u could do a lot with darwin. it has pretty great potential. but its lacking in a number of places. i don't think its very popular, because GNU/Linux and the BSDs hit pretty much the same target. There are a few things that darwin can do better (firewire, in my experience, is difficult with GNU/Linux, but easy with Darwin). But the shortcomings mostly outweigh its benefits, imo.
you can use it as a general unix-like environment, just like u would GNU/Linux, the BSDs, or whatever. Darwin doesn't come with a GUI (or maybe it comes with X11). You can't run full gui-fied OSX programs, but u can run command line programs, or X11-gui programs. i also found that getting sound to work was excessively difficult without using OSX libraries (that situation may have improved, cuz its been a while).
i used to dual between darwin and GNU/Linux, and use darwin just for my iPod.
i think some people use it as they test out low-level drivers and stuff.
Re: supercomputer clusters, they've all been run on Mac OS X as far as I'm aware. Though the second choice would be Linux, not Darwin. (I'm aware of a mini-cluster of G5s sold to the navy by Yellow Dog that was Linux based).
It's simply not worthwile for most folks to deal with such a niche of a niche product when Linux is also available and if you buy Apple hardware then you get the full Mac OS X free.
Before you play around with Darwin I suggest using a different flavour of BSD. Like FreeBSD, OpenBSD or my favorit NetBSD. Their a more complete distribution and easier to install. Though the new version of Darwin is looking pretty good, been using it as a webserver for a while now.
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you can use it as a general unix-like environment, just like u would GNU/Linux, the BSDs, or whatever. Darwin doesn't come with a GUI (or maybe it comes with X11). You can't run full gui-fied OSX programs, but u can run command line programs, or X11-gui programs. i also found that getting sound to work was excessively difficult without using OSX libraries (that situation may have improved, cuz its been a while).
i used to dual between darwin and GNU/Linux, and use darwin just for my iPod.
i think some people use it as they test out low-level drivers and stuff.
Re: supercomputer clusters, they've all been run on Mac OS X as far as I'm aware. Though the second choice would be Linux, not Darwin. (I'm aware of a mini-cluster of G5s sold to the navy by Yellow Dog that was Linux based).
It's simply not worthwile for most folks to deal with such a niche of a niche product when Linux is also available and if you buy Apple hardware then you get the full Mac OS X free.