6 ms·

RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source

240 points by Bluestein 2mo ago

gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
[flagged]
- Bluestein 2mo ago
  ... or flowers for the grave? :)
  - Bluestein 2mo ago
    PS: The FAQ speaks to this somewhat: "This is a huge effort. Y'all must be crazy! Yes. Here's to the crazy ones... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do. In all seriousness, though, it's not my first rodeo. I have no illusions about the scale of building an OS or how long projects like Haiku, ReactOS or GNUStep took to get usable. This is just something I like doing in my Copious Spare Time™ and that I hope will be useful someday. I've always liked Apple's design and elegance, but am not thrilled with the direction of recent macOS® or how closed the hardware has become. And I'm a big believer in open source. So ... let's build something that feels as elegant, without all the lock-in, and maybe (just maybe) I can get it to a point that reasonably useful Mac apps build & run on it. And if not, we'll build a lot of cool pieces along the way and learn a ton. I'm OK with that."
- efficax 2mo ago
  I dunno you could definitely do a "wine but for macos" kind of implementation, e.g., https://www.darlinghq.org/ https://www.darlinghq.org/ without breaking IP laws
- reactordev 2mo ago
  why do anything? why Linux? why FreeBSD? why Mac at all? Why build your own wind turbine when corporations make large ones? Why build a cyclekart when you own a car? Why workout when everyone's going to die? With that mindset, everything is useless and nothing has a point. Have I made my point?
  - Bluestein 2mo ago
    > Why workout when everyone's going to die? I regret to actually say this, and mean no controversy - but, I have been actually asking myself just that - and, not in the "workout or not" sense, alone. In the "does anything have a point", way. Apologies.- PS. To indeed contribute something: I am a big fan of the "doing things because of the joy of doing things" itself theory of it all, which is, seemingly, an antidote.-
    - BirAdam 2mo ago
      In general, things have meaning because people assign meanings to them. Nothing inherently has meaning as meaning exists only within the human mind/soul. If you are searching for meaning, you will find nothing.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
- baron3dl 2mo ago
  I've always been shocked by the lengths of time people will commit to proving wrong the folks who tell them "you can't do that."
- seabrookmx 2mo ago
  > when you could run Darwin That's what this is. Darwin isn't installable today. Apple just dumps a bunch of source code. Previous attempts at making Darwin bootable didn't go far and had no GUI.
  - gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
    Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it. There's also PureDarwin (?) which had been around forever but last I recall the lone developer was seriously ill and the project was not receiving help. I don't see how this would be any different. To everyone here cheering this on: when will you be contributing? Or are you just waiting to download it, run it once for the lulz, and drag it to the Trash?
    - jdiff 2mo ago
      > Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it. Who jammed a toe in your cheerios?
      - gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
        What will you personally be contributing to the project to help move things along? Besides accolades on HN of course. I'm being real here and frankly blind, empty support of open-source projects does zero to support them.
        jdiff 2mo ago
        I'm actually the head lead developer in chief president. Now, your cheerios?
        cxr 2mo ago
        (For those not catching on that the claim was written in jest, the person commenting here is not the creator of this project nor have they committed any code.)
        deleted 2mo ago
- cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
  Perhaps the biggest reason is that the existing FOSS OS world has little to offer for people who like a Mac-style desktop. It's possible to customize DEs to have a very shallow visual resemblance but the details are all wrong, with Windows, legacy Linux desktops, and even mobile operating systems (in e.g. the case of GNOME) exerting the greater bulk of design influence. The question might then, "why not make this a DE instead?" to which the answer is that Mac users also like how the underpinnings of the OS work (or have worked in older releases) and would like to continue to use their favorite Mac apps, which isn't going to happen as long as any traditional Linux distribution is involved. Mac apps also have a design ethos that's rare among current native Linux apps, which drives demand for alternatives. To do this properly it really needs to be a whole-OS endeavor.
  - gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
    Didn't the Best Koreans rip off the Mac GUI in their home-grown spyware-laden Linux distro? Red Star Linux or whatever it's called. I wonder if they have a GitHub...
    - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
      I haven't downloaded or played with it because I'd rather not toy with software so obviously full of landmines, but from what I've seen it also falls into the "surface level" bucket. It goes a little further than one might get by e.g. enabling KDE's global menubar and installing one of the Mac-themed Breeze forks, but not much.
  - jppittma 2mo ago
    EndeavorOS. I think it's actually the userspace though, which this aims to emulate. The problem is that if you're using a macbook for final cut pro, then endeavorOS doesn't solve your problem.
    - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
      Hmm, isn't EndeavorOS in the same vein as CachyOS? Mainly a pre-configured Arch variant with a custom point-and-click configurator built in? I don't see where it'd be of particular interest to would-be switchers using macOS.
- tomhow 2mo ago
  Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
travisgriggs 2mo ago
Everyone gets to name their projects for their own reasons. If the pitch is basically an “alternate apple” macOS, I would have chosen one of the other other (alternate) apple varieties as the root of my OS. Missed opportunity I guess.
- laxd 2mo ago
  Real apple-people would'nt consider this anyways. Open source geeks is were they can get traction. Seems like there is plenty of us that would like fbsd quality and vertical integration to the desktop level. There is effort but no breakthroughs.
  - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
    The more technical side of the Mac user base would probably jump ship if a polished, open macOS analogue appeared. There's been a lot of discontent with changes dating as far back as 10.7 Lion, and has been gradually mounting more rapidly since 10.10 Yosemite and accelerating greatly with 13 Ventura through 26 Tahoe. There's substantial demand for a spiritual successor to OS X 10.4/10.6/10.9 that isn't being filled.
    - TheAmazingRace 2mo ago
      Tell me about it. Those OS X versions you mentioned for Tiger, Snow Leopard, and Mavericks were some of the best releases of OS X ever. Thankfully, macOS Golden Gate is proving to be a decent release so far in my tests of the public betas, but I do yearn for the simplicity (and more power user friendly aspects) of the aforementioned OS X releases.
    - linguae 2mo ago
      I agree. I would switch to an open source spiritual successor to even Tiger in a heartbeat if it were available. The difficult part is replicating the ecosystem of applications. From a technological standpoint I would prefer a modern Linux distribution with KDE or Cinnamon over using 2005-era Mac OS X Tiger, though I’d gladly use a version of Tiger that was retrofitted with a modern Darwin core, modern libraries for security purposes, and an up-to-date web browser. However, Linux does not have Microsoft Office, the Adobe Creative Suite, Preview.app, Keynote, Dictionary.app, and other pleasant Mac apps. The FOSS alternatives are not as polished. Even venerable Office 2008 for Mac feels nicer than LibreOffice, and it’s compatible with the XML-based Office formats. I guess for now I could run Tiger in an emulator, though admittedly current operating systems serve my needs, even if I prefer the polish of Tiger and Snow Leopard. I get really good performance running PowerPC Tiger inside QEMU on my base M4 Mac Mini and on my Ryzen 9 3900 desktop, definitely not as snappy as running Tiger on actual contemporary PowerPC hardware, but fast enough to actually be productive.
mixdup 2mo ago
>but we're not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem What has changed about Apple's ecosystem vis a vis openness, hardware, or the 'ecosystem'? The macOS ecosystem is pretty much the same as it has been since 1997
- reactordev 2mo ago
  a lot of the kernel extensions are closed source proprietary. The core is still open but a lot of what makes modern Mac, Mac, are those kexts.
  - mixdup 2mo ago
    how has that changed over the past 20 years? the proprietary parts of Mac OS X and now macOS have been proprietary from the beginning
    - radicaldreamer 2mo ago
      There used to be a bootable Darwin instance that Apple published, which on paper would've made things a bit easier, but they stopped publishing it a while ago. It never resulted in any serious OS with a UI however.
      - ndiddy 2mo ago
        There was a community around Darwin for a while, and people released Darwin distros that ran X11 and a variety of ported Unix software. You’re right that it never really amounted to anything serious though. Within Apple, open sourcing Darwin seems to mainly have been a marketing ploy to get Unix/Linux people interested in Mac OS X by tying it to the hype around the open source movement. There’s a good article with more information here: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
        mixdup 2mo ago
        The premise of that article is way off base. Darwin didn't fail, because the point wasn't to create a robust open source operating system along the lines of Linux. Apple got everything they needed from the OSS community while providing no more than they were required to. Apple got a bunch of tools, utilities, shells, etc as well as a view that this was a Real UNIX Operating System (TM) (they even got it certified) and that inarguably sold millions of machines Their goal was never to build a community around Darwin or get a bunch of people outside the company using Darwin sans Mac OS X's proprietary bits, or to get a bunch of people outside the company contributing to Darwin
soupbowl 2mo ago
Good luck! There are many attempts at doing something similar. We can't really see anything to judge it by, yet.
masijo 2mo ago
Would be nice to have a screenshot in the overview page
dang 2mo ago
Related. Others? New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212 - Nov 2025 (165 comments) RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485596 - Dec 2023 (176 comments) RavynOS – Finesse of macOS, freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514 - Aug 2022 (366 comments)
pmkary 2mo ago
