
PureDarwin – An Informal Successor to OpenDarwin - cookrn
https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin/wiki
======
soneil
Other than moving it to github, is there actually anything new here? They're
still talking about the xmas release (2008), and of targeting Darwin9 (2007)
and Darwin10(2009).

~~~
jgranby
Exactly -- the latest major release is Darwin 15 (corresponding to OS X El
Capitan / 10.11). I'd love to see this (or a similar) project succeed and
remain relevant, but it just seems to be falling further and further behind
the official releases.

(To be clear, I know there are good reasons for this, and I'm not trying to
imply that a lot of work hasn't gone into what has been released ... but I
can't help but wonder if there's no longer any hope of it catching up with
(semi-closed) Darwin.)

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DigitalJack
I fully appreciate the "doing it for the fun of it" mentality. Am I wrong in
assuming that is the "why" behind this project?

I have used OS X full time for 7 years now, and I love it, but I never thought
the kernel had much to recommend it.

~~~
mdaniel
My interest in having a running Darwin system is the ability to build OSX
things on an openly licensed platform. I know that it is permissible to
virtualize OSX on top of OSX, but even that is a PITA and more so in a
TeamCity/jenkins/etc setup

Giving what the mingw project has contributed to being able to build Windows
binaries on Linux, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to do something
similar for OSX, but since so much of it is already open source, it seems a
waste to discard the _exact code_ that OSX is running

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lloeki
This is something I've been waiting for. After years of standby I've been
working on Arch OS X again lately (fully operational but currently waiting for
trademark approval from the Arch Linux team) and Arch Darwin is something I
was contemplating to do for fun at some unspecified timeframe in the future.

~~~
mrweasel
If you don't mind me asking: Other than intellectual curiosity, why would you
want to run Darwin, and not just one of the BSDs? Aren't a large number of the
drivers still closed source?

~~~
lloeki
The kext mechanism is pragmatic and interesting: as opposed to Linux kernel
modules, binary kexts are compatible across whole kernel versions.

Also, having alternatives is always interesting. I was also interested in
making the core of OS X† have some form of FOSS liveliness, but I've been
quite disheartened about OS X and openness (however limited) since this[0]
happened.

[0]:
[https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller/issues/2](https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller/issues/2)

† I do believe that FOSS is very important, but I also recognise the critical
effect of closed source innovations, and believe that a delicate balance and
synergy between both aspects can produce fantastic results.

~~~
yardie
Strange The OSS kext I use for SMART USB HDDs [0] is also signed, but
obviously not the source. You can download the compiled and signed driver here
[1].

[0][https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-
Driver](https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver)
[1][https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive-
support](https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive-support)

This sounds like one reviewer has it in their mind that the signing is for
licensing (commercialization) and not for security (authentication).

------
orionblastar
Darwin was cool until Apple quit releasing ISO files and just the source code
that needed a lot of work to debug it and put it back together.

I'm glad to see someone took it over and has a goal of making Darwin ISO
files. I hope it also gets an OSX themed skin for whatever Desktop GUI they
decide to use with Cario Dock or something to look like OSX.

~~~
pjmlp
Without the whole Objective-C/Swift userspace libraries it will just look like
OS X, but it won't be OS X.

~~~
fithisux
KDE is better than Aqua. One needs Darwin for drivers and other subsystems.
You can even run cocotron on this.

~~~
pjmlp
I cannot seat a Mac OS X user, or developer in front of it, and they will be
able to use it just like Mac OS X.

~~~
Zardoz84
Try to tweak KDE to mimic OSX

~~~
mattkevan
And then you'll have a bad copy of a bad copy.

The fit and finish of linux desktops, especially KDE, are nowhere near as good
as the Mac, and adding a theme which kind of sort of makes it look like OS X
only serves to highlight where it doesn't match up.

As a long time Mac user and now Linux user the only desktop which is vaguely
tolerable is Elementary OS as at least someone there with a good eye for
detail went through and made sure it all fits together.

~~~
sspiff
> The fit and finish of linux desktops, especially KDE, are nowhere near as
> good as the Mac

I beg to differ, but only with the "especially KDE" part. KDE is a different
beast than most other modern desktop environments, in that it does not try to
mimic OS X style in any way.

KDE was started way back when with a goal of replicating a Windows-like UI,
with a Start-menu like launcher and a Start-bar like task bar with applets.

It may not be to your tastes, but the fit and finish of KDE3, 4 and now 5 is
excellent. Integrated application sets (K[Anything]) with integration into a
centralized control/config panel for shortcuts, MIME type handling, ...

The only problem with this is that other popular applications do not bind this
tightly to KDE (understandable from application developers - KDE is not the
only game in town).

Previously, GTK applications in particular acted and looked like they were
from '93 when run outside of GTK-centric desktop environments (XFCE, Gnome).
However, Qt has developed a GTK2 and 3 engine that uses Qt and Qt themes under
the hood, largely solving that problem when properly configured (try any
stable OpenSuse release, for instance).

