8 ms·

OS X emulation layer for Linux

125 points by frozenport 14y ago

japhyr 14y ago
Can someone with a better understanding of this project Summarize it's goals? For example, would I be able to run Xcode on a Linux machine using this project when it is mature?
- 0x0 14y ago
  I think it's the same idea that Wine has for win32 applications, but for OS X applications instead: Provide a binary executable loader and an implementation of all the standard frameworks and libraries, so you can run unmodified mac apps on x86/x64-based Linux. Edit: For your Xcode example, in short, yes. (Although - that's probably one of the most difficult apps of them all to bring up, since it integrates and depends on iTunes, mobiledevice/mobilesupport libraries, debugger tools etc.)
zkirill 14y ago
Would be interesting to see if this could be used to integrate XCode Unit Testing into Arcanist/Phabricator running on a Linux machine.
- sneak 14y ago
  Today you can run hackintosh osx in a vm, ssh to it, and use xcodebuild. Obviously it's more overhead but it functions today.
  - i386 14y ago
    Except that you violate the EULA. I wouldn't recommend this in a commercial environment.
    - sneak 14y ago
      Not if the VM host is on Apple-branded HW. Also, you'd have to get caught. It's not customer-facing.
      - stusmall 14y ago
        "You'd have to get caught" isn't a way to do business. Plus it won't fly for those of us who work in giant megacorps with license audits.
        sneak 14y ago
        If you're running xcode CI at a giant megacorp, you might want to rethink your life decisions.
        i386 14y ago
        Thats unfair to say. Release Engineering is super critical to running great software companies and is a strict technical discipline of its own.
        i386 14y ago
        And if your company has dreams of becoming a larger successful company, you are going to have to pull it out anyway. Its cheaper in the long run just to buy a Mac Mini or an older MacBook. I'd even argue its cheaper time-wise just to get the hardware instead of dealing with an unstable build server if you go the hackintosh route.
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      Why doesn't Apple make it possible to use its development environment (required for developing products to run on its hardware) in a VM? This seems like a user-unfriendly decision.
      - i386 14y ago
        Its business model is making a sweet profit on premium hardware.
  - davidcuddeback 14y ago
    I'm curious which set of hackintosh instructions you used. I tried a long time ago to install Snow Leopard on a VirtualBox VM using iBoot, but I couldn't get iBoot to work correctly on the VM. I'd love to have an OSX VM for browser testing and CI.
    - nobleach 14y ago
      Using VMWare Player is a much easier install. I run it on VMWare Workstation 8 (it may even work on 9, I don't plan on spending the money to upgrade right now) There is one little Unlocker tool to run that tells VMWare to go ahead and boot OSX. Lion runs extremely well for me. Yes this violates their EULA.
      - davidcuddeback 14y ago
        I'll try VMWare next. I think I found the unlocker, too. Thanks for the tip. I respect a EULA as much as it respects me.
bengl3rt 14y ago
This is of great interest to me because I've always wanted to run this... http://cycling74.com/whatismax/ http://cycling74.com/whatismax/ On one of these: http://www.museresearch.com/products/receptor-vip.php http://www.museresearch.com/products/receptor-vip.php Designing live performance environments in Max is awesome, but laptops just are not designed for the rigors of the road. They are delicate creatures that stand in awkwardly, at best, for musical instruments. Max running on the Receptor would be incredible, and hopefully not too challenging considering the environment is largely self-contained with very few external dependencies.
- stephencanon 14y ago
  What features does pd not have that you need? (Alternatively, if you really do need max/msp, for the price of the receptor you could buy a pair of mac minis and have redundancy if one of them dies on the road -- obviously the receptor isn't just a computer, but laptops aren't the only alternative).
- retroafroman 14y ago
  Isn't PureData (http://puredata.info/ http://puredata.info/) the open source equivalent, available to run native on Linux, and fairly feature compatible?
- dsl 14y ago
  Seeings as the Receptor is rack mount, I assume you have a rolling roadie case you're wanting to keep it in. This is what you are looking for: http://www.powermax.com/parts/code/PM_CU_XS http://www.powermax.com/parts/code/PM_CU_XS
Hello71 14y ago
"No offense intended", but how is this different from any of the <n> different other OSX emulators?
- frozenport 14y ago
  Do you know of any?
  - dbecker 14y ago
    Perhaps he is referring to one of the Hackintosh projects that emulate Apple hardware so you can run OS X on non-Apple hardware. Though that seems transparently different to me than this project.
  - orionblastar 14y ago
    PearPC? http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/about.html http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/about.html Mac OS X PowerPC emulation is spotty at best. Mac On Linux? http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ Runs the PowerPC Mac OS X on PowerPC Linux systems. Most that I know of aren't emulators but virtual machines for the PowerMac/CHRP platform that happen to run the PowerPC Mac OS X on them. There would be more I am sure, and for Intel Macs, but Apple can just threaten lawsuits to discourage more of it. If the ability to run Mac OS X apps on other platforms exists, Apple stands to lose a lot of money on hardware sales. The Hackintosh market, for example uses cheap PC hardware to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple branded computer.
    - nobleach 14y ago
      I don't think we'll see more simply because once Apple made the transition to Intel, it became somewhat "easy" to install an Intel supported version of OSX on vanilla hardware. I don't think it's the lawsuits keeping the emu guys at bay, I think it's just the "why bother" factor. If it's nostalgia, I completely understand. I did install OSX 10.2 Jaguar a couple of weeks ago on PearPC because my son is obsessed with the different releases that came out before he was born. I wanted to show him all that pin-stripey goodness.
