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SheepShaver: macOS run-time environment for BeOS and Linux
- benkan 4y agoBeOS! Good memories. I tried out BeOS maybe 20 years ago until it was dropped. Is it still maintained?
- lillywastaken 4y agoHaiku is an open source BeOS clone that is still developed, but the original isn’t
- benkan 4y agoThank you!
- christkv 4y agoYou can use haiku os it’s the open source beos and even runs the binaries
- memsom 4y agoBut this requires a PowerPC processor under BeOS so you can’t use this with Haiku at the moment. The Linux version looks like it emulates the CPU so it can probably be made to work I guess?
- RuggedPineapple 4y ago>But this requires a PowerPC processor under BeOS so you can’t use this with Haiku at the moment. Bold of you to assume a forum full of tech enthusiasts don't have PPC machines sitting around.
- speed_spread 4y agoWill BeOS PPC run on a POWER workstation like the Talos Raptor? That would be a hell of a combo...
- RuggedPineapple 4y agoNear as I can tell the POWER9 chips (at least the IBM ones) only have backwards compatibility through POWER7 from 2010. The last PPC chip Apple used, the G5, implemented the POWER4 ISA, so that's pretty far back.
- rbanffy 4y agoHaiku should be portable to it, but that's a lot of computer for an OS that is not daily-driver grade.
- memsom 4y agoHaiku will never support legacy BeOS PowerPC apps though, as that makes no sense. PEF is hard to support even today.
- rbanffy 4y agoIt’s a shame, but it’d probably be easier in a VM.
- memsom 4y agoThere is also currently no way to even virtualize BeOS for PowerPC. I wish there was. The closest I have seen is a MESS that could boot and show the boot splash screen (this is a 3d Be logo on PowerPC, the one you see on Intel was only ever on Intel.) The dingusppc have BeOS as a possible target for their Mac emulation, but it is not there yet. I'm pretty sure QEMU can't boot BeOS because BeOS requires an old world ROM and it requires a PCI Mac with a 603 or 604 processor - so a 4400, 7300, 8500/8600, 9500/9600 and a few others (including clones) work - but nothing NUBUS and nothing post the first motherboard revision of the 8600/9600. The later x600's have a different motherboard and do not work. Nothing that shipped with a G3 and nothing with new world ROM.
- lproven 4y agoYou might enjoy this piece I wrote at the start of the year. https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/haiku_beta_4/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/haiku_beta_4/
- lillywastaken 4y agoIt’s probably worth mentioning that you can also use QEMU, which is a bit more involved but can use a bigger disk and also run OS X, and Mac OS 9.2.2 (as it supports an MMU, SheepShaver doesn’t)
- memsom 4y agoYou can, but not under BeOS. Under BeOS Mac OS is run almost like Classic was on MacOS X. The OS is more or less virtualised as a user space app, and the CPU is not emulated in any way. That’s the main reason that BeOS only supports PowerPC. Indeed, if you run it on a Mac under BeOS it doesn’t even need a toolbox ROM
- buserror 4y agoUnfortunately qemu isn't as 'integrated' as Sheepshaver -- theres the mouse grab problem, also no disk sharing with the host (the read[/write] fat32 disk don't seem to work, at least under 9.2.2) I had a a project for #marchintosh of making myself a nice powerPC emulation stack to recompile and open source quite a few free/shareware I did back then, but I more or less gave up as I couldn't find something 'comfortable' to work in. I guess I'll have to find, dust up and try to hook that old G4 Mac Mini that I'm sure is in a drawer, somewhere :-)
- kps 4y agoIs QEMU the best option to run older OS X (in particular Snow Leopard, and yes, a legal retail purchased physical copy) on a modern machine? I currently keep a rather bulky cheese grater to run a few programs from time to time.
