8 ms·

MkLinux: Apple-Funded Port of Linux to the Power Mac / Mach Microkernel

69 points by lwf 11y ago

mhurron 11y ago
uh, looks a little old.
- csixty4 11y ago
  So are Power Macs
  - OJFord 11y ago
    Power Machs, if you will.
compay 11y ago
This was the first Linux I ever used.
- tbrock 11y ago
  Same. I still have the book in my parents bedroom.
rhubarbquid 11y ago
In hindsight, this was probably a candidate for the basis of OS X before they decided to buy NeXT and go with that
- spiralpolitik 11y ago
  After Copland was killed Solaris and Windows NT were the first options Apple considered. They also had discussions with Be before finally going with NeXT. This was all pre Cathedral and Bazaar (1997) so Linux wasn't really on the radar at most companies.
  - setpatchaddress 11y ago
    True dat. MkLinux was someone's pet project, much like Apple Dylan. It was never internally considered a contender for the future of Mac OS.
  - vt240 11y ago
    Back in 2000 I found we had a Power Mac 6100/60 at work which had the Copland developer preview loaded on it. I've never seen a copy of it since. I wonder if anyone still has the media, I looked all around the office for it, I'd love to take a look at it again. One of those rare birds from Apple, like MAE. Although, I think MAE could actually run some programs unlike the Copland DR. I don't remember being able to do anything in it. If I found a copy of MAE I would totally go get myself an Ultra 1 from eBay all setup just for the thrill :-)
    - benley 11y ago
      I'm pretty sure I have a copy of MAE on cd around somewhere - possibly multiple versions. If you really want it let me know and I'll see if I can dig it up.
      - vt240 11y ago
        Yeah, send me message at s.d.m at ieee.org. The only time I got to play with it, was at the Sun office here in Seattle. We tossed out all our Sun gear years ago now but I saved all the media and books going back to Solaris 2.6 in case I ever wanted to setup a system again.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Survives to this day, as the OSF Mach sources in MkLinux were the alleged basis for Mach kernel module emulation in the NextBSD project. This according to Kip Macy's testimony over IRC, at least.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  How ironic a part of a dead Linux lives on as a part of a BSD...
rwmj 11y ago
I ran this for many years (back in 1997/1998 and onwards) on recycled System 7 hardware[1]. The hardware was very reliable. Mac OS pre-X was horrible, just constantly crashing. MkLinux made the hardware pleasant for web servers and firewalls. Edit: [1] I think the hardware was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600
- VonGuard 11y ago
  The 8.5 and 8.6 branches of Mac OS were great, I feel. I hosted lots of servers on them, especially 8.6.2. However, every single other version of the OS was a buggy, crashing nightmare if you were looking for extended uptime. 7.6.1 was halfway OK, but man, I never kept a Mac OS running as long as in 8.6.2. I had months of up time, I'm telling you. Months!
  - yuhong 11y ago
    There is no Mac OS 8.6.2. Thinking about it, Blue Box running on NuKernel with Copland-style background server apps would probably not have been bad, especially with the use of Pascal instead of C strings which helped security.
    - VonGuard 11y ago
      I must mean 8.6. I think I am confusing it with 8.5.1.... It has been 16 years..... 8.5.1 and 8.6 were the greatest, though... Anyway, the great thing about hosting on Classic Mac OS is that there was nothing to exploit. With no remote admin capabilities beyond some Appletalk-related stuff, even if someone did find a way to compromise your system, the only thing they could really do was freeze it. I threw a Mac OS 7.5-ish (obviously I am forgetting numebrs) Mac up on the Defcon LAN and put the IP on the whiteboard for targets, and not a damn thing happened. Not even a hang...
0x0 11y ago
Why is it that Apple apparently is so keen on Mach? As I understand it, both this and XNU/Darwin/OSX have Mach in the lower layers. And if it adds so much value, why doesn't regular Linux distributions build on top of this?
- gaze 11y ago
  Avi. Literally just Avi really wanted it.
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Completely different kernel principles, designs and architectures. Regular Linux distributions would have to rewrite the kernel, hope it's accepted upstream, fork or patch-and-pray. I'm sure certain concepts were borrowed from Mach and implemented in Linux and the other way around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)#Mach_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)#Mach_concepts > And if it adds so much value, It isn't that simple. There are tradeoffs made with every kernel design decision.
  - 0x0 11y ago
    What I still don't understand is, for a project like MkLinux to exist, they must have looked at Linux and decided that a (non-mk-)linux kernel was lacking something?
    - wmf 11y ago
      They probably thought that porting Linux to run on Mach and porting Mach to PowerPC was less work than porting Linux to PowerPC. In retrospect, this was not true.
      - riffraff 11y ago
        I don't think that would be true, I recall yellowdog linux was running on macs at the same time.
- asveikau 11y ago
rje 11y ago
I remember running this on a Power Computing machine during college. It was a great alternative to System 7 at the time, and easier to be productive in than something like BeOS DR3 (although BeOS was fun in its own right). I'm surprised to see this got updates all the way up to 2009!
- vt240 11y ago
  I switched to BeOS on my Motorola StarMax when it got stable around the second release and used it as my primary OS for quite awhile (all the way through version 5 when I switched to x86). I had tried MkLinux, but was using MachTen before that. I had used MachTen on 68k and it was rock solid, I never had the same luck with the PowerPC version. I honestly can't remember why I didn't stick with MkLinux. Much later I ran YellowDog on my G3 machines. EDIT: I'm thinking back... I was pretty young at the time 14-15 yo. And just learning to program, and what I really loved about BeOS was how easy the API was to learn. I had been learning C/C++ in MachTen and never could wrap my head around making Machintosh GUI applications. But sitting down with the Online documentation in BeOS, it was VERY easy to make a program with 3D graphics and a native GUI. Later on, QNX gained a lot of popularity I think for the same reasons (fantastic documentation and API). I had worked on a project under Solaris which relied on POSIX.4 extensions (yikes) before moving it to QNX.
rbanffy 11y ago
I was working at Brazil's largest ISP at the time and we had stacks of abandoned Power Macs. I grabbed one and installed it as my second desktop. Life wasn't exactly easy and compiling things like a browser were a pain, but it was an excellent X terminal. I left the company to come back a couple months later as a consultant. Just about every sysadmin had one on their desks by then.
msbarnett 11y ago
My first experience with UNIX in general and Linux in specific. In some very real ways I owe my career to playing with MkLinux on my G3 PowerMac in highschool.

