Darwin vs. MacOS and its relationship to BSD

Daemon News has this article on Darwin, its relationship to MacOS X and BSD operating systems, and its possible longevity as an Open Source project. I'm personally interested in the technical aspects of Darwin, given that its kernel is related to Mach, with some enhancements coming from BSD, I'm not sure if this makes it a true BSD OS, or some kind of distant cousin.

the IO kit is cool but very little info

[johnjones]

very little info on the darwin project nor the mach project the intresting thing is that they have (intel) been useing mach as a benchmark to porting NT/digital's/MSunix OS

now Apple has got in on the act

but machs dyn liniker is not ported to ARM/SuperSH/whatever and so limits the portabililty i.e. the code is not there but could be there

LSI could ask apple to sort out there NC projects

hey that would be cool !

regards

john jones
(a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)

What it is

[AntiBasic]

Note: The point below is to note that MacOSX is not a new flavour of unix, it's a new major version increment of NeXTSTEP. Note the internal version number consistancy. On MacOSX Server,

`uname -s` == "Rhapsody", `uname -r` == "5.7".

MacOSX = Rhapsody 5.7+ Rhapsody = OPENSTEP for Mach (product code name change as of Apple buyout) OPENSTEP for Mach = NeXTSTEP (product name change as of Sun-NeXT co-released OpenStep spec.)

therefore (transitive property)

MacOSX = NeXTSTEP

The series, each of which is comprised of some version of Mach, BSD, Display Postscript, and Objective-C Frameworks:

NeXTSTEP 1.x -4.4BSD-lite -Mach 2.5 -DPS -Objective-C + Appkit Framework

NeXTSTEP 2.x -4.4BSD-lite -Mach 2.5 + extensions -DPS -Objective-C + Appkit Framework

NeXTSTEP 3.0..3.3 -4.4BSD-lite -Mach 2.5 + more extensions -DPS -Obj-C + Appkit + Foundation Kit (early kit)

OPENSTEP 4.0..4.2 -4.4BSD-lite -Mach 2.5 + more extensions -DPS -Obj-C + New OpenStep frameworks + EOF

Rhapsody 5.x (Early Apple prototype) -4.4-lite -Mach 2.5 + blah blah -DPS -Obj-C + OpenStep core frameworks (Codenamed Yellowbox) + extensions + EOF

MacOSX Server 1.x (Rhapsody 5.7) same as the above, but stabler.

MacOSX 1.x (Rhapsody 5.x [where x -4.4BSD-lite -Mach 3 + fidly bits -DisplayPDF (Quartz) -Obj-C + enhanced OpenStep frameworks (Now called Cocoa) + EOF

BSD bits were taken from NetBSD and FreeBSD, with (I thought) some userland from OpenBSD. EOF = Enterprise Object Framework - an Object-to-Relational Database adapter layer (very very good.)

Re:What it is

[aanantha]

Close. NeXTStep predated 4.4BSD. NeXTStep 1.0 was released in 1989. They were using a 4.3BSD server on top of Mach 2.5 . 4.4BSD-Lite was released March 1, 1994. Rhapsody was the first NeXT OS that incorporated 4.4BSD-Lite. It incorporated Lite-2. But it's not so big a deal, the differences between 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD is mostly the stuff that SunOS 4 contributed back. Stuff like vnodes. From the user and application perspective, they pretty much look identical.

With Mac OS X DP2 the BSD server was updated to FreeBSD 3.2 . So Darwin looks like FreeBSD for the most part, but uses Mach SMP and provides Mach kernel-threads. Mac OS X also supposedly has some XML stuff hidden in /etc configuration files to make it easier for the GUI config tools to maintain consistency. Well, at least that's what Ars Technica claims. I haven't seen it firsthand.

Re:What it is

[mr]

They did grab code bits from Open and NetBSD.

Darwin Question(s)

[SONET]

What apps\utilities run on Darwin? I have been looking all over the place on the net to find this out with no luck. Can you compile *BSD apps on Darwin (on Apple hardware)?

For example, if I wanted to run Samba, Apache, tcpdump, MRTG, or even just use grep, would it be currently possible on Darwin? Anyone know of any web sites that list apps that can be used?

I have a chance to pick up a new Powerbook for dirt cheap this week... if Darwin can run these things now I'll jump on it.

Thanks!
--SONET

Re:Darwin Question(s)

[MasonMcD]

Try Stepwise's http://softrak.stepwise.com/Apps/WebObjects/Softra k, or http://www.osxfaq.com/. But aside from Darwin, the neat thing is running them with a nifty GUI. Otherwise, just get FreeBSD.

Re:Darwin Question(s)

[mr]

>I have a chance to pick up a new Powerbook for dirt cheap this week.

Think about this: Run Net or OpenBSD on the box if you want BSD. Otherwise, linuxppc.

With the addition of sheepshaver, you should be able to run Mac OS apps.

Re:What it is NeXT

[dmp]

It is nice to see my favorite OS (next comes OpenBSD) come back as a brand new, renamed, repainted, ten year old OS! I don't quite understand why Apple is getting so much attention about catching up to the rest of the world about ten years too late. Display Postscript with the NeXTStep gui kicked ass. Now, if Steve Jobs will quit fscking around with colors and make all the boxes black cubes I will be right back where I was in 1991 and the world will have finally caught up...
( and that soft, female voice that says: "Your printer is out of paper.")

can you type 'make'?

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

I would imagine that if enough libarary support is complete, it'd be relatively easy to run 3rd party ANSI-C or ANSI-C++ source based applications. All you'd have to do is compile them. What I don't know is if all of the libraries are up to where they need to be, or if lots of stuff that works in BSD/Linux/HP-UX/Solaris/AIX etc can't be compiled yet...

Re:What it is NeXT

[f5426]

> ( and that soft, female voice that says: "Your printer is out of paper.")

:-)

She still say it to me. And 'Paper is jammed in your printer'

Mmmm.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:What it is

[f5426]

You messed the capitalisation of NeXTstep a couple of time...

FoundationKit was part of EOF, hence was avalaible under NEXTSTEP 3.2

> EOF = Enterprise Object Framework - an Object-to-Relational Database adapter layer (very very good.)

And _NOT_ present on Mac OS X. Developers are very upset.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Darwin Question(s)

[f5426]

See http://www.darwinfo.org/

You can run many things on darwin, including a X server. Using Darwin instead of linux/NetBSD make a lot of sense, for instance if you want to hack Mac OS X later.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Darwin Question(s)

[SONET]

Hmm, from what I can find FreeBSD no longer supports PPC. I think NetBSD is the only one that supports PPC, with OpenBSD only supporting 68K.

Thanks though :)

--SONET

Re:Darwin Question(s)

[SONET]

Anyone know where I can find 'Sheepshaver'? I tried Freshmeat and Google with no luck.

Thanks
--SONET