Useful Mac OS X Terms: What is Darwin?

Beneath the appealing, easy-to-use interface of Mac OS X is a rock-solid foundation that is engineered for stability, reliability, and performance. This foundation is a core operating system commonly known as Darwin. Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly Mach 3.0, operating-system services based on 4.4 BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), high-performance networking facilities, and support for multiple integrated file systems.

Darwin 1.4.1 is the UNIX-based, open-source foundation of Mac OS X. It is based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies and provides protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. This release corresponds to the release of Mac OS X 10.1.

• For a brief overview of Mach, see technical document 43137: Useful Mac OS X Terms: What is Mach?
• For a brief overview of BSD, see technical document 43139: Useful Mac OS X Terms: What is BSD?
• For a brief overview of Darwin, see technical document 43140: Useful Mac OS X Terms: What is Darwin?
• For in-depth information on Mach, BSD and Darwin, see the Apple Developer Connection site:

http://developer.apple.com/unix/index.html