“Stripped of Apple’s proprietary fluffery, MacOS’s BSD core is
waiting to win your heart.”
“There’s something weird yet pleasing about seeing a
command-line interface on an iMac. It seems so wrong, and at the
same time so right. And it’s never been easier to get; all you have
to do is install Darwin, the BSD derivative that underpins Apple’s
forthcoming MacOS X.”
“Darwin is Mac OS X minus the singing and dancing Aqua/Quartz
GUI, minus the Mac “Classic” emulator, and minus the “Carbon” API
for newer Macintosh binaries. It features Apache, Perl, and many
other open source cornerstones. And, when you tire of having a CLUE
(command-line user environment) you can even install XFree86, which
includes a Darwin port for the first time in the current 4.02
release.”
“Real honest-to-gosh paid Apple engineers with access to Apple’s
hardware specs have made Darwin work correctly on supported
machines — at least in theory (I haven’t done extensive testing).
This is a far cry from the token engineer or two that Apple
traditionally marches off into the lonesome Siberia of MkLinux or
LinuxPPC land.”