Darling Is Still Active With A Goal To Run macOS Apps On Linux

[V1tol]

But right now Darling can only run simple applications, so you have a better shot of running Windows versions of those apps through Wine than the Apple versions through Darling.

True, but what I wanted to say - you have to port less things to run macOS apps than Windows. macOS apps have much in common with Linux apps - they run on POSIX-compatible Unix-like system, use plain-old config files instead of Registry, draw themselves using OpenGL than DirectWhatewer. Not saying that some components of macOS are opensource - Foundation for example. If Darling has the same human resources - it can do progress much faster, than Wine do.

[crymsonpheonix]

At least, it is POSIX compatible and has lots of stuff from BSD. And the binaries are ELFs. So, ideally, you have to implement userspace only to run many macOS programs.

It is posix-like, there are some pretty glaring differences though. Also, the binaries are *NOT* ELF, they're Mach-o, which is completely different.

[starshipeleven]

It is posix-like, there are some pretty glaring differences though. Also, the binaries are *NOT* ELF, they're Mach-o, which is completely different.

Technically speaking it should be full POSIX, being a Unix certified system. But I've seen enough people bitching about this or that thing to not be so sure POSIX is enough.

[wizard69]

This is an interesting project though it does seem to have some priority ssues. For example why get Homebrew running when the primary focus of home brew is to get Linux/UNIX utilities runnning on the Mac.

As for being easier long term i do believe that would be the case as you can go the other way fairly easy. That is open source apps can be built and ran on the Mac fairly easy. Then you have Swift and its support libs that Apple has moved to Linux. Im not saying every app transfers easily but it often isnt much worst then going from Linux to BSD.

I suspect one big problem is that Linux and Mac OS have similar software libraries already. So there are far fewer must have Mac apps to transfer to Linux.

I still believe Mac OS has an advantage over Linux in ease of use though that gap has shrunk some since 2008 when i switched my laptop to a Mac. Otherwise i cant say there are a lot of apps today that keep one on a Mac. The nice thing though is that XCode, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and a few other basic apps are free.

[grok]

This might be useful for some macintosh users? OSX seems not very forward or backward compatible. So, running Darling on OSX would have some uses.

[omer666]

I am interested in this because of one software that nobody can beat: Nisus Writer.
Or maybe we should try to develop an open source equivalent for Nisus classic...

[RelaxTrolls]

This is an interesting project though it does seem to have some priority ssues. For example why get Homebrew running when the primary focus of home brew is to get Linux/UNIX utilities runnning on the Mac.

Homebrew is not about getting linux applications to work. lol... no idea why you would think that (?)... it provides a way to build all sorts of libraries, utilities, tools on MacOS.

homebrew provide their own toolchain, as well, as being able to use Apple's toolchain, link against their libc implentations, etc...

to me anyway, it seems obvious why this would be important; they will be able to build all sorts of needed, tools, programs, libs, etc to help accelerate development... if h have a look through homebrew's package list. you would probably see why...

[Guest]

most macOS apps don't need to be ported to Windows (or Android), or have good equivalents already.

Sketch doesn't have a real alternative on any platform yet. You could achieve a similar result with Inkscape or Photoshop or Illustrator but only if you don't value your time very highly.

[mzs.112000]

You do get access to a lot of the "high-end" programs that macOS has access to, of course a lot of these cost money and are only available via the App Store, which Darling will never be able to legally run due to licensing, copyright and/or DRM issues.

[starshipeleven]

Sketch doesn't have a real alternative on any platform yet. You could achieve a similar result with Inkscape or Photoshop or Illustrator but only if you don't value your time very highly.

I don't find the "sketch" you talk about with google (I get many different "sketch" programs doing different things, don't know what is the right one), can you link it?