rednukleus 14y ago
What is the purpose of this, other than just to see if it can be done? I can't think of any software that would be worthwhile emulating that doesn't already have a Linux or Windows version (which is covered by Wine), other than xcode.
- daeken 14y ago
  Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Garageband, Voodoopad, etc.
  - zerd 14y ago
    Notational Velocity, Adium, Textmate, Omnifocus, Bubble trouble, ...
    - JEVLON 14y ago
      Codekit, Creative Suite, Evernote, Finder, Fontbook, iTunes, Reeder, Soulver, Sparrow, Quicktime. You could run photoshop.exe in Wine but there are bugs. There are alternatives to the other apps though, but they are not as polished.
      - UntitledNo4 14y ago
        Finder? Really? I would never imagine anyone would miss using Finder. That's the bit of MacOS I found hardest to get used to. Looks good, but it's completely basic and featureless, and missed the versatility of KDE's Dolphin for quite a while until I found out about TotalFinder. Despite TotalFinder being a great improvement over vanilla Finder, I still miss some of Dolphin's features such as: the ability to browse remote locations (FTP, SSH) and the ability to run a terminal window within dolphin for the folder you are viewing.
        pschastain 14y ago
        While I'd agree that overall it is lacking, Finder does support ftp/ftps.
saurik 14y ago
A) This was discussed by a bunch of people already two weeks ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022 B) Apparently this is a better-marketed expansion of the long-established maloader, which already works for many of the use cases that people bring up when they hear about this project (such as running parts of Xcode).
orionblastar 14y ago
Well this OS X emulation layer is not ready for prime time yet. Don't expect it to run 100% of your Mac OS X apps. I'd really rather see more projects that focus on cross compiling XCode source code on Linux, so that companies can take their OS X software apps and cross compile them for Linux with little to no changes in the source code. I'd much rather trust native Linux code than OS X emulated code. I'd also like to see some 'byteswap' projects that take the machine language of OS X apps and convert them to Linux format by converting each API or system interrupt, etc from OS X to Linux for apps that don't have the source code anymore. Also anyone remember the Apple Darwin Project? I guess it stopped releasing binary install ISOS and instead releases the source code. You got the core of OS X right there, and it would be a good place to start to see the migration from Darwin to Linux right there.
- akurilin 14y ago
  It would be certainly amazing to be able to develop iOS apps on Linux, but I doubt Apple will entertain the idea.
  - orionblastar 14y ago
    Develop iOS apps on Linux, run iOS apps on Linux, or both? I think Apple would restrict development requirements in the App Store to ban iOS apps created with a Non-Apple compiler on a Non-Apple platform just like they banned Adobe Flash and iOS apps made with Flash. Not only that but Apple would sue anyone who made an environment to run iOS apps on a non-Apple operating system. I kind of have a Love-Hate relationship with Apple because of that. I feel that iOS apps should be made on any platform and be allowed to run on any platform. Android is the complete opposite of iOS/Apple, any platform and any language can develop Android apps, you can choose more than just one store to buy apps from, and there is this Bluestack app http://bluestacks.com/ http://bluestacks.com/ that runs Android apps on Windows and there is a beta for Mac OS X IIRC. Not only that but there is an Android for PC OS: http://www.android-x86.org/download http://www.android-x86.org/download
    - akurilin 14y ago
orionblastar 14y ago
Oh BTW DAE remember ARDI's Executor? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executor_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executor_%28software%29 It is not OS X, but the Classic Macintosh System translated on the fly to native code. Because it didn't get enough funding, and lack of interest, and very few buyers it sort of went DOA. I am sure if they had enough funding they could have modified it to OS X translation. Maybe someone should help them do a Kickstarter project?
- nobleach 14y ago
  I remember it well. I still remember the Webcrawler/Yahoo/Altavista search that took me to it. I just had this inkling that it was something that HAD to exist. Sure enough, it did. And the demo version was awesome. Even more awesome was the clean room techniques they used to develop it.
- bane 14y ago
  I believe it's open source now.
- daeken 14y ago
  Having worked on a translation layer for a large API (my project Alky converted Windows games to run on Linux and OS X), building something like this solo is just asking for pain. An open source project with solid direction is much more likely to end well. Also, Executor really couldn't be changed to support OS X; totally different architecture, no processor emulation, etc. At the end of the day, it's really just API translation; not a technically difficult project, just an incredibly intensive one.
  - orionblastar 14y ago
    How does ARDI Executor compare to the Mac OS X emulation in this linked article? Are they on the right path, or does Executor do things differently?
    - daeken 14y ago
      They're really not comparable at all. Executor is a 68k emulator + APIs for OS7; the tough part there is doing the emulation properly, and then just implementing all the APIs. Darling is just a binary loader + APIs; the loader is trivial but there are a bajillion APIs. Probably 3-4 orders of magnitude more complexity in Darling, simply due to how much is in OS X. I do think they're on the right track, though. Hoping to lend a hand when I get some free time.
bobowzki 14y ago
The only thing I'm really missing on linux is xcode.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

