Linux right now. But once it's ported to another OS, it is a completely authentic Linux environment - it will run any Linux executable. This would be an interesting shortcut for an OS vendor looking for Linux binary compatibility. See the projects page for more information on porting UML to other operating systems.

    Following that idea, it would be cool to port UML to MacOS X. (Would that automatically work on FreeBSD?) This way, you can run MacOS X, Linux (UML), MacOS 9.x inside that and DOS inside that. Why anybody would want to do that is beyond me, but it seems like a cool idea. Hey, with UML, it might be possible to have a "native" Linux system running on just about any operating system.

    Here's a scary thought: If Linux runs under Windows, what happens when Windows crashes? On second thought, maybe it's better to run Linux as the native OS and emulate or virtualize the junk under that.

  • How great! I was just looking for something that would do this. I work for a school district (all macs) but had 90+ intel boxen donated since the dot bomb (District is in norcal). Now all I have to do is make a PC seamlessly boot into a mac enviroment. That should be easier than trying to teach 200 teachers windows or linux!
    • As others have pointed out, you can't run MOL on intel based systems, but you CAN run UAE (Unix (or unstable, depends on who you talk to) Amiga Emulator) and then run a mac emulator on top of that. It's not easy, the legality is questionable and it can be slow, but it does work, I did it a few years ago for kicks.

      You'll need the Amiga Forever [cloanto.com] CD (which comes with fully licenced Amiga OS ROMS and software) and a mac emulator and mac ROMS (they're out there somewhere, and instructions for extracting them (legally) from your old macs are out there too.)

      There's some other bits too, like getting the Picasso96 graphics drivers running, but it's not that tough, and if you wanted I could give you a hand if you felt like taking a crack at it. I ran MacOS 7(point something) on UAE under Linux (you can run UAE under windows, too) when I had an AMDk6-2 450 and it ran fine, speedwise.

      God, you'd think I was a lisp programmer or something.
  • I've been trying to get MOL working on my Powerbook G3 Wallstreet (running Mandrake 8/PPC), but it isn't working. :P It locks hard when trying to load a ROM from disk, and it seems to work using newworld boot method to get the ROM from the MacOS System Folder (although the G3 Wallstreet is an old-world machine), but then it crashes after mapping the GC (no segfault or anything, just quits).

    Has anybody set up MOL on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet? Anything I need to be careful about? I pretty much just followed the directions in the docs.

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