[buug] Hello, I'm new.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting f.johan.beisser (jan at caustic.org):

> thanks though, i'll gladly trade you a blank for a copy given half a
> chance (or, if you can point me to where i can download darwin, i'll
> gladly do that).

Apple's really rather obnoxious about that.  For something allegedly
open source, you're really made to go through the Cupertino Inquisition,
just to get a copy.  They want you to "register" for a "developer ID" 
before they'll send the ISO image.  But you can use
username=cipherpunks, password=cipherpunks, and the current x86 and PPC
ISOs are at http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1.4/release/

What's really quite creepy is that you probably (if your luck is like
mine) won't have any luck finding copies of the ISO elsewhere.  God
Forbid that they would just list it in a truly public, browseable 
directory, like other freenixes.

Ah, finally:  By searching on the exact filenames, I've found some
third-party locations:

http://ftp.mobikom.com/OperSys/UNIX/Darwin/
http://hisham.cc/files/apps/
http://custom.lab.unb.br/pub/os/darwin/cd/x86/
230 MB, when gzipped; 240 MB, plain.

Caveats:

(1) Darwin-x86 has _really_ narrow hardware support.  I've tried and
tried and tried, and can't seem to ever successfully complete
installation.  Methinks the sole purpose of this port is to prove lack
of endian-ness problems in the source code, and that the only x86 box it
will _actually_ install on is one in some dark Cupertino basement.

(2) Installing Darwin is really a slightly perverse (if possibly
entertaining) thing to do.  Why?  Because to make it useful at all,
you'll need to also go get the XFree86 port for Darwin, available only
separately.  After that plus probably a lot of other updating work,
you'll have a decidedly funky BSD variant that's kinda-sorta like
NetBSD, except based (by default) around a bizarre RPC-based directory
service called NetInfo.  And it'll be really rather slow compared to
NetBSD.  And exist in a compatibility island all its own.

The PowerPC variant:

http://www.futuretg.com/ftp.futuretg.com/mirrors/iso/10_macosx/
http://volker.preil.bei.t-online.de/soft/html/darwin.html
(251 MB, and one source claims that it's not actually gzipped)

-- 
Cheers,    "Not only does the English language borrow from other languages, 
Rick Moen  it sometimes chases them through dark alleys, hits them over the
rick at linuxmafia.com   head, and goes through their pockets."  -- Eddy Peter