What's a better product Windows 7, or Darwin?

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Hey everyone,

I'm new to this forum!

What's a better product between Windows 7, and Darwin?

Would Darwin be considered as a Mac OS X?

Could Darwin be run on a Windows 32-bit PC desktop for dual booting?

Would Darwin be similiar to a Windows desktop, or more like command line? I hope it's user friendly without command line.

Could I setup Darwin without losing my data on Windows?

Could Windows apps (32-bit) be run under Darwin?

Could I setup Darwin at free of charge without spending money?

Would it require a list of my Windows hardware to get the proper hardware drivers?

Does this forum have both time, and patience to setup Darwin only if it is similar to Mac OS X?

That's all of my questions for now.
 

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Darwin is the Kernel that runs Mac OS X, it has its origins in BSD and you don't run it by itself but rather "get" it when you install OS X on a Mac.

OS X is legally meant to work on a Mac that you own, attempting to install/use OS X on non-Apple hardware is against the EULA and will not be discussed on this forum..

Windows and OS X are two entirely different OS'..so there are a handful of programs like Wine, CrossOver that allow you to run Windows programs on OS X, but if that fails, your options are to run Windows with a Virtual Machine on OS X or go the dual-boot route with Boot Camp..
 
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Thank you for your reply. I thought OpenDarwin was an OS? I was wrong. There are no similar OS's without violating EULA?
 

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From Darwin (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OpenDarwin was a community-led operating system based on the Darwin system. It was founded in April 2002 by Apple Inc. and Internet Systems Consortium. Its goal was to increase collaboration between Apple developers and the free software community. Apple benefited from the project because improvements to OpenDarwin would be incorporated into Darwin releases; and the free/open source community supposedly benefited from being given complete control over its own operating system, which could then be used in free software distributions such as GNU-Darwin.[18]
On July 25, 2006, the OpenDarwin team announced that the project was shutting down, as they felt OpenDarwin had "become a mere hosting facility for Mac OS X related projects," and that the efforts to create a standalone Darwin operating system had failed. They also state: "Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this."[19] The last stable[citation needed] release was version 7.2.1, released on July 16, 2004.[20]

Now apparently, PureDarwin has taken over where OpenDarwin stopped..now to me, the whole appeal of Mac is OS X, and less so the Kernel, though I'm glad it's underneath me and keeping things stable..

If all you really wanted to do was play with the Darwin Kernel, you're almost better of heading to FreeBSD or Linux even..I'm not sure I see the reason to run Darwin all by itself..I can't imagine this is a very large user base..
 
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Thank you so much for all the info!

I'll tell you why I'm asking about Darwin so much, and how to set it up without being in violation of both laws, and EULA.

I have plans of saving up for the MacBook Pro. It won't be anytime soon. I never owned an Apple except for the older version of the Nano iPod, and recently got an iPhone 4.

I never been on a Mac. It's not messing around with the kernel. I am looking for an OS to dual boot on my PC, so I can get a feel of something similar to Apple that would be free.
 

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I figured that's what you were trying to do..in which case you will gain nothing from running PureDarwin or anything else on a PC since that's not what OS X is..Mac's run OS X and Darwin (the Kernel) is just one part of it as I'd stated before..

The only way you'll get to play with what runs on the Macs is to actually buy a Mac. If you are saving up for a MBP, then continue to do so and when you do purchase the MBP, keep your PC handy during the initial transition process..

You can have the Apple Store folks transfer any needed content from your PC to the MBP and then experiment with what you can do on OS X. Visit the Switcher forum here and read and ask questions..

I switched to a Mac nearly 2 years ago after not having used Apple's since an old Apple II-e and I was a little confused initially..but in no time I was functioning well enough to fully switch over to the iMac I have now as my primary computer..
 
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I have some more questions for you. Do you know much about BSD, or Linux? Would a Mac be operating or close to BSD, or Linux? If you say BSD, would it be FreeBSD, or OpenBSD? If you say Linux, what type of Linux? I know I asked some question over at EverythingiCafe. I forget what my question was. It was something like Mac. They was guessing that Mac would run off of a Linux OS where Windows would run off of DOS. How true is that?
 

