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Cocoa-Way – Native macOS Wayland compositor for running Linux apps seamlessly
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoVery interesting, can this run something like android using waydroid within Orbstack too? It would then essentially run android on macos as well, I do feel like it should be possible.
- cyanmagenta 7mo agoForgive the naivety, but what graphical Linux apps are people trying to run that don’t have native MacOS builds? In my experience, Linux GUIs are generally written in Qt or GTK, both of which are multi-platform. I don’t doubt that they exist, I’m just struggling to think of a popular example.
- hrmtst93837 7mo ago[flagged]
- susupro1 7mo agoThis is exactly why most devs just surrender and ship an 800MB Electron bundle for any cross-platform tool. I finally got sick of that tradeoff. Ported a local video processing pipeline to Tauri v2 so it just uses the native macOS webview instead of fighting GTK or bundling Chromium. By hydrating heavy dependencies (like ffmpeg) via Rust at launch, the payload dropped to 30MB and idle RAM sits under 80MB. Leaning on the native OS renderer is the only way cross-platform doesn't feel like a bloated compromise.
- xlmnxp 7mo agoI want to use KDE Plasma instead of Mac OS ugly (in my opinion) interface
- vovavili 7mo agoThis is possibly the first time in human history this opinion has been stated.
- sersi 7mo agoI mean Apple hasn't done itself any favours with Macos Tahoe.
- drob518 7mo ago“Liquid Ass” as some people say.
- polshaw 7mo agoI don't want KDE but I would much prefer gnome to macos desktop, I think it's both prettier and more functional, and that's not a tahoe thing. I hate finder too, and don't see any way to properly use an alternative.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoTo be honest, I agree a little bit because I remember from my time at customizing KDE that everyone wanted it to make it look like Mac OS but it feels a bit of peer-pressure/cool-factor, people used to like how Mac OS look but after Tahoe, I feel like most people don't. To be honest, I am on mac right now but I really like Niri/Hyprland and to a degree KDE as well. I definitely feel like those were immensely more customizable and I miss that customizability, even if some people might use that customizability to make it look like MacOS default.
- layer8 7mo agoSimilar opinions are voiced in about every recent macOS UI thread, and even occasionally in Windows threads.
- hnlmorg 7mo agoIt really isn’t. There are a great many people who use macs for work but who do not like Apples design choices. And that number has skyrocketed even further since Liquid Glass was pushed onto people. In fact one of the front page articles today is literally calling macOS “ugly” in the title.
- boschetto 7mo agoI think there are many use cases for this software. For example, you may not want to run some graphical applications directly on your Mac for security, isolation or testing purposes. If this software turns out to be lower latency than RDP and CRD, I could also see it being very useful for accessing a remote graphical workstation (e.g.: running heavy software on an beefy machine in a data center instead of taking up resources on my skinny laptop).
- audunw 7mo agoPopular apps? Probably not many. But in the field of integrated circuit design there’s lots of apps that are Linux-only. I’ve tried to run some of them in containers on Mac. But XQuartz is awful. If they ever transitioned to Wayland perhaps this would let us run these apps on Mac in a nice way. On the other hand some of them have started getting ARM builds (for running simulations on certain cloud environments) so maybe native Mac GUI builds could happen someday soon.
- MBCook 7mo agoWhat about this plus XWayland? Would that do it?
- addaon 7mo ago> But XQuartz is awful. What issues are you seeing with it? I use it pretty heavily and have no complaints…
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- bitwize 7mo agoThe biggest issue I found is that X apps look like ass against the elegant Mac environment. Maybe that's mitigated somewhat by macOS 26's Android-ass looking UI, but the appearance/functionality clash between Mac and generic Unix was a major issue before.
- fouc 7mo agoI agree, I think the problem is the seamless integration, where it renders only the application against the macOS environment. I'd much prefer something more like the cocoa-way example where there's a window that has its own background, and the applications run inside that. Not sure if Xquartz supports running a compositor or windowing manager.
- bitwize 7mo ago
- OJFord 7mo agoIt's not necessarily something only available for Linux, but something that you want to containerise. (And then it's inherently running on Linux.)
- jon-wood 7mo agoThis is very interesting to me for two reasons: 1. I'd really like to run my development environment for things under Siri for its tiling window management but for better or worse I'm deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem for everything else, this looks like it could be a really nice way of doing it (possibly once multi monitor support is in). 2. There are still a few applications which have supported Linux builds but no support for macOS (Iridium's Niagara Workbench application for configuration of building management systems springs to mind here). Since Apple ended support for Quartz this has been a bit of a pain to deal with.
- ubercow13 7mo agoApart from just running Linux apps, you can use this to run graphical applications remotely on a Linux server, like X11 forwarding.
