Darwin, Fink Updates

BSDForums writes "The Darwin team is pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD. This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers. The version of Darwin installed by this CD corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.3. Check out the release notes for more information." dmalloc writes "The Fink team has announced that their binary distribution versioned 0.6.2 is ready for use now. It is a bug-fix release to alleviate issues that came up in 0.6.1. Along with the bug fixes, it introduces an enhanced package manager which is now capable of using the finkmirrors.net-supplied rsync and distfiles mirrors."

x86?!

[neosake]

This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers.

Does this mean that it's available pc's now, and when "certain" is mention, what are the conditions?

Yeah, i rta, and could'nt find this nfo.

Re:x86?!

[kayen_telva]

opendarwin [opendarwin.org]

Re:x86?!

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenDarwin.org maintains a database of x86 hardware that has been successfully used with Darwin.

http://opendarwin.org/hardware/ [opendarwin.org]

Re:x86?

[xtermin8]

Its still experimental and buggy. Unless you want to spend serious amounts of time tweaking and toying with it, don't bother. Then again, its also a quintessential challenge for "hackers." If you're tired of working on monolithic linux, go for it.

Panth-Wire ??

[EccentricAnomaly]

Or can you install the Panther Darwin version on a Jaguar OS X machine and get some sort of hybrid monster OS ?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:????hmmm???

[ZackSchil]

Like a computer running a command line version of Linux or Unix with no GUI. Hold down command-option-s while your Mac is restarting to get a good idea. You'll notice what's different

Re:????hmmm???

[baka_boy]

Have you used a normal BSD installation? Think console/shell at startup (nice full-screen framebuffer-based one, though, at least on PPC), and XWindows for your choice of desktop environments.

Of course, you've got effectively the NeXTStep/OpenStep/OS X system environment, which means Frameworks, NetInfo, etc., are all in there, along with a Mach-based kernel-land environment, which is fairly opaque at the user level.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Darwin and Fink.

[BrookHarty]

Does darwin support sound yet? I didnt see any sound hardware supported in the driver list.

As for fink, its so nice to have a real terminal window, konsole or multi-gnome-term is far better than iTerm or Console on OSX. Too bad the mostly used app, theres no shareware or freeware that on par and doesnt need X to run. And XMMS or Mplayer while a little more cpu intensive is almost the same boat. Really fink is the first thing I ever install on OSX. (Other than iTunes)

Re:Darwin and Fink.

[Orien]

Doesn't iTunes come with OSX?

Impact for Panther/Jaguar users?

[MacGod]

Excusive my Unix newbie-ness, but what effect would installing this have on a typical jaguar or Panther installation? ie: With one of these OSes installed, could I proceed to install Darwin 7.1 on top, and gain all the new benefits, while still preserving the rest (ie: Mac-specific) part of my OSX installation?

Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK the opendarwin release cannot be installed over the top of Panther. You will get all the benefits when Apple release 10.3.2 in the next few weeks so don't worry too much about it at the moment.

Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users?

[mrgeometry]

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that Darwin is kind of like the thing running "under" Jaguar or Panther.

Roughly, Darwin is the underlying part of the operating system; the rest of Jaguar/Panther is mostly user interface stuff. This is what Apple charges money for---Darwin they give away, and the user interface part is $129 (per year :-) ).

So you wouldn't install Darwin if you already have Jag or Panther. Only if you have another computer that you want to set up with a free OS (and you don't mind install

Re:Impact for Panther/Jaguar users?

[WatertonMan]

I don't think you can do this. Almost certainly things would break. Wait for Apple. They'll have it out shortly. (I'm actually surprised Darwin updates are coming out before the OSX update - isn't it usually the other way around?)

BTW - one place Darwin is interesting is in competition for PPC Linux. If you just have a server then you have a lot more consistency if you install Darwin rather than Linux. Further you can test a lot of things on your OSX box. Had I an old 300 MHz or slower Mac around I'

I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days

[gsdali]

and it appears to be not perfect. It wants me to install the XFree86 package, whatever I try to install. I'd rather it didn't. I'm very happy with Apple's X11 and the system-xfree86 package that represents it. Severeral things were broken by the update to panther, or rather the parallel fink update, things were fine till I started fiddling. I may wait a while before fiddling again, let fink and panther, or rather fink and gcc3.3. To settle down.

(PS I'd normally take my whines elsewhere but I can't seem to

Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days

[jpkunst]

Try installing the X11 SDK from the Panther Xcode CD. I installed the X11 SDK and Fink 0.6.2 (in that order) and I haven't been asked by Fink to install XFree86.

JP

Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days

[gsdali]

Unfortunately that didn't work, I had installed X11 SDK when I installed panther but I ran the installer again bu to no avail.

Anyway, here's not the place for whining and fink is an excellent project and should be applauded for all it's great work.

Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days

[benh57]

You need the X11 *SDK* (from the XCODE disk, not 'when you install the OS') and the X11 *USER* (from the OS disk). Both have to be chosen custom in two different installers.

Re:I've been using fink 0.6.2 for a few days

[dimator]

There is a FAQ [sourceforge.net] about this, I don't know if you tried it, or if it applies to 0.6.2, but it worked for me a couple weeks ago.

This was the one that worked.

[gsdali]

Thanks

Confirmed: need X SDK from XCode disk

[MikeTRose]

I ran into the same problem but it cleared up after:

1. reinstalling X11 via download from Apple (Fink attempt to install the GIMP had wiped it out)
2. installing X11 SDK from "Packages" folder of Xcode install CD
3. wiping out & recompliling Fink & Darwinports [opendarwin.org] installs (including the /sw and /opt/local target directories, which had some ownership issues)

   I then proceeded to happily & peacefully install the GIMP 1.2.5 via DarwinPorts -- smooth sailing all the way. I am officially a DarwinPorts fan

Darwin is a great project

[Anonymous Coward]

I really think that it has potential, if more people would take an interest in it. Mach/FreeBSD based kernel, FreeBSD userland, your choice of Netinfo or regular /etc, an OpenStep API, and full source code. I mean really, this thing kicks ass!

The only one issue that I have with it is it's lack of x86 drivers, which is not a fault of Darwin itself. If it supported my hardware, I'd run it exclusively, as every experience that I've had with it on PPC hardware has been nice...

fink is kde-centric

[Anonymous Coward]

fink would be great if it weren't so kde-centric. i for one would appreciate a little more focus on other desktop environments...like gnome, for example.
their kde stuff is up to date at 3.14, while their gnome is still on 1.4.2? i mean, how many years behind is that? they aren't even testing anything in unstable over 1.4.2. cmon guys...

Re:fink is kde-centric

[Ranger Rick]

Most of gnome2 (well, 2.0) is in fink, and gnome 2.4.1 is being wrapped up right now. "Unstable" is not for testing, Fink unstable means "it's been tested by the developer and is ready to be supported by him/her." 2.4 is being worked on in "experimental" which is the playground for packagers to work on things without having users complain that [foo] isn't working.

"Fink" has no stance on desktops, but Gnome's packager has historically been insanely busy and didn't have much time to keep up with things ver

Re:fink is kde-centric

[MikeTRose]

Gnome2 is also available through DarwinPorts [opendarwin.org], FWIW.

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the non-Darwin part of OS X is only available (publically) compiled. Compilation is the process of converting processor-independent high-level-language code to a lower level, in this case processor-type specific, form.

In order to get the non-Darwin part to run on x86, you'd need the source code to it so you can recompile for the Intel architecture. Apple's not likely to give that out any time soon.