In theory, running Apple Silicon apps on ARM64 linux machines would be really nice. But we are still far from having a performant and feature-complete implementation of doing so.
Darling only targets x86_64 stuff. Still, it's a cool project.
Kinda sad that there are very few updates though [1]
their AppKit implementation receives about 20-30 commits every 5 years. Cool project, but
you are better off waiting for proprietary software manufacturers to release ARM64 builds (a lot of them do now) and patch the holes with FEX.
This is the Darling project which aims to run macOS software on Linux for both Intel and ARM64.
But you are probably looking for this:
> Does it support GUI apps?
> Almost! This took us a lot of time and effort, but we finally have basic experimental support for running simple graphical applications.
It is still far away from running your favorite mac GUI apps like Logic Pro or Xcode, but it is a work in progress but can still run command line tools.
I went down a deep but entertaining rabbit hole in the other direction for fun: https://github.com/ayourtch-llm/fakelinux - initially with the idea “just replace the syscalls in the executable with some sort of a trap and handle that”.
It almost worked, unfortunately MacOS reserves x18 for platform purposes and Linux doesn’t.
The result is some sort of pretty mad contraption which works sufficiently often to compile aarch64 Linux VPP and its dependencies on the Mac using Linux gcc :)
I suppose with some polish it might be useful for something..
Recently, Apple has made it so with a special entitlement, com.apple.private.custom-x18-abi iirc, you can actually use the x18 register, mainly so ARM64 versions of WINE/CrossOver can run outside of Rosetta, since they'll be partially killing Rosetta in macOS 28.
All I want for Christmas is Logic on Linux. But then you’d still need a Mac to legally download it from the App Store and DRM checks would probably only work on Macs
Agh that's one of my biggest Linux regrets! Logic Pro is probably my favorite DAW, it feels so smooth to use, and that's likely connected to me using GarageBand extensively when I was a child. (I still remember "composing" multiple memorial songs in honor of Steve Jobs, as weird as that sounds!)
The strategy Apple has figured out with GarageBand pre-installed (or at least very low friction to install) seems really really smart in hindsight, give complete beginners a highly simplified but functional version of your professional utility, and provide an on-ramp to your professional programs. I imagine if Microsoft had some professional version of Windows Movie Maker it would've taken over a big chunk of the video editing market via the same method.
Anyway, regarding Linux DAWs, I am trying to get used to Ableton in Wine, but it's just not the same, and making it work in Wine is troublesome enough that I end up giving up before finishing anything of interest. Is there any DAW that feels like it actually belongs on Linux and doesn't either feel like you're maintaining a package by yourself, or has an awfully bad UI/UX like all FOSS DAWs I tried so far? I think in 2026 there's really a good opportunity here, with user interest genuinely rising for Linux on desktop.
Bitwig natively supports Linux. I bought a license a while ago and while the cost is steep, I don't regret it at all.
The downsides are going to be the bland cross-platform UI and the general lack of plugin support on Linux. But the upside is native PipeWire support for application-specific channel audio and complex output routing options. The pack-in plugins are pretty good too, The Grid can replace a lot of your subtractive synths: https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/
+1 for Bitwig - written by a bunch of former Ableton devs and its external plugin/module sandbox means that a badly behaving VST won't take down the entire DAW.
I use Ardour on Linux when I have to and what is terrible is that to get acceptable latency and jitter I have to use the sound system at the ALSA level. This kills sound for any other app I happen to be running. Pipewire introduces too much latency for recording good live performances and getting jackd to run properly with Ardour is something I haven't had success with yet, though to be fair I want to record music and not futz around with some baroque sound system. Half the time after quitting Ardour I have to restart pipewire/wireplumber et al to get sound working properly again.
In contrast, on MacOS I plug in my USB sound interface, it appears in my DAW and I'm on my way. And yes, I am getting a Mac now.
I don't think anyone has an implementation of macOS' audio and midi frameworks (and whatever else Logic links to; probably a lot). I would like to have Hauptwerk under Linux, but it uses ilok, and that's not going to happen any time soon. But we can dream.
If its possible to compile & and sign iOS or MacOS apps that would be VERY useful in CI environments, but yeah hard to think of other killer command-line apps that only run on MacOS.
If they had good GUI support then some more things open up but nothing really essential. Garage Band has no equal in terms of ease of use, if you are into that sort of thing.
It has built in support for Electron, JVM, Flutter and even native apps (although of course then you still have to compile the native binaries on macOS yourself).
That also works the other way around. You can ship to Windows from Linux or macOS.
Right, it's meant for portable desktop apps. You have to compile iOS apps on a Mac anyway so I'm not sure there'd be any demand for Conveyor's cross-building support for iOS apps.
