MkLinux (for Microkernel Linux) is an

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

computer

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

begun by the

Open Software Foundation The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was a not-for-profit industry consortium for creating an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. It was formed in 1988 and merged with X/Open in 1996, to become The Open Group. Despit ...

Research Institute and Apple Computer in February 1996, to port

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

to the PowerPC platform, and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

computers. The name refers to the Linux kernel being adapted to run as a server hosted on the Mach

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

, version 3.0.

History

MkLinux started as a project sponsored by Apple Computer and OSF Research Institute, to get "Linux on Mach" ported to the Macintosh computer and for Apple to explore alternative kernel technologies on the Mac platform. At the time, there was no officially sponsored PowerPC port of Linux, and none specifically for Macintosh hardware. The OSF Institute, owner of the Mach

and several other

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

-based technologies, was interested in promoting Mach on other platforms. Unlike the design of the later

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

versions 10 and newer (not to be confused with the contemporaneous

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

versions 9 and older), MkLinux was designed to take full advantage of the Mach microkernel. By contrast, macOS inherited from

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...

the

hybrid kernel A hybrid kernel is an operating system kernel architecture that attempts to combine aspects and benefits of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in computer operating systems. Overview The traditional kernel categories are mono ...

named XNU, wherein the BSD kernel personality is grafted on Mach, which are both run together in a single kernel address space for faster performance. The effort was spearheaded by Apple's VP of Development Tools Ike Nassi and Brett Halle at Apple, and development was later split between two main people: Michael Burg on device drivers and distribution at Apple in Cupertino, California; and Nick Stephen on Mach porting and development at the OSF in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

, France. Other key individuals to work on the project included François Barbou at OSF, and Vicki Brown and Gilbert Coville at Apple. MkLinux was officially announced at the 1996 World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). A free CD containing a binary distribution of MkLinux was handed out to the attendees. In mid 1998, the community-led MkLinux Developers Association took over development of the operating system. The MkLinux distribution is much too large for casual users to have downloaded via the slow dial-up Internet access of the day, even using 56k modems. However, the official CDs were available in a book from Prime Time Freeware, published in English and in Japanese. The book covers installation, management, and use of the OS, and serves as a hardcopy manual. Apple later released the

Open Firmware Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems, where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...

-based

Power Macintosh The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006. Described by ''MacWorld'' as "the most important te ...

computers, an official PowerPC branch of the Linux kernel was created and was spearheaded by the LinuxPPC project. MkLinux and LinuxPPC developers traded a lot of ideas back and forth as both worked on their own ways of running Linux. Debian also released a traditional monolithic kernel distribution for PowerPC—as did SUSE, and Terra Soft Solutions with

Yellow Dog Linux Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) is a discontinued free and open-source operating system for high-performance computing on multi-core processor computer architectures, focusing on GPU systems and computers using the POWER7 processor. The original deve ...

. When Apple dropped support for MkLinux, the developer community struggled to improve the Mach kernel, and to support various Power Macintosh models. MkLinux continued to be the only option for Macintosh NuBus computers until June 2000, when PPC/Linux for NuBus Power Macs was released.

Reception

''MacTech'' magazine observed this of the general state of Linux on Macintosh in 1999: "Seen as a Windows NT or commercial Unix killer in some circles, Linux also promises to give the Mac OS a boost in the right direction and might even give Mac OS X Server a run for its money among Apple shops." The installation process was seen as "either smooth as silk or very, very rough" and that it "can also be slightly more difficult to recompile the MkLinux kernel because of the extra steps to placate the Mach microkernel." MkLinux had greater hardware compatibility than LinuxPPC at the time, supporting both NuBus and PCI Macintosh systems whereas LinuxPPC only supports PCI. Compared to LinuxPPC, MkLinux was generally known as having a performance cost due to the overhead of the Mach kernel. The Linux environment was found to provide a potentially adequate desktop suite, but one that forgoes the entire Macintosh experience in favor of pure Linux.

Legacy

MkLinux is the first official attempt by Apple to support a free and open-source software project. The work done with the Mach 3.0 kernel in MkLinux is said to have been extremely helpful in the initial porting of NeXTSTEP to the Macintosh hardware platform, which would later become macOS.

Releases

References

External links