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Just a DE like GNOME or KDE? Obviously you don't know much about OSX.

OS X is just a DE on top of Darwin. I can easily put KDE on my mac. I can even remove the OS X DE altogether and just have Darwin + KDE. The only difference is that OS X can't be put on top of Linux/Plain BSD (right now).

OS X isn't �€�just a DE on top of Darwin�€�. Darwin is a subset of Mac OS X.

Graphical Mac OS X relies on a number of technologies which are present in Darwin and aren't in Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

Perhaps they could be ported (some of them have already been), but without the source to the GUI parts, getting it up and running would be fairly tricky (NetBSD's Mach-O support might well help you out, mind).

So why isn't OSX just a DE?

the real problem for bsd is that while they tried to be a good server, they didn't really care that it would be a good fit for the desktop. The linux people wanted both and that is why it took off. "I can play with it at home and hey I can use it as a server." The more linux was used as a desktop, the more drivers and developers for it and that turned it into a better server OS as well.

I use BSD on both the desktop (PC-BSD) and server (FBSD) and like it much better then the Linux in either service, as I have to do at work. FBSD is cleaner, easier to administer/upgrade, 7.0 is faster, more scalable. The ports are the best system I have seen for managing SW installs...

The cluster f*&k that is the Linux development method has creadted the worst code base that I have ever seen!

TEHO I guess.

TBM

but linux didn't fork like the bsd's.

Then why are there so many Debian-based distros? If that's not forking, then what is?

And for all those years in which Linux was undeniably faster at SMB and BSD's performance was nothing short of embarrassing?

No doubt you are referencing, as have so many other well meaning but misguided people, Kris Kennaway's tired and outdated old MySQL benchmark which pointed out a flaw in Glibc. (Thanks for that, BTW.) See the more recent benchmarks conducted by Nick Piggin, using the current Glibc, and note that Linux is now faster than FreeBSD:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/npiggin/sysbench/

What can I say? Nah, nah, neh nah nah? Or perhaps I should say that the idea of focusing on such a benchmark to make an absolute claim that one is faster than the other is silly and meaningless.

I'm glad you are pleased with FreeBSD. Not all of us have the same requirements and tastes.

Edited 2008-04-08 22:06 UTC

The Nick Piggin benchmarks are outdated too. From Jeff's blog:

http://jeffr-tech.livejournal.com/

"We tracked down our problem with the performance drop above 30 threads on Nick Piggin's mysql benchmark to conservative settings for the pthread adaptive spinning. We see a big gain relative to where we were before. Frankly at this point we're splitting hairs with linux and I don't really care where we stand. We had a tremendous problem and we resolved it. Time to move on.."

The only thing that shows FreeBSD performance clearly ahead of Linux is with pipes- yeah I know, its hardly something that will make a Datacentre manager start ripping out his Linux boxes and replace them with FreeBSD

The people who modded you down should go to http://fxr.watson.org/ to at least have a founded opinion. I wouldn't say FreeBSD kernel source is as much better than Linux as their manpages are. They are similar in both performance and dirtyness.
If you want to read both clean secure code and useful manpages, try OpenBSD.

I'd say it was more a combination of timing (hello AT&T lawsuits), licensing choice, and culture that led to Linux taking off

culture was a big part of it. Linus brought together the minix community and the gnu community when he used their tools. linux wasn't forked the way bsd was. He gave the opportunity for a lot of people to contribute to the kernel. Developers like that sort of thing as it was the ultimate hackOS. It feels good to say you made a difference to an OS that many people use.

Could have been??? more users use BSD (Darwin, FBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD...) on their desktop than any other open source OS.

The BSD's are great operating systems, stable, fast and very useful.

BSD protection clause???????? The BSD license is truly an open license. The BSD license is IMO the best OOL out there.

Anti-commercial??? again I think your views are AFU. Apple is a very commercial entity. The BSD is more commercial friendly then GPLx. They both have their place but I'll stick to BSD licenses.

TBM

Edited 2008-04-08 19:18 UTC

I think he's saying that the noncommercially produced freebsd, netbsd and openbsd combined are not as successful as the noncommercial but GPL linux or the commercially produced macosx.

Now firefox has proven to be quite successful. Firefox in turn has increased demand for non GPL (or at least, only LGPL) code such as cairo graphics. When looking for a new memory allocator for firefox 3, they couldn't consider Hoard (www.hoard.org) since it was GPL.

I'm not sure why I'm replying to a Moulinneuf comment, but, for the benefit of everybody else reading these comments:

1a. Darwin most definitely is �€�real�€� Open Source according to the OSD (which, given that you capitalised Open Source, is obviously what you're referring to).