If you target cross-platform frameworks that don't require Apple's toolchain, it can be made to work. For instance if you write an Electron or JVM app for the desktop then Conveyor can ship it from anything, because all the native components come pre-compiled in that case. But I don't think many people are writing mobile apps in that way.
A few years back, I would have dreamt to run Photoshop on Linux.
But this and the mandatory utilities that come with it became so bloated that even if it was officially offered on Linux I am not sure I would be using it.
Yes and no. The Xcode GUI definitely doesn't work yet; see *Will <<Insert_Random_GUI_Application>> Work?* above. However, the Xcode CLI tools like Clang, LLDB, Git, the Metal compiler, the Swift compiler, and more do work.
*What about `xcodebuild`?*
Some versions of `xcodebuild` (e.g. 11.7) are known to work for extremely basic XIB-based macOS apps. However, the vast majority of projects do not qualify as extremely basic and aren't supported yet.
> Do you know about opensource.apple.com, GNUstep, The Cocotron and other projects?
> We do, and in fact, Darling is largely based on the original Darwin source code published by Apple. We use The Cocotron as a basis for our Cocoa implementation, along with the Apportable Foundation and various bits of GNUstep.
There are lots of amazing Mac only apps, but I'm not sure simply running them on Linux would be worth it. Without the cohesiveness of the UI as a whole you'd be losing a lot.
For me it’s mostly media apps - Fireworks CS 6, Reason 10, maybe some version of Garage Band. There’s alternatives but these apps hit a sweet spot that I could camp out on for decades if the tech treadmill didn’t like to make software an exercise in seeing shifting shapes in the clouds.
> Is there some really amazing Mac only software that would justify the effort ?
As others said, the killer app is XCode. Even if you can technically get it to run, you'll still need the full support and test flows of a native solution, so you might as well follow the proper path and use a Mac.
I can get Visual Studio to run in Parallels today. I still test with a real Windows machine.
Finally, I can run Calculator.app and TextEdit on NixOS without buying a $3,000 aluminum cheese grater. Next up: emulating the spinning beach ball of death for authentic nostalgic immersion.
Why can't we just be satisfied with wayy old mac versions in VMs on linux, ones where you played prince or persia or oregon trail, the fun looking black and white versions and some later ones their steel windows UIs, the theming, the file explorer, the note taker app.
Isn't that level of fun one gets from looking at that enough?
Mac OS X binaries are the most susceptible to bit rot of any major OS. There's constant platform churn, all of it closed source, and there's nowhere near the community that exists around emulating older Windows.
You can reliably run DOS, Win, Linux applications of almost any vintage with the right translation layer / emulator, but there's a black hole of MacOS apps circa 2002-2012 that just no longer runs on anything, even later Intel Macs.
I used to enjoy a cute little Pacman clone called Pac the Man X, for example, and I just don't know how I could run this today. Seems to reliably take down any emulator I've thrown at it - presumably it's using some kind of graphics acceleration that's not emulated. (Suggestions welcome.)
VMs with GPU passed through. You can get Mac compatible GPUs that will work, look for the Dortania OpenCore guide GPU lists to find one that works for the version of Mac OS X it runs on. Looking on Macintosh Repository, that game will run on Intel CPUs and Snow Leopard, 10.6+. (IDK for sure.) You can emulate Intel Mac OS X using QEMU on linux machines, there are some scripts that make it easy from Proxmox that I use.
You can also emulate PPC Mac OS X and pass through devices, but I have not tried to do this, so your mileage may vary.
It is easier to emulate 10.7+ versions than 10.6, but you can get it to work from 10.4 with work.
Having experienced how much LLMs can help with reverse-engineering stuff, I wonder why such projects don't actually see unusual development speed-up. The things that are possible now with a fraction of time were previously reserved to the elite few.
Sadly, the fact that there's no response to some serious PRs implementing major frameworks (https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1725) is not exactly a sign of an actively-managed project. Hopefully someone steps in or forks it.
This project will get notably much more difficult once Apple fully migrates to arm64 and x86 software no longer gets published. The arm64->x86 ISA translation is costly, there's been little precedent so far since everyone goes the other way round and so it will likely render the whole effort futile.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 5.2 ms ] threadDarling only targets x86_64 stuff. Still, it's a cool project.
Kinda sad that there are very few updates though [1]
[1] https://blog.darlinghq.org/
But you are probably looking for this:
It is still far away from running your favorite mac GUI apps like Logic Pro or Xcode, but it is a work in progress but can still run command line tools.It almost worked, unfortunately MacOS reserves x18 for platform purposes and Linux doesn’t.
