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Why can't someone slap the XNU api onto Linux and create a runtime system that permits Apple's UX frameworks/libraries to be used by Linux developers (who will
by vaxman 7y ago
Why can't someone slap the XNU api onto Linux and create a runtime system that permits Apple's UX frameworks/libraries to be used by Linux developers (who will create more performant apps that do incredible things while maintaining the look-and-feel of the Macs that we once loved)? As long as we're booting Linux on machines bought at their local mall outlet or online store, I don't see the legal problem. Maybe a new generation of managers at Apple would even cooperate with such a Linux distribution (something like A/UX of yesteryear)?
- pmjordan 7y agoWhy can't someone slap the XNU api onto Linux Probably because importing Mach messaging and VM APIs into the Linux kernel, and recreating IOKit and similar from scratch is a pretty major undertaking; the APSL isn't GPL-compatible, so using the existing XNU code and trying to make it fit into the Linux kernel isn't something that could ever be upstreamed. Aside from the fact that Linux's device model doesn't exactly map to IOKit well. Then there are invariably plenty of assumptions that userland makes: launchd is probably assumed to have PID 1; all sorts of stuff like that. Plus of course, there's the question of whether this would be inline with the EULA of Apple's userland… There's always GNUStep if you want to write Cocoa apps in Objective-C on Linux. Somehow I have a feeling the APIs aren't what's been holding back Linux on the desktop.
- shakna 7y agoDarling is a translation layer that does something similar [0]. Development has gone up and down over the years. One of the main pain points is the way Apple adopts, and then discards, a new GUI API every few years. [0] https://www.darlinghq.org/ https://www.darlinghq.org/