125 points by frozenport 14y ago

Can someone with a better understanding of this project Summarize it's goals? For example, would I be able to run Xcode on a Linux machine using this project when it is mature?

0x0 14y ago
I think it's the same idea that Wine has for win32 applications, but for OS X applications instead: Provide a binary executable loader and an implementation of all the standard frameworks and libraries, so you can run unmodified mac apps on x86/x64-based Linux. Edit: For your Xcode example, in short, yes. (Although - that's probably one of the most difficult apps of them all to bring up, since it integrates and depends on iTunes, mobiledevice/mobilesupport libraries, debugger tools etc.)

zkirill 14y ago

Would be interesting to see if this could be used to integrate XCode Unit Testing into Arcanist/Phabricator running on a Linux machine.

sneak 14y ago
Today you can run hackintosh osx in a vm, ssh to it, and use xcodebuild. Obviously it's more overhead but it functions today.
- i386 14y ago
  Except that you violate the EULA. I wouldn't recommend this in a commercial environment.
  - sneak 14y ago
    Not if the VM host is on Apple-branded HW. Also, you'd have to get caught. It's not customer-facing.
    - stusmall 14y ago
      "You'd have to get caught" isn't a way to do business. Plus it won't fly for those of us who work in giant megacorps with license audits.
      - sneak 14y ago
        If you're running xcode CI at a giant megacorp, you might want to rethink your life decisions.
        i386 14y ago
        Thats unfair to say. Release Engineering is super critical to running great software companies and is a strict technical discipline of its own.
      - i386 14y ago
        And if your company has dreams of becoming a larger successful company, you are going to have to pull it out anyway. Its cheaper in the long run just to buy a Mac Mini or an older MacBook. I'd even argue its cheaper time-wise just to get the hardware instead of dealing with an unstable build server if you go the hackintosh route.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Why doesn't Apple make it possible to use its development environment (required for developing products to run on its hardware) in a VM? This seems like a user-unfriendly decision.
    - i386 14y ago
      Its business model is making a sweet profit on premium hardware.
- davidcuddeback 14y ago
  I'm curious which set of hackintosh instructions you used. I tried a long time ago to install Snow Leopard on a VirtualBox VM using iBoot, but I couldn't get iBoot to work correctly on the VM. I'd love to have an OSX VM for browser testing and CI.
  - nobleach 14y ago
    Using VMWare Player is a much easier install. I run it on VMWare Workstation 8 (it may even work on 9, I don't plan on spending the money to upgrade right now) There is one little Unlocker tool to run that tells VMWare to go ahead and boot OSX. Lion runs extremely well for me. Yes this violates their EULA.
    - davidcuddeback 14y ago
      I'll try VMWare next. I think I found the unlocker, too. Thanks for the tip. I respect a EULA as much as it respects me.

