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Apple Businesses

Apple updates Darwin, releases OpenPlay 82

Posted by Hemos from the is-it-social-darwinism dept.
A reader writes "Apple has made available a binary release of Darwin on its public source server. They also released the rest of the Darwin source code which should finally let it compile out of the box. On top of that Apple has published a third Open Source project dubbed OpenPlay. OpenPlay is a network abstraction layer designed to simplify the task of creating programs which communicate across multiple computers. "
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Apple updates Darwin, releases OpenPlay More

Apple updates Darwin, releases OpenPlay

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  • Re:question? - OS X (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Carbon isn't really a distribution of the BSD layer. It's basically a new set of API's. The problem with OSX is that it's a completely different os, it cannot run any old mac apps without running in the bluebox (a macos emulator). Carbon is designed to allow developers to quickly port their apps to take advantage of new features that will be in OSX (multitasking, memory management, etc) while still allowing these apps to run on older OS's, albiet without the benefits of the OSX environment. So basically Carbon is the same mac API's available now (with a few extras thrown in), but they function differently to aid in development of OSX apps.

  • Re:Mach kernal -> Mach4 & Flux OSKit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mach development was continued at the University of Utah:
    http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flexmach/mach4/h tml/Mach4-proj.html

    Which sparked an even more interesting project, the Flux OSKit:
    http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/index.html

    Flux took the lessons learned from the Mach project and created a code kit that let's you compile your own kernel.

    Oh, and both Mach4 & Flux both run on x86 processors....

    Eric Bronnimann

  • Re:hardware configurations. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wouldn't want a G3 because of the Apple baggage: the extra price, the crappy OS that I'd just format, and the limited hardware support... but the chip looks nice. At least MacOS X is based around UNIX, but that will just make the price go up, because it's a commercial UNIX. Maybe the hardware support will eventually get better too, but I still don't like the design, the philosophy, the business model...

    Well, OS X is actually based on FreeBSD, and since Apple does the hardware and software, you get the OS for free when you buy a computer. As for hardware support, it is getting better, especially now that the industry is moving towards USB (if only Intel wasn't bent on knocking FireWire - it's so cool, and one of the best things going out there)

    The only reason Apple would want to get in on Open Source this late in the game is to cash in on it, not to change their evil ways. If they really cared, then I could walk down to the store, and buy a cheap G3 from another company, preinstalled with Linux or BeOS or something, and have Apple's blessing as a hardware reseller. Yeah, right, not in this Universe. They'd be another Microsoft, if they thought they could pull it off.

    Now here's where I have to disagree with you. This makes no sense. Apple is a *hardware* company - how would your plan allow them to survive? Considering that, and the fact that they've been 100% proprietary for so long, I think it's pretty damn admirable what they're doing in regards to open source. Look how quick they were to modify the APSL, how many things they're giving away for free, how they're actually listening to their customers and developers again. I don't know where you get this idea of 'evil' unless you consider every company that's out to make a profit (which is all of them) as evil. Of course Apple's decisions are at least partly influenced by how they will make them money - that's how business works. Still, the prices aren't outrageous, the machines are fantastic. Could you imagine a world where Microsoft owned the hardware as well as the software? Now that would be evil.

  • Some additional info (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The following information has been provided by someone who went to the WWDC Darwin sessions yesterday:

    The Objective-C runtime was added to Darwin as well.

    The Debian packaging system has been adopted for the Darwin distribution, and should be
    fairly easily moved to Mac OS X Server if someone were inclined to try.

    Apple has setup an anonymous CVS server with the Darwin sources.

    FreeBSD is the "reference" BSD for Darwin (and by extension, Mac OS X).

  • Re:question? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is no X Server for OSXS. Currently OSXS is a BSD compatible system, based on a modified mach kernel (currently 2.5, soon 3.0) with Apple's traditional display postscript windowing system. Apple will most likely never develop an x server for it, as this is not intended to compete with unix. In the near future, OSXS will not be a seperate OS at all, but will be a series of packages and add ons to OSX (the cosumer OS) to allow it to do server duties. OSX will also be a muti user system, with optional BSD tools, but will feature a much more advanced graphical interface, as well as numerous kernel modifications to boost performance for consumer applications.
  • Posted by BrianDaMac:

    OpenPlay looks really cool. I hope this gets ported to Linux so game companies that use it would be more willing to port to Linux.
  • According to BYTEMark Integer tests, you might as well buy a K6 instead of a PII, which is what I did, but that isn't what you'd want for games. In fact, if you believe id Software (I do, 'cause they're just that cool :) you wouldn't want a G3 for games, either.

