FreeDarwin is a project started to create a BSD-like OS based on Apple Darwin. It uses the NetBSD pkgsrc system, and hopes to replace the DarwinBuild build system with a BSD like build system for the base system, as well as replace many of the Apple and GNU userland tools with BSD userland tools. The first pre-release was released today.
So their basic reason for existence is to create a bsd well suited to powerpc? Lovely intentions, but it seems incredibly ill-timed as there just won’t be that much in the way of desktop systems around any more.
I don’t really understand it either.
I understand NetBSD on the XBox, or contiki webserver on Commodore64’s, but this I don’t understand.
Unless they use GNUStep+Window Maker as default in order to provide some form of compatibility of course..but that’s not the stated goal of this project. The stated goal is to make a form of BSD for PPC that requires less technical expertise to install. I don’t know if starting a new project from almost scratch is the right way to do that though.
That’s not the intention. The intention is to leverge a system that already exists that has excellent support for PPC hardware, and to build a clean BSD-like system on top of it. I don’t want to emulate OS X, I just want something that works really great on PPC hardware that is free and a BSD.
That’s not the intention. The intention is to leverge a system that already exists that has excellent support for PPC hardware, and to build a clean BSD-like system on top of it. I don’t want to emulate OS X, I just want something that works really great on PPC hardware that is free and a BSD.
And that’s all fine and good. It just seemed to me like they were geared a bit towards desktops and I thought the market for ppc desktop machines was just in the process of disappearing. I’ll admit, I don’t know a whole lot about the ppc market.
The bit about the email kiosks in high traffic areas was just a bit of background, about why the project was started. The other BSD ppc ports are often just a little too unstable to be put into the kind of conditions I needed to put these macs into. Just like any BSD, the hope is for FreeDarwin to work great in the server world, as well as in the desktop world.
Use OpenBSD.
OpenBSD would not do X11 with higher than 8bpp, it locked up console hard, and even with X11 running at 8bpp Xorg would periodically crash without any reason.
It seems like it’s almost a tradition to installl <insert free os here> onto old hardware you have sitting around the basement, so perhaps this is the best time to do it!
is not that obsolete. EFIKA is coming !!! And I would like to see an EPIA/C3/C7 BSD distro,like EPIOS.
I’d love to see a FreeDarwin porting effort to the EFIKA!
Definately! I agree with that.