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Darwin (operating system)

Darwin is the core Unix operating system of macOS (previously OS X and Mac OS X), iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and bridgeOS. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD,[3] other BSD operating systems,[6] Mach, and other free software projects' code, as well as code developed by Apple.

"Darwin (kernel)" redirects here. For the article about the kernel, see XNU.

Developer

Apple Inc.

C, C++, Objective-C, assembly language

Unix,[1][2] FreeBSD,[3] BSD[4]

Current

currently open source with proprietary components, previously open source

November 15, 2000 (2000-11-15)

23.4.0 / March 5, 2024 (2024-03-05)

github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macOS

Current: x86-64, 64-bit ARM, 32-bit ARM (32-bit ARM support is closed-source)
Historical: PowerPC (32-bit and 64-bit), IA-32

Hybrid (XNU)

NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD, BSD

Command-line interface (Unix shell)

Mostly Apple Public Source License (APSL), with closed-source drivers[5]

opensource.apple.com

Darwin is mostly POSIX-compatible, but has never, by itself, been certified as compatible with any version of POSIX. Starting with Leopard, macOS has been certified as compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3).[7][8][9]

License[edit]

In July 2003, Apple released Darwin under version 2.0 of the Apple Public Source License (APSL), which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) classifies as a free software license incompatible with the GNU General Public License.[23] Previous versions were released under an earlier version of the APSL license, which did not meet the FSF definition of free software, although it did meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition.[24]

is a component of the X Window System that runs on macOS (Darwin). XDarwin, before the introduction of Apple's X11.app.

XQuartz

is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems.

GNUstep

a window manager designed to emulate the NeXT GUI as part of the wider GNUstep project.

Window Maker

(formerly DarwinPorts), Fink, and Homebrew are projects to port UNIX programs to the Darwin operating system and provide package management. In addition, several standard UNIX package managers—such as RPM, pkgsrc, and Portage—have Darwin ports. Some of these operate in their own namespace so as not to interfere with the base system.

MacPorts

GNU-Darwin was a project that ports packages of free software to Darwin. They package OS images in a way similar to a .

Linux distribution

The project was a port of Wine that allows one to run Microsoft Windows software on Darwin.

Darwine

SEDarwin was a port of mandatory access control framework and portions of the SELinux framework to Darwin.[45] It was incorporated into Mac OS X 10.5.[46]

TrustedBSD

The Darbat project was an experimental port of Darwin to the . It aims to be binary compatible with existing Darwin binaries.[47]

L4 microkernel family

The project is a compatibility layer for running macOS binaries on Linux systems. It uses some Darwin source code.[48]

Darling

There are various projects that focus on driver support: e.g., wireless drivers,[50] wired NIC drivers[51][52][53] modem drivers,[54] card readers,[55] and the ext2 and ext3 file systems.[56][57]

[49]

DarwinBSD Project is a Darwin project using pkgsrc for packages. It is an open source project.

[58]

A/UX

mkLinux

OSF/1

at Apple Developer Connection

Darwin Releases

source code of individual packages

Hexley, the Darwin mascot

PureDarwin.org

at the Wayback Machine (archived December 25, 2011)

The Apple Museum "MacOS X Build Numbers"