Apple is preparing the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) next spring, and support plans for Sun’s ZFS file system appear to be confirmed.
The ZFS file system is based on Unix and is part of the Solaris 10 operating environment. It offers a host of advantages over other file systems, such as HFS + used by Apple, such as its inherent ability to automatically detect and repair data corruption problems. It is also a very fast filesystem in supplying the requested data.
Additionally, it seems likely that Mac OS X 10.5 will allow creating partitions or disk images formatted as ZFS.
In other related news, Apple is rumored to be able to port a user interface called Gtk + to Mac OS X. Such a user interface could allow applications that support Gtk + to work on the Mac without using the X11 windowing system.
Such support could also mean that such applications could run on Mac, Windows, and Linux systems using the same interface, thus theoretically increasing the number of opensource applications available for the Macintosh.
