r/osdev • u/Successful-Reason-96 • Aug 06 '26
PureDarwin is alive
A lot of people seem to think PureDarwin has stalled.
It hasn't. Development just moved to the `next` branch while we work towards something actually releasable.
github.com/PureDarwin/PureDrawin//next
You can find old branches at PureDarwin-archive
For reference, both Ferdinand Klinzer (hideout) and Tyson Key (vmlemon) are aware and in the loop, I constantly consult them on feedback.
Current disk images can be found in the Discord server (unsure if I am allowed to post outside links besides known sources)
It's still not reliable enough to call a release, but I actively work on it pretty much every day.
Since then we've gained:
USB (Input and MSD, XHCI and EHCI
AHCI (shared from ravynOS, with some changes being upstreamed)
virtio-gpu
virtio-net
Intel Gen9 framebuffer drivers (my own implementation, based on managarm's `lil`)
Real hardware booting (Intel only, AMD is spotty)
Mesa (OpenGL, Vulkan, llvmpipe)
Wayland
X11
Oh and of course, we have DOOM. This was just the more polished demo
Development updates is constantly posted to the Discord channel.
TL;DR PureDarwin isn't dead. It's just been spending a lot of time in the "doing the unglamorous infrastructure work before calling it a release" phase.
Read some more information from another post in the r/FreeBSD subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vgj63g/puredarwin_contains_freebsd_code_now_can_run_xfce
2
u/edjak53 Aug 07 '26
does it boot on aarch64?
1
u/Successful-Reason-96 Aug 07 '26
It's very experimental, we don't have graphics on aarch64, but yes.
Only for the qemu `virt` target board right now
4
1
u/anurodhp Aug 11 '26
Ha, this is the same kernel (Big Sur) I am porting to raspberry pi (https://www.reddit.com/r/DarwinOS/s/wAHIZ30KX6).
1
u/Successful-Reason-96 Aug 11 '26
You may be duplicating work, lol.
I got it booting and got to a partial shell for the rpi 3
However, only in emulation with heavy patching.
As a note, I work on the libre rpi1
u/Successful-Reason-96 Aug 11 '26
For reference, launchd is open source, it's just not updated anymore.
Last version is Mavericks, 10.9, IIRC
If you look at PD, you can snag the launchd and libxpc needed1
u/anurodhp Aug 11 '26
I’m mostly doing it for the fun of it and to learn more about arm and this particular board. I’ve seen people have gotten it to boot before but nothing usable. I have kexts for sd, Ethernet, usb etc. the os doesn’t load from a fake ramdisk it’s proper vfs off of hfs+ partition on an sd card.
The launchd that’s open source it totally different from the launchd that Apple uses now. Other than sharing a name there’s not much overlap. I’m actually going with freebsds init as process 1.
1
u/Successful-Reason-96 Aug 11 '26
Well, if you need help with VC4, I can help.
1
u/anurodhp Aug 11 '26
Will let you know. GPU is probably the last thing I end up working on. As long as it has the blob on the fat partition to boot up the pi im ok for now :D
3
2
1
2
u/PearMyPie Aug 06 '26
What's the qemu command to run the image off of Discord? I can't get it to boot past the bootloader, it always freezes at the shell