- sharikous 4y agoThat's the option with the least headache. I believe there are other simulators too but they are much more specialized. With some hacking you can run all MacOS/MacOS X versions on x86, x64 and PPC from 8.6 to 13 if you have a x64 machine. If you have an Apple Silicon one it gets too slow to simulate around 10.10 (on x64 you can use hvf virtualization). It might be a bit less nice than tailored emulators like SheepShaver but having the same UI for all these OSes (plus other OSes) beats everything in my opinion. Unfortunately Apple Silicon machines cannot be simulated without some hidden knowledge only some secretive companies have. Hopefully the knowledge will become public some years from now.
- snvzz 4y agoGreat it's open source software in the form of a git repo now. But for some reason, using the same repository for 3 independent projects horrifies me. The commits are unavoidably going to be all over the place, and tracking one project's changes hard.
- exitb 4y agoThe use of "macOS" capitalization somehow makes it appear as if it's about the current Apple OS, when in fact this is about classic MacOS.
- doomlaser 4y agoMac OS, to be pendantic about styling :)
- lproven 4y agoNope. No space. MacOS == System 1 to MacOS 9. Mac OS == OS X == 10.0 to 10.12. macOS == 10.13 to 13.
- CharlesW 4y ago> MacOS == System 1 to MacOS 9. I can't speak to previous releases, but Mac OS 9 definitely used a space. (Before looking it up I would've bet on "no space" too, BTW.) https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/docs/install/images/about.gif https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/docs/install/images/about.gif
- atdrummond 4y agoI believe the space was added when they formally renamed the operating system Mac OS in 1996 (with System 7, specifically 7.6).
- chongli 4y agoSystem 7.5.1 and later used the name Mac OS in its boot screen [1] but the boxes still said “Macintosh System 7.5” [2] up until the release of 7.6. [1] https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/12/69888558_ee83d000f9.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/12/69888558_ee83d000f9.jpg [2] https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?image_uri=https:%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fengadget-public-production%2Fproduct%2F30%2Fnfi%2Fmac-os-75-2ifd.jpg&thumbnail=640%2C&client=49kdj93ncb8s938hkdo&signature=9efe9412a9f6da85bc1619b901544341598fea3b https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?image_uri=https:%2F%2Fs3.am...
- abujazar 4y agoThis repo is more up to date - https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu Currently recommended builds for macOS: https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7360 https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7360
- DeathArrow 4y agoThe reference to BeOS brings me good memories. It was a time then the world of desktop operating Systems was much bigger than today. BeOS, Syllable, SkyOS, Atheos, ReactOS, QNX etc. At its time I liked BeOS phylosophy more than that of Linux and Windows, it's a shame it didn't take off.
- ofalkaed 4y agoWe have Haiku which is getting quite good and Amiga is still in production, their new computer that is currently in beta testing looks pretty good, they would possibly get me to part with the money if they released a laptop.
- VyseofArcadia 4y agoI installed Haiku on an old netbook recently. It ran like a dream, except for kernel panicking every 5 minutes.
- waddlesplash 4y agoThat's not normal behavior (these days, anyway!) A lot of users are able to go months without kernel panics, especially on certain kinds of older hardware. Did you report any of these panics?
- rebolek 4y agoI installed Haiku on an old Eee and yes it runs like dream and I haven't experienced single kernel panic yet. I'm thinking about installing it on something "bigger" than Eee as I was really surprised how usable and nice the OS is.
- tialaramex 4y ago> Amiga is still in production, their new computer that is currently in beta testing looks pretty good The Amiga "Tabor" or "A1222" is a very, very silly machine. Because they insist on PowerPC even though that's basically a long dead architecture, the best available CPU for it was the QorIQ P1022 a SOC designed to be inside say a mid-range Ethernet switch a decade ago. In the event they actually ship a product in some sort of volume (say, dozens) before NXP discontinue the processors altogether this would be far worse than a PC or Mac you could have bought in 2015 when it was conceived, and yet also far more expensive, very silly.