I think any desktop operating systems has to present itself with at least a single screenshot. Why not one in the entire page?
- pmkary 2mo ago
  And now that I have walked over the whole website: Why not a single screenshot anywhere?
  - WesolyKubeczek 2mo ago
    I wager that maybe, probably, possibly, perhaps the GUI of this thing looks like ass and feels even worse. There used to be screenshots, you can google them. But maybe don’t.
    - Bluestein 2mo ago
      And, perhaps (?), that ties in with the GUI being the most proprietary thing here, thus, them building that last/less or wanting to de-emphasize it?
      - cxr 2mo ago
        Aristo already exists and looks great: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=aristo%20cxr&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=aristo%20cxr&sor...>
        ripdog 2mo ago
        The real link: https://www.cappuccino.dev/aristo/ https://www.cappuccino.dev/aristo/ Looks great, so sad that it's yet another web framework. Kinda smacks of GNOME, though.
        kentosi 2mo ago
        Oh wow I remember trying cuppaccino about .... 15 years ago maybe? Fun times, though I never built anything serious.
mcdow 2mo ago
from the faq: > Is this... legally sketchy? No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects. as far as i understand it, most companies don’t bother sending cease and desists to projects you’ve never heard of. the fact that the aforementioned projects have avoided the banhammer of Apple should not be an indication that a successful MacOS clone would receive the same treatment. but on the other hand, maybe that’s a champagne problem. if you can make a macos clone good enough to get the attention of Apple, you’ve already done something incredible.
- jppittma 2mo ago
  I think the better example is actually GNU, which endured several challenges as a clean room implementation of unix. I think this is legally sound, but IANAL.
- IsTom 2mo ago
  I think the core of this is google vs oracle case. I think they'll be in the clear unless they hit some specific (design?) patents.
- hnlmorg 2mo ago
  Microsoft definitely know about ReactOS.
  - mcdow 2mo ago
    not saying $TECHCO doesn’t know about X project. i’m just saying that if the average person doesn’t know about it, it’s unlikely to get shut down, as it poses no threat.
    - hnlmorg 2mo ago
      Maybe. But Microsoft get the bulk of their licensing from enterprise offerings. And Windows comes preinstalled on consumer machines anyway. So I don’t think there’s any risk of ReactOS becoming a problem for MS. And with Apple, they’ve always approached the market as a hardware company first and foremost. Which is why macOS has always been free vs Windows which, until recently, was not. Platforms like Linux was always a greater threat to both companies because Linux takes potential customers away from Microsoft and Apples ecosystems in ways that FOSS reimplementations do not. But that all said, companies of that scale are inherently greedy and paranoid. So I wouldn’t be surprised to them burying those projects under a mountain of frivolous legal demands if those projects were to become as widely known as Linux.
tcdent 2mo ago
> Developers can port existing Cocoa applications with minimal changes. I wonder how big the actual gap between close to Cocoa App compatibility and full app compatibility is? Being able to run MacOS apps natively would unlock a huge barrier to adoption here.
- steve1977 2mo ago
  First, this will at best be source compatible. And if it ever reaches a usable state, I assume it will far behind Apple's current systems.
01096173741 2mo ago
[flagged]
Select2 2mo ago
[dead]
ivanjermakov 2mo ago
Imagine the world where open-source is collaborating instead of fragmenting. Single Linux distribution, single compartibility layer for other OSes, single graphics API, single package manager...
- pythonaut_16 2mo ago
  Imagine a world where there's no innovation because everyone just accepts the current standard instead of trying something weird.
  - Bluestein 2mo ago
    Obligatory: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVDzuT0fXro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVDzuT0fXro
- nobleach 2mo ago
  I mean, yes, that might get more folks working on a single project - which _might_ lead to shipping more quickly (might - more devs doesn't always equal speed). But I think what we'd end up with is Gnome; something that works fairly well, yet the committee won't allow simple things that the community wants. So we have the whole, "fine, I'll fork this project and add it myself" followed by, "why don't you spend your time HELPING the project instead of creating your own". It sounds a bit like a doom-loop. I'm kinda on the opposite end of the spectrum. I love this world where 45 people try to race toward the same goal. Sometimes the best ideas win. Sometimes the fastest to the first goal wins. Sometimes everyone gives up. Sometimes we have competing standards we have to sift through. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess.
- theandrewbailey 2mo ago
  If we had that, many people would yearn for a cambrian explosion of diverse software running in unique niches trying out different ideas.
- Brian_K_White 2mo ago
  That world is terrible. Thank deity no one has the power to actually inflict and enforce their particular bankrupt oppressive idea of the one true world on everyone else. Variety and change is basically the definition of life itself. Uniformity and stasis are pretty good definitions of death. Kooky offshoots and dead-ends are not waste, they are the very definition of life. Imagine a world without life? Sure, absoulutely do imagine that, so that you can understand how and why you would never want that and should never suggest it, and know exactly how to respond to anyone who comes along and tries to float this genius idea of efficiency.
