Sup fellow Linux, BSD, MINIX, OS X, Haiku, Plan 9, and Amiga OS users! Instead of working on my homework and preparing for my graduation, I decided to look into Darwin, and what it consists of. No, not OS X, Darwin. Stuff like XNU and Mach. Supposedly it's open source, or the majority of it is, but I can't find the source anywhere. Anyone have any intel on where the source is? Also, does anyone have a summary of the history and special features that Darwin (or it's components) has over other UNIX-like systems?
Or is it just OS X with a different name?

Thanks guys, I'm gonna go procrastinate some more and not do my homework!

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(19-04-2015, 07:11 PM)dsplayer14 Wrote: Sup fellow Linux, BSD, MINIX, OS X, Haiku, Plan 9, and Amiga OS users! Instead of working on my homework and preparing for my graduation, I decided to look into Darwin, and what it consists of. No, not OS X, Darwin. Stuff like XNU and Mach. Supposedly it's open source, or the majority of it is, but I can't find the source anywhere. Anyone have any intel on where the source is? Also, does anyone have a summary of the history and special features that Darwin (or it's components) has over other UNIX-like systems?
Or is it just OS X with a different name?

Thanks guys, I'm gonna go procrastinate some more and not do my homework!

Well, after some simple Googling that I didn't bother to do initially, I found the source to the kernel, XNU (which is a hybrid of Mach and BSD). However, no find on any source of the Darwin operating system. I feel like my best bet is just exploring Apple's open source software repository.

Wazzup Bro.

Mac OSX is based on Free BSD so Apple must release its OS source code because of the BSD license that is tied with Free BSD. It includes all of the Apple stuff ( kernel ) except for the GUI and Apple software because that is proprietary closed source.

The link for download can be found at puredarwin.org Their website does not have a lot of documentation and work they do does not frequently get posted to the page it seems like. It says they are working on OSX Snow Leopard, and the Apple release of that OS came out way back in 2011. So you will not be getting the bleeding edge stuff that is included in the newer Apple releases.


I have not used puredarwin but I believe that you can do anything with it as you would a BSD system. I even think that you can install Apple software onto it but I am not sure.

I also think that you need a Apple system to get it up and running flawlessly. But you may be able to get a semi working system out of non-mac hardware.

I tried to install this along time ago but had no luck, all I got was kernel errors every time I tried to boot the system. I believe the kernel was complaining that it could not find my Pentium CPU.


yrmt knows more because he runs PureDarwin ( At least I think he does, or he may be running OSX without the default Desktop and instead a tiling window manager and a different port manager ) so you will want to shoot him an e-mail. I remember that he had a picture of his Darwin setup on Deviantart, I will try to find that. It was just a scrot of a tiling window manager I recall.

Ya, its Darwin with xQuartz with mcdwm.
http://ybeastie.deviantart.com/art/Unix-...-346040665

(20-04-2015, 10:27 AM)jobss Wrote: yrmt knows more because he runs PureDarwin

He doesn't run PureDarwin, he isn't even on the team. :P

That's a scrot of Mac OSX 10.8.2 with XQuartz.

(26-04-2015, 04:10 AM)vypr Wrote:

(20-04-2015, 10:27 AM)jobss Wrote: yrmt knows more because he runs PureDarwin

That's a scrot of Mac OSX 10.0.2 with XQuartz.

Thanks for the correction. With those QEMU open I thought it was Darwin with a virtual instance of Mac OSX.

(20-04-2015, 10:27 AM)jobss Wrote: Mac OSX is based on Free BSD so Apple must release its OS source code because of the BSD license that is tied with Free BSD.

The BSD license doesn't require reciprocation as far as I'm aware. Apple could choose to not contribute back to a BSD-licensed product.

BSD is free to do with whatever you like, as long as you don't say you wrote it.
(I don't think it is necessary to have to include the copyright notice any more either.)

(28-04-2015, 05:19 AM)bsdkeith Wrote: BSD is free to do with whatever you like, as long as you don't say you wrote it.
(I don't think it is necessary to have to include the copyright notice any more either.)

Licensing is by far the most confusing part of Open Source Software.

(19-04-2015, 07:11 PM)dsplayer14 Wrote: However, no find on any source of the Darwin operating system.

XNU + every other open-sourced Apple software for OSX = Darwin. It's just a matter of putting everything together.

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(28-04-2015, 10:51 AM)jobss Wrote: -licensing-

The majority of the XNU kernel (and the entirety of Darwin, excluding kernel) is licensed under the Apple Public Source License. There's only a fraction of FreeBSD stuff that's still in there, but heavily modified.