Darwin 1.2.1 is for what?

J

jweisbin

Registered
I downloaded the latest release (1.2.1) of Darwin (http://www.versiontracker.com/redir.fcgi/kind=1&id=309/release.html), thinking that this would update the OS X kernel. The installation instructions, however, indicate that this needs to be installed on its own partition, which should first be re-formatted. So what is this, exactly? Is it just BSD?
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Jim Weisbin
jim@savagetransendental.com
http://www.savagetranscedental.com
 
Darwin is the Core of MacOS X. It's not just a kernal, it's the whole OS, it just doesn't have the GUI and the apps that come with the GUI bundled with it. At least that's my understanding.
 
The Darwin OS is not supposed to be installed with the PB, it is a seperate OS. Besides the PB is running Darwin 1.2.0 and it is functionally the same. When the final version of OS X is released it will probably have some mechanism for upgrading the Darwin core. I haven't heard of anything in the 1.2.1 release to make it worth the hassle of upgrading the PB.

Just my $0.02 :),
 
First of all, Darwin is not a seperate OS; it IS the OS. OSXPB just has the GUI overlay that Darwin by itslef doesn't. The reason Darwin 1.21 was "released" was because Darwin developers had been using 1.0 for a while, and so apple released 1.21 to get them up to date. Why? Because PB used 1.20. The real difference between 1.20 and 1.21? I don't know, but unless ur a darwin developer, it probably isn't really all that important anyway.

Hope that clears stuff up,
F-bacher
 
Thats what I meant. I was not saying it was a completely different OS. I was saying that it was a seperate OS in the sense that it is meant to be used by itself and not as a layer of OS X. Sorry if my previous post was confusing :D.
 
Originally posted by ihafro
Okay, so does anyone know if you can install the Aqua GUI over the Darwin core?
Click to expand...

But what about Quartz and all those other goodies? You'd have to implement those as well. You CAN, but you'd need what apple has: the source code. You can switch between Darwin and OSX to ur heart's delight with >console at the login screen for OSX.

F-bacher
 
I think in the OS X installer the "BSD Subsystem" and "OS X" or whatever they call the top layer in the installer (sorry, can't remember off the top of my head) are separate checkboxes.

If my thinking is correct, you could check one and not the other, and install a new darwin core "BSD subsystem" under Aqua or a new Aqua on top of the old darwin (barring incompatibilities). So you don't need the source code -- apple provides the binaries, and I think that Aqua "module" is pretty separate from the Darwin one.

Does this seem right to anyone else?
 
Only problem with that is that you can't actually check or uncheck those boxes. however, you could try to install Darwin on an empty partition and then run the Mac OS X installer on that partition. Since the installer is smart and only installs what is needed it might work.

Try this and let me know :),
 
You can use the updated Darwin. I did, but it was not worth the trouble. You have to do a lot of manipulation. I did this as an exersise of understanding the underlying os. If you are a developer, you can got to Apples cvs website and download and build updated components.

Michael


Originally posted by VGZ
Only problem with that is that you can't actually check or uncheck those boxes. however, you could try to install Darwin on an empty partition and then run the Mac OS X installer on that partition. Since the installer is smart and only installs what is needed it might work.

Try this and let me know :),
Click to expand...
 
Actually, there are minor differences between the CoreOS of Mac OS X and Darwin (e.g. drivers that Apple doesn't own the source to and so can't OpenSource, etc).

It's not recommended that you replace the entire distro with Darwin, but you can easily recompile the kernel (xnu) and swap it into OS X (this is how someone added support for PPC 604 machines... they recompiled xnu then created a temporary partition and a destination partition, copied the contents of the installer CD to the temporary partition, replaced the kernel so they could boot the cd, then installed it, and replaced the kernel on the final partition).

Darwin is useful by itself as an OS, if a CLI is your cup of tea. Also, X Windows works on it nowadays, and more and more software is being ported... It looks like it could become a viable alternative OS sometime in the future...

The reason Darwin 1.2 took a few weeks after the release of the PB to manifest itself was because Apple had to sever it from Mac OS X and make sure only the source they wanted to release was in it.

Darwin 1.2 is useful if you know how and why to use it. Otherwise, don't worry about it, understand it's there and know that it's definitely A Good Thing™.
 
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