CodeCompost 2mo ago
Another one? What happened to the other one that was called ... (quick Google) ... Hello System?
jamesforestwest 2mo ago
You're using open-source Apple code (Darwin) and aiming for Cocoa API compatibility. How are you handling the legal side? Apple's APIs and frameworks are proprietary. Are you reimplementing them from scratch, or using something like GNUstep?
- steve1977 2mo ago
  Looking (briefly) at the source code, it looks like they are at least partially using source code from Cocotron https://cocotron.org/ https://cocotron.org/
mrweasel 2mo ago
Maybe someone more familiar with operating systems kernels can answer this: Is Darwin really all the exiting? It is different from both the BSD kernels and Linux, but less so than Windows. Other than the ability to run macOS applications (assuming you can clone the libraries and APIs from macOS) is there some benefit of Darwin that I'm not seeing?
- jabedude 2mo ago
  I don't think it's all that exciting. The hybrid BSD/mach personalities is somewhat interesting, as are some of the available mach machineries. It's been a stable foundation for several of the most successful operating systems in history though
- __d 2mo ago
  XNU has some interesting features. It’s Mach based, so it has Mach ports, which are an IPC system that is fairly heavily used by macOS. It has DriverKit, which is a C++ framework for drivers that’s got morecsuppirt than the usual Unix driver model. Mach-O does more than ELF, and enables the two-layer namespacing that makes macOS able to manage dynamic linking dependencies better than ELF. Nothing really earth-shattering but interesting enough. And far easier to build a macOS environment on than FreeBSD.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
    > Mach-O does more than ELF, and enables the two-layer namespacing that makes macOS able to manage dynamic linking dependencies better than ELF. I've always admired that mach-o supports fat binaries.
    - mike_hearn 2mo ago
      It's more that Darwin does. A fat binary is just two independent Mach-O binaries concatenated with a small header.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
j45 2mo ago
It will be interesting to see how much further (or not) some open source projects like this can get using meaningful AI driven development.
itsrobreally 2mo ago
I'm sort of surprised that development is still on X86 instead of moving over to ARM, it looks like the only builds for ARM are for raspberry pi - I know about Asahi but I would have thought that these darwin-based projects would have a leg up on booting even the latest hardware, is Apple not updating darwin anymore?
- jeandrek 2mo ago
  Here's macOS 26.5's XNU: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/tree/ac9718fb1af618d5ce8678d0dc6e8a58f252216f https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/tree/ac9718fb... Could just be what the devs have available, if they're really already going to the trouble to target RPi?
- junon 2mo ago
  Kernel dev here (my own project): ARM is great. Love it. There are tons of chips that all do things differently, much more so than x86. Plus the booting mechanisms are a PITA to figure out, debugging is tricky, etc - and that's a single target. x86 isn't particularly elegant given its years of cruft and questionable design decisions but at least it's quasi-consistent (yes, lots of "well actually" possible; I'm speaking broadly). The ISA on ARM is better, IMO, than x86 but the surrounding ecosystem is hellishly fragmented. Just my $0.02. makes it difficult for OSdevers to find an 'in' to a wider ARM audience. rpi is a great entry point.
  - itsrobreally 2mo ago
    Right, I probably should have said "Apple Silicon" specifically. The m1 launched in 2020, the last intel mac was released in 2023.
latexr 2mo ago
At the top of Project Goals is “Clean Design”. It would be nice to have screenshots. The wiki is impossible to read on mobile, due to the sidebar.
amatecha 2mo ago
Why using Discord for comms? Is there anyone who hasn't hit the max 100 "servers" years ago? I've been [lightly] using Discord since 2015 - I'm at the point where I just simply won't even consider trying to narrow down which "server" I can leave so as to join a new one, unless it's something pretty important to make it worth that time sink.
jeandrek 2mo ago
Seems at least one of the same developers works on both PureDarwin and ravynOS: https://www.puredarwin.org/news/The-Road-to-20-5-0.html https://www.puredarwin.org/news/The-Road-to-20-5-0.html (This is the first time I've heard of the latter.)
- fithisux 2mo ago
  Good. Unfortunately Hackintosh people never put weight behind Pure Darwin. A missed opportunity.
- steve1977 2mo ago
  The text gives the impression that PureDarwin has been Clauded
nign 2mo ago
So many people in these comments talking about this project like it's pitching itself as a ready to go replacement for MacOS... why are you expecting screenshots, this is a tiny project of ambitious scale that is only 5 years old. What they have achieved is brilliant.
FoundARetard 2mo ago
[flagged]
Almondsetat 2mo ago
I swear I see this exact kind of project every year under a new name
- UncleSlacky 2mo ago
  It's based on helloSystem (at least the GUI is), which you may remember from a few years ago? https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/
mrobot 2mo ago
a prealpha for a 2021 project i might run far away from this and start my own which i also dont release