- pkaeding 7mo agoI thought Wayland was different from X11, and didn't allow this. But I'm far from an expert on this topic so I'd like to learn more.
- chrismorgan 7mo agohttps://github.com/neonkore/waypipe https://github.com/neonkore/waypipe proxies Wayland over a network. It’s straightforward enough in theory: Wayland core is just a communications protocol plus shared memory; so you just need to forward the messages, and detect and send changes in the shared memory. Not the cheapest thing, but perfectly tractable. Of course, there are also more difficult extensions, like GPU integration, but that sort of thing was a problem for X as well.
- TingPing 7mo agoThis is how modern x11 worked too since nobody uses software rendering with x primitives anyway.
- functional_dev 7mo agohere is Wayland vs X11 visualised.. it might help - https://vectree.io/c/compositing-window-management-architecture https://vectree.io/c/compositing-window-management-architect...
- amelius 7mo agoAccording to that page Wayland's architecture is simpler than X11.
- 7mo ago
- pajko 7mo agoPuTTY
- coldtea 7mo agoThat's a Windows app.
- okayokay123 7mo agoEmacs runs much faster and better on Linux VMs. And I have a VM for each client I work with.
- fny 7mo agoThat's not the use case. The use case is running apps from a remote Linux host as a local window. A performant VNC for specific windows if you will. For example, you could run VS Code on that machine as a window on your Mac. A more real world example is people accessing guis (e.g. matlab) on lab clusters. The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra.
- adastra22 7mo agoOr running applications within fully sandboxed VMs on the local machine, but with native-ish forwarded GUI. Great for dev.
- QuantumNomad_ 7mo ago> The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra. Older versions of macOS even had an X server distributed by Apple that you could install on your machine, and if memory serves right you were then easily able to forward X11 from a remote Linux host (or other operating systems running X11 applications) using ssh and have it render to your macOS desktop. From a quick google search there is apparently still an Apple supported third-party open source project called XQuartz one can use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuartz X11 forwarding with ssh and XQuartz looks to work the same way that I remember using the Apple distributed X server in the past. Install the X server and then use the -X flag of ssh. Same way that you forward X11 between two Linux computers, or Sun workstations or whatever with an X11 desktop, over ssh. https://docs.cse.lehigh.edu/xforwarding/xforwarding-mac/ https://docs.cse.lehigh.edu/xforwarding/xforwarding-mac/
- bigyabai 7mo agoNative GTK apps on macOS are often more broken than running it in a VM or Parallels, in my experience. I used to use Gitg on macOS and it was a terrible experience all around.
- addaon 7mo agoThere’s a bunch of old Fortran stuff I use regularly (AVL, XFoil), but that’s all X, not Wayland, and XQuartz has worked great for decades.
- LeFantome 7mo agoThe first thing I wondered about was running GUI apps in a Linux container.
- e40 7mo agoI run emacs on linix in X11 mode and display on my mac with Starnet’s FastX. Been doing this since the product was released, and was a customer of their X server before that.
- pxc 7mo agoI use Linux VMs on macOS mostly headless via OrbStack. If it was convenient to run an individual window from the GUI in a way that felt native and performed well, I might run Emacs and Firefox from Linux instead of on the macOS side. Then I could manage them more via NixOS mechanisms instead of the janky options available on macOS. Plus in the case of Emacs, filesystem performance is still way, way better on Linux for some common tools. Git and Magit just perform massively better.
- anArbitraryOne 7mo agoNow if we could switch MacOS to use Win/Linux keyboard commands, MacOS wouldn't be so insufferable
- p-e-w 7mo agoI mean, you can simply use Linux and save yourself all those hacks…
- anArbitraryOne 7mo agoAbsolutely. I went through great lengths to install Asahi on my work M1, only to have most things not work (RTFM). So when one is forced to use MacOS, may it round corners in hell, for work…
- ubercow13 7mo agoMaybe try this: https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/#pc_shortcuts https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/#pc_shortcuts
- IshKebab 7mo agoYeah I've used Karabiner to get windows-style shortcuts (home/end, etc.) and it works very well.
- drob518 7mo agoAside: the new, large radius Liquid Ass corners that make some parts of the window basically unusable are really annoying me.
- rick_dalton 7mo agoSuper key for most keybinds is much nicer than windows in my opinion, where it is entirely wasted on opening the start menu. On Linux it gains a few functions based on the desktop environment but not much.
- IshKebab 7mo agoNeat, but wouldn't it be better to have the windows as "seamless"? I.e. not contained within another window.
- WhyNotHugo 7mo agoA matter of taste: when I use wine on Linux I prefer to confine all window to a single "real" window. In truth: I suspect that your suggestions is more work to pull off properly.
