Thanks Robert,
I just did not want to go into a lot of details. My bottom line was
that unless you want to run a very specific port that has not been
ported to Mac OSX (these are quite rare), I do not see the reason to
install FreeBSD on a Mac Book. As for X11 it is maintained as a
separate port, and one can go to:
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ to download the latest version
which is much less buggy. The only caveat is that when Apple updates
the operating system it reverts to whatever they have on the official
release and one has to reinstall the latest version.
Aharon Friedman
On Oct 6, 2008, at 1:36 PM, Robert Watson wrote:
On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Dr. Aharon Friedman wrote:
Sorry, I meant BSD.
Here is the link:
http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-3.html
Aharon Friedman
I don't see the origina message you replied to on the list, so am
replying to it via your post...
I'm just a lurker, but even I know that only some of the userland
apps in OS X are BSD-based. The kernel is mach microkernel based
and not even slightly similar.
This claim regarding the kernel is highly inaccurate. There are
significant quantities of FreeBSD, Mach, and Apple-originated code
in the Mac OS X kernel, both because Apple pulled in a lot of
FreeBSD code early on, but also because code moves between the two
kernels fairly easily and fairly frequently, and in both directions.
You'll find a FreeBSD-derived VFS, network stack, and countless
other kernel parts in Mac OS X from their first open source drop
forward. More recently, though, you'll find that the Audit
implementation present in FreeBSD 6.x and later is based on the Mac
OS X kernel audit code, and the TrustedBSD MAC Framework that
appeared in Mac OS X Leopard is straight from FreeBSD.
It's certainly true that there's a lot of non-FreeBSD code -- XNU
uses the Mach scheduler and Mach IPC, and a quite different driver
framework, for example. There's also some convergent evolution:
FreeBSD contains a Mach-derived VM that also comes from the original
Mach project.
Finally, just to be clear: XNU is not a micro-kernel, even though it
contains significant amounts of Mach code. The "microkernel" and
remainder of the kernel run in a single address space, and although
certain separation is (often) maintained in the source code /
abstractions, the Mach, FreeBSD, and device driver parts run in a
unified and tightly integrated way.
Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge
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