Run macOS Software on Linux

BBluestein about 3 hours ago 18 commentsRead Article on darlinghq.org

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ay•about 1 hour ago

I went down a deep but entertaining rabbit hole in the other direction for fun: https://github.com/ayourtch-llm/fakelinux - initially with the idea “just replace the syscalls in the executable with some sort of a trap and handle that”.

It almost worked, unfortunately MacOS reserves x18 for platform purposes and Linux doesn’t.

The result is some sort of pretty mad contraption which works sufficiently often to compile aarch64 Linux VPP and its dependencies on the Mac using Linux gcc :)

I suppose with some polish it might be useful for something..

porphyra•about 2 hours ago

In theory, running Apple Silicon apps on ARM64 linux machines would be really nice. But we are still far from having a performant and feature-complete implementation of doing so.

Darling only targets x86_64 stuff. Still, it's a cool project.

Kinda sad that there are very few updates though [1]

[1] https://blog.darlinghq.org/

belowavgiq•26 minutes ago

their AppKit implementation receives about 20-30 commits every 5 years. Cool project, but you are better off waiting for proprietary software manufacturers to release ARM64 builds (a lot of them do now) and patch the holes with FEX.

LollipopYakuza•about 1 hour ago

A few years back, I would have dreamt to run Photoshop on Linux. But this and the mandatory utilities that come with it became so bloated that even if it was officially offered on Linux I am not sure I would be using it.

nonestdeus•about 1 hour ago

Cool that it exists, but I honestly don't even know which mac exclusive program I would want to install.

999900000999•about 1 hour ago

Very neat.

All I want for Christmas is Logic on Linux. But then you’d still need a Mac to legally download it from the App Store and DRM checks would probably only work on Macs

inatreecrown2•4 minutes ago

Give Reaper a try, it works very well on linux and you can even use VSTs.

jagged-chisel•about 2 hours ago

Quibble: it'll run anything that runs on open source Darwin. You won't be running anything needing macOS frameworks.

SilentM68•about 1 hour ago

Would be nice to run Final Cut Pro on Linux without having to pay an arm and a leg for the actual machine. It's a really expensive toy :(

rvz•about 2 hours ago

This is the Darling project which aims to run macOS software on Linux for both Intel and ARM64.

But you are probably looking for this:

   > Does it support GUI apps?
   > Almost! This took us a lot of time and effort, but we finally have basic experimental support for running simple graphical applications.

It is still far away from running your favorite mac GUI apps like Logic Pro or Xcode, but it is a work in progress but can still run command line tools.

dylan604•about 2 hours ago

What allows Wine to run so many Windows apps that there's not an equivalent for MacOS? Is it lack of interest? Is it a technical thing? I'd even be willing to limit to x86 apps. Or maybe there is and I'm just really out of touch??

tengwar2•about 2 hours ago

At a guess: the "killer apps" are things like MS Office and Photoshop, and since they are usually available on both Windows and Mac, there's not such a pressing demand to support similar functionality for Mac apps if the Windows version is easy to obtain.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

That's such an obvious answer that I'm honestly embarrassed that it did not occur to me. <facepalm> Thanks for not rubbing it in!

AdieuToLogic•about 1 hour ago

> What allows Wine to run so many Windows apps that there's not an equivalent for MacOS? Is it lack of interest? Is it a technical thing?

It is a technical thing.

The XNU[0] kernel, which underpins macOS and is detailed by the exceptional book "Mac OS X internals"[1], can theoretically run on many x86 and/or ARM machines. However, the issue with running macOS apps via other operating systems is not the OS, but instead are the GUI frameworks expected (i.e., Carbon[2], Quartz[3], etc.). These frameworks are intentionally written for Apple hardware/macOS distros. Which makes sense when viewing macOS as a selling point for selling Mac's.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU

1 - https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17205558M/Mac_OS_X_internals

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)

bri3d•1 minute ago

No? Windows also has its own graphics subsystem, compositor, and an even bigger set of user land UI/forms/controls libraries than Mac OS. It really is just a critical velocity / adoption / time thing, there’s nothing strongly technical separating Mac OS API/ABI translation from Windows ala wine.

GeekyBear•about 1 hour ago

GNUstep ran early MacOS apps on Linux after Apple bought Next and adopted their APIs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUstep

I don't think the project kept up with changes to the APIs over the decades compared to how well the Wine project kept up with changes in Windows.

duskwuff•1 minute ago

[delayed]

asveikau•about 1 hour ago

Win32 has a little less churn than AppKit used to. If you support the API surface of winxp from 25 years ago you can run a lot of stuff. Most teams inside Windows at MSFT also try to leave older APIs alone and introduce stuff in an additive fashion. Apple, by contrast, historically has app compatibility as a non-goal.

I said "used to" because anecdotally, I had a personal project I haven't released anywhere target AppKit, I haven't been maintaining it because life is busy, I recently rebuilt it for the first time in a long time and I was shocked that everything worked. ~8 years ago, you would need to do some porting to a new major release once per year. I skipped that maintenance for many releases and didn't need to change a single line. This tells me that desktop apps are not at all an area of major focus for them lately. Maybe swiftui is getting all the attention. They are doing something more resembling Microsoft, leaving the old shit alone.

crazysim•about 1 hour ago

While the productivity apps are mentioned in the other comments of this reply, games are another reason. There are far more games on Windows to port and handle than macOS games. And in that case, you got a financial desire in the form of Valve and its Steam store. macOS games tend to be ports from Windows and are usually less featureful.

cyberax•about 1 hour ago

> What allows Wine to run so many Windows apps that there's not an equivalent for MacOS?

A lot of work done over 3 decades. Wine also started when Win32 was something comprehensible by one person, so they could build it up slowly.