[Breadfan]

I'm thinking of giving Darwin a shot on an older system. Looks like it could be fun to play with. Its based on FreeBSD and built to run like OS X for Mac but it is available to run on an x86 platform.

Look here: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

Anyway, anyone ever try installing it before? I'm gonna download it one night and make a CD image of it...but I'm not sure what to expect when I install it. I'll have to go over documentation.

Anyway I'll figure that out no problem. But my main question is how does it do compatibility-wise. How do I get drivers for my programs? Will it have native drivers for some of my stuff?

I wont have much, just need IDE drivers (and ATA100 drivers if I used my A7V) and MuseXL drivers, plus nVidia drivers.

Would I use Mac drivers or Linux drivers?

Again I may stumble across these answers as I dig deeper into this curiosity of mine.

But in the meantime, just curious if anyone has tried Darwin. If so, post some of your eXPeriences with it.

Mike

[XWRed1]

Darwin apparently only works on 440BX boards, and has drivers for almost nothing. You can't use Linux drivers, and Mac drivers definately wouldn't work (especially since you aren't installing on a Mac).

Once you got it running, it would probably end up being pretty much like FreeBSD for all intents and purposes, until you tried doing something system specific like working on the kernel or fooling with drivers.

If you install it, you won't get the MacOS X gui or any of that.

From the Darwin x86 Installation Notes

Supported Hardware:
-------------------

IDE:
Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.
Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better.
Ethernet:
Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported.
Video:
You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all
modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators
such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards.
Successfully tested hardware:
All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
IDE controllers.
IBM ThinkPad A21m (with onboard Intel ethernet)
Known to not be supported:
All AMD and VIA based systems.

[Breadfan]

Thats a shame...oh well.

Yeah, I looked into it just a bit more, looks like Darwin is just the core that is open source so it can be made to run elsewhere. So yeah, probbaly no OS X goodies. The reason I thought it could is becuase I heard a while back that it would allow you to run OS X on a PC.

I don't have an BX boards, and I had an LX board but built a system out of it and gave it to my cousin.

Well now I'm sure if I see the point to Darwin anymore...might as well just run FreeBSD...

I'm gonna read more into it tonite probably, when I have time. I'd still like to play with OS X a bit, but don't want to buy a Mac. Maybe I'll go to compusa this weekend and play with one of their CrapMacs...

Mike

[UnseenMenace]

From my understanding Darwin does not have the OSX GUI and is based on open source Unix type Operating Systems and it is this that is available.

[XWRed1]

Basically, OSX is Darwin + A bunch of special Apple goodies. You won't get those Apple goodies to run on anything other than a Mac.

[Superman53142]

Fireball tried it before. It was simply a BSD, LOL.

And yes, it supports only the PIIX4 IDE controller. My PIIX3 on an old P200 wasn't good enough for it.

IMO, just go BSD if you want to use Darwin