240 points by Bluestein 2mo ago

gnuplustoejam 2mo ago

[flagged]

Bluestein 2mo ago
... or flowers for the grave? :)
- Bluestein 2mo ago
  PS: The FAQ speaks to this somewhat: "This is a huge effort. Y'all must be crazy! Yes. Here's to the crazy ones... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do. In all seriousness, though, it's not my first rodeo. I have no illusions about the scale of building an OS or how long projects like Haiku, ReactOS or GNUStep took to get usable. This is just something I like doing in my Copious Spare Time™ and that I hope will be useful someday. I've always liked Apple's design and elegance, but am not thrilled with the direction of recent macOS® or how closed the hardware has become. And I'm a big believer in open source. So ... let's build something that feels as elegant, without all the lock-in, and maybe (just maybe) I can get it to a point that reasonably useful Mac apps build & run on it. And if not, we'll build a lot of cool pieces along the way and learn a ton. I'm OK with that."
efficax 2mo ago
I dunno you could definitely do a "wine but for macos" kind of implementation, e.g., https://www.darlinghq.org/ https://www.darlinghq.org/ without breaking IP laws
reactordev 2mo ago
why do anything? why Linux? why FreeBSD? why Mac at all? Why build your own wind turbine when corporations make large ones? Why build a cyclekart when you own a car? Why workout when everyone's going to die? With that mindset, everything is useless and nothing has a point. Have I made my point?
- Bluestein 2mo ago
  > Why workout when everyone's going to die? I regret to actually say this, and mean no controversy - but, I have been actually asking myself just that - and, not in the "workout or not" sense, alone. In the "does anything have a point", way. Apologies.- PS. To indeed contribute something: I am a big fan of the "doing things because of the joy of doing things" itself theory of it all, which is, seemingly, an antidote.-
  - BirAdam 2mo ago
    In general, things have meaning because people assign meanings to them. Nothing inherently has meaning as meaning exists only within the human mind/soul. If you are searching for meaning, you will find nothing.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
baron3dl 2mo ago
I've always been shocked by the lengths of time people will commit to proving wrong the folks who tell them "you can't do that."
seabrookmx 2mo ago
> when you could run Darwin That's what this is. Darwin isn't installable today. Apple just dumps a bunch of source code. Previous attempts at making Darwin bootable didn't go far and had no GUI.
- gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
  Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it. There's also PureDarwin (?) which had been around forever but last I recall the lone developer was seriously ill and the project was not receiving help. I don't see how this would be any different. To everyone here cheering this on: when will you be contributing? Or are you just waiting to download it, run it once for the lulz, and drag it to the Trash?
  - jdiff 2mo ago
    > Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it. Who jammed a toe in your cheerios?
    - gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
      What will you personally be contributing to the project to help move things along? Besides accolades on HN of course. I'm being real here and frankly blind, empty support of open-source projects does zero to support them.
      - jdiff 2mo ago
        I'm actually the head lead developer in chief president. Now, your cheerios?
        cxr 2mo ago
        (For those not catching on that the claim was written in jest, the person commenting here is not the creator of this project nor have they committed any code.)
        deleted 2mo ago
cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
Perhaps the biggest reason is that the existing FOSS OS world has little to offer for people who like a Mac-style desktop. It's possible to customize DEs to have a very shallow visual resemblance but the details are all wrong, with Windows, legacy Linux desktops, and even mobile operating systems (in e.g. the case of GNOME) exerting the greater bulk of design influence. The question might then, "why not make this a DE instead?" to which the answer is that Mac users also like how the underpinnings of the OS work (or have worked in older releases) and would like to continue to use their favorite Mac apps, which isn't going to happen as long as any traditional Linux distribution is involved. Mac apps also have a design ethos that's rare among current native Linux apps, which drives demand for alternatives. To do this properly it really needs to be a whole-OS endeavor.
- gnuplustoejam 2mo ago
  Didn't the Best Koreans rip off the Mac GUI in their home-grown spyware-laden Linux distro? Red Star Linux or whatever it's called. I wonder if they have a GitHub...
  - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
    I haven't downloaded or played with it because I'd rather not toy with software so obviously full of landmines, but from what I've seen it also falls into the "surface level" bucket. It goes a little further than one might get by e.g. enabling KDE's global menubar and installing one of the Mac-themed Breeze forks, but not much.
- jppittma 2mo ago
  EndeavorOS. I think it's actually the userspace though, which this aims to emulate. The problem is that if you're using a macbook for final cut pro, then endeavorOS doesn't solve your problem.
  - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
    Hmm, isn't EndeavorOS in the same vein as CachyOS? Mainly a pre-configured Arch variant with a custom point-and-click configurator built in? I don't see where it'd be of particular interest to would-be switchers using macOS.
tomhow 2mo ago
Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

travisgriggs 2mo ago

Everyone gets to name their projects for their own reasons. If the pitch is basically an “alternate apple” macOS, I would have chosen one of the other other (alternate) apple varieties as the root of my OS. Missed opportunity I guess.

