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Yeah, it probably would be feasible to dust off the FreeBSD Linux compatibility layer[1] and turn that into native support for Linux apps on Mac. I think Apple
by fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
Yeah, it probably would be feasible to dust off the FreeBSD Linux compatibility layer[1] and turn that into native support for Linux apps on Mac.
I think Apple’s main hesitation would be that the Linux userland is all GPL.
[1]: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/ https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/
- leoh 1y agoIf they built as a kernel extension it would probably be okay with gpl. There’s a huge opportunity for Apple to make kernel development for xnu way better. Tooling right now is a disaster — very difficult to build a kernel and test it (eg in UTM, etc.). If they made this better and took more of an OSS openness posture like Microsoft, a lot of incredible things could be built for macOS. I’ll bet a lot of folks would even port massive parts of the kernel to rust for them for free.
- fiddlerwoaroof 1y agoMy impression is they’re basically trying to end third party kernel development; macOS has been making it progressively more difficult to use kexts and has been providing alternate toolkits for doing things that used to require drivers.