PureDarwin Is Back To Improving Apple's OS X Darwin

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PureDarwin Is Back To Improving Apple's OS X Darwin

The PureDarwin operating system project is out with a new release. PureDarwin attempts to make Apple's Darwin open-source base operating system for Mac OS X more usable to users...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI1ODI

[mark45]

It's one of the thousands of projects which get nowhere.

[ninez]

It's one of the thousands of projects which get nowhere.

So what.... What exactly is your point??

I don't think the intention of puredarwin is to become the next MacOSX/Windows ... but if you like hacking, it might be fun to experiment and you might learn a few things along the way ~ and there is certainly nothing wrong with that

[mark45]

No kidding, there's nothing wrong with playing with dirt either, or keeping worshiping OS/2.

[Nobu]

No kidding, there's nothing wrong with playing with dirt either, or keeping worshiping OS/2.

Hey, if we didn't play with dirt, we wouldn't have figured out that you could make walls and build houses with it. If we didn't play with rocks and chisels we wouldn't have figured out that you could make wheels (ok, the second one is pushing it, but whatever).

Point being, a lot of innovation comes from people who begin with just playing around with something. That innovation can either directly or indirectly impact every other OS, sometimes in a big way. That is why it's good to have other projects (sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger) that people can play around with in their spare time. And if you pay attention to them, you might have some ideas for your own project, possibly better than the original idea. Of course, if you don't code and don't share your idea, it's worthless, so the other project would similarly seem worthless to you.

[ninez]

Hey, if we didn't play with dirt, we wouldn't have figured out that you could make walls and build houses with it. If we didn't play with rocks and chisels we wouldn't have figured out that you could make wheels (ok, the second one is pushing it, but whatever).

Point being, a lot of innovation comes from people who begin with just playing around with something. That innovation can either directly or indirectly impact every other OS, sometimes in a big way. That is why it's good to have other projects (sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger) that people can play around with in their spare time. And if you pay attention to them, you might have some ideas for your own project, possibly better than the original idea. Of course, if you don't code and don't share your idea, it's worthless, so the other project would similarly seem worthless to you.

+1

Very well said, Nobu ~ I was just replying in a similar fashion, when i saw your post.

It would be pretty cool with Debian GNU/Darwin.

Debian already have Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.

PuerDarwin already has it's approach (to package management). It uses ports (from freebsd), so assuming they have most of the bits in place needed ~ there is already a great deal of software that (potentially) could be built to run on top of PureDarwin. (thousands and thousands of peices of software, a few different DEs, etc).

I'm also not really sure what advantage (if any) there would be to using Darwin with debian (or the freebsd kernel either). I guess for the end-user whom doesn't want to compile software it would be an alright combo - but i don't think it is anywhere near the point of being ready for that, it would seem that ports is a better option, in this case.

[mike4]

Yea, I couldn't even find a Virtualbox image. It only would become useful it it would allow to run and develop OSX apps. Maybe someone might bring a Debian alike: http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ with that Apple kernel? Personally I'm surprised that there's no project for a OSX compatible desktop yet.

[uid313]

It would be pretty cool with Debian GNU/Darwin.

Debian already have Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.

[uid313]

Maybe much of the code in Darwin could be picked up and merged into FreeBSD?

[ninez]

Yea, I couldn't even find a Virtualbox image. It only would become useful it it would allow to run and develop OSX apps. Maybe someone might bring a Debian alike: http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ with that Apple kernel? Personally I'm surprised that there's no project for a OSX compatible desktop yet.

I'm pretty sure that it needs to be converted from qemu's format to .vdi (which qemu has a tool for), although i have never used it - i'm pretty sure that is what you would need to do (google it!).

As for being surprised their isn't a OSX compatible desktop yet ~ Why are you so surprised? Wine took years and years to get to where it can run windows apps, somewhat well (depending on various things / to varying degrees). There have been a few attempts at getting OSX apps to run on non-OSX systems, but nothing has really materialized and i am NOT surprised. - it is a lot of work, you don't have access to most of Apple's source code for very important parts of the system that you would NEED to have implemented in order to fully-support Mac apps (quartz is one such example).

But if you are really desperate to run Mac apps on your linux machine, you can always virtualize it ~ but you need a decent machine and you pretty much have to use VMware (and unlock/crack it + get your hands on darwin vmware tools from VMware Fusion for Mac) - because QEMU/virtualbox cannot provide any native gfx driver that will provide h/w acceleration... it's a bit tricky to setup too (but not that hard). MacOSX virtualizes _very_ well. (it's not a resource pig and is very fast - not far off from running it on hardware! - much lighter than win7/8 VMs).