Apple has released an update to Darwin, the open-source core to Mac OS X. The new version, 1.4.1, corresponds to Apple’s recently released Mac OS X 10.1.
Other changes have also been made. Apple’s release notes indicate that this is the first release with a bootable PowerPC image; software packages have been updated and changed; and more. You can get more details from the Darwin Web site.
Based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0, Darwin provides users with protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking, advanced networking, and many of the other core features supported by Mac OS X. It doesn’t feature many of the higher-end functionality of OS X, but software developed to run on Darwin should work unmodified on Mac OS X, as well.
Apple has released Darwin to spur interest and support from the extensive community of open source advocates and UNIX users. Source code and binary installers are both available, and users are encouraged to share their own work with the community.
To use Darwin you’ll need 32MB of RAM (64 MB recommended) and 1GB of available hard disk space (2GB recommended) on the target drive partition. You’ll also need about 300MB available to download a CD image.