
MkLinux: Apple-Funded Port of Linux to the Power Mac / Mach Microkernel - lwf
http://mklinux.org/
======
rwmj
I ran this for many years (back in 1997/1998 and onwards) on recycled System 7
hardware[1]. The hardware was very reliable. Mac OS pre-X was horrible, just
constantly crashing. MkLinux made the hardware pleasant for web servers and
firewalls.

Edit: [1] I think the hardware was this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600)

~~~
VonGuard
The 8.5 and 8.6 branches of Mac OS were great, I feel. I hosted lots of
servers on them, especially 8.6.2. However, every single other version of the
OS was a buggy, crashing nightmare if you were looking for extended uptime.
7.6.1 was halfway OK, but man, I never kept a Mac OS running as long as in
8.6.2. I had months of up time, I'm telling you. Months!

~~~
yuhong
There is no Mac OS 8.6.2. Thinking about it, Blue Box running on NuKernel with
Copland-style background server apps would probably not have been bad,
especially with the use of Pascal instead of C strings which helped security.

~~~
VonGuard
I must mean 8.6. I think I am confusing it with 8.5.1.... It has been 16
years..... 8.5.1 and 8.6 were the greatest, though...

Anyway, the great thing about hosting on Classic Mac OS is that there was
nothing to exploit. With no remote admin capabilities beyond some Appletalk-
related stuff, even if someone did find a way to compromise your system, the
only thing they could really do was freeze it. I threw a Mac OS 7.5-ish
(obviously I am forgetting numebrs) Mac up on the Defcon LAN and put the IP on
the whiteboard for targets, and not a damn thing happened. Not even a hang...

------
vezzy-fnord
Survives to this day, as the OSF Mach sources in MkLinux were the alleged
basis for Mach kernel module emulation in the NextBSD project. This according
to Kip Macy's testimony over IRC, at least.

~~~
rbanffy
How ironic a part of a dead Linux lives on as a part of a BSD...

------
rbanffy
I was working at Brazil's largest ISP at the time and we had stacks of
abandoned Power Macs. I grabbed one and installed it as my second desktop.
Life wasn't exactly easy and compiling things like a browser were a pain, but
it was an excellent X terminal.

I left the company to come back a couple months later as a consultant. Just
about every sysadmin had one on their desks by then.

------
0x0
Why is it that Apple apparently is so keen on Mach? As I understand it, both
this and XNU/Darwin/OSX have Mach in the lower layers. And if it adds so much
value, why doesn't regular Linux distributions build on top of this?

~~~
luckydude
I was big into OS dev when Mach was coming around but I was a newbie. I read
all the Mach papers with stars in my eyes, it all sounded so good. I wasn't
alone in getting drawn in by the research papers.

I went to Sun and learned how a kernel could work and could perform and the
allure of Mach, for me, started to wane. Reading the mach code made it worse,
especially compared to the Sun code.

All these years later, I remain underwhelmed. Linux has a nicer VM system,
performs better, and is more readable. Not Sun level readable by any stretch,
but better than my memory of mach (which, to be fair, is in the distant past).

If someone can point to actual real world data that shows Mach to be better
performing on the same hardware I'd be interested in seeing that, I tend to
think that's not possible.

If you want to see what a real microkernel done right looks like, go look at
QNX before they added the POSIX conformance. You have 4-5 people logged into
an 80286 doing work. Very, very light weight and well done. They were the only
guys that understood what the "micro" in microkernel meant. I remember Dan
Hildebrandt telling me that the microkernel easily fit in a 4K instruction
cache (it pretty much had to, it didn't do much so you needed some space for
whatever it was dispatching).

~~~
oscargrouch
As someone that loves to dig into source code to see how things are done...

Solaris source is the state-of-the-art. If there's a "beautiful" kernel,
Solaris is definitely the one. QNX also is one very well made kernel(its like
a OS created by a zen master).

It's a pity that sun took so long to open the source of Solaris, or else i
could be typing this from a solaris kernel, instead of Linux.

~~~
snw
well... there is illumos

~~~
oscargrouch
The solaris source code was open, i believe in 2005.. then came OpenSolaris in
2008.. and then the Illumos fork, if i recall correctly in 2010, after Oracle
bought Sun..

But even in 2005, when they decided to open the source, it was already too
late, because Linux was already a big hit by that time.

But, to use Illumos as a first machine, can be really painful, exactly because
of the lack of adoption, and the lack of drivers and software as a
consequence... that's the reason of my comment about the time to open the
code.. and Oracle closing it up again, didnt help it either.

I would definetly consider Ilummos as a server node.. but for a personal
machine.. it can get painful really easy, if you use for development like i
do.

------
rhubarbquid
In hindsight, this was probably a candidate for the basis of OS X before they
decided to buy NeXT and go with that

~~~
spiralpolitik
After Copland was killed Solaris and Windows NT were the first options Apple
considered. They also had discussions with Be before finally going with NeXT.

This was all pre Cathedral and Bazaar (1997) so Linux wasn't really on the
radar at most companies.

~~~
vt240
Back in 2000 I found we had a Power Mac 6100/60 at work which had the Copland
developer preview loaded on it. I've never seen a copy of it since. I wonder
if anyone still has the media, I looked all around the office for it, I'd love
to take a look at it again. One of those rare birds from Apple, like MAE.
Although, I think MAE could actually run some programs unlike the Copland DR.
I don't remember being able to do anything in it. If I found a copy of MAE I
would totally go get myself an Ultra 1 from eBay all setup just for the thrill
:-)

~~~
benley
I'm pretty sure I have a copy of MAE on cd around somewhere - possibly
multiple versions. If you really want it let me know and I'll see if I can dig
it up.

~~~
vt240
Yeah, send me message at s.d.m at ieee.org. The only time I got to play with
it, was at the Sun office here in Seattle. We tossed out all our Sun gear
years ago now but I saved all the media and books going back to Solaris 2.6 in
case I ever wanted to setup a system again.

------
rje
I remember running this on a Power Computing machine during college. It was a
great alternative to System 7 at the time, and easier to be productive in than
something like BeOS DR3 (although BeOS was fun in its own right).

I'm surprised to see this got updates all the way up to 2009!

~~~
vt240
I switched to BeOS on my Motorola StarMax when it got stable around the second
release and used it as my primary OS for quite awhile (all the way through
version 5 when I switched to x86). I had tried MkLinux, but was using MachTen
before that. I had used MachTen on 68k and it was rock solid, I never had the
same luck with the PowerPC version. I honestly can't remember why I didn't
stick with MkLinux. Much later I ran YellowDog on my G3 machines.

EDIT: I'm thinking back... I was pretty young at the time 14-15 yo. And just
learning to program, and what I really loved about BeOS was how easy the API
was to learn. I had been learning C/C++ in MachTen and never could wrap my
head around making Machintosh GUI applications. But sitting down with the
Online documentation in BeOS, it was _VERY_ easy to make a program with 3D
graphics and a native GUI. Later on, QNX gained a lot of popularity I think
for the same reasons (fantastic documentation and API). I had worked on a
project under Solaris which relied on POSIX.4 extensions (yikes) before moving
it to QNX.

------
compay
This was the first Linux I ever used.

~~~
tbrock
Same. I still have the book in my parents bedroom.

------
msbarnett
My first experience with UNIX in general and Linux in specific. In some very
real ways I owe my career to playing with MkLinux on my G3 PowerMac in
highschool.

------
mhurron
uh, looks a little old.

~~~
csixty4
So are Power Macs

~~~
OJFord
Power Machs, if you will.