69 points by lwf 11y ago

mhurron 11y ago

uh, looks a little old.

csixty4 11y ago
So are Power Macs
- OJFord 11y ago
  Power Machs, if you will.

compay 11y ago

This was the first Linux I ever used.

tbrock 11y ago
Same. I still have the book in my parents bedroom.

rhubarbquid 11y ago

In hindsight, this was probably a candidate for the basis of OS X before they decided to buy NeXT and go with that

spiralpolitik 11y ago
After Copland was killed Solaris and Windows NT were the first options Apple considered. They also had discussions with Be before finally going with NeXT. This was all pre Cathedral and Bazaar (1997) so Linux wasn't really on the radar at most companies.
- setpatchaddress 11y ago
  True dat. MkLinux was someone's pet project, much like Apple Dylan. It was never internally considered a contender for the future of Mac OS.
- vt240 11y ago
  Back in 2000 I found we had a Power Mac 6100/60 at work which had the Copland developer preview loaded on it. I've never seen a copy of it since. I wonder if anyone still has the media, I looked all around the office for it, I'd love to take a look at it again. One of those rare birds from Apple, like MAE. Although, I think MAE could actually run some programs unlike the Copland DR. I don't remember being able to do anything in it. If I found a copy of MAE I would totally go get myself an Ultra 1 from eBay all setup just for the thrill :-)
  - benley 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure I have a copy of MAE on cd around somewhere - possibly multiple versions. If you really want it let me know and I'll see if I can dig it up.
    - vt240 11y ago
      Yeah, send me message at s.d.m at ieee.org. The only time I got to play with it, was at the Sun office here in Seattle. We tossed out all our Sun gear years ago now but I saved all the media and books going back to Solaris 2.6 in case I ever wanted to setup a system again.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Survives to this day, as the OSF Mach sources in MkLinux were the alleged basis for Mach kernel module emulation in the NextBSD project. This according to Kip Macy's testimony over IRC, at least.

rbanffy 11y ago
How ironic a part of a dead Linux lives on as a part of a BSD...