bengl3rt 14y ago

This is of great interest to me because I've always wanted to run this... http://cycling74.com/whatismax/ http://cycling74.com/whatismax/ On one of these: http://www.museresearch.com/products/receptor-vip.php http://www.museresearch.com/products/receptor-vip.php Designing live performance environments in Max is awesome, but laptops just are not designed for the rigors of the road. They are delicate creatures that stand in awkwardly, at best, for musical instruments. Max running on the Receptor would be incredible, and hopefully not too challenging considering the environment is largely self-contained with very few external dependencies.

stephencanon 14y ago
What features does pd not have that you need? (Alternatively, if you really do need max/msp, for the price of the receptor you could buy a pair of mac minis and have redundancy if one of them dies on the road -- obviously the receptor isn't just a computer, but laptops aren't the only alternative).
retroafroman 14y ago
Isn't PureData (http://puredata.info/ http://puredata.info/) the open source equivalent, available to run native on Linux, and fairly feature compatible?
dsl 14y ago
Seeings as the Receptor is rack mount, I assume you have a rolling roadie case you're wanting to keep it in. This is what you are looking for: http://www.powermax.com/parts/code/PM_CU_XS http://www.powermax.com/parts/code/PM_CU_XS

Hello71 14y ago

"No offense intended", but how is this different from any of the <n> different other OSX emulators?

frozenport 14y ago
Do you know of any?
- dbecker 14y ago
  Perhaps he is referring to one of the Hackintosh projects that emulate Apple hardware so you can run OS X on non-Apple hardware. Though that seems transparently different to me than this project.
- orionblastar 14y ago
  PearPC? http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/about.html http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/about.html Mac OS X PowerPC emulation is spotty at best. Mac On Linux? http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ Runs the PowerPC Mac OS X on PowerPC Linux systems. Most that I know of aren't emulators but virtual machines for the PowerMac/CHRP platform that happen to run the PowerPC Mac OS X on them. There would be more I am sure, and for Intel Macs, but Apple can just threaten lawsuits to discourage more of it. If the ability to run Mac OS X apps on other platforms exists, Apple stands to lose a lot of money on hardware sales. The Hackintosh market, for example uses cheap PC hardware to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple branded computer.
  - nobleach 14y ago
    I don't think we'll see more simply because once Apple made the transition to Intel, it became somewhat "easy" to install an Intel supported version of OSX on vanilla hardware. I don't think it's the lawsuits keeping the emu guys at bay, I think it's just the "why bother" factor. If it's nostalgia, I completely understand. I did install OSX 10.2 Jaguar a couple of weeks ago on PearPC because my son is obsessed with the different releases that came out before he was born. I wanted to show him all that pin-stripey goodness.

rednukleus 14y ago

What is the purpose of this, other than just to see if it can be done? I can't think of any software that would be worthwhile emulating that doesn't already have a Linux or Windows version (which is covered by Wine), other than xcode.

daeken 14y ago
Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Garageband, Voodoopad, etc.
- zerd 14y ago
  Notational Velocity, Adium, Textmate, Omnifocus, Bubble trouble, ...
  - JEVLON 14y ago
    Codekit, Creative Suite, Evernote, Finder, Fontbook, iTunes, Reeder, Soulver, Sparrow, Quicktime. You could run photoshop.exe in Wine but there are bugs. There are alternatives to the other apps though, but they are not as polished.
    - UntitledNo4 14y ago
      Finder? Really? I would never imagine anyone would miss using Finder. That's the bit of MacOS I found hardest to get used to. Looks good, but it's completely basic and featureless, and missed the versatility of KDE's Dolphin for quite a while until I found out about TotalFinder. Despite TotalFinder being a great improvement over vanilla Finder, I still miss some of Dolphin's features such as: the ability to browse remote locations (FTP, SSH) and the ability to run a terminal window within dolphin for the folder you are viewing.
      - pschastain 14y ago
        While I'd agree that overall it is lacking, Finder does support ftp/ftps.

