Darling: macOS Translation Layer for Linux

https://www.darlinghq.org/

by lelf • 6 years ago

614 199 6 years ago

mewse-hn2• 6 years ago

Get ready for a lawsuit if you build iOS app interoperability

squarefoot• 6 years ago

Could Apple do that? The project is distributed under GPL3.0 which allows for commercial use, but apart from that they're not using it in any way that could be detrimental to Apple's business.

jagged-chisel2• 6 years ago

I think the insinuation is that in order to run iOS apps, one would necessarily need to infringe on Apple's copyrights.

But that's not necessary. There is open source code at the base of macOS and iOS, and it's only that being used currently. Even to go further and create a full clone of iOS would be fine, if (and only if) a "clean room" implementation were made.

mewse-hn2• 6 years ago

Apple are currently suing the people behind Corellium, an iOS emulator.

mhh__• 6 years ago

Even if they couldn't, I'm sure they'd try.

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

Licenses and patents are different things.

uzero• 6 years ago

Exactly. Also, be careful if you have a fruit as a logo.

bb88• 6 years ago

Does someone have some screenshots for what it looks like under linux? In particular, how are the menus handled?

peteretep2• 6 years ago

In the absence of anything better:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2091148&page=2&p=1...

kennywinker• 6 years ago

Q: Does it support GUI apps?
A: Almost! This took us a lot of time and effort, but we finally have basic experimental support for running simple graphical applications. It requires some special setup for now though, so do not expect it to work out of the box just yet.

GUI support seems not to be ready yet, but when it is, it looks like they're using cocotron, so it'll look something like any of the examples you see on this page: http://www.cocotron.org/Examples/

asddubs8• 6 years ago

they seem to have their own fork of it, as the original appears to be dead:

https://github.com/darlinghq/darling-cocotron

peteretep2• 6 years ago

Does it support GUI apps? Almost!

kayodelycaon2• 6 years ago

I'm kind of curious what non-GUI Mac apps exist. The built-in system utilities maybe? CUPS and Webkit both run on linux natively.

kccqzy• 6 years ago

Plenty of Apple-provided utilities like diskutil, hdiutil, etc.

trothamel• 6 years ago

Most of the Xcode build system is non-gui. Having things like xcode-build, codesign, altool, etc. running on a non-mac would be great for continuous integration purposes. (If it didn't violate some arbitrary Apple rule.)

monocasa• 6 years ago

My unit tests and some integration tests. Yes, it's not as good as running them native, but running Linux native and darwin and windows in Darling and Wine is a very nice 80/20 for some of my work.

lathiat• 6 years ago

Bonjour Compatibility Test

banana_giraffe• 6 years ago

There are some utilities around creating and validating HLS streams that would be useful to run on non-MacOS cloud machines.

I haven't checked, though I'm fairly sure the license says you're lot allowed to, though.

askvictor• 6 years ago

I've recently been developing a cross-platform (gui) app in python + qt. I develop on a Windows machine, but want to run pyinstaller on a Mac to make a Mac package available. Unfortunately, not having a Mac, I can't do this simple thing. I played around briefly trying to (illegally) get a MacOS VM running, but gave up. This would solve my problems (well, not testing that it actually works as expected on a Mac, but much better than nothing)

fuzzy22• 6 years ago

Printer drivers! :D

I have a GDI laser printer that comes with Mac drivers. I really want them to work on Linux.

stephc_int13• 6 years ago

I can't wait to use XCode on Linux, but that's probably overly optimistic...

asddubs8• 6 years ago

it would be really nice to be able to debug safari from linux actually. the other day I had to fix a safari bug by relying on friends to test things for me, because I didn't have access to a recent enough apple device

mtzaldo• 6 years ago

I'm not related to the site, but next time you can use a macos vm...https://www.macincloud.com/

uhoh-itsmaciek• 6 years ago

For what it's worth, I've had the same issue and have been able to reproduce some Safari bugs in the WebKit-based Midori.

ficklepickle2• 6 years ago

Browserstack is my go-to for this. I've been very happy with it.

hevelvarik• 6 years ago

Wow, hope this works out, no easy way to do anything with my iPhone on Linux has been galling

grishka6• 6 years ago

I wish they took more of a ReactOS kind of approach. Namely, use all the open-source parts that go into macOS, like the kernel and CoreFoundation, and write the proprietary ones from scratch. Then you'd finally have a desktop OS with no compromises and a huge existing app ecosystem (and a consistent GUI).

scythe• 6 years ago

That was tried with OpenDarwin, but Apple was not a fan of the project IIRC.