    I wouldn't want a G3 because of the Apple baggage: the extra price, the crappy OS that I'd just format, and the limited hardware support... but the chip looks nice. At least MacOS X is based around UNIX, but that will just make the price go up, because it's a commercial UNIX. Maybe the hardware support will eventually get better too, but I still don't like the design, the philosophy, the business model...

    The only reason Apple would want to get in on Open Source this late in the game is to cash in on it, not to change their evil ways. If they really cared, then I could walk down to the store, and buy a cheap G3 from another company, preinstalled with Linux or BeOS or something, and have Apple's blessing as a hardware reseller. Yeah, right, not in this Universe. They'd be another Microsoft, if they thought they could pull it off.

    However, when have minimum requirements ever been right? I have an old ZIP drive that lists a 386 as one of the requirements. Why? I don't know, maybe because they expect you to use Win '95 or something. :) It works fine on a 286 running DOS. In fact, that's a great use for a ZIP drive, transferring lots of files off of an old computer...

    I also just got a TV card, which listed not just Windows '95, 20MB of RAM and whatnot as requirements, but also certain supported video cards (!)... it works great under Linux, with my (unlisted) cheap Trident card.

    Really, I believe system requirements about as much as I believe benchmarks, or Apple press releases. In all cases, only real usage will give you the answers you need.
  • All I'm saying is that if Apple weren't so arrogant in the first place, and let other vendors sell their hardware, I would have supported that, and bought their hardware. Or if they offered their systems at reasonable prices, preferably without MacOS I would have considered it. So they lost my business, how are they supposed to make money that way?

    The bottom line is, I don't support arrogance. Anyone who thinks that their hardware or software is so "insanely great" that I should pay extra for the priviledge of using it deserves the shafting they get when I and other unblinded people don't buy their products and support the alternatives. This is also why I don't run Windows, I'm not about to pay for an OS that sucks so badly.

    Also, MacOS is free and sucks, MacOS X is not free, and probably does not suck, because Apple didn't develop it. The PowerPC doesn't suck either, because Apple didn't develop it either. In fact, if IBM or Motorola marketed it better, I might have bought it. However, Motorola just makes the chips, and IBM can't market a paper bag.

    Therefore, I have a K6/300 that runs Linux, and I can laugh at Apple. Their prices suck in comparison, and their machines are annoying and ugly. Much of this is opinion, which is why I can laugh at them. :)
  • only problem is, using ORBs for production distributed systems is largely a bad idea. They are still based on RPC's, primarily: not a very scalable approach.

    The new CORBA Messaging spec is a start, but I don't think there are very many implementations of it.
  • Apple does indeed have a patent for PEF.

    However, as I understand it, OSX doesn't use PEF (or rather it can, but can read others as well). I expect that we'll see PEF gradually phased out; Apple seems to be moving away from proprietary stuff as of late (before you flame me, notice that I said seems to be and that I didn't say it had moved away completely yet.)
  • OSX will be moving to Mach 3; the first developer release (available now, and apparently for free if I hear correctly, and no it's not Darwin) is already there.

    Interestingly enough, this is the same Mach which MkLinux uses. This could mean some significant advances for that platform...

  • What file system does it use? Ext2? HFS+?

    Like most BSDs, Mac OS X Server and Darwin use UFS. Apple has included an HFS[+] filesystem implementation, but you must boot from UFS. It's expected that Apple will make Mac OS X [client] bootable from HFS+. (Classic HFS will never work, though; doesn't know how to store UNIX permissions like HFS+ does.)

