questions on file formats

[Ean Kingston]

On Friday, March 4, 2005, at 07:35  PM, Dave Pesner wrote:

> Does FreeBSD support the .DMG file format?  I need to know this
> because I'm looking for a free alternative for an OS X emulator and a
> liscensed copy of OS X(isn't open source software great) for my next
> computer.  If BSD does support OS X file formats such as DMG, great.

I believe that a .dmg file is a virtual disk in a file (generally used 
to install software). Although FreeBSD does have equivalent things 
(virtual disks and software packaging) I don't think it supports .dmg 
files specifically.

You should also know that FreeBSD is not going to run any software 
written for the Mac. There will be substitutes for most of the Mac 
software but you will probably find that some of the data file formats 
are proprietary to Apple and don't work anywhere else.

That being said, there are a lot of file formats that can be 
manipulated by software available for FreeBSD. This would include .mp3, 
.avi, .txt, .rtf, .pdf, .jpg, .gif, ...

> If not, please suggest a free UNIX based operating system that does,
> and works with AMD64.

You may want to look at the Darwin project. It is the open source 
project that was a spin off of OS X. It may support some of the file 
formats used by OS X but it isn't going to run any of the software that 
requires Aqua (the OS X GUI) since that isn't part of Darwin.

Also, I have no idea what platforms Darwin supports.