1b. Darwin, under the terms of the APSL 2, is released under a Free Software license (see http://lists.apple.com/archives/Publicsource-announce/2003/Aug/msg0...). It's not GPL-compatible, but GNU don't believe that detracts from software being classified as Free, and they most definitely know better than you or I, given they defined the term in the first place.

1c. Neither the OSI nor the FSF have any problem explaining how to find the source, share the source, copy it for personal use or make copies for a friend, make derivative work or sell it to other people because the license expressly permits those things. Are you perhaps thinking of the original APSL 1.0 or minorly-revised APSL 1.1?

2a. The source is available from http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/

2b. Just because a version of Mac OS X has been released doesn't imply that a version of Darwin has been as well�€"the two are distinct products on slightly different release cycles.

3. Server OEMs may not ship FreeBSD, but plenty of hosting providers run FreeBSD. If you counted operating system usage by OEM sales, Linux wouldn't even register on most people's scales as existing, which is clearly a flawed methodology.

4. The BSD license was intended to be corporation-friendly. If any of the NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD projects wanted to steer things differently, they could have done: they could have released their respective operating systems under the GPL if they wanted to (note that Linux and glibc, as well as numerous other pieces of GPL and LGPL code include snippets of BSD-licensed code, thanks to the non-advertising-clause BSD license being broadly compatible with many different licenses).

5. The very fact that Apple was able to release the commercial Mac OS X including portions of FreeBSD, NetBSD and CMU Mach (all of which are BSD-licensed) cements firmly the notion that the BSDs are more �€�commercial-friendly�€� (as touted). By definition, it can't possibly mean the reverse. The only thing that Apple's licensing of Darwin under the APSL indicates is that Apple didn't want to be quite as �€�commercial-friendly�€� with Darwin as the other BSD projects.

6a. Apple is �€�BSD�€�, because the operating systems they ship (the only operating systems they ship, and the operating systems people often buy their products for) are all demonstrably BSD-based, even if much of it is no longer licensed under the terms of the 3- or 4-clause BSD licenses. The code still has BSD lineage. Great big chunks of it.

6b. Apple is, by definition, a billion dollar BSD company.

It would seem you are basing your arguments on the assumption that Darwin is not BSD. That is correct, however, neither are the other so called BSDs. BSD is a UNIX that ended distribution in 1995. The contemporary so called BSDs are all BSD derived, and them being licensed under the BSD license doesn't make them any more the BSD UNIX. This fact undermines your arguments as they are based on a false assumption.

the usual misconception is that macosx is on top of freebsd.

I've always chuckled at the way many BSD advocates try and portray the disadvantage of the BSD license in producing code and software that is used to provide others like Apple with a free ride to produce totally different and incompatible systems. "Oh well" the BSD people say. "It makes us the most used desktop system around!"

Keep thinking the above if it gives you some pleasure, and some comfort.

I've always chuckled at the way many BSD advocates try and portray the disadvantage of the BSD license in producing code and software that is used to provide others like Apple with a free ride to produce totally different and incompatible systems. "Oh well" the BSD people say. "It makes us the most used desktop system around!"

Keep thinking the above if it gives you some pleasure, and some comfort. "

Surely that depends on what your aims are?

If your aim is to write code and know that millions of people use it because your license is so liberal, and you get satisfaction from knowing that (evidently lots of people do, after all), then who's been disadvantaged?

If your aim is to write code with the intention that nobody can fork it in a way which prevents others from doing the same thing (as per the GPL and similar licenses), then obviously the BSD situation isn't going to be amenable to you.

Neither is inherently right or wrong, it's just that different people value different things.

(As an example: I build websites for clients for a living; I know that thousands of people use my code every day, and to me that's what makes the job worth doing; they don't even know that I'm responsible for it (unless something goes wrong and I have to talk to them!). Other folk don't really get anything from that scenario, and would much rather, say, build a site for themselves, and enjoy the fact that people know who built and runs it).

That's not even funny anymore because almost nobody get to use BSD code as is , they get to use BSD based code. The difference is that the BSD rights and privilege are illegally removed and that the funding and future development goes into making proprietary drivers , software and OS that are cutting in directly with BSD. The BSD are a laughing ridiculous joke as soon as you compare it to it's commercial derivative : SUN , Apple , Microsoft.

Who is disadvantaged you ask again ? the BSD themself , they are removing themself from being competitive and are dependent on others' good will and contributions at all and every level.

How come the BSD can't be on par in the fundings and contribution of code and number of user's vs project that are all 4 decade ( that's 40 years ) yougner if not less then they are themself. Why do they need the Hardware contribution of other OS distributors ? Why don't they have major one themself ?

If the lies your telling where reality and truth , then there would be no need for GNU/Linux at all , there would be no Apple as it would be made obsolete by BSD itself due to it's rate of development and it's quality of code and accepted prevelance in all aspect of computer OS.

