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rmendis · Mar 17, 2003, 09:37 AM

Originally posted by Millennium on "A 'Classic Mode' for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther?' thread:
MkLinux, you see, is not really Linux as we know it. It's a very clever Linux-alike, but many very imporrtant parts of the guts were ripped out and replaced with Mach's versions. To migrate the OSX Unix shell to MkLinux would be basically making three layers instead of two: BSD over Linux over Mach, instead of just BSD over Mach.

What's the fascination with Linux, anyway? Not to disparage Linux at all; it's a great OS in its own right and I use it often, but there's no real reason for Apple to port.

I ment replace much of the BSD shell with a Linux shell...though there are several similarities. That is basically be Linux over Mach microkernel. (Perhaps with some BSD functionality for compatibility).

Already Apple has "X11 for Mac OS X".
This could potentially in a few years migrate to "Linux for Mac OS X".

A reason to this of course would be to capitalize on the hype and popularity of Linux.

MacGorilla · Mar 17, 2003, 10:01 AM

Originally posted by rmendis:
I ment replace much of the BSD shell with a Linux shell...though there are several similarities. That is basically be Linux over Mach microkernel. (Perhaps with some BSD functionality for compatibility).

Already Apple has "X11 for Mac OS X".
This could potentially in a few years migrate to "Linux for Mac OS X".

A reason to this of course would be to capitalize on the hype and popularity of Linux.

It would also throw out years of hard work. While Linux and BSD have much in common, the APIs are different and would mean rewriting some apps.

Besides, Apple doesn't want to tinker with Linux because its under the GPL and they would have to open source all the stuff that runs on top: carbon, Aqua, etc. Apple ain't gonna go there.

stew · Mar 17, 2003, 10:15 AM

What part of Linux do you want to have on OS X? Linux itself is a kernel, you can't put Linux on Mach. What mkLinux had was a kernel that mostly acted like Linux, but was Mach on the inside.

What would be the advantage of having Linux instead of BSD, especially considering that Linux is mostly a BSD clone? IMO the best aspect of Linux are the inner workings (the scheduler, the drivers, etc) which you would not get by adding a Linux emulation layer on top of Darwin.

Really, what would be the benefit of all this?

Earth Mk. II · Mar 17, 2003, 10:38 AM

Linux is a kernel. GNU/Linux is a platform. What the hell is a "linux shell"? I mean.. if you've really got a hankering for Bash, then install it and be done with it.

What would be the advantage of using linux over BSD anyway? Driver support for *nix apps wouldn't improve any since there's an entirely different architecture for sound and such than even BSD, which the *NIX parts of OS X are based on.

Linux binary support I could (marginally) understand - but I think that would best be suited by an open source project with no specific ties to apple.

cwasko · Mar 17, 2003, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
Linux is a kernel. GNU/Linux is a platform. What the hell is a "linux shell"? I mean.. if you've really got a hankering for Bash, then install it and be done with it.

Well, if u'r running 10.2.x then Bash is already there. If that is all the O.P. wants, then just plop this in the terminal to change the default shell for the current user:

Code:
sudo niutil -createprop . /users/`whoami` "shell" "/bin/bash"

Angus_D · Mar 17, 2003, 01:43 PM

Linux binary compatibility would be marginally useless as the vast majority of binary-only linux applications are x86 only anyway.

Earth Mk. II · Mar 17, 2003, 01:59 PM

true, but I can see it being used for some stuff from DebianPPC or another PPC linux project.

I agree that it probaby won't be terribly useful - but I can understand someone's desire for a compatability layer.