Mac OS X on an Intel machine

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Insolence

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SOLUTION

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Insolence

Wow... neato! =P I look forward to getting my hands on it... muahaha

- Insolence

Darwin was never meant for the PC. Sure, there's a build that runs on x86, but it only exists because it was bonehead easy to do. Had it been a challenge to port it would never have happened. Apple does have a port of OS X for windows that is concurrent with the Mac version but it will never be released. It's there just in case Apple ever decided to start using Intel or AMD chips. Which at this point isnt likely.

ASKER

It appears that "Star Trek" is now "Marklar".

If Darwin runs on an intel x86 and OS X sits on top of Darwin then I cannot see why OS X won't run on an x86 machine - it must be a "political" decision not to release a version. A great pity.

There are other unix OSs that work well on intel machines. I've managed to install Sun Solaris 10 on a notebook. But I really would like to try using OS X.

Darwin is just the underpinning. Aqua, and the other bits that sit on top of Darwin would have to be ported. They have been ported, but as above, Apple wont release it. Makes something nice to hold over MS's head..heh

SOLUTION

locutis76

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locutis - I'd be interested in knowing more about this. what does it look like? does the os function like it does on a mac?

There's a difference between Apple's OS X for intel, which Apple has not released to developers, and darwin with a 3rd party "patched up" Aqua interface thrown on it. A BIG difference.

locutis76

Doing a google search nets the following information:

http://www.pegasus3d.com/rhapsody/rhapsody_screens.html

http://www.occam.com/ocr/osx/intro/03.html

http://www.xclave.com/Info/MacOSXServer.phtml

http://www.simski.org/next/software/rhapsody/info_rh/Rhapsody%20on%20VPC%20Install.pdf

What I have is the developer release that was seeded to developers in 1998, which installs and boots on an intel PC. Once booted, you pretty much have the exact look, feel, and usability of the ORIGINAL Mac OS X Server (based on Rhapsody).

Hope this helps. If you need more clarification, don't be afraid to ask.

SOLUTION

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ASKER

Is the Rhapsody Developer Release still available?

Not that I know of. It wasnt really meant to be a usable OS either. More a toy for developers to tinker with and see the progress of. Kinda like the first developer release of BeOS. Cool, but totally useless.

locutis76

It as available only in two separate releases (DR 1 and DR2) back in 1998.

ASKER

A few more notes:

The http://www.osxonintel.com website metioned above is now http://osxonintel.xoverzero.com.

My main reason for wanting to run OS X on an intel machine was to experience the Aqua interface. Unfortunately this does not look possible at the present time.

One tool I've found is WindowBlinds (http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds) which attempts to customise Windows XP with the look and feel of OS X.

look yes, but not the feel! :-)

ASKER

Thanks everyone.

roterbaron

Yes the codename is Marklar. I knew it in the early days as the Star Wars project but I could be wrong. As far as I know it was designed so that Apple were never dependent on one chip manufacturer, obviously this is prudent if like Motorola the semiconductor arm has problems and also to avoid being in the pocket of a large conglomerate like IBM. There is certainly no plan to release this despite the obvious enthusiasm it may cause in parts of the PC community. When the NEXT developers were taken back by Apple under Jobs they were set to work on a variant of the Next OS for the Mac under a variety of different HW conditions hence there are a few Plan Bs.

PC_Guru

I have viewed recently 2 applications, that let to run Mac OS (6.x, 7.x until 8.1), if you have Mac ROM's image, Mac OS installer and a bootable floppy disk or CD. I did look at :
Basilisk II (http://gamma.nic.fi/~lpesonen/BasiliskII/BasiliskII_win32_20012001.zip)
And SoftMac (http://www.emulators.com/softmac.htm).

The First is freely distributable and the second has a free version although it's payed software. I got a Mac ROM's image from a Quadra Mac computer and downloaded a bootable disk image file for Mac OS 7.0, but i haven't could to run Mac OS on my PC yet. I've asked support at BasiliskII developers and i'm waiting for it yet.

We're talking OS X, not OS 6-8.

PC_Guru

I'm not totally sure, but i believe that if you can ride OS 6-8 in your pc using some emulator, also you can do it using OS X, because OS and applications of Mac don't use direct access on hardware except some few app. But, i can be wrong, of course.

VERY VERY VERY different beasts. What the 6-8 emulators are doing is emulating a 680x0 processor. OS X doesn't run on 680x0 processors. As of yet there are no G3-G5 emulators for any platform.

rogerperkins

Being that OS X is based on Linux, it shouldn't be too hard to replicate the look and feel of OS X on a Linux machine, especially if it was done in an open source model.

Look and Feel of OS X != OS X

roterbaron

OSX is not based on Linux it is based on Berkley Subsystem Unix which is a Unix core like Linux but not Linux, BSD is older and more stable on the whole. You can replicate the core easily with something like FreeBSD but to recreate the look and feel of OSX you would have to build your own Aqua-GUI, Apple's core is open source so you are welcome to give it a go but you'll have to be quite a programmer -it is Aqua that is the look and feel of OSX whilst Unix is the engine.

Not just Aqua, but Quartz, and the other underlying technologies that rely on hardware that just doesnt exist in a PC.

Amino_

Hasn't anyone heard of PearPC?

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

PearPC runs at ~1/100th the speed of the processor. Seriously.

cjansen75

CherryOS...coming soon.

http://www.cherryos.com