- jbverschoor 7mo agoPerfect.. this will allow me to run GUI apps in a container. I did a similar thing with X11, but I didn't like so much. Bit by bit, Apple is loosing it's Desktop position. It all starts at the developers. At soon, every person will be a "developer".
- throwaway613746 7mo ago[dead]
- jbverschoor 7mo agoIn reply to then throwaway. Anything I want sandboxed or “grouped”. Work on a project -> open the relevant container. Similar to parallels window integration mode. It’s all from shortcomings to have a hierarchical view on your data and applications. Goal: isolation. Security-wise, and focus-wise
- kelnos 7mo ago> Bit by bit, Apple is loosing it's Desktop position. Apple never really had much of a desktop position to start with. And their desktop position has always been a higher share than Linux, so I don't really see how this changes much in that regard.
- jbverschoor 7mo agoTake away the desktop.. then why stay integrated in the rest of the ecosystem? Why pay for iCloud when it's not gonna work on all your devices? etc.
- fatata123 7mo ago[dead]
- tsuru 7mo agoWow. Would this allow a macos-based wayland-client to create an EGL surface?
- BirAdam 7mo agoNow, if only macOS still had the ability to drop to a Darwin shell without a GUI at all… we could just have a nice UNIX with something like KDE or COSMIC, brew as our package manager… what a dream.
- MarsIronPI 7mo agoBut why MacOS then? If you take away the interface what differentiates Darwin from FreeBSD or GNU?
- komali2 7mo agoPerformance on apple chipsets!
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- BirAdam 7mo agoThat it will actually run on Apple Silicon. TBH, I would love to install GNU or BSD on my M4 Max Mac Studio. What I really wanted is a modern UNIX workstation. My Studio’s price/performance was the best available, so that’s what I bought. Now, I am happy with that purchase except for the constant diminution in software quality from Apple.
- esseph 7mo agoIf I could buy modern apple hardware and run the Linux of my choice, I probably would. I have 0 interest in the apple ecosystem.
- MarsIronPI 7mo agoI wish I could get an Apple SoC in a 2013 Thinkpad chassis.
- krackers 7mo agoOn intel macs there used to be single user mode, but even then I don't think you ever had control over the framebuffer.
- pugchat 7mo ago[dead]
- kogasa240p 7mo agoWonder if this will bring at least a tiny amount of interest to GNUstep.
- skrrtww 7mo agoThis looks like slop? The README is full of emojis and kind of incoherent, there are no implementation details, there claims to be a Metal backend that doesn't seem to exist, etc. The dependency list is also...something: https://github.com/J-x-Z/cocoa-way/tree/main/vendor https://github.com/J-x-Z/cocoa-way/tree/main/vendor
- jhatemyjob 7mo agoThis is definitely not worth using. It doesn't even say what hypervisor its using. Is it using QEMU? Docker? Podman? Lima? Colima? And also this chart is super weird: Solution Latency HiDPI Native Integration Setup Complexity Cocoa-Way Low Yes Native windows Easy XQuartz High Partial X11 quirks Medium VNC High No Full screen Medium VM GUI High Partial Separate window Complex A standard VM will always be the easiest to set up by far. And latency should be the same across all 4. I mean after all it's a VM running on your local machine. Honestly I don't even know what it means when it says "Latency". I also looked at some of the code and it's using OpenGL 3.3 Core which is... super old. But it makes sense in the context of this being LLM-generated since most of its training data is probably OpenGL 3.3 Core code.... Overall this project is very strange. It makes me feel more confident in my skills, AI isn't all that great. It's all hype. You can get to the frontpage of HN. And if you're Peter Steinberger you can get acquired by OpenAI for a billion dollars. But that's about it. The code isn't getting any better. This reminds me of that C-compiler-in-Rust publicity stunt by Anthropic. There's no substance. It's just a headline.
- lights0123 7mo agoWhile I agree with the rest of your comment, they do mention they use OrbStack as their hypervisor in their demo video.
- jhatemyjob 7mo agoGotcha thanks for that info. Yeah that's insane. You have to read the description of a YouTube video to understand what a project on Github is doing. There is no architecture here.
- jFriedensreich 7mo agoI need something like this for android, termux-x11 is a good start but if termux gets wayland support or there is a way to expose wayland sockets from the android native linux VM, the only thing missing is a native rendering compositor for a smoother experience
- lzhgusapp 7mo ago[dead]
- LoganDark 7mo agoServer-side decorations "with shadows and focus indicators" -- is it not using macOS's native window chrome? Pass... Add OpenGL instead of Metal, and hard pass.
- jeremie_strand 7mo ago[dead]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]