Darwin
Darwin is an open-source software which has been released under the Apple Public Source License. This Unix computer operating system was released by Apple Inc. under their own license in 2000. Darwin comprises of code evolved by a hybrid of codes developed by Apple along with code derived from NEXTSTEP, as well as from FreeBSD and other free software projects.
In fact, the Mac OS X was developed critically around Darwin as the core set of components. Not only that, Darwin also has the capability to be run as a standalone operating system.
The evolution of Darwin can be traced back to NeXT’s NEXTSTEP operating system (later known as OPENSTEP), which was originally released in 1989. Later in 1997, Apple bought Next, and the company immediately announced it would use OPENSTEP as the foundation for its next operating system. This operating system was to be Rhapsody in 1997 and the Rhapsody-based Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999. A year later, in 2000, Rhapsody was branched into Darwin and released as open-source software under the Apple Public Source License (APSL), and components from Darwin are present in Mac OS X today.
Hardware and software support
Presently in its current version, Darwin boasts of support for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the PowerPC and Intel x86 processors as well as the ARM processor. This is the processor used in the popular iPhone and iPod Touch. This version of Darwin has not been released as a standalone operating system yet.
Not just that, it also supports the POSIX API by way of its FreeBSD lineage. Of course it can also run a wide range of programs written for various other Unix-like systems.
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