More generally, it doesn't offer much of practical value to use the Darwin kernel which is at this point pretty tied to Apple hardware that comes with OS X anyway. You can still Hackintosh but it just adds a lot of additional complexity that you won't have to deal with on Linux.

grishka6• 6 years ago

The point is that desktop Linux is still pretty much a bunch of standalone components loosely duct taped together. Sometimes they fall apart, but even when they don't, it still shows. Linux GUIs still feel like an afterthought.

upd: googling "OpenDarwin" bings up two first results that are news of it closing, in 2006

dis-sys• 6 years ago

why bother following the clearly failed model? ReactOS has been there for more than 20 years, how many people are actually running ReactOS in production?

paulryanrogers3• 6 years ago

ReactOS got too ambitious IMO. If they had stopped chasing versions at say XP/2003 then it may have matured more quickly. That said they are getting closer to useable with every release. Like FreeDOS before it I suspect it will fill a niche where Microsoft binaries are too expensive yet compatibility is important.

shp0ngle• 6 years ago

That exists, is named PureDarwin (I think) and is about as active as the original article project.

Which is not completely dead, but also not that active.

Turns out there is a big effort difference between “why don’t they just”ing on forums and actually doing it! :)

ric2b• 6 years ago

Then you'd finally have a desktop OS with no compromises and a huge existing app ecosystem (and a consistent GUI).

What compromises does Ubuntu have vs MacOS? It has orders of magnitude better gaming support thanks to Wine + Steam Proton.

grishka6• 6 years ago

Linux GUIs are extremely inconsistent and just generally feel like an afterthought. Out of all GUI desktop operating systems I've used, nothing comes close to macOS as far as consistency goes.

Besides that, Linux desktop is this loosely stacked pile of different components that sometimes falls apart. No one wants to spend 50% of their time writing config files and setting up drivers instead of actually doing something useful.

war1025• 6 years ago

Has this project regained some momentum?

I feel like I heard about it a number of years ago and then it never went anywhere.

The copyright at the bottom says 2012-2019, which makes me think it's the same project.

asddubs8• 6 years ago

i checked out their repos on github, at first glance it seemed somewhat low activity (but not dead), but there's actually a lot of activity on the ARM branch at least:

https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/commits/feature/arm-sup...

anon73044• 6 years ago

Adding support for Apple's future ARM processors perhaps?

sicromoft• 6 years ago

How did they not name this Dine?!

nom• 6 years ago

Let's wine and dine them all :D

deepstack• 6 years ago

Who though emulation can be so delico.us.

dkdbejwi383• 6 years ago

I wine 'em and dine 'em, but I don't let them tell me what to do.

IceyEC• 6 years ago

Or Mine!

m12k• 6 years ago

Running Darwin on Linux - Dar-ling. Plus nobody dreams of being the sidekick. But yeah, it would have been clever - I'm still disappointed that PyQT isn't called QTPy.

TheUndead96• 6 years ago

In my mind it is now QTPy until the end of time

mkl• 6 years ago

"Qt" is pronounced "cute", not "cue tee". That's why it's PyQt, not PyQT or QTPy.

hugodahl• 6 years ago

What can't be solved by software (or marketing?), someone will solve with hardware[0]!

[0] http://adafruit.com/qtpy

azangru• 6 years ago

Dine is not an emulator?

Diesel555• 6 years ago

I like the F-16 logo on the homepage. Sleek minimal airplane to represent fast with a nice outline.

totetsu• 6 years ago

Those may look like jet plain candies, [1] but I think they are in fact tux the penguins feet.

