Getting Mozilla on OpenDarwin
I'm now using WindowMaker as my window manager, and starting to install some other applications. A browser would be nice ... so I used
Darwinports to install Mozilla, but it was still running this morning trying to build the thing.
I then remembered that I could maybe go and grab an RPM from
here. I'm downloading the Mozilla RPM now and will give it a try later today.
WindowMaker is working on OpenDarwin!
During the night last night,
Darwinports completed the download and installation of
WindowMaker and all of it's dependancies ... my first experience at something other than
twm on OpenDarwin.
I had to do a quick update to my .xinitrc file in my home directory, changing it to:
#!/bin/sh
exec wmaker
... and then run 'startx' ... and it all came up working! Very cool ... now I'm going to see about grabbing KDE!
OpenDarwin RPM Repository
I was surprised to stumble on this today ... a
OpenDarwin v7.2.1 RPM Repository ... and there are a lot of packages here! I'm going to start to grab some of these and see how well things work ... yet another direction for getting more software for OpenDarwin!
Alternate Window Managers
I was looking for an alternate window manager for OpenDarwin. I've been using twm and it is just too minimal for me. I started to see if I could get Gnome from Darwinports, but the installation failed when trying to install Perl 5.8 ... which I already have.
I started to look at AfterStep, and then saw mention of WindowMaker in an article that claimed a complete successful installation using Darwinports. So I started the installation hours ago and it is slowly bringing down the various dependancies, building, and installing them. I'm going to give this a try ... and then I found a few alternate directions.
One thing that I hadn't thought of is that the KDE environment is 'stronger' in this market with the Apple use of KDE components. I'll see what I can do with KDE, after I complete my experiment with WindowMaker.
Documenting my progress
I spent time today working on
OpenDarwin again. Now that I have a working network driver, it's a lot more fun! I can now start to download and install a wide range of Open Source to make it a more complete and usable system.
One thing that I've been doing is spending some of the time documenting the work that I am doing to the
OpenDarwin Wiki. They are running a copy of the
MediaWiki and I have to admit that I am very impressed with the functionality. I'm just learning the interface and capabilities, but it appears to be a very rich wiki with a lot of functionality. I ended up writing this page today on
Installing OpenDarwin x86 on Virtual PC 2004. I still have a lot to add, but it's a good start.
I'm going to see if I can complete my CD ROM image tonight that will contain the network driver and some other tools. I'm still working through some details. I'll keep documenting.
Problems with DNS and the clock
I'm not sure why, but this morning the DNS or network had died on my
OpenDarwin installation. In addition, the clock had "stopped" ... or was going *extremely* slow. I ended up having to reboot. At first I was thinking it was a
Darwinports issue ... or a repository issue ... since I was getting errors trying to fetch the most basic packages. When I went to grab a copy of
Fink curl failed to resolve the DNS name. That's about when I rebooted.
When I got logged in then I could begin the download of Fink, and I went back to Darwinports and began the process of installing Gnome again ... not sure if it's going to work ... but it's installing!
OpenDarwin 7.2.1 - Setting the default boot device
When you first boot OpenDarwin 7.2.1 (x86) I found that on Virtual PC, I have to hit enter to get to the boot prompt, and then manually specify the boot device. The format of this command is:
Now the specific device might vary on your installation so you'll have to possible put different values for the channel and device (e.g. disk#s#). The '-v' is the switch for verbose mode.
After completing an installation, you can go and edit the preferences file:
- /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
Look for the 'Kernel Flags' key tag and enter the same string that you used above (e.g. rd=disk0s1) within the string tags following it. This will set your default boot device.
Darwinports installed!
As of this morning, I was able to get
Darwinports installed on my
Darwin installation on Virtual PC 2004. I followed the instructions on the
Darwinports web site. The cvs checkout worked, the configure worked, and the install worked. For some reason the 'port' command didn't get installed into my path ... I'll do that manually and then give it a try ... and see if I can grab a better window manager!
Getting X going in OpenDarwin 7.2.1
Well ... I found out that OpenDarwin v7.2.1 did not include X11 with it ... I found these instructions on Google:
GET X11:
(note: this will only have twm, which is pretty lame. Darwinports will fix that for you.)
This ought to get me back to exactly where I was with OpenDarwin v7.0.1 ... so then next I'll be trying
Darwinports.
Getting X going with OpenDarwin 7.0.1
I got X going easily in OpenDarwin v7.0.1 ... it's nice to have multiple xterms ... but boy is it far from a desktop! I'm now trying to get the same going with OpenDarwin v7.2.1 ... but it seems that X is not included!?!?!
For OpenDarwin v7.0.1:
1. To get a GUI up, I created a .xinitrc in my home directory that contained:
- /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm &
- /usr/X11R6/bin/twm
2 .Add /usr/X11R6/bin to your path:
- export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin
3. Edit the /etc/profile if you want to add to the path permanently. Add /usr/X11R6/bin to the existing path statement.
4. Type 'startx' and you ought to be off and running.
If you click (and hold) you'll get a menu so that you can open another XTerm, or exit the desktop.
Experimenting with OpenDarwin ... again!
A year or so ago I heard about the release of OpenDarwin v7.0.1 ... the Open Source project building on Apple's
Darwin project. Darwin is the core operating system beneath the popular OS X operating system distribution. At that same time I was starting to use Virtual PC for all sorts of other operating systems and so I gave it a try. Well ... it almost worked. The OS installed, and after a little configuration I even had X-Windows working, and a primitive window manager. The network driver ... did not work.
I've spent some time, learned some things, and got some things working. With the recent Intel/Apple announcement, I figured that I would get back into things .... just for the fun of it. I'm going to blog the various lessons and experiments that I perform. I created a new blog -
OpenDarwin Experiences ... I'll start to post some stuff tonight. As of today I got the network driver working with OpenDarwin v7.0.1 ... I want to know if I can get it to work with v7.2.1. We'll soon see!
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