Run macOS Software on Linux
darlinghq.org
darlinghq.org
> We do, and in fact, Darling is largely based on the original Darwin source code published by Apple. We use The Cocotron as a basis for our Cocoa implementation, along with the Apportable Foundation and various bits of GNUstep.
Apportable (<3) was a YC startup https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/apportable from 2011 - the Foundation repo last update was Dec 2014.
Darling only targets x86_64 stuff. Still, it's a cool project.
Kinda sad that there are very few updates though [1]
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..
I believe you can find slightly more info on how to use it in some XNU (macOS kernel) tests, namely this one: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/main/tes...
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.
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.
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.
No, it did not. There was no point at which GNUstep provided binary compatibility with Mac OS applications - while the two ecosystems shared some common history, it was much too far back to provide any form of compatibility. Additionally, Mac OS X used a different executable format than Linux or other UNIX-like operating systems, and GNUstep never attempted to provide that sort of low-level compatibility.
(For perspective: the GNUstep project started in the early 1990s. Mac OS X was first released to users in 2001.)
It may have been possible for some developers to port applications between Mac OS X and GNUstep while sharing some code, but that's a long way from running an unmodified application.
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.
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
Apple's business model regarding macOS is to sell as many devices as possible capable of running that operating system.
The former lends itself to intrinsic portability such that an independently derived emulation layer is possible (not easy, just possible), whereas the latter has the freedom of assuming device capabilities/features always present for any given release.
There's a reasonable argument that the Win32 API was designed to be more stable than the Mac OS one and this makes WINE's task easier, but this sword is double-edged: while slow change is useful, backwards compatibility expands the Win32 API surface area, since each API also needs to continue to support every way it was ever wrongly used. With the continued proliferation of Windows UI frameworks and OS subsystems, it becomes difficult to argue that Windows is any easier than Mac OS would be to implement at an API layer.
I do think there is an argument to be made that Win32 was more straightforward and felt more tractable when WINE _started_, and therefore the project was able to scale with the problem space, while OS X started from a "larger" place and was therefore more daunting, but this again is a timing and traction argument more so than a purely technical one.
> I don't agree that this particular trait of macOS makes an implementation at the layer WINE implements (full API+ABI) any harder or easier.
Here is my corroboration. Apple publishes XNU to the world in this repository:
https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
> I do think there is an argument to be made that Win32 was more straightforward ...
I did not make that argument. Instead, the position I hold regarding Windows is:
... an independently derived emulation layer is
possible (not easy, just possible) ...
In fact, you have made my point for me:
> ... while slow change is useful, backwards compatibility expands the Win32 API surface area, since each API also needs to continue to support every way it was ever wrongly used.
I wonder if something like that might be a short term viable path to get working apps. Something like the non-opensource libraries as a download pack for certain each release of Mac OS X, for at least versions Apple no longer supports, to get working programs, then you could slowly work toward open implementations.
When it started Windows was a lot smaller, so getting Windows 3.1 programs working was probably enough.
There's too much history to cover in a quick comment.
Wine has a lots of things that help - the compatibility database https://appdb.winehq.org/ is a good place for people to submit info on apps for instance, there's also a big test suite that runs against Windows + Wine.
Both of these have been around since the 1990s - Darling is at an earlier stage, but once GUI apps run better both of those are good ideas to adopt.
I think Darling probably needs more people working on it.
The whole are of Metal on Vulkan looks interesting https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/issues/390#issuecomment...
Windows 11 will still run Windows apps from Windows 3.1, because they have a backwards compatibility effort that Apple eschewed.
Now that makes it more complex to emulate all the features, but the core features used by most programs get emulated, and then just add features for specific programs to get them to work. And games tend to use core features and DirectX or OpenGL, mostly, whereas productivity apps and other things can do lots of weird things that are non-standard.
For Mac OS X, you really need to handle each versioon of Mac OS X. There are some core features that may work across versions, and some features that are available only on certain versions, then some features that are unique.
Backwards compatibility. Apple changes their API every year or so, usually for no good reason.
If they had good GUI support then some more things open up but nothing really essential. Garage Band has no equal in terms of ease of use, if you are into that sort of thing.
The Firefox source tree has every tool available for cross-compilation from Linux → macOS, which is how Firefox is built for macOS.
It has built in support for Electron, JVM, Flutter and even native apps (although of course then you still have to compile the native binaries on macOS yourself).