[1]https://corpcons.nz/images/thumbs/0062343_pascall-deltas-jet...

hu3• 6 years ago

Could be but looking at the zoomed in image and HTML code confirms it's an F16:

https://i.imgur.com/ypZWbti.png

https://i.imgur.com/Os7BjsF.png

mig39• 6 years ago

Does this allow one to mount iCloud Drive on a linux box?

Or has anyone figured out another way to do that?

djxfade2• 6 years ago

That should be possible without this approach. I found this project (which seems dead), but iCloud Drive itself should be fully possible to implement without a full translation layer.

https://github.com/samuelthomas2774/icloud-drive-fs

surfsvammel• 6 years ago

If this works, it’s a total game changer for me.

davesque• 6 years ago

Until ARM Macs become prevalent.

SomeoneFromCA• 6 years ago

Then we'll use ARM Linux!

barbs• 6 years ago

I like the idea, but I also can't think of anything I'd personally use it for.

Does anyone else have any Mac apps on their "run-on-linux" wishlist?

xenospn• 6 years ago

I think Adobe apps would qualify, no?

bscphil• 6 years ago

I assume OP means Mac-only. It's pretty unlikely this this project will achieve more for Mac applications than Wine has for Windows applications.

JellyBeanThief• 6 years ago

Off the top of my head: OmniGraffle, Rogue Amoeba's Fission, Affinity Designer.

d3nj4l• 6 years ago

iTerm, for one.

broodbucket• 6 years ago

Any particular reason why when there's a plethora of good Linux-native terminal emulators?

xondono3• 6 years ago

I was a iTerm fan, but nowadays it runs super slow on my MBP. Granted it’s old-ish but 2015 is not so long ago.

Alacritty is way faster in my experience.

earthlingdavey• 6 years ago

Sketch

berkes• 6 years ago

My company uses Tuple for pair programming.

That leaves me out as Linux user from our pair-programming-sessions (Jitsi and Google meet with screensharing does solve some). Not sure if this is a blessing or if I'm really missing out.

saint-loup• 6 years ago

Sketch. At my company we use a mix of PC running Linux and Mac. Being able to run Sketch on Linux would open perspectives for designer types. Although the switch to Linux would meet opposition for other reasons. :)

The home page of Darling specifies "experimental support for running simple" GUI. Does anyone have any idea whether Metal support (which Sketch uses) is out of the question?

mattbk1• 6 years ago

BibDesk

steffan3• 6 years ago

This is somewhat a philosophical question/ Ship of Theseus - you are only licensed to run MacOS on Apple hardware, but what if I had, say, an Xserve and replaced a hard drive? What about a Motherboard? Would a Franken-XServe with an AMD Threadripper still be ‘Apple Hardware?’

alcidesfonseca• 6 years ago

Windows 7 (and 8?) had an activation procedure that would be blocked if the hardware changed since the last one (I can’t remember the exact hw they hashed). They have since went back on the restriction and windows 10 has more forgiving activation rules.

pjmlp2• 6 years ago

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client...

asveikau2• 6 years ago

I remember hitting that on Vista when I swapped out a motherboard that died, circa 2007. It asked me to call a phone number. So I did. I explained to the phone rep what I did to cause the error. They asked me where I got my copy of Windows. I told them. They unblocked me.

xondono3• 6 years ago

They still do, but they are more forgiving in some sense (they fingerprint more info, not just your motherboard so they can detect “small” changes).

I’m still regularly hit with “Activate your account” when I run my windows partition from parallels because the “hardware” has changed!

wpm• 6 years ago

It would count as Apple hardware until you swapped the logic board, thus removing the boot ROM/EFI/SMC.

steffan3• 6 years ago

Supposing you could adapt the ROM/EFI/SMC to work with the new motherboard. (I'm not claiming practicality here, just possibility), perhaps desoldering & resoldering the respective chips onto a new daughterboard or even a PCI card.

Does that make it a Mac still? You could literally replace almost every component in a Mac except for the motherboard and have it still be a Mac, but shouldn't the converse be true as well? If I used the original case, hard drive/SSD, video card, keyboard & mouse, even the CPU, but replaced just the logic board (swapping the ROM/EFI/SMC somehow), it seems to me it would still be considered a Mac. Particularly if in the process the original logic board was rendered inoperative to head off any claims of duplicate license use.

m4632• 6 years ago

Is this question in relation to darling? Because it is based on freely available source, not hackintosh-type stuff.