rwmj 11y ago

I ran this for many years (back in 1997/1998 and onwards) on recycled System 7 hardware[1]. The hardware was very reliable. Mac OS pre-X was horrible, just constantly crashing. MkLinux made the hardware pleasant for web servers and firewalls. Edit: [1] I think the hardware was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7600

VonGuard 11y ago
The 8.5 and 8.6 branches of Mac OS were great, I feel. I hosted lots of servers on them, especially 8.6.2. However, every single other version of the OS was a buggy, crashing nightmare if you were looking for extended uptime. 7.6.1 was halfway OK, but man, I never kept a Mac OS running as long as in 8.6.2. I had months of up time, I'm telling you. Months!
- yuhong 11y ago
  There is no Mac OS 8.6.2. Thinking about it, Blue Box running on NuKernel with Copland-style background server apps would probably not have been bad, especially with the use of Pascal instead of C strings which helped security.
  - VonGuard 11y ago
    I must mean 8.6. I think I am confusing it with 8.5.1.... It has been 16 years..... 8.5.1 and 8.6 were the greatest, though... Anyway, the great thing about hosting on Classic Mac OS is that there was nothing to exploit. With no remote admin capabilities beyond some Appletalk-related stuff, even if someone did find a way to compromise your system, the only thing they could really do was freeze it. I threw a Mac OS 7.5-ish (obviously I am forgetting numebrs) Mac up on the Defcon LAN and put the IP on the whiteboard for targets, and not a damn thing happened. Not even a hang...

0x0 11y ago

Why is it that Apple apparently is so keen on Mach? As I understand it, both this and XNU/Darwin/OSX have Mach in the lower layers. And if it adds so much value, why doesn't regular Linux distributions build on top of this?

gaze 11y ago
Avi. Literally just Avi really wanted it.
fucking_tragedy 11y ago
Completely different kernel principles, designs and architectures. Regular Linux distributions would have to rewrite the kernel, hope it's accepted upstream, fork or patch-and-pray. I'm sure certain concepts were borrowed from Mach and implemented in Linux and the other way around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)#Mach_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)#Mach_concepts > And if it adds so much value, It isn't that simple. There are tradeoffs made with every kernel design decision.
- 0x0 11y ago
  What I still don't understand is, for a project like MkLinux to exist, they must have looked at Linux and decided that a (non-mk-)linux kernel was lacking something?
  - wmf 11y ago
    They probably thought that porting Linux to run on Mach and porting Mach to PowerPC was less work than porting Linux to PowerPC. In retrospect, this was not true.
    - riffraff 11y ago
      I don't think that would be true, I recall yellowdog linux was running on macs at the same time.
asveikau 11y ago

rje 11y ago

I remember running this on a Power Computing machine during college. It was a great alternative to System 7 at the time, and easier to be productive in than something like BeOS DR3 (although BeOS was fun in its own right). I'm surprised to see this got updates all the way up to 2009!

vt240 11y ago
I switched to BeOS on my Motorola StarMax when it got stable around the second release and used it as my primary OS for quite awhile (all the way through version 5 when I switched to x86). I had tried MkLinux, but was using MachTen before that. I had used MachTen on 68k and it was rock solid, I never had the same luck with the PowerPC version. I honestly can't remember why I didn't stick with MkLinux. Much later I ran YellowDog on my G3 machines. EDIT: I'm thinking back... I was pretty young at the time 14-15 yo. And just learning to program, and what I really loved about BeOS was how easy the API was to learn. I had been learning C/C++ in MachTen and never could wrap my head around making Machintosh GUI applications. But sitting down with the Online documentation in BeOS, it was VERY easy to make a program with 3D graphics and a native GUI. Later on, QNX gained a lot of popularity I think for the same reasons (fantastic documentation and API). I had worked on a project under Solaris which relied on POSIX.4 extensions (yikes) before moving it to QNX.

rbanffy 11y ago

I was working at Brazil's largest ISP at the time and we had stacks of abandoned Power Macs. I grabbed one and installed it as my second desktop. Life wasn't exactly easy and compiling things like a browser were a pain, but it was an excellent X terminal. I left the company to come back a couple months later as a consultant. Just about every sysadmin had one on their desks by then.

msbarnett 11y ago

My first experience with UNIX in general and Linux in specific. In some very real ways I owe my career to playing with MkLinux on my G3 PowerMac in highschool.