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Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

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Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#21

Post by pcwalton »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).

The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware.

At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happening at either end (application and compositor).

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#22

Post by ori_b »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).

But Wayland is that exact same 3d graphics stack.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#23

Post by pjmlp »

pcwalton wrote: post #21
pjmlp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).

The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware. At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happeni…

Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks.

As the name says, DRI3 was yet another attempt to improve the whole performance stack on Linux.

As mentioned, I did my share of FOSDEM sessions.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#24

Post by pjmlp »

ori_b wrote: post #22
pjmlp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).

But Wayland is that exact same 3d graphics stack.

Kind of, because it is built on top EGL so everything is done via the 3D stack.

On X there is a mixture of X protocol, 3D stack and the interactions among all possible combinations.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#25

Post by unixhero »

mikalv wrote: post #17
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

Haha, well it's not only X11, but it's one of the main reasons. Other reasons are that for my usage and work, it just "works", no hours of configuration in dotfiles. Also it's convenient as a cross platform developer, since I can just crosscompile to Linux and Windows(mingw) via Docker. However, without the Mac, you'll have to break some licenses with a hackintosh. I think the project is cool, but in work related sit…

Yeah. Linux is not like that any more.

Try Linux Mint. The only configuration you will do is to enter your username and password.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#26

Post by jcelerier »

pjmlp wrote: post #23
pcwalton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware. At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happeni…

Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. As the name says, DRI3 was yet another attempt to improve the whole performance stack on Linux. As mentioned, I did my share of FOSDEM sessions.

> Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks.

thanks for the laugh

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#27

Post by proyb2 »

pcwalton wrote: post #21
pjmlp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).

The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware. At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happeni…

At least Khronos will be creating Meta API for Metal, Directx and Vullan to address the difference, I hope that would just work and solve around Vulkan fragmentation and complexity that cant fit into all Apple SDK.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#28

Post by bostand »

pjmlp wrote: post #12
mikalv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea personally I'm mostly fascinated with the semi microkernel architecture. I don't really mind that the rest is closed. And yea, I've suspected they lost some good people after seeing all the new security issues in the kernel the past years. If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :)

I came to realize that for those of us that actually care about graphics programming, nice GUI tools and UI/UX, Linux world will never be the place to be. The majority of devs are happy having a replicate of PDP-11 experience, maybe with twm and tools like xdvi or xv. Those that try to improve the overall desktop experience closer to other desktop systems, get bashed as needless fluff.

Your posts are full of stereotypes...

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#29

Post by eru »

mikalv wrote: post #17
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

Haha, well it's not only X11, but it's one of the main reasons. Other reasons are that for my usage and work, it just "works", no hours of configuration in dotfiles. Also it's convenient as a cross platform developer, since I can just crosscompile to Linux and Windows(mingw) via Docker. However, without the Mac, you'll have to break some licenses with a hackintosh. I think the project is cool, but in work related sit…

The graphical user interface has almost nothing to do with ease of configuration. And yes, ease of configuration is worth a lot.

Related anecdote: I started a friend of mine on Ubuntu, but she hated all the configuration via endless clicking. She immediately took to Archlinux---there's still configuration, but it's simpler and since it's all text, it's much easier to just read everything on the Archwiki instead of having to follow pictures (or descriptions of pictures).

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#30

Post by raimue »

jarjoura wrote: post #6

XNU open source bits from Apple are always a tiny subset of the actual kernel code. Plus, long gone are the people who Apple hired from the FreeBSD world who believed in it enough to push internally for it. So who knows at this point what is filtered out at publish time. Don't get me wrong, it's great to read how file drivers really work, and read how XNU manages virtual memory, but other than that, it's a pretty cra…

Especially they are hiding everything about the ARM architecture. There have not been any code drops for iOS except WebKit.

As an example, you can see here how Apple removes whole files and even code in #ifdef sections before throwing it over the wall:

https://opensource.apple.com/source/hfs/hfs-366.50.19/make_o...

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