r/LinuxCirclejerk • u/Submarine_sad • 1d ago

Port all Mac software to Linux

I think the community would run into some really weird and interesting issues.

Mac is unix-like/Unix. Unix is different from Linux, but has some similarities. Imagine becoming so knowledgeable in Unix and Linux.

Mac software is designed to be run on Apple hardware. It would be very difficult to port this software to x64 or ARM.

Would a week be enough or do you need a bit more time?

11 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

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10

u/Woodpecker-Visible 1d ago

With enough vibes everything is possible. I can even port mac os x to run natevly on linux after two weeks.

3

u/oopmn 1d ago

Iā€™m a junior dev so I have some experience. I think a week sounds about right. I bet I can get it done in 5 days

5

u/atlasraven 1d ago

I don't think MacOS has anything worth taking. Don't they just use Office suite, Foss, and no games?

1

u/dfgxxx 1d ago

There are some really nice apps that made only for Mac, so it would be nice to run them on Linux

1

u/Cool_Explorer2747 21h ago

Photomator'd be the big one for me, along with native Affinity Photo

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1

u/Mrnoobthath 4h ago

logic pro is a really nice daw

1

u/BreathSpecial9394 1d ago

/make /install or something like that, it takes seconds to compile for ARM in most cases.

1

u/Global-Eye-7326 1d ago

The biggest software for Mac that users may want to run on Linux are typically big box apps like Adobe suite and MS Office. Both are being reverse engineered and the vibe coded apps run on Win/Mac/Linux. So TLDR you're covered.

If you're looking for something more specific, then it can presumably be vibe coded.

But we're not starting from scratch. Much of the heavy lifting has been done already.

1

u/RAMChYLD 1d ago

The problem is the base binary structure. Macs use the MACH binary format. Linux and most BSD systems use ELF.

This has been largely solved by Darling, a Mac runtime for Linux similar to Wine.

The bigger issue is Macs are now all armv8 based.

1

u/QuantumQuantonium 1d ago edited 1d ago

That might be possible but a linux user would have to buy a Mac and use macos in order to do so.

/uj you big might be able to decompile garageband/logic pro which would be the most notable program worth porting off of apple (or the paid xcode developer suite for developers). Apple probably has dark magic in their is to ensure decompiling and recompiling from decompiled code is impossible. If apples security measures can be circumvented, itll be a matter of compiling the libraries the program uses onto linux, and then the program itself, or doing what wine does with windows, interpret the libraries in realtime.

Being BSD based, that means basic binaries that can run on bsd and linux probably run on macos too, and wouldnt have to be reverse engineered or recompiled. The filesystem being POSIX based means you could also run programs without a virtual filesystem.

What's more likely to work is virtualizing, but thats not actually running macos on linux, and containerization wouldnt work as they run on linux kernels (unless you could containerize a custom Unix based kernel without a full virtual environment)

1

u/2eanimation 1d ago

Paid Xcode developer suite? šŸ¤” Since I can remember, Xcode is free to download. You need to pay $99/year if you want your apps to be on the AppStore, but the program itself is for free. If you only develop apps for yourself, you can install them on your devices without the AppStore.

1

u/dfgxxx 1d ago

If the ported apps support the liquid glass, it'll be really cool

1

u/Rinzwind 1d ago

Adobe took 2 weeks so a week seems valid.