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All OS' are made up of 2 components..one is the Kernel, the second is the User Interface (UI)..in a lot of OS' these are intricately linked together to create the whole OS. Windows is a good example of this migration..

Windows initially was just an application that ran on top of DOS. DOS, in its most primitive sense, was acting as the Kernel for the earlier versions of Windows. With the migration to Windows 95, the DOS-level Kernel functionality was embedded into the OS..and this continues on to this day..the Kernel within Windows is the NTKERNEL..

Mac OS X follows this model..the Darwin Kernel manages all the hardware and so on and the UI is what you will be using most of the time. You can run a terminal to do things from the command line, but that's just like opening a "CMD" or "DOS" window in Windows..

Linux/BSD are different in that regard..the Kernel is developed independently of the UI and various distribution makers will take a particular version of the Kernel and then bundle in the necessary components (X-org, Gnome/KDE/XFCE/TWM/Enlightenment/blah blah) and a whole bunch more applications to create a distribution that collectively serves a purpose..

So Ubuntu, is a Gnome based Linux distro, while Fedora is a KDE based Linux distro..

You can, however, take just the Linux Kernel and couple that with a VERY simple filesystem and run it on very minimal systems which need an OS but don't need a UI which can be quite a resource hog..

So I get what you're trying to do, but there really is no short cut to being able to experience a Mac running OS X short of purchasing your future Mac..:)

Yes I do know a little bit about Linux..;) I use it all the time at work to create embedded devices..
 
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Would you prefer FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or Linux as dual booting without all of the command line? What would you, or most folks prefer for a UI that if you have the time to walk me through the steps to set it up on my PC without erasing my data?




All OS' are made up of 2 components..one is the Kernel, the second is the User Interface (UI)..in a lot of OS' these are intricately linked together to create the whole OS. Windows is a good example of this migration..

Windows initially was just an application that ran on top of DOS. DOS, in its most primitive sense, was acting as the Kernel for the earlier versions of Windows. With the migration to Windows 95, the DOS-level Kernel functionality was embedded into the OS..and this continues on to this day..the Kernel within Windows is the NTKERNEL..

Mac OS X follows this model..the Darwin Kernel manages all the hardware and so on and the UI is what you will be using most of the time. You can run a terminal to do things from the command line, but that's just like opening a "CMD" or "DOS" window in Windows..

Linux/BSD are different in that regard..the Kernel is developed independently of the UI and various distribution makers will take a particular version of the Kernel and then bundle in the necessary components (X-org, Gnome/KDE/XFCE/TWM/Enlightenment/blah blah) and a whole bunch more applications to create a distribution that collectively serves a purpose..

So Ubuntu, is a Gnome based Linux distro, while Fedora is a KDE based Linux distro..

You can, however, take just the Linux Kernel and couple that with a VERY simple filesystem and run it on very minimal systems which need an OS but don't need a UI which can be quite a resource hog..

So I get what you're trying to do, but there really is no short cut to being able to experience a Mac running OS X short of purchasing your future Mac..:)

Yes I do know a little bit about Linux..;) I use it all the time at work to create embedded devices..
 

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As a second OS on your PC, I would definitely recommend going with Linux and Ubuntu to boot since it's a very nice user-friendly distro that will make your introduction to Linux quite nice..

The beauty of this approach is that you can do a lot of things with the UI..and use the command line when you want to learn that..

As someone who's used Linux for 15+ years now, when I initially began using my Mac I was tempted to just open up a terminal and do things but I tried to use the UI as much as I could and I find that I can do most of what I want with the UI and use the terminal when I just know I'll be faster doing certain things there..

This topic should also be probably moved to the Other Operating System forum since it doesn't belong in Darwin/OS X development..
 
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I would give Ubuntu 11.04 a shot for a second OS and do it through WUBI so if its not what you want or like its easy to remove if you decide its the right one partition and install.
 
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+1 for Ubuntu. Great UI, lots of bundled programs, perfect place to start learning about Linux. There are lots of choices but you're probably better off starting with a distro with a polished UI and work from the command line as your skills increase...
Cheers
 

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