The rEFIT project describes itself as a ‘boot menu and maintenance toolkit for EFI-based machines like the Intel Macs.’ EFI, or the Extensible Firmware Interface, is a spec for a software interface between our OS and the Mac’s firmware. It’s basically a new and improved BIOS, used in place of the legacy BIOS used on IBM-compatible PCs. That is why most ‘OS-hoppers’ use rEFIt. While it enables you to select your OS of choice upon boot, there are also other neat functions, such as the option to shutdown, reboot and a basic terminal. It even recognizes Live CDs so you can select them instead of having to push the C key when you want to check out a bootable CD.

rEFIt is nice because it is able to recognize what’s on the hard drive, detect what you’ve installed and see if there’s a bootable medium inside. It’s a welcome change from the old PC boot loaders like GRUB or the standard Windows boot loader. Now you can overwrite an operating system without the fear that you won’t be able to boot into it without significant tweaks. And I’m not a big Boot Camp fan — this is a Free Software Project, so it’s not going anywhere. It’s actually quite surprising how a little piece of software can change your Mac experience. The beauty of owning a MacBook is getting that urge to tweak everything to your liking. I

In conclusion, rEFIt is certainly a piece of software any OS explorer will love. The project is still active, and I’m sure we’ll see more improvements in future versions, but at the moment they’ve already got something cool for all of us. So don’t wait any longer and download it!

Although it will be a new release, don’t expect anything revolutionary. Snow Leopard’s development team is supposedly focusing on improving speed, stability and getting rid of nasty bugs. We certainly hope it’ll fix a lot of problems the 10.5.3 Leopard update caused. With the new release, PowerPC support may finally be dropped. Snow Leopard will work only on 64-bit Intel Macs. With dropped legacy support, some blogs think that Apple is shifting its focus on the cutting-edge of computer technology. Will we see an Atom-based Apple subnotebook?

Ars Technica also said the new OS X may be shifting to a Cocoa-only wrap. Bad time for Carbon, but supposedly a good time for Objective-C developers.

When will we get a taste of Snow Leopard, you ask? Well, most sources claim there will be a developer seeding at the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. Just don’t get too excited.

Let’s take a trip back in time…

Every Operating System has a core, called a “kernel”. Mac OS X uses a hybrid kernel – the Mach microkernel developed until about 15 years ago at Carnegie Mellon University. The Berkeley Software Distribution project, a Unix derivative from which FreeBSD and similar distributions were born, used this kernel for its BSD version of UNIX. During the development of this kernel and the growth of the BSD project, a certain Steve Jobs founded the NeXT company. Apple bought this company in 1996, effectively bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple as interim CEO (most of you probably know he left Apple in 1985). NeXtStep was a very important “step” towards Mac OS X. After a few failed attempts at using various projects, like Taligent or Copland to base their new OS project on, Apple decided to simply buy NeXT and use OpenStep, a programmer-friendly OS by NeXT, as its foundation for further development.

OpenStep used the Mach kernel. The developers at Apple then took advantage of the permissive BSD licence (which is not as aggressive towards commercial use as the GPL, for instance) to build the first Darwin with BSD code, along with other Free Software projects’ code. Thus, Darwin was born. That is why the Darwin kernel is based on both FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies.

Yes, your shiny Mac OS X and the ultra-geeky NetBSD have a lot in common. Like most UNIX systems, Darwin includes the standard set of UNIX tools, along with Apache, sendmail and similar services.

A new version of Mac OS X is prepared by putting together the different pieces of Darwin and Apple’s Quartz graphics system. Of course, the developers at Apple include their own applications and modifications, making Darwin a user-friendly environment. Your iPhone runs Darwin, too.

So now you know! You may think you don’t need this knowledge, but maybe sometime in the future you will see some potential in the UNIX base. That is why you can run X natively, for instance.

Go read the Mac Terminal Introduction by Alex and learn more!

Find out more on these sites:
gnu-darwin.org
developer.apple.com
kernel.macosforge.org

Again, “Welcome to Darwin”!