laxd 2mo ago
Real apple-people would'nt consider this anyways. Open source geeks is were they can get traction. Seems like there is plenty of us that would like fbsd quality and vertical integration to the desktop level. There is effort but no breakthroughs.
- cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
  The more technical side of the Mac user base would probably jump ship if a polished, open macOS analogue appeared. There's been a lot of discontent with changes dating as far back as 10.7 Lion, and has been gradually mounting more rapidly since 10.10 Yosemite and accelerating greatly with 13 Ventura through 26 Tahoe. There's substantial demand for a spiritual successor to OS X 10.4/10.6/10.9 that isn't being filled.
  - TheAmazingRace 2mo ago
    Tell me about it. Those OS X versions you mentioned for Tiger, Snow Leopard, and Mavericks were some of the best releases of OS X ever. Thankfully, macOS Golden Gate is proving to be a decent release so far in my tests of the public betas, but I do yearn for the simplicity (and more power user friendly aspects) of the aforementioned OS X releases.
  - linguae 2mo ago
    I agree. I would switch to an open source spiritual successor to even Tiger in a heartbeat if it were available. The difficult part is replicating the ecosystem of applications. From a technological standpoint I would prefer a modern Linux distribution with KDE or Cinnamon over using 2005-era Mac OS X Tiger, though I’d gladly use a version of Tiger that was retrofitted with a modern Darwin core, modern libraries for security purposes, and an up-to-date web browser. However, Linux does not have Microsoft Office, the Adobe Creative Suite, Preview.app, Keynote, Dictionary.app, and other pleasant Mac apps. The FOSS alternatives are not as polished. Even venerable Office 2008 for Mac feels nicer than LibreOffice, and it’s compatible with the XML-based Office formats. I guess for now I could run Tiger in an emulator, though admittedly current operating systems serve my needs, even if I prefer the polish of Tiger and Snow Leopard. I get really good performance running PowerPC Tiger inside QEMU on my base M4 Mac Mini and on my Ryzen 9 3900 desktop, definitely not as snappy as running Tiger on actual contemporary PowerPC hardware, but fast enough to actually be productive.

mixdup 2mo ago

>but we're not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem What has changed about Apple's ecosystem vis a vis openness, hardware, or the 'ecosystem'? The macOS ecosystem is pretty much the same as it has been since 1997

reactordev 2mo ago
a lot of the kernel extensions are closed source proprietary. The core is still open but a lot of what makes modern Mac, Mac, are those kexts.
- mixdup 2mo ago
  how has that changed over the past 20 years? the proprietary parts of Mac OS X and now macOS have been proprietary from the beginning
  - radicaldreamer 2mo ago
    There used to be a bootable Darwin instance that Apple published, which on paper would've made things a bit easier, but they stopped publishing it a while ago. It never resulted in any serious OS with a UI however.
    - ndiddy 2mo ago
      There was a community around Darwin for a while, and people released Darwin distros that ran X11 and a variety of ported Unix software. You’re right that it never really amounted to anything serious though. Within Apple, open sourcing Darwin seems to mainly have been a marketing ploy to get Unix/Linux people interested in Mac OS X by tying it to the hype around the open source movement. There’s a good article with more information here: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
      - mixdup 2mo ago
        The premise of that article is way off base. Darwin didn't fail, because the point wasn't to create a robust open source operating system along the lines of Linux. Apple got everything they needed from the OSS community while providing no more than they were required to. Apple got a bunch of tools, utilities, shells, etc as well as a view that this was a Real UNIX Operating System (TM) (they even got it certified) and that inarguably sold millions of machines Their goal was never to build a community around Darwin or get a bunch of people outside the company using Darwin sans Mac OS X's proprietary bits, or to get a bunch of people outside the company contributing to Darwin

soupbowl 2mo ago

Good luck! There are many attempts at doing something similar. We can't really see anything to judge it by, yet.

masijo 2mo ago

Would be nice to have a screenshot in the overview page

dang 2mo ago

Related. Others? New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212 - Nov 2025 (165 comments) RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485596 - Dec 2023 (176 comments) RavynOS – Finesse of macOS, freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514 - Aug 2022 (366 comments)

pmkary 2mo ago

I think any desktop operating systems has to present itself with at least a single screenshot. Why not one in the entire page?