- pflanze 4y agoThere's also Mac-on-Linux (MOL), which I've been using from ~1999 to run the original OS under Linux on my Mac hardware until I dropped Mac OS completely a few years later. It does require a PPC host. I remember back then MOL was preferable to SheepShaver, but I don't remember why anymore. [1] https://www.maconlinux.net/ https://www.maconlinux.net/
- goosedragons 4y agoFun fact! You can use Mac on Linux to run Mac OS on your Nintendo Wii.
- rvense 4y agoHow well does that work? I (not a gamer) only recently learned of the Wii U and thought it would be great for that exact thing.
- goosedragons 4y agoDoesn't seem perfect but this is also an original Wii and not the Wii U: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhDQicLvHNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhDQicLvHNQ I'm not sure if MOL will work on the newer kernel used by Wii U linux though.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> I remember back then MOL was preferable to SheepShaver, but I don't remember why anymore. Speculation: Running on native hardware probably give you better performance, and probably meant that you didn't have to provide a ROM file because it could just read the chip that's actually installed in the machine.
- memsom 4y agoSheepshaver runs natively on supported Macs under BeOS and you likewise don’t need a ROM file as it uses the one built in to your Mac. The real reason is probably it doesn’t support MacOS past 8.5 really. Not well.
- TheChaplain 4y agoLook like a dead project by now, Mr. Bauer haven't been active on GitHub for years. :(
- Waterluvian 4y agoI used Sheepshaver to emulate system non-PowerPC games + System 7.5.3 when making Mac game nostalgia videos on my YouTube many years back. I found it to be far more performant than Basilisk for anything that wanted to run with Quickdraw. It also seemed to have less clipping audio. I should see how it runs all these years later on a Linux box.
- WillAdams 4y agoRather a shame that Executor got lost in the shuffle: https://github.com/ctm/executor https://github.com/ctm/executor and didn't stick around until Rosetta and so forth went away and it became potentially more useful.
- mmphosis 4y agoThere is no ppc970 emulator that I know of that can run Mac OS X 10.5 with "Quad Core" PowerPC (64-bit) 16 GB RAM specs. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/index-powermac-g5.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/index-powerma... qemu-system-ppc (2019) can run Mac OS X 10.5 PowerPC https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/PowerPC https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/PowerPC pearpc (2015) can run Mac OS X 10.3 PowerPC with caveats https://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ https://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ SheepShaver can run Mac OS 9.0.4 PowerPC Basilisk II can run Mac OS 8.1 68k
- rbanffy 4y agoInstead of emulation like this (which is really cool, BTW), I'd love to see something like GNUStep or Etoile growing into a full implementation of all macOS APIs so that I could just build a native Mac application against it and have it run on Linux.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoI think that it's often underestimated just how much of what made/makes OS X/macOS good is actually in AppKit and the various other frameworks it's used with. Parts of it are a little aged compared to something that's received more attention in the past decade (like UIKit), but it still does a LOT of heavy lifting and makes developing a polished, capable desktop app much less of a headache. In writing apps with other desktop UI frameworks, it's become evident just how much AppKit does well that many frameworks barely do or don't offer at all. Sometimes it's even really basic things, like how WinUI somehow has no first-party tableview despite that being one of the most fundamental desktop widgets. Cross-platform AppKit would be a dream setup.
- rbanffy 4y agoIndeed. It’d need to be extended to cover the various other subsystems and probably offer a less idiosyncratic look and feel. Not that I dislike the NeXT visuals - I’d totally have a NeXT as my daily driver (with X, of course), but it became dated the moment Windows 95 copied it. In any case, anything that can be documented can be implemented in a clean room.
- kstrauser 4y agoSheepShaver was the successor to the Amiga's ShapeShifter Mac emulator (also written by Christian Bauer). I had fun running Mac OS and games on my Amiga. It also had the interesting property that my Amiga had a 68060 processor, which no Mac had, meaning that it was faster at running 68k apps than any official hardware was.
- sli 4y ago> for BeOS and Linux And also for OS X, Windows, and BSD.