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jhunt5247 · Mar 4, 2005, 08:40 PM

Greetings,

I was thinking of dumping OS/X all together and installing one of the BSD's out there. Anyone done this, or know which one is the furtherest along in features.

Don't get me wrong, I love OS/X, but I sure do miss my FreeBSD box.. Yes, Fink provides me with a lot, but I just miss the layout.

galarneau · Mar 4, 2005, 09:54 PM

Well, it's either OpenBSD or NetBSD for you. There isn't a FreeBSD port for macppc.

I do a ton of stuff with OpenBSD, but it seems that the internal modem for most machines are not supported, and I'm stuck on dial-up for now.

I've thought about putting NetBSD on my iMac DV/SE 400, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I don't know about you, but I hate the way all the /etc files have changed with the 5.x branch of FreeBSD. I cut my BSD teeth on 4.10 and it was so easy to setup. OpenBSD and NetBSD are still nice and lean like FreeBSD 4.10 was.

Post back and let us know how it went.

Partisan01 · Mar 7, 2005, 12:06 PM

Originally posted by galarneau:
Well, it's either OpenBSD or NetBSD for you. There isn't a FreeBSD port for macppc.

I do a ton of stuff with OpenBSD, but it seems that the internal modem for most machines are not supported, and I'm stuck on dial-up for now.

I've thought about putting NetBSD on my iMac DV/SE 400, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I don't know about you, but I hate the way all the /etc files have changed with the 5.x branch of FreeBSD. I cut my BSD teeth on 4.10 and it was so easy to setup. OpenBSD and NetBSD are still nice and lean like FreeBSD 4.10 was.

Post back and let us know how it went.

I have also used OpenBSD on ppc a decent amount. I have it running on my B&W. I recently switched to OpenDarwin though. Basically I have a firewire card in that computer and want to use firewire drivers. OpenBSD doesn't have support for firewire, and they've been saying it's in the works for a few years now. The only thing I don't like about OpenDarwin is the netinfo utility. I don't mind that everything is in a db on the system, it's just that the commands are so cryptic to get anything done. From what I've seen OpenBSD and NetBSD are both about the same level of completeness.

BLAZE_MkIV · Mar 11, 2005, 01:06 PM

Maybe you should write some scripts to handle editing netinfo and submit them to the darwin project or post them somewhere. I couldn't figure the darn thing out. Not so much the netinfo tools the man pages are ok enough. Its were to put what than got me.

Partisan01 · Mar 13, 2005, 06:51 PM

Originally posted by BLAZE_MkIV:
Maybe you should write some scripts to handle editing netinfo and submit them to the darwin project or post them somewhere. I couldn't figure the darn thing out. Not so much the netinfo tools the man pages are ok enough. Its were to put what than got me.

I don't know what you're trying to do with netinfo, but I used the opendarwin faq a lot, they have a tutorial there. And apple has a guide on setting up nfs with netinfo. My gripe is it's a pain to see what's in the DB, and if you have errors it's not easy to go back and edit the mistake you've made.

Kinda on the same vein, I really like OpenDarwin, except for the complete lack of documentation. I can find most things through the man pages or OS X docs, but there needs to be a guide that is basically how opendarwin is different from other systems, and areas it shines in. There doesn't seem to be a good place to find out opendarwin specific items. For example it took me forever to find that hdiutil unmounts a firewire device. I expected umount to unmount it, especially because I used mount to mount it...

Well I can rant for a while, but the bottom line is: at the end of the day it still fits my needs better than the available BSD's currently, so I just get used to the quirkyness.

ndt

Rainy Day · Mar 24, 2005, 08:17 PM

Originally posted by galarneau:
There isn't a FreeBSD port for macppc.

Uh, well, yes there is: It's called MacOS X (or Darwin).

jamil5454 · Mar 25, 2005, 07:52 AM

Ubuntu is the easiest, most featured UNIX alternative I've found for PPC. It's based off of Debian, which is probably the best but not easiest to use. They even have a live CD for ppc that you can download at:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org

The only thing it didn't detect right away was my airport extreme card on my latest gen. iBook G4.

Angus_D · Mar 26, 2005, 06:13 PM

Originally posted by Rainy Day:
Uh, well, yes there is: It's called MacOS X (or Darwin).

Mac OS X (and Darwin) are not FreeBSD.

Also, as far as OpenDarwin goes: OD is really not for general user consumption at this time. I honestly can't see why anyone would use it instead of OS X - it's largely the same as OS X, but missing all the cool bits.

Also, you can get lookupd to look at the flat files in /etc, and there are multiple adduser commands floating around (not least of which the one that I wrote and is in the usermgmt_cmds project in OD cvs).

Partisan01 · Mar 26, 2005, 10:45 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Mac OS X (and Darwin) are not FreeBSD.