pmkary 2mo ago
And now that I have walked over the whole website: Why not a single screenshot anywhere?
- WesolyKubeczek 2mo ago
  I wager that maybe, probably, possibly, perhaps the GUI of this thing looks like ass and feels even worse. There used to be screenshots, you can google them. But maybe don’t.
  - Bluestein 2mo ago
    And, perhaps (?), that ties in with the GUI being the most proprietary thing here, thus, them building that last/less or wanting to de-emphasize it?
    - cxr 2mo ago
      Aristo already exists and looks great: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=aristo%20cxr&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=aristo%20cxr&sor...>
      - ripdog 2mo ago
        The real link: https://www.cappuccino.dev/aristo/ https://www.cappuccino.dev/aristo/ Looks great, so sad that it's yet another web framework. Kinda smacks of GNOME, though.
        kentosi 2mo ago
        Oh wow I remember trying cuppaccino about .... 15 years ago maybe? Fun times, though I never built anything serious.

mcdow 2mo ago

from the faq: > Is this... legally sketchy? No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects. as far as i understand it, most companies don’t bother sending cease and desists to projects you’ve never heard of. the fact that the aforementioned projects have avoided the banhammer of Apple should not be an indication that a successful MacOS clone would receive the same treatment. but on the other hand, maybe that’s a champagne problem. if you can make a macos clone good enough to get the attention of Apple, you’ve already done something incredible.

jppittma 2mo ago
I think the better example is actually GNU, which endured several challenges as a clean room implementation of unix. I think this is legally sound, but IANAL.
IsTom 2mo ago
I think the core of this is google vs oracle case. I think they'll be in the clear unless they hit some specific (design?) patents.
hnlmorg 2mo ago
Microsoft definitely know about ReactOS.
- mcdow 2mo ago
  not saying $TECHCO doesn’t know about X project. i’m just saying that if the average person doesn’t know about it, it’s unlikely to get shut down, as it poses no threat.
  - hnlmorg 2mo ago
    Maybe. But Microsoft get the bulk of their licensing from enterprise offerings. And Windows comes preinstalled on consumer machines anyway. So I don’t think there’s any risk of ReactOS becoming a problem for MS. And with Apple, they’ve always approached the market as a hardware company first and foremost. Which is why macOS has always been free vs Windows which, until recently, was not. Platforms like Linux was always a greater threat to both companies because Linux takes potential customers away from Microsoft and Apples ecosystems in ways that FOSS reimplementations do not. But that all said, companies of that scale are inherently greedy and paranoid. So I wouldn’t be surprised to them burying those projects under a mountain of frivolous legal demands if those projects were to become as widely known as Linux.

tcdent 2mo ago

> Developers can port existing Cocoa applications with minimal changes. I wonder how big the actual gap between close to Cocoa App compatibility and full app compatibility is? Being able to run MacOS apps natively would unlock a huge barrier to adoption here.

steve1977 2mo ago
First, this will at best be source compatible. And if it ever reaches a usable state, I assume it will far behind Apple's current systems.

01096173741 2mo ago

[flagged]

Select2 2mo ago

[dead]

ivanjermakov 2mo ago

Imagine the world where open-source is collaborating instead of fragmenting. Single Linux distribution, single compartibility layer for other OSes, single graphics API, single package manager...

pythonaut_16 2mo ago
Imagine a world where there's no innovation because everyone just accepts the current standard instead of trying something weird.
- Bluestein 2mo ago
  Obligatory: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVDzuT0fXro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVDzuT0fXro
nobleach 2mo ago
I mean, yes, that might get more folks working on a single project - which _might_ lead to shipping more quickly (might - more devs doesn't always equal speed). But I think what we'd end up with is Gnome; something that works fairly well, yet the committee won't allow simple things that the community wants. So we have the whole, "fine, I'll fork this project and add it myself" followed by, "why don't you spend your time HELPING the project instead of creating your own". It sounds a bit like a doom-loop. I'm kinda on the opposite end of the spectrum. I love this world where 45 people try to race toward the same goal. Sometimes the best ideas win. Sometimes the fastest to the first goal wins. Sometimes everyone gives up. Sometimes we have competing standards we have to sift through. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess.
theandrewbailey 2mo ago
If we had that, many people would yearn for a cambrian explosion of diverse software running in unique niches trying out different ideas.
Brian_K_White 2mo ago
That world is terrible. Thank deity no one has the power to actually inflict and enforce their particular bankrupt oppressive idea of the one true world on everyone else. Variety and change is basically the definition of life itself. Uniformity and stasis are pretty good definitions of death. Kooky offshoots and dead-ends are not waste, they are the very definition of life. Imagine a world without life? Sure, absoulutely do imagine that, so that you can understand how and why you would never want that and should never suggest it, and know exactly how to respond to anyone who comes along and tries to float this genius idea of efficiency.