Does it violate Apple's EULA? No! We only directly use those parts of Darwin that are released as fully free software.

steffan3• 6 years ago

No, it's not related to Darling, but it did provoke the question for me of whether it is [legally] possible to 'upgrade' an original Mac to modern components and still have it be considered a Mac. Clearly a hard drive, ram replacement, and video card replacement are acceptable, CPU if it happens to be replaceable, keyboard, mouse, monitor. Really the only thing that might remain is the motherboard. But if you kept that and replaced anything else, shouldn't that could as still being a Mac?

LockAndLol3• 6 years ago

They can put anything in the license but the question is if it'll pass in court. Maybe in American court but European too?

How can it be permissible to buy software and not be allowed to use it on whatever you own? You own both. It's like DRM without the actual protection.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Sounds like SoftPear (which IIRC stopped for tragic reasons)

But unless you have the capability of running the GUI, it's hard to justify (is there a killer cmdline only app for Mac OS? I don't think so)

alexellisuk• 6 years ago

It'd be nice to see the bootstrap automated or easier to get up and running on common distros like Ubuntu.. would an apt package be on the horizon?

unixhero• 6 years ago

How about the Quartz compositor? Does it run that?

xondono3• 6 years ago

Has anyone tried it with omnifocus?

bogwog• 6 years ago

If this thing can run even just the Xcode command-line utilities, it'd be a huge asset for cross-platform projects, build automation, etc. Definitely keeping an eye on this!

logicOnly• 6 years ago

If Apple isn't getting their developer license and hardware brought, they will find a way to make it impossible.

Apple needs to force developers to use their hardware or it won't have a native/refined feeling and developers will stick to Windows/Linux without the extra step of Apple.

grawprog• 6 years ago

Apple needs to force developers to use their hardware or it won't have a native/refined feeling

Or Apple stops making as much money in hardware sales and might actually have to lower their prices?

developers will stick to Windows/Linux without the extra step of Apple.

Doesn't that mean Apple is already superfluous and only exists because of arbitrary restrictions created by Apple making the entire ecosystem artifical?

p_l• 6 years ago

Little known fact but you can build most of the utilities on Linux, and if you use Mac to prepare some of the bits, you can end up with complete build environment. Not Xcode itself, but enough to be able to build from source, afaik.

birdyrooster• 6 years ago

Xcode requires macOS, I am pretty sure it won't run on straight Darwin

bkovacev• 6 years ago

Would this eventually allow us to run things like iMessage?

KMnO4• 6 years ago

No, iMessage is heavily controlled by Apple to the point where even Hackintosh computers running the entire Mac operating system can't always get it working. Without a real Apple device (or: a real Apple serial number cloned to your device), iMessage has little possibility of ever working, even if this project evolves to GUI applications.

saagarjha3• 6 years ago

Many people are able to use iMessage on Hackintosh machines.

rmrfrmrf• 6 years ago

i wonder if you could sign mac apps with this

omginternets• 6 years ago

Another small step towards my ideal setup of:

1. Apple hardware 2. Bare-metal linux OS 3. Emulation/shims to run MacOS software on top

Sure, it seems like a horrific Frankenstein's Monster of a setup, but since I can't have the best commercial applications, running on the (IMHO) best OS, running on (IMHO) the best hardware, this is a pill I would be willing to swallow.

SeanLuke• 6 years ago

It appears that this webpage hasn't been updated for over a year. Hoping this project hasn't been put in mothballs.

pmarreck• 6 years ago

We aim to fully integrate apps running under Darling into the Linux desktop experience by making them look, feel and behave just like native Linux apps.

If this goes beyond just the "window dressing", it may cause UI issues

daveisfera• 6 years ago

Shameless plug for a project I'm proposing to do the opposite (i.e. run Linux binaries from a container on macOS natively): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davejohansen/cider-cart...

asddubs8• 6 years ago

this is not really the same thing, since you don't have to reverse engineer anything

Darling: macOS Translation Layer for Linux

Related Stories