  • There's also MkLinux.
  • Actually, DisplayPostScript (DPS) is on the way outat apple. MacOS X server uses it, but MacOS X Client will not nor will any future versions of client or server. The new imaging model is based on PDF using technology initially developed by Jobs other company Pixar, a company which knows a tad about graphics. DPS was shelved, at least in part, because of Adobes excessive liscensing fees. I have even heard rumors of a minimal gui being released by apple for Darwin, but those were only rumors and mixing in the DGS system from Gnustep nay be the best bet.
  • since it seems that apple is moving to EGCS for OS X, I had a few questions...

    What binary format does OS X Server use? What format will OS X use? even if they don't use PEF, will they integrate PEF support into the EGCS Linker? (hence, opening up their patent on PEF)... I'm assuming that they're going to be working with the EGCS folks to improve it's PPC code generation?
  • I haven't seen Darwin running.

    You can port this to anything you like, IF you dare. Going up the software chain, OS X Server is specifically written with portability in mind, even if in practice it's only available right now for PowerPC G3 (I've seen Rhapsody DR2 for Intel but never got the damn thing to install).

    I seriously doubt Darwin uses ext2.

    Apple has just released some kind of basic GUI for the thing (NOT the MacOS window manager), and I believe you can download compiled binaries now, and have a completely running system that's based on BSD. Their webpage is very short on information, but it looks a bit more readable this week.

    The whole thing doesn't interest me too much.. I'm waiting for OS X Server; hopefully in a few weeks that's what I'll be running. I like OS 8.6 but I'd like X if nothing than for the standard suite of UNIX tools on a Mac.

    There's a GNU environment available for Windows called CYGWIN... does anyone know if something like this exists for the MacOS, besides the Conix unix-based virtual machine?

  • I believe Conix make a UNIX that runs on top of MacOS. It's a virtual machine so it runs more slowly, but within that environment everything is UNIX.

    I don't expect Darwin to win Open Source converts from the Linux community, and probably neither does Apple. But this does highlight how easy it is to develop for their new OS, how "open" (documented) it is, and shines a powerful spotlight on the Black Box known as Windows NT. Anyone price what a 50-user license of Microsoft Windows NT goes for?? I don't know, but $400 for OS X is a bargain even before considering OS X's performance numbers.


  • Someone has installed it. Me. (Score:5)

    by MrKai ( 5131 ) on Tuesday May 11, 1999 @07:48AM (#1897157)
    I grabbed it (the binary distrib) and installed it last night.

    It is in fact BS4.4 over Mach3, wth Apple/NeXT's supplemental directory structure.

    There was no GUI included...it runs in/as a shell.

    If you've ever used NeXT/Openstep (or MacOS X 10) it will all look familiar to you.

    Apparently, *this* core, Darwin 0.2, and not the one that MacOS X Server is currently running on top of, is what Mac OS X ("Client"), which was released as a Developer Preview yesterday at WWDC, is based on.

    Apple has moved to egcs as well.

    So, for all those that think Apple is full of Poopy-Doo Doo's, it's right there in front of ya'.

    Apple is and will be building it's libraries (MacOS API, Java and Openstep/CoCo) on top of what's on that website...just like they said.

    So as much as some of us like to rag on Apple, it appears to be w/o merit this time...they are doing what they said they would. And I don't see anyone else with a commercial OS even releasing a teensy bit of what makes it tick...

    The kernel should be able to be brought up on a PC, but I need to have a closer look at whether or not they run the shell in character mode on a PC), or on a bitmapped screen like in the old Openstep. If it's on a bitmapped screen, there might be driver issues...

    I suppose I could just ask them...Wilfredo Sanchez spends a lot of time on the dev list...

    -K
  • According to Stepwise [stepwise.com], Apple has opted to use debs for Darwin. Between Corel and this, Debian should be making waves with the press, pretty soon.

    "The Debian packaging system has been adopted for the Darwin distribution, and should be fairly easily moved to Mac OS X Server if someone were inclined to try"

  • OS X Server doesn't use X, it uses DisplayPostscript, like NeXt did. Thanks to gnustep, DisplayPostscript is available for X, though.
  • It breaks down like this:

    kernel - FreeBSD
    tools - NetBSD
    library code - OpenBSD

    Read it for yourself [apple.com]
  • Not Conix, Tenon Intersystems. They make a product called MachTen. It's not open, but it does come with some of the source. Conix makes an X server for MacOS.

