Darwin Question

Darwin is all the open-source stuff from OS X (the UNIX subsystem, the libraries, etc.).

Mac OS X's GUI is closed-source, so it's not included with Darwin. All other closed-source or Apple-proprietary software from Mac OS X is not included with Darwin.
 
Would it be possible to run a GUI (Gnome) configured exactly like Aqua is on top of Darwin and be able to execute Mac OS X programs or would you need Mac OS runtime libraries?
 
Hm? You can't configure Gnome "just like Aqua". The binaries expect exactly Mac OS X. For other environments, you need different binaries. For Gnome, apps expect X11, for example. But you can't just shove X11 down an OS X app's throat as a replacement for Quartz.
 
Running Darwin would be the same situation as running GNU/Linux or any of the BSDs. You'd need X in order to run a graphical environment, and usually it's one of the many desktop environments and window managers that are available for X.

Of course, there's this project called Étoilé that uses the GNUSTEP framework. FLOSS Weekly recently interviewed the developers of Étoilé and they got into some detail about how it's supposed to function. Mind you, this is not ready for prime time, but it might be worth a try if you're game enough. I'd love to run this once it's actually ready.
 
If I remember correctly, they were working for some binary compatibility with applications for OS X, though I'd be curious to see how they'd achieve this. At least it might be binary compatible with NeXTSTEP.
 
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