Darling Still Has A Goal Of Running macOS Apps On Linux

[CuriousTommy]

My personal favorite would be iTunes support. iTunes (for iPhone backups) is one of the few reasons i keep a Windows partition.

In the past, Apple did have download page for iTunes on Mac. But if you want the latest version, you are probably going to need to access to a MacOS install.

They seem to be suffering from a lack of developers, I hope any developer reading this considers helping out. I would if I had any clue about C / C++ / Swift and the like :P.

Once my spring semester is over, I plan to reimplement some of the simple API for Objective-C. I have experience with C++, Python, and Java, but I am currently trying to learn Objective-C on the spot. But I do want to ask a few questions to the Darling team before I start to contribute.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but do you have experience with programming? If not, I found Python the easiest to learn. While I have not messed around with Swift, I heard that it is supposed to be similar to python. If you own an iPad, there is a cool app called Swift Playground.

https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

I think Apple would crack down on this pretty hard, considering that they don't even allow running macOS VMs on non-Apple hardware.

It is very possible to run MacOS on a VM, by either using QEMU or VMware. They tried once to break the Hackintosh, but it eventually got patched. If this is Apple's effort in blocking VM usage, it's a really poor attempt.

With that being said, I hope the Darling team is careful with who they invite into their project. Especially for people who have agreed to Apple's EULA.

Even for the software that also has Windows versions that run on wine, through darling they may run better due to an easier translation between OS calls.

People say that, but I wonder if that actually would be the case. There might be some devil in the details.

[dragorth]

IMHO, I need to see a list with at least 10 "must have" MacOS apps that are just so much much better than anything Linux has and aren't from Microsoft.... With that said, the project will likely be fun and challenging. But I'll probably yawn on releases.

Here is one list of things that have no equivalent on Linux.

Adobe Cloud. (Even though this constitutes more than 10 apps alone, I will count it as one.)
Allegorithmic Substance Designer/Painter/Alchemist
Xcode
3d Coat
Zbrush
Daz3d (Makehuman is in no way a replacement for this.)
Marvelous Designer
Quixel Suite/Mix
Terragen/World Machine
Visual Studio (for Mac)
Vue and Plantfactory/SpeedTree
QuartzCode
Scrivener
Clarrsse
iExplorer

Now, this doesn't mentiion Mac/iPhone only games (since iphone apps are coming to Mac) or things that are significantly better than on Linux.

[andre30correia]

waist of time but ok, the only app is itunes but without usb support who cares?

[cjcox]

IMHO, I need to see a list with at least 10 "must have" MacOS apps that are just so much much better than anything Linux has and aren't from Microsoft.... With that said, the project will likely be fun and challenging. But I'll probably yawn on releases.

[stingray454]

Thanks to Metal, I'm sure we're going to get even farther away from such a thing.

Not necessarily, as there are already MoltenVK for translating Vulkan to Metal. It should be quite possible to create a Metal to Vulkan wrapper in the future to support Metal applications.

[schmidtbag]

This could be huge, if it could do the same to users who need that one app that is only on MAC as Proton does to people who want to game. But we are a very long way from here, especially with video acceleration.

Thanks to Metal, I'm sure we're going to get even farther away from such a thing.

I can't find good reasons for this project to exist. What would people use it for? Adobe's shitty software and sketch? Would it be able to allow people to do iOS development (Xcode, the iOS simulator) without the need for a mac? I think Apple would crack down on this pretty hard, considering that they don't even allow running macOS VMs on non-Apple hardware.

So.... do you not know why Macs exist? Because I assure you, people don't buy Macs because of the hardware capabilities (not since the early 2000s anyway).

[lucrus]

Interesting project. I wish it could run Wine for macOS, then maybe Wine can support running WSL and you can sort of mount -o bind from WSL to native underlying Linux to gain some performance back...

[ssorgatem]

I can't find good reasons for this project to exist. What would people use it for? Adobe's shitty software and sketch? Would it be able to allow people to do iOS development (Xcode, the iOS simulator) without the need for a mac? I think Apple would crack down on this pretty hard, considering that they don't even allow running macOS VMs on non-Apple hardware.

Easier OSX/iOS development without a Mac, access to lots of Mac-only and Windows/Mac-only software (even some games!).
Even for the software that also has Windows versions that run on wine, through darling they may run better due to an easier translation between OS calls.
Maybe even some old games that only support D3D on Windows but use OpenGl on Mac.

I can't find good reasons for this project to exist. What would people use it for? Adobe's shitty software and sketch? Would it be able to allow people to do iOS development (Xcode, the iOS simulator) without the need for a mac? I think Apple would crack down on this pretty hard, considering that they don't even allow running macOS VMs on non-Apple hardware.

[dragorth]

Its a long way off but im interested in one day running Photoshop mac version on Linux and if it could run more stable and smoother than WINE.

Then there are other profesdional tools many will be interested in im sure.

IMO the biggest design benefit I wish WINE would copy from Darling is their OverlayFS to minimize duplicate files

While Photoshop would be nice, don't expext it to be easy. It was just about single handidly the reason HFS+ case sensitive FS didn't take off. Why? Because Adobe products just wouldn't install, let alone run when on such a file system. (Of course, by the time Darling is down, EXT4 folder level case insensitivity should have plenty of testing and time to mature.