  • I don't see any reason OS/X couldn't run a third party X Server - there were some available for NeXTStep, for example. (The "native" GUI does not run in X however.)

    Specifically, I can't imagine that a XFree86 port would be impossible, given that the BSD API is there in Darwin.



    --
  • Both NetBSD and OpenBSD have Mac ports. Furthermore, Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all have Mac/m68k projects, which you might reasonably argue count as separate from the PPC versions. If so, then the tally rises to seven.
  • mklinux runs on ppc powermacs, hp pa-risc boxes, and x86. i have no idea how well the pa-risc and x86 ports work, though, cuz i've never run them.
  • i'm certain there is, somewhere. apple did not invent mach.
    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public /www/doc/abstracts/manual.html

  • hardware configurations? (Score:4)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Tuesday May 11, 1999 @06:04AM (#1897166) Homepage
    macnn says that Darwin requires a G3.

    but since it's open-source, you ought to be able to port it to any machine you want, be it low-end power mac or 486. i glanced through some of the early posts to the darwin-development mailing list, and quite a few of the people seemed to expect to be able to easily run it on an x86 machine.

    actually, now that i think about it, what about this whole "mach" thing? Darwin and OS X use the mach microkernel to communicate with the hardware, right? doesn't this mean you could basically port the entire Darwin OS to a new architecture by finding an existing Mach kernel (such as the mklinux ones..) for that architecture and dumping the Darwin OS on top of that?

    what i'm curious about is when, or whether, i'll get to run Darwin on this here PPC 7200/75.

    really, i'm still waiting for a coherent, complete overview of Darwin (viewed as an operating system and not as an attempt to cash in on the current "hipness" of Open-Source) with, y'know, a description of what it's like, or a screenshot or something. Hell, i've yet to hear of a single case of someone installing darwin.

    And since in order to install darwin before binaries you essentially had to have an existing *nix distribution to install it, i doubt anyone did install darwin. At least i assume you'd need *nix, i never saw any instructions on apple's site, just a bunch of random .tar.gz files listed in a difficult-to-download-all-at-once line on a web site. no FTP. (though i haven't checked there in awhile).

    And i don't know what it's like now, since i have not been able to actually get into the Darwin sections of apple's web site at any point in the last 24 hours. The server does not respond. It may just be too busy; either way i can't get in.

    So while i have tried to figure it out, i'm still completely in the dark about Darwin. Does anyone have any details about this system? Like, is there some sort of GUI, is it difficult to use or incomplete or instable? What file system does it use? Ext2? HFS+?

    Has anyone actually seen this mysterious OS?
  • Is that Mozilla was "carbonated" over a weekend using a utility that Apple released to developers. Apple really went all out to make sure that porting from Mac OS to Mac OSX will be a breeze.
  • It's a new display format that butchers DisplayPostscript and Adobe's PDF, taking the best ideas out of both formats.
  • Do we really need another one of those? It's called an ORB - "Object Request Broker". App1 wants to send a message to App2, so it uses an ORB. The ORB takes care of everything else. All possible possible permutations of communication take place through an orb. There are quite a few out there.
  • ...then we could really pretend to be running a NEXT machine. I'm curious to see an i86 port, but then, I already have so many ways to get a bash prompt already, even in windows. Free 'nix poppin up all over the place.
  • Their site just has the source code zipped up, requiring registration. The FAQ gives no useful details. What kind of "network abstraction" is it? Are there any real docs?
  • Does anyone know if this stuff (darwin and/or MacOS X Server) will work (badly/well) on an iMac?

    I'm a FreeBSD fan, and I'm sick of beige boxes. =)

    Oh, it wouldn't be a public server.. just another box to play with, and perhaps do some development on.
    ???
  • This discussion has popped up on the Mklinux mailing list before. The problem is getting the right version of mach. The mach that OS X and I assume Darwin uses is a kludge of two different verions last I heard. There might be a little bit of apple code change in there as well. I would definitely be excited if someone pulled this of though.
  • I not very familure with Darwin OS, is this a BSD system with a apple X server (ported to power PC of course) and with apple talk support? If apple made a X desktop enviroment under a open source license (haven't read the apple open license completely, but if it suffices :) that would compile under linux, I would love to give it a whirl. This could also help bridge the gap that the QT and Gnome folks are working on, bringing Linux to the common desktop.
  • Great, now the mac has two open UNIX OS. LinuxPPC and Darwin, lets hope the two can cooperate at least somehow, The HFS+ code could be used as a linux module. And maybe the MKlinux project can benefit from Darwin's mach kernel....
  • Darwin is without graphical interface its just NeXT without the graphics which means mach kernel with a BSD layer and then ofcource alot of new stuff like HFS+ support etc.
  • How could anybody run darwin then they released the binary distribution and the missing parts of the system today ?

