Hi
Fairly odd question, but still I think is rather interesting question. Since the Mac OSX is built on top their own XNU Kernel - (a Hybrid of both Microkernel and monolithic kernel) would it not be possible to simply install and compile a Linux kernel to replace the XNU?
I would imagine that the XNU conforms the POSIX rules, since its capable of running UNIX software. So shouldn't installing a Linux kernel be a breeze on the Mac OSX. Would like to think that there is an alternative to the Hybrid kernel.

I'm still a newbie at this so please be kind!

What are your thoughts?
Chris

If you are using Mac hardware (as opposed to Intel-compatible PC), you could try it with the kernel from YellowDog or one ot the other distros that runs on Mac hardware. It would be interesting to see if it works.

A quick Google search reveals that there is on-going discussion whether or nor Mac OS should switch to a Linux kernel.

The XNU kernel is quite different from the Linux kernel, starting with it's Mach-O format instead of ELF and quite a lot of other issues as well.

As a matter of fact, it is nearly impossible to build Apple's Darwin on itself without having Mac OS X and all it's developer tools. When starting with the latest Darwin binary distribution I succeeded only to upgrade 3 versions of the xnu kernel, but even so some framework stuff (IOKit, etc) failed to build. The system works, but it leaves you with a Darwin 8.3 version (equivalent to the underlying system of MacOS X 10.4.3). Most Darwin packages fail to build as well, unregarded what GCC version you use.

You need MacOS to develop and upgrade Darwin to the recent level. Open source projects like OpenDarwin did vanish, GNUDarwin is stagnating, and the DarwinBuild tools are hopelessly outdated.

If even Darwin isn't able to build itself, then I would assume doing the same with a Linux kernel is in for even more trouble.

Darwin is fast and lean, but achieves this by having almost no services running by default, the /bin directory looks like a desert scene, and with an 8-character password scheme it's not a security champion either.

My conclusion after a few weeks of experimenting was to stick with Linux - actually any other UNIX-flavour, Haiku, Plan9, QNX and all the rest might be more rewarding then touching Darwin and wasting your time.

Just my opinion,
regards,
SIMP

Fedora User