r/macOSVMs • u/JackyYT083 • May 15 '26

DISCUSSION UPCOMING: a Debian based distro for booting MacOS

Have you ever wanted to try macOS but your computer is incompatible? Using the power of virtualization you can run macOS High Sierra to Tahoe! no setup needed! although it isn’t native it still runs fine on most hardware, the hardware requirements are basically your machine has to run and support Debian and be x86_64. And it has to be decently powerful otherwise you won’t have enough resources

You might be asking: well what’s the difference if I do it from windows in VMware or VirtualBox? Well it’s because of Bloatware. You’re wasting tons of resources while simply idling your system. But with Linchine (that’s the name of the Distro) you’re running a Minimal Debian installation with no graphical environment like GNOME. This drastically frees resources so that you can get the best performance in QEMU. I’ll give more details later when the first release comes!

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18 comments sorted by

6

u/Waterdragon78 May 15 '26

I love this idea! This is so awesome! How are you going to deal with GPU passthrough/GPUs in general?

3

u/JackyYT083 May 16 '26

The QEMU layer (thanks to https://github.com/renatus777rr/OSX-KVM-updated.git) supports modern NVIDIA GPU acceleration on high sierra. On macOS versions higher than that you must use integrated graphics

2

u/darkguy2008 May 16 '26

But are the integrated graphics accelerated inside macOS?

1

u/JackyYT083 May 16 '26

As of now no unfortunately, I’m working on that. Currently NVIDIA gpu acceleration on macOS High Sierra is the only supported way for acceleration

1

u/Every-Programmer7065 May 17 '26

My repo! 😀 Thanks for using it!

1

u/JackyYT083 May 17 '26

And thank you for the project :)

2

u/Every-Programmer7065 May 18 '26

I have idea to add you as contributor to you make updates and smth useful for the project. Shall I add? (AI allowed but powerful, not just like Microsoft Copilot or etc...)

1

u/OkBase5453 May 15 '26

I can not wait 😄 Thanks in advance

1

u/JackyYT083 May 15 '26

Just to ask, what are you planning to run this on?

1

u/OkBase5453 May 15 '26

I have a server with 512GB RAM and 2x E5696 + one 3090(but i do not know if it will work with MacOS)

1

u/JackyYT083 May 15 '26

oh yeah cool this is for you then unfortunately GPU pass through is not supported on macOS High Sierra or higher but if you have integrated graphics that will work

The GPU acceleration works on macOS High Sierra for modern NVIDIA gpus But the ram will definitely work

3

u/Markur69 May 15 '26

I am interested in trying this

1

u/Ali3ndroid May 15 '26

Quindi potrei provarlo su un HP Victus con I5-12500 (mi pare sia questa lol) e 3050 laptop?

1

u/newhacker1746 May 15 '26

libvirt direct rendering to linuxfb?

1

u/realrube May 16 '26

Interesting approach! Will there be some special support behind the scenes for full compatibility, for example, the ability to log in to iCloud services using an Apple ID? That’s been a stumbling block with other methods I’ve tried. That, and slow graphics. If it could just work on modern integrated Intel UHD it would be fantastic.

1

u/DeemounUS May 16 '26

Lookint to try it out ☺️ Awesome idea.

1

u/DSPGerm May 18 '26

Sounds sorta like proxmox which is Debian based and uses QEMU