    But in a way some people run darwin; the users of MacOS X Server.
  • The binary release and many parts of the system was released right now so there are no port at all

    I would sure love to have mach running a Multi-Multi-processor machine :)
    The only problem is that it's an old mach version,

    /I hope the HURD gets released soon(like soon measured in milleniums or something:;-/)
  • Well if propertary UNIXs count we got OS X Server also

    Which means Linux Darwin BSD MachTEN and OS X Server. To bad our linux versions currently suck,

    /I'm dying to get my hands on Debian2.2 for PPC
  • So is anyone actually running Darwin at this point?

    I've seen a lot of discussion of where it comes from, whether it's a good idea, how open is the license; but I haven't seen the merest shadow of a review from someone who's tried to use it.

    Is it actually a standalone useable product? Is anyone using it as their primary OS at this point?

  • Yes, Avie Tevanian was part of the Mach team. The head/professor of the Mach project was Rick Rashid, the VP of Microsoft Research. Other significant contributors to Mach followed Rashid to Microsoft (Rich Draves and Mike Jones being good examples).
  • actually, bsd source was taken from all three of the public bsd trees: openbsd, netbsd, and freebsd. i would wager that more was taken from net and open than free because of the cross-platform nature of those trees.
  • The hardware requirements are for the new Apple-supplied binary distribution.

    There's lots of Intel-oriented code in there already. Drivers, booting code, etc.

    I suppose getting it up on Intel will require booting on a PowerMac, then cross-compiling the source to produce Intel binaries.

  • I don't give much credit to Apple's hardware requirements. They just want people to have one more excuse to buy the snazzy looking new G3 boxes their practical selves have been holding off on.

    They listed the requirements for playing the high-res Star Wars trailer as a G3 300 or a PII 400. Turns out, it plays just fine on my PII 333. I bet it would play just fine on a PII 300 too. They just wanted people to say "look, I guess a G3 300 is as fast as a Pentium II 400".
  • Umm.. a G3 300 is about as fast as a PII 400 especially when it comes to graphics computations (BTYEMark Integer tests anyone??). Honestly, I would much rather have minimum requirements be a little too high than see what the game manufacturers do with their min. requirements.
  • Yeah, those requirements are pretty out-to-lunch. That hi-res trailer was silky-smooth on an old G3/266 beigeMac and a 233 mhz powerbook.

  • Re:Anybody have details on OpenPlay? (Score:3)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Tuesday May 11, 1999 @07:44AM (#1897194) Journal
    Yes. The distribution includes a brief "OpenPlay: Project Organization and Porting Notes," an "OpenPlay Programmers Documentation" and "Writing OpenPlay Net Modules."

    The porting notes suggest that porting primarily entails: (i) modification of a single file "platform.h," (ii) extending file-system abstraction services to the new platform (mainly, finding a specific folder, iterating over files and then opening and binding to plugins), and (the hardest part), (iii) implementing a new protocol module. Sample plugins for protocol modules are provided, but it is suggested that these tend to be very target-specific and rate to require complete rewrites.

    The docs are basically just API references, without much discussion or many examples. The distribution includes sample code, of course.

    The docs characterize OpenPlay as a Net module manager, facilitating the programming of systems using an API, which can then be readily ported across various platforms operating from indpendent platform-localized plugins. The principal services of OpenPlay are categorized as configuration, data transfer, enumeration, human interface and miscellaneous functions.
  • Got it to work on a 6400/180 and 5500/225, not too well though. It isn't TOO slow, but it is still dev and an improvement over the current MacOS.

    Tip: Burn some cds first, I had to initialize the 6400s drive twice after some trouble...

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