Also, as far as OpenDarwin goes: OD is really not for general user consumption at this time. I honestly can't see why anyone would use it instead of OS X - it's largely the same as OS X, but missing all the cool bits.

Also, you can get lookupd to look at the flat files in /etc, and there are multiple adduser commands floating around (not least of which the one that I wrote and is in the usermgmt_cmds project in OD cvs).

Well I've been using OpenDarwin for a few months now and I find it's perfect for my needs. I don't need OS X because A. I don't want to pay for it on old hardware, and B. I only need a basic unix. That said I would not recommend it to anyone who does not have a decent amount of unix knowledge right off the bat. I loaded it up and was up and running within a few days. I use it for DHCP, web server, db server (local).

The only challenge I've had with it is trying to netboot NetBSD onto some Sun Sparc machines from OpenDarwin. I was able to tftp the files correctly, but NFS wasn't quite working correctly. I need to revisit it again and see if anything's changed....

Rainy Day · Mar 28, 2005, 11:14 AM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Mac OS X (and Darwin) are not FreeBSD.

They are, in essence, the FreeBSD port to PPC. Granted it's more of a fork than port, and not the same as FreeBSD running on Intel iron, but the bloodline is the same:

Kernel Programming: BSD Overview

MacOS X Tiger Preview

Kernel Programming: Differences between Mac OS X and BSD

Angus_D · 03:17 PM

Originally posted by Rainy Day:
They are, in essence, the FreeBSD port to PPC.

No, they aren't. Whilst it is true that a portion of the kernel (and userland) is derived from FreeBSD, there are significant differences. Mach, IOKit, NetInfo, etc. You're completely ignoring vast parts of its heritage. Better references can be found at The OpenDarwin FAQ: What is Darwin?.

Kernel Programming: BSD Overview says that "The BSD portion of the Mac OS X kernel is derived primarily from FreeBSD". This is correct. There are other portions of the kernel which are not BSD derived, and the OS is more than just the kernel.

The Tiger Preview stuff on BSD is written by marketing, and so can be safely ignored.

Darwin is not a FreeBSD port to PPC. Please don't say that. At best, that's a vast oversimplification. At worst, it's just plain wrong.

Angus_D · Mar 28, 2005, 03:11 PM

Originally posted by Partisan01:
Well I've been using OpenDarwin for a few months now and I find it's perfect for my needs. I don't need OS X because A. I don't want to pay for it on old hardware, and B. I only need a basic unix.

Fair enough. It'd be excellent if you'd contribute any mind share that you have from running it to the OpenDarwin project, there's a dearth of documentation. I did a lot of fixing up of the FAQ a while back, but it's still short of what I would regard as adequate.

Angus_D · Mar 28, 2005, 03:15 PM

Originally posted by galarneau:
Well, it's either OpenBSD or NetBSD for you. There isn't a FreeBSD port for macppc.

http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html?

Partisan01 · Mar 28, 2005, 10:27 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Fair enough. It'd be excellent if you'd contribute any mind share that you have from running it to the OpenDarwin project, there's a dearth of documentation. I did a lot of fixing up of the FAQ a while back, but it's still short of what I would regard as adequate.

I'm on a few of the mailing lists for the OpenDarwin project. I've been getting the itch recently to start testing the build scripts that were recently updated. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

What areas of the FAQ have you updated? I've used that thing a decent amount, if there are areas that need improvement? I took a look at the ToDo Wiki and didn't see anything for the FAQ. If there's a list, and I have dealt with some of the areas I would be more than willing to help out.

FreeBSD PPC....Yes it exists, but from the status page they say they are in the process of getting it to boot into single usermode. Not exactly a system anyone can really use right now.

leira · Mar 29, 2005, 12:59 AM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html?

From that link.

What is the current status?

FreeBSD/PowerPC currently is on the verge of booting to single-user mode.

Angus_D · Mar 29, 2005, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by Partisan01:
What areas of the FAQ have you updated? I've used that thing a decent amount, if there are areas that need improvement? I took a look at the ToDo Wiki and didn't see anything for the FAQ. If there's a list, and I have dealt with some of the areas I would be more than willing to help out.

Just needs to be looked at and verified for accuracy. Some of the HOWTOs certainly need attention as well (the Networking howto doesn't even talk about ncutil IIRC).

FreeBSD PPC....Yes it exists, but from the status page they say they are in the process of getting it to boot into single usermode. Not exactly a system anyone can really use right now.

While that might be true, the assertion was that there was no port.

P · Mar 29, 2005, 02:13 PM

The Darwin kernel is not really similar to FreeBSD. The userland part is. Unless you're programming something that depends on details of the kernel (or the executable format, or some other esoteric bits), you're fine with Darwin. FreeBSD developers have stated that the reason FreeBSD is not ported to to macppc is that Darwin exists and essentially fills that void:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3415&page=6

That reply is a bit old, and there is porting work going on, but still...