P.S. I would like to hear comments from developers. I did my homework, but if you have more information please let us know about it!

I have compiled a list of five games you probably have never heard of. All the games are playable even on a low-end MacBook and more importantly, simply fun! So log out of your Facebook account, shut down that e-mail client and do your brain a favor by getting your game on.

These games are all free, cross-platform and made either by the open source community, or by a single developer. Buckle up…

1. Armagetron (Advanced)

Remember the movie Tron? Armagetron is an OpenGL arcade game where you drive a so-called “light-cycle”. This vehicle leaves a small wall behind so the main objective is to make the other players hit your wall while trying to avoid hitting other players’ walls. You can play Tron against the computer or with up to 16 players using the multiplayer/lan mode.

Get your light-cycle here

2. Neverball

This game has already achieved cult status even though many people never actually tried it. Neverball makes heavy use of its physics engine: in order to reach the next level you have to guide a ball through an obstacle course with your arrow keys. The first levels are easy but it can get really tricky. There is another game included in the .dmg binary by the same author called Neverputt which uses Neverball’s physics engine for a cool little multiplayer mini-golf simulation.

Become addicted to Neverball here

3. Frets on Fire

Do you like Guitar Hero? Well why would you have to pay for it when there’s a great Finnish open source game called Frets on Fire? Frets on Fire features inverted keyboard gameplay (contrary to popular belief, guitar playing with your keyboard is fun), support for guitar controllers, and even song importing (you can compose your own songs, download community created songs or import Guitar Hero music). Take your keyboard and become a virtual rockstar!

Get ready to rock here (the Mac version is still experimental)

4. Cave Story

This game is a platformer masterpiece. The Japanese developer studio StudioPixel spent 5 years creating the game and they did a great job. Cave Story has everything a platformer would ever need: “solid controls, smooth gameplay, a great cast of characters and dialogue, an interesting plot, good music and beautiful old-school 2-D artwork.” Some people would probably put it in first place, but I’m not a big platformer fan.

Rock your pixelated socks here (don’t forget to download the English translation)

5. Moonlight Walks

“It’s the summer before you go away to college, and you’re spending it visiting with your aunt and uncle on a small island in the Atlantic ocean. One night, while out taking pictures of the full moon, you meet a girl walking down the beach…”

I’m sure some of you may know many other anime-style games but Moonlight Walks has a special place in my gamer heart. According to the website, Moonlight Walks is a bishoujo visual novel written by an American author in just one month. It features 21 paths to 4 different endings. What I like is the story and it’s a pity that the artwork is not on the same level. Don’t worry, even though it’s a novel, you will finish this game in about 20 minutes.

Take a walk in the moonlight now

When you have some time on your hands and you decide to play a game, try one of these five. You’ll see how small games can be fun and exciting. Do you know any other little games for casual gamers? Feel free to share your comments.

Basically, the X11 window sytem is what OpenOffice was made for. OpenOffice, by being free, makes a perfect alternative to other office suites for the Mac, especially Microsoft’s much heralded Mac Office. So, the developers decided in September of last year to make a decent official port for the Mac.

The open source community created its own solution, a great OpenOffice fork called NeoOffice. I personally think the Ooo (I wonder how they pronounce this) project leaders have made a wise decision, we all know what forks in open source mean. Sadly, this also means the NeoOffice project will probably slowly die out, although the developers do have a large userbase at the moment. The thing is, I think OpenOffice is a great product; I just don’t trust companies sponsoring open source.

According to the official website:

“At the moment this means porting OpenOffice.org to run natively on Mac OS X. Once OpenOffice.org Aqua final is released, the team will focus on making OpenOffice.org adhere to the Apple HCI guidelines.”

Here it is running natively on my Mac. Like I said above X11 is not needed anymore, just drop it in your Applications folder and you’re up and running.

There is already a working alpha release available, and the team will continue to produce X11 builds after the final release, too, which is without doubt a very smart move.

The third version of the most popular open source office suite by Sun is planned for late 2008.