saurik 14y ago

A) This was discussed by a bunch of people already two weeks ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022 B) Apparently this is a better-marketed expansion of the long-established maloader, which already works for many of the use cases that people bring up when they hear about this project (such as running parts of Xcode).

orionblastar 14y ago

Well this OS X emulation layer is not ready for prime time yet. Don't expect it to run 100% of your Mac OS X apps. I'd really rather see more projects that focus on cross compiling XCode source code on Linux, so that companies can take their OS X software apps and cross compile them for Linux with little to no changes in the source code. I'd much rather trust native Linux code than OS X emulated code. I'd also like to see some 'byteswap' projects that take the machine language of OS X apps and convert them to Linux format by converting each API or system interrupt, etc from OS X to Linux for apps that don't have the source code anymore. Also anyone remember the Apple Darwin Project? I guess it stopped releasing binary install ISOS and instead releases the source code. You got the core of OS X right there, and it would be a good place to start to see the migration from Darwin to Linux right there.

akurilin 14y ago
It would be certainly amazing to be able to develop iOS apps on Linux, but I doubt Apple will entertain the idea.
- orionblastar 14y ago
  Develop iOS apps on Linux, run iOS apps on Linux, or both? I think Apple would restrict development requirements in the App Store to ban iOS apps created with a Non-Apple compiler on a Non-Apple platform just like they banned Adobe Flash and iOS apps made with Flash. Not only that but Apple would sue anyone who made an environment to run iOS apps on a non-Apple operating system. I kind of have a Love-Hate relationship with Apple because of that. I feel that iOS apps should be made on any platform and be allowed to run on any platform. Android is the complete opposite of iOS/Apple, any platform and any language can develop Android apps, you can choose more than just one store to buy apps from, and there is this Bluestack app http://bluestacks.com/ http://bluestacks.com/ that runs Android apps on Windows and there is a beta for Mac OS X IIRC. Not only that but there is an Android for PC OS: http://www.android-x86.org/download http://www.android-x86.org/download
  - akurilin 14y ago

orionblastar 14y ago

Oh BTW DAE remember ARDI's Executor? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executor_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executor_%28software%29 It is not OS X, but the Classic Macintosh System translated on the fly to native code. Because it didn't get enough funding, and lack of interest, and very few buyers it sort of went DOA. I am sure if they had enough funding they could have modified it to OS X translation. Maybe someone should help them do a Kickstarter project?

nobleach 14y ago
I remember it well. I still remember the Webcrawler/Yahoo/Altavista search that took me to it. I just had this inkling that it was something that HAD to exist. Sure enough, it did. And the demo version was awesome. Even more awesome was the clean room techniques they used to develop it.
bane 14y ago
I believe it's open source now.
daeken 14y ago
Having worked on a translation layer for a large API (my project Alky converted Windows games to run on Linux and OS X), building something like this solo is just asking for pain. An open source project with solid direction is much more likely to end well. Also, Executor really couldn't be changed to support OS X; totally different architecture, no processor emulation, etc. At the end of the day, it's really just API translation; not a technically difficult project, just an incredibly intensive one.
- orionblastar 14y ago
  How does ARDI Executor compare to the Mac OS X emulation in this linked article? Are they on the right path, or does Executor do things differently?
  - daeken 14y ago
    They're really not comparable at all. Executor is a 68k emulator + APIs for OS7; the tough part there is doing the emulation properly, and then just implementing all the APIs. Darling is just a binary loader + APIs; the loader is trivial but there are a bajillion APIs. Probably 3-4 orders of magnitude more complexity in Darling, simply due to how much is in OS X. I do think they're on the right track, though. Hoping to lend a hand when I get some free time.

bobowzki 14y ago

The only thing I'm really missing on linux is xcode.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]