The NextBSD Project Revived: Apple's Userland on Top of the FreeBSD Kernel

The NextBSD project, previously abandoned, has been given a new lease on life. This was announced on the initiative's official website.

NextBSD sets out to combine Apple's free, open-source-based userland utilities with the kernel of the FreeBSD operating system. In doing so, the project attempts to recreate a kind of hybrid: a system environment familiar to macOS users, running on top of a kernel independent of Apple.

The available description offers no details about the current state of development, the roadmap, or the makeup of the team. The project's official website reports only the fact of its revival itself.

The history of NextBSD goes back to attempts by enthusiasts to use the open parts of Apple's ecosystem — in particular, the components published under Darwin and related projects — outside the closed macOS platform. The FreeBSD kernel has traditionally been seen by the developers of such initiatives as a convenient foundation: a significant portion of the macOS userland was historically borrowed from FreeBSD in the first place, which simplifies compatibility at the level of system calls and utilities.

The revival of projects like this is of interest primarily to the community of BSD enthusiasts and to those curious about alternative operating environments. The emergence of a working system that combines Apple's open components with an independent kernel could give developers an additional tool for experimentation and for studying the inner workings of both ecosystems.

It is too early to judge the viability of the revived project — initiatives of this kind have in the past often stalled at an early stage due to the limited resources of the community. The further development of NextBSD will depend on whether an active group of developers can be gathered around it.

Source: Lobsters