spiroth10 Posted July 25, 2008 Share Posted July 25, 2008 I've been a *nix user for awhile, and I recently installed an OSx86 distro on my laptop (only to find no network card support in either OSx86 or even linux, its win only ) but aside from that, I got to screw around a bit, and there is a fully functional *nix core underneath... this made me think that if someone were to get a build essentials package (gcc, g++, make, etc.) they'd most likely encounter little trouble compiling/installing drivers, loading them as modules, and hacking the OSX implementation from getting in Darwin's way with the said driver.... I know a lot of people have downloaded GNU Darwin and done similar feats using it as an OS on its own, and I just can't see why this wouldnt work, although I admit I havent been involved in this scene very long at all... on a side note, I'm going to try to install leo4all on my desktop, it's got some limited nforce support so I may be able to get up and running on it quickly. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/117698-theoretically-couldnt-we-get-any-linux-unix-and-bsd-drivers-working-with-osx86/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
j_t Posted July 26, 2008 Share Posted July 26, 2008 mac os x uses kernel extensions -- its not like other unix oses where they are compiled into .so or .o namely linux and say freebsd -- also -- the headers are not the same -- you cannot simply compile an iwi driver for darwin that was built for freebsd -- it will be looking for things like sys/ etc etc etc -- many complications that have to be worked in the code -- Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/117698-theoretically-couldnt-we-get-any-linux-unix-and-bsd-drivers-working-with-osx86/#findComment-833930 Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitkat54 Posted July 26, 2008 Share Posted July 26, 2008 that said, it CAN be done... a lot of what works on hacks are the results of people writing kexts, and if you have a linux driver, you can port it to Darwin. Of course, "theoretically", someone could write an OS that looked and behaved exactly OSX and Aqua from total scratch, with support for vanilla PC hardware... but, umm... yah, and that is the gist of why not a lot of drivers get ported -- even with the information, it's tedious, and unlike linux which allows for open collaboration, developing drivers for OSX86 is a bit more discreet. -Josh Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/117698-theoretically-couldnt-we-get-any-linux-unix-and-bsd-drivers-working-with-osx86/#findComment-834093 Share on other sites More sharing options...
darbid Posted July 28, 2008 Share Posted July 28, 2008 here you go, something for your theory, http://developer.apple.com/documentation/P..._section_1.html Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/117698-theoretically-couldnt-we-get-any-linux-unix-and-bsd-drivers-working-with-osx86/#findComment-836330 Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagicWTF Posted July 29, 2008 Share Posted July 29, 2008 dude that's a good read, it was really infromative as to how the OS really is different from UNIX (Is a part-time Solaris user) I've often wondered why the IWIdarwin drivers seem to take so long to be ported from freebsd. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/117698-theoretically-couldnt-we-get-any-linux-unix-and-bsd-drivers-working-with-osx86/#findComment-837449 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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