CodeCompost 2mo ago

Another one? What happened to the other one that was called ... (quick Google) ... Hello System?

jamesforestwest 2mo ago

You're using open-source Apple code (Darwin) and aiming for Cocoa API compatibility. How are you handling the legal side? Apple's APIs and frameworks are proprietary. Are you reimplementing them from scratch, or using something like GNUstep?

steve1977 2mo ago
Looking (briefly) at the source code, it looks like they are at least partially using source code from Cocotron https://cocotron.org/ https://cocotron.org/

mrweasel 2mo ago

Maybe someone more familiar with operating systems kernels can answer this: Is Darwin really all the exiting? It is different from both the BSD kernels and Linux, but less so than Windows. Other than the ability to run macOS applications (assuming you can clone the libraries and APIs from macOS) is there some benefit of Darwin that I'm not seeing?

jabedude 2mo ago
I don't think it's all that exciting. The hybrid BSD/mach personalities is somewhat interesting, as are some of the available mach machineries. It's been a stable foundation for several of the most successful operating systems in history though
__d 2mo ago
XNU has some interesting features. It’s Mach based, so it has Mach ports, which are an IPC system that is fairly heavily used by macOS. It has DriverKit, which is a C++ framework for drivers that’s got morecsuppirt than the usual Unix driver model. Mach-O does more than ELF, and enables the two-layer namespacing that makes macOS able to manage dynamic linking dependencies better than ELF. Nothing really earth-shattering but interesting enough. And far easier to build a macOS environment on than FreeBSD.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
  > Mach-O does more than ELF, and enables the two-layer namespacing that makes macOS able to manage dynamic linking dependencies better than ELF. I've always admired that mach-o supports fat binaries.
  - mike_hearn 2mo ago
    It's more that Darwin does. A fat binary is just two independent Mach-O binaries concatenated with a small header.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago

j45 2mo ago

It will be interesting to see how much further (or not) some open source projects like this can get using meaningful AI driven development.

itsrobreally 2mo ago

I'm sort of surprised that development is still on X86 instead of moving over to ARM, it looks like the only builds for ARM are for raspberry pi - I know about Asahi but I would have thought that these darwin-based projects would have a leg up on booting even the latest hardware, is Apple not updating darwin anymore?

jeandrek 2mo ago
Here's macOS 26.5's XNU: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/tree/ac9718fb1af618d5ce8678d0dc6e8a58f252216f https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/tree/ac9718fb... Could just be what the devs have available, if they're really already going to the trouble to target RPi?
junon 2mo ago
Kernel dev here (my own project): ARM is great. Love it. There are tons of chips that all do things differently, much more so than x86. Plus the booting mechanisms are a PITA to figure out, debugging is tricky, etc - and that's a single target. x86 isn't particularly elegant given its years of cruft and questionable design decisions but at least it's quasi-consistent (yes, lots of "well actually" possible; I'm speaking broadly). The ISA on ARM is better, IMO, than x86 but the surrounding ecosystem is hellishly fragmented. Just my $0.02. makes it difficult for OSdevers to find an 'in' to a wider ARM audience. rpi is a great entry point.
- itsrobreally 2mo ago
  Right, I probably should have said "Apple Silicon" specifically. The m1 launched in 2020, the last intel mac was released in 2023.

latexr 2mo ago

At the top of Project Goals is “Clean Design”. It would be nice to have screenshots. The wiki is impossible to read on mobile, due to the sidebar.

amatecha 2mo ago

Why using Discord for comms? Is there anyone who hasn't hit the max 100 "servers" years ago? I've been [lightly] using Discord since 2015 - I'm at the point where I just simply won't even consider trying to narrow down which "server" I can leave so as to join a new one, unless it's something pretty important to make it worth that time sink.

jeandrek 2mo ago

Seems at least one of the same developers works on both PureDarwin and ravynOS: https://www.puredarwin.org/news/The-Road-to-20-5-0.html https://www.puredarwin.org/news/The-Road-to-20-5-0.html (This is the first time I've heard of the latter.)

fithisux 2mo ago
Good. Unfortunately Hackintosh people never put weight behind Pure Darwin. A missed opportunity.
steve1977 2mo ago
The text gives the impression that PureDarwin has been Clauded

nign 2mo ago

So many people in these comments talking about this project like it's pitching itself as a ready to go replacement for MacOS... why are you expecting screenshots, this is a tiny project of ambitious scale that is only 5 years old. What they have achieved is brilliant.

FoundARetard 2mo ago

[flagged]

Almondsetat 2mo ago

I swear I see this exact kind of project every year under a new name

UncleSlacky 2mo ago
It's based on helloSystem (at least the GUI is), which you may remember from a few years ago? https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/

mrobot 2mo ago

a prealpha for a 2021 project i might run far away from this and start my own which i also dont release