Last updated on December 8th, 2022 at 02:44 pm
Apple made open the kernel and system components of macOS 11.0 Big Sur
It became known that Apple has published the source codes of the low-level system components of the macOS 11.0 Big Sur platform, built on the basis of free software. In addition to the XNU kernel, components of the Darwin OS and other components, programs and libraries that are not related to the GUI were freely available. In total, Apple has made available 190 source packages for various components.
It is also known that Apple has prepared instructions that will help you use the published components to build your own version of the XNU kernel for macOS 11.0.1 on a Mac with an Intel processor. The XNU kernel sources have been released as snippets of code associated with the next release of the Apple software platform. Recall that XNU is part of the Darwin open source project and is a hybrid kernel that includes a Mach kernel, as well as components from FreeBSD and the C ++ IOKit API for writing drivers.
It is also worth noting the continued development of the initiative, within the framework of which Linux support for the new Apple M1 processor is implemented. The project is developing under the name Asahi Linux, and its contributors have already published some of the results of reverse engineering graphics drivers that Apple created specifically for the M1 processor. The source notes that so far the developers have amassed enough information about the instruction set to disassemble simple shaders.