That also works the other way around. You can ship to Windows from Linux or macOS.
Well, not if somebody finds a way to run the compilation elsewhere!
Hence my comment!
Right now, iOS dev requires to own a recent Mac machine, which is hell of expensive, and moreover needs to be renewed every few years...
Completely unjustifiable...
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
The strategy Apple has figured out with GarageBand pre-installed (or at least very low friction to install) seems really really smart in hindsight, give complete beginners a highly simplified but functional version of your professional utility, and provide an on-ramp to your professional programs. I imagine if Microsoft had some professional version of Windows Movie Maker it would've taken over a big chunk of the video editing market via the same method.
Anyway, regarding Linux DAWs, I am trying to get used to Ableton in Wine, but it's just not the same, and making it work in Wine is troublesome enough that I end up giving up before finishing anything of interest. Is there any DAW that feels like it actually belongs on Linux and doesn't either feel like you're maintaining a package by yourself, or has an awfully bad UI/UX like all FOSS DAWs I tried so far? I think in 2026 there's really a good opportunity here, with user interest genuinely rising for Linux on desktop.
Most DAWs barely work on the platforms they support.
I can’t see Linux as being a viable market since most Linux users except software to generally be free.
Vs OSX which lets you enter a credit card number and buy stuff right from the built in store.
If I recall Ubuntu might of once attempted paid applications on its built in store and it didn’t really work.
Logic is probably made at below cost, but it keeps you in the OSX ecosystem.
Need a 32GB OSX box with a 2TB drive, only one place to get it.
Ableton Live has worked on Wine for close to 2 decades now. WineHQ has positive run reports dating back to 2006: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...
You can’t both praise native Linux daws like Bitwig and then claim WINE is fine.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually prefer Linux when I can use native applications and build frameworks.
The downsides are going to be the bland cross-platform UI and the general lack of plugin support on Linux. But the upside is native PipeWire support for application-specific channel audio and complex output routing options. The pack-in plugins are pretty good too, The Grid can replace a lot of your subtractive synths: https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/
Very strangely fitting: using Jobs "bicycle for the mind" to compose this in his honor :)
Linux has a terrible audio subsystem. First you'd have to write CoreAudio for Linux, which would not be easy.
In contrast, on MacOS I plug in my USB sound interface, it appears in my DAW and I'm on my way. And yes, I am getting a Mac now.
I run the last version I could fully buy before it went subscription based. It’s great.
You can reliably run DOS, Win, Linux applications of almost any vintage with the right translation layer / emulator, but there's a black hole of MacOS apps circa 2002-2012 that just no longer runs on anything, even later Intel Macs.
I used to enjoy a cute little Pacman clone called Pac the Man X, for example, and I just don't know how I could run this today. Seems to reliably take down any emulator I've thrown at it - presumably it's using some kind of graphics acceleration that's not emulated. (Suggestions welcome.)
https://gist.github.com/JoshCooley/095b80f9639a4dc7e762208ae...
You can also emulate PPC Mac OS X and pass through devices, but I have not tried to do this, so your mileage may vary.
It is easier to emulate 10.7+ versions than 10.6, but you can get it to work from 10.4 with work.
*Does Xcode work?*
Yes and no. The Xcode GUI definitely doesn't work yet; see *Will <<Insert_Random_GUI_Application>> Work?* above. However, the Xcode CLI tools like Clang, LLDB, Git, the Metal compiler, the Swift compiler, and more do work.
*What about `xcodebuild`?*
Some versions of `xcodebuild` (e.g. 11.7) are known to work for extremely basic XIB-based macOS apps. However, the vast majority of projects do not qualify as extremely basic and aren't supported yet.
I genuiniely can't see why I would want to run Mac software on my Arch box.
I have used Linux since the 1990's and used the Mac back in 1988.
As others said, the killer app is XCode. Even if you can technically get it to run, you'll still need the full support and test flows of a native solution, so you might as well follow the proper path and use a Mac.
I can get Visual Studio to run in Parallels today. I still test with a real Windows machine.
It looks more like a Magneto-Optical Drive, not a beach ball
Isn't that level of fun one gets from looking at that enough?
EDIT: although it looks like some try, e.g. https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1776 https://github.com/darlinghq/darling-xnu/pull/16
Sadly, the fact that there's no response to some serious, months-old PRs implementing major frameworks (https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1725, https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1724) is not exactly a sign of an actively-managed project. Hopefully someone steps in or forks it.