A New Project To Run Mac OS X Binaries On Linux

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI0Njc

by buster • 14 years ago

160 58 14 years ago

throwaway2048• 14 years ago

this has the potential to progress much faster, and much more completely than WINE, after all OSX is already a POSIX system, so many of the elements are already there.

JulianMorrison• 14 years ago

Surely POSIX is the least of it. Mac apps are built on an API that has been much extended since the NeXT days and which even then was a complete wrapper over the underlying Unix OS. Think "copying QT and the whole KDE ecosystem" to get a grasp of the scale of it.

rjknight• 14 years ago

And without access to the source!

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

I've long suspected that having OS X compatibility for Linux would be easier and more useful than Windows compatibility for many people. Due to their similar underpinnings and less legacy stuff in OS X.

Being able to run XCode , Photoshop and Sequel Pro under Linux would certainly make my life easier.

Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.

They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.

pyre2• 14 years ago

OS X apps that 'shell out' to the BSD under-pinnings could be an issue. The CLI options can differ between Linux and BSD/Darwin.

adamzegelin• 14 years ago

A shim to handle common tools and remap the options would be feasible.

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

That would seem to me to be the least of the problems. Just as you can install GNU coreutils on OS X, you can compile the BSD utilities to run on Linux as well.

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

> Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop. They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.

Given Apple's behavior in the past and in other areas, I would be very, very surprised if they were to condone (let alone promote) anything even remotely resembling OS X applications on another system.

While I don't think either outcome is likely, I'd be more willing to bet on them invoking some absurd copyright law to try and prevent this kind of work from happening (something along the lines of Oracle vs. Google).

asveikau3• 14 years ago

Less legacy, eh? Well, I guess there has been less emphasis on compatibility throughout the years, but NeXTSTEP is older than Windows NT...

bjg2• 14 years ago

While I agree with your point, I'm not sure if Windows NT is the correct comparison.

- Windows 1.0 released November 1985 [1]

- NextStep 1.0 releaed September 1988 [2]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

tjoff• 14 years ago

Wait, how can years be a stronger legacy metric than backward compatibility emphasis?

Xuzz• 14 years ago

I wonder if they could use anything from the Magenta project, an attempt to make an iOS-compatible Linux implementation.

Website: http://crna.cc/magenta.html + http://crna.cc/magenta_source.html

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087224

Zev• 14 years ago

This mostly sits at a higher level than Magenta does -- you don't need kernel support for Foundation/AppKit ABI compatibility.

todd3834• 14 years ago

Full support for Photoshop is one of the main things that keep me from being able to be fully linux

est• 14 years ago

and OmniGraffle

fafner• 14 years ago

What's so good about it? Just looks like Dia or Visio.

zem• 14 years ago

that was the first app i thought of when i saw this. pretty much the only piece of osx software i know of that is that much better than any of the competition.

nacs• 14 years ago

You can run Photoshop through Wine ( http://www.winehq.org/ ) quite easily.

Details here: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&...

saurik• 14 years ago

An older such project, that already works for numerous use cases (such as running parts of Apple's toolchain) is maloader.

https://github.com/shinh/maloader

runn1ng• 14 years ago

actually, darling is based on maloader. (or, at least, uses parts of its code)

rcthompson• 14 years ago

Darling = darlin' = DARwin on LINux?

aclimatt• 14 years ago

Yep. (The flashing cursor on the Wiki page gives it away.)

zaknanny• 14 years ago

How long will this project be relevant considering that apple is planning on switching its processors from intel to some apple unique processor soon? If it is similar to the switch they made when switching to intel, nothing will be compatible.

SG-• 14 years ago

It doesn't really matter, it's a research project. And second of all your statement that nothing was compatible with the Intel switch is completely false. PPC binaries worked just fine for years.

Lastly, there aren't any plans to switch Macs to ARM, it's a rumor.

justincormack• 14 years ago

And even if there were, Linux runs fine on ARM, so this project could.

fleitz• 14 years ago

The project will never really be relevant. If you have a serious need to run OS X probably already have OSX and a Mac.

If you need to simultaneously run Linux you install it in a VM.

This project like WINE for the most part will always be a "look what I can do" type project. It's never going to be a rosetta type system designed to bridge ecosystems as the VirtualBox / VMWare bridge already works quite well.

stcredzero5• 14 years ago

Having been disgusted by security holes in Preview and the lack of viable alternatives to Preview/Adobe Reader on OS X, I installed WINE and Foxit Reader on my Macbook Pro. (And used Automator to have it launched as an OS X app.) Google Chrome is ok for a PDF reader much of the time, but there are some really annoying bugs in its PDF functionality. (Which especially impact comics.)

kzrdude• 14 years ago

I think WINE is relevant now, after very many years of work and bugfixes (Imagine the number of quirks they have found and addressed).

skywalk• 14 years ago

After becoming somewhat disappointed with silverlight running in a win VM on linux (constant crashes, no reporting, buggy video driver usage) and being pleasantly surprised by the ease of running netflix desktop (http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/) - I would say this couldn't be any farther from the truth. It's at least one instance of wine that has brought a previous inaccessible web app to the linux mainstream.

elteto• 14 years ago

Is that confirmed? Last time I checked those were only faint rumors, and switching to a proprietary architecture is not gonna help their bottom line, unless they want to get rid of the PC / Laptop division.

bitcartel2• 14 years ago

An interesting research project, but don't hold your breath. Apple's private APIs are going to take a very long time to reverse engineer.

codgercoder• 14 years ago

Remember how exercised everyone got about Window's private APIs?

bitcartel2• 14 years ago

Reminds me of Yellow Box (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F7...)

moxie• 14 years ago

"Darling also possesses some hope as the project is being worked on for a diploma thesis research project by a university student..."

I would draw the exact opposite conclusion.

leoh• 14 years ago

Ouch. This is not going to be easy. There are some major differences in dylibs versus so's in Linux.

nedzadk• 14 years ago

Photoshop here i come :)

djisjke• 14 years ago

It already runs on Linux, thanks to wine: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&...

rbanffy• 14 years ago

I'd suggest going after source compatibility rather than binaries. It shouldn't be that difficult to check an Xcode project for things incompatible with GNUStep and offer a way to allow ProjectCenter to build binaries on and to other platforms, provided the developer refrained to use Mac-only features. It would be a nice way to collect hard data on what should be considered more important for GNUStep to develop, generating countless other opportunities for students pursuing various degrees.

BTW, is anyone building TextMate for platforms other than OSX?

malkia• 14 years ago

In similar vein, there is cocotron - a framework that implements Cocoa (OpenSTEP), and other things - http://www.cocotron.org

bitwize2• 14 years ago

Interesting project, but probably runs afoul of a whole passel of Apple IP, and so will get nowhere useful.

United857• 14 years ago

Even if you just focused on console apps, that would be a huge milestone for many folks.

One example: being able to run XCode's command line build tools to generate iOS and Mac builds on our Linux CI boxes without a dedicated Mac build slave would be huge.

tonyoconnell• 14 years ago

How lovely would it be to be able to run Adobe products on Linux? ... When Apple decided to fuck over Adobe by killing Flash I though the perfect countermove would be to release AdobeOS. They could crowd source the design from its user base, port their products to Linux and be in a very strong position to compete with OSX and Windows. Now that Apple has abandoned its old users for the mass market there's room for an open source OS for the designers, photographers and developers whose needs are not being met.

A New Project To Run Mac OS X Binaries On Linux

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