No , BSD is inherently and completely wrong , if it where right then the majority of people who created or particpated in it in the past would still be associated with it, proud to say so too , and most people would still work at it as it is most people who have really worked on BSD and are excellent and good at what they do are doing something else.

BSD is chaos , everything goes , the problem with chaos and why it appeals to kids and people like you in theory is it's a good thing if your as blind as you are and only look at the good side witch is what people like you only do and talk about. Once you look at it's bad side it completely negate it's good side.

Sure it's fun to say millions of people use BSD code , the reality is the million use closed derivative and the reality is that it's not really fun to have ZERO support be it from BSD themself , its commercial proprietary derivative or anyone else for BSD.

BSD is fun in theory , in reality most people will work on other OS or at something else. Because there is no real demand for BSD job or any future for it.

Darwin is what BSD could have been , if BSD ad not been inherently and completely wrong.

The proof is in your example you work at building website instead of at building BSD and being paid to do so.

The point is that the success of Mac OS X, or any other derivative, does not equal to success for BSD and Darwin because they're not the same things.

Chuckle ... What are your criteria for failure and success. They are obviously not the same as the BSD developers. Actually, they would reach the exact opposite of your conclusions.

The BSD are not catering the desktop crowd. Their aim is to be excellent servers, and they most certainly are. That is success, it is as simple as that.

They do not have a crisis in regards to developers or user base.

That companies are using BSD code is not a failure. It is actually something the developers want.

Wow, prejudices and unfounded assumptions are fun! :-)

It's just where you set your priorities. In terms of making money, maybe. In terms of serving their users well - that would be my priority - the BSDs are really successful; it's worth mentioning that almost every OS is intended to a special audience, and definitely, the audiences of the BSDs and the audiences of other OSes aren't much the same.



To ... erm, cater ... :-) the desktop crowd, there are systems that are based upon BSDs, intending to make the BSD easier to newbies, but without breaking compatibility to the underlying OS. Examples are PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, both based upon FreeBSD, with different grades of compatibility.



That's true. The BSDL has often been criticized to be a kind of "rape me license" because it allows things that the GPL or commercial licenses don't. That's nothing bad per se, and, as you mentioned, this is well intended.

I'd like to add that I'm using BSD for server and desktop purposes (productivity, programming, multimedia, video, audio, gaming etc.) nearly exclusively (along with a bit of Solaris and IRIX) for many years now, and I do feel that the BSDs are what they wanted to be - no "what they could have been" - because if they would be something highly different, I'm not sure if I would use them under these circumstances, for example, if the kind of how documentation is done would change into the way that's sadly to be seen with Linux (you can easily imagine other examples where BSD is most successful). Furthermore, since I got my defective iBook working, I develop into a fan of Mac OS X. :-)

That is true but doesn't change the fact that the underlying OS is being designed and developed with servers in mind. Darwin includes many features in the kernel to improve experience for the desktop user.

Additionally, the discussion in this thread has been distinguishing between the DE and the underlying system and in the case of both DesktopBSD and PC-BSD they are as you say yourself both FreeBSD underneath.

The license permits what has been done with Darwin. How is this a failure? If BSD devs wanted only to be materially wealthy, they would not be generously donating their time in the manner they do. (The same more or less applies to many - not all - FOSS projects.)

Or may be it just shows how successful BSD is thats why they chose it in the 1st place.

After my jaw dropped from reading this I decided to register here so I could ask...

Are you serious??

Darwin is a complete franken-os compared to something like FreeBSD. FreeBSD is well thought out and has sane code. Check out the xnu and darwin tree some time. It's a mess.

I'd like to hear exactly what Darwin is that FreeBSD could have been.

~telengard

that timeline completely ignores mach, nextstep and openstep. you might get the wrong impression that osx is only a fork of freebsd. this big unix timeline is much better:

http://www.levenez.com/unix/

I would go further than that... Darwin is based on the core of NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. The FreeBSD parts only happened when Apple replaced/updated *STEP components with them, or extended the core in to areas that the *STEP's didn't cover. The "comes from FreeBSD" is factually incorrect. "Converged with FreeBSD from disparete trunks of the same overall base" would be more correct.

This impression should not be concluded from the timeline. Darwin and Mac OS X are no forks of BSD, but they have a strong relationship to BSD. Maybe this is not clearly shown by this timeline.



Yes, this one is much better and saves you from buying expensive wallpaper for your coding booth. :-)

April fools was 8 days ago, dude. The Hurd? Are you kidding me?

No, that may have been true in the early 90s, but a lot of Linux's success has been in the late 90s to especially the mid-2000s. That success is not because BSD was in the courtroom. They could have easily overcome that early obstacle while Linux was still struggling to work on common hardware and run common software. Alas, they did not, for better or for worse.