The result is some sort of pretty mad contraption which works sufficiently often to compile aarch64 Linux VPP and its dependencies on the Mac using Linux gcc :)
I suppose with some polish it might be useful for something..
I believe you can find slightly more info on how to use it in some XNU (macOS kernel) tests, namely this one: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/main/tes...
All I want for Christmas is Logic on Linux. But then you’d still need a Mac to legally download it from the App Store and DRM checks would probably only work on Macs
The strategy Apple has figured out with GarageBand pre-installed (or at least very low friction to install) seems really really smart in hindsight, give complete beginners a highly simplified but functional version of your professional utility, and provide an on-ramp to your professional programs. I imagine if Microsoft had some professional version of Windows Movie Maker it would've taken over a big chunk of the video editing market via the same method.
Anyway, regarding Linux DAWs, I am trying to get used to Ableton in Wine, but it's just not the same, and making it work in Wine is troublesome enough that I end up giving up before finishing anything of interest. Is there any DAW that feels like it actually belongs on Linux and doesn't either feel like you're maintaining a package by yourself, or has an awfully bad UI/UX like all FOSS DAWs I tried so far? I think in 2026 there's really a good opportunity here, with user interest genuinely rising for Linux on desktop.
Most DAWs barely work on the platforms they support.
I can’t see Linux as being a viable market since most Linux users except software to generally be free.
Vs OSX which lets you enter a credit card number and buy stuff right from the built in store.
If I recall Ubuntu might of once attempted paid applications on its built in store and it didn’t really work.
Logic is probably made at below cost, but it keeps you in the OSX ecosystem.
Need a 32GB OSX box with a 2TB drive, only one place to get it.
Ableton Live has worked on Wine for close to 2 decades now. WineHQ has positive run reports dating back to 2006: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...
You can’t both praise native Linux daws like Bitwig and then claim WINE is fine.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually prefer Linux when I can use native applications and build frameworks.
The downsides are going to be the bland cross-platform UI and the general lack of plugin support on Linux. But the upside is native PipeWire support for application-specific channel audio and complex output routing options. The pack-in plugins are pretty good too, The Grid can replace a lot of your subtractive synths: https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/
Very strangely fitting: using Jobs "bicycle for the mind" to compose this in his honor :)
Linux has a terrible audio subsystem. First you'd have to write CoreAudio for Linux, which would not be easy.
In contrast, on MacOS I plug in my USB sound interface, it appears in my DAW and I'm on my way. And yes, I am getting a Mac now.
If they had good GUI support then some more things open up but nothing really essential. Garage Band has no equal in terms of ease of use, if you are into that sort of thing.
The Firefox source tree has every tool available for cross-compilation from Linux → macOS, which is how Firefox is built for macOS.
https://hydraulic.dev/
It has built in support for Electron, JVM, Flutter and even native apps (although of course then you still have to compile the native binaries on macOS yourself).
That also works the other way around. You can ship to Windows from Linux or macOS.
Well, not if somebody finds a way to run the compilation elsewhere!
Hence my comment!
Right now, iOS dev requires to own a recent Mac machine, which is hell of expensive, and moreover needs to be renewed every few years...
Completely unjustifiable...
I run the last version I could fully buy before it went subscription based. It’s great.
*Does Xcode work?*
Yes and no. The Xcode GUI definitely doesn't work yet; see *Will <<Insert_Random_GUI_Application>> Work?* above. However, the Xcode CLI tools like Clang, LLDB, Git, the Metal compiler, the Swift compiler, and more do work.
*What about `xcodebuild`?*
Some versions of `xcodebuild` (e.g. 11.7) are known to work for extremely basic XIB-based macOS apps. However, the vast majority of projects do not qualify as extremely basic and aren't supported yet.
> We do, and in fact, Darling is largely based on the original Darwin source code published by Apple. We use The Cocotron as a basis for our Cocoa implementation, along with the Apportable Foundation and various bits of GNUstep.
Apportable (<3) was a YC startup https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/apportable from 2011 - the Foundation repo last update was Dec 2014.
I genuiniely can't see why I would want to run Mac software on my Arch box.
I have used Linux since the 1990's and used the Mac back in 1988.
As others said, the killer app is XCode. Even if you can technically get it to run, you'll still need the full support and test flows of a native solution, so you might as well follow the proper path and use a Mac.
I can get Visual Studio to run in Parallels today. I still test with a real Windows machine.
It looks more like a Magneto-Optical Drive, not a beach ball
Isn't that level of fun one gets from looking at that enough?
You can reliably run DOS, Win, Linux applications of almost any vintage with the right translation layer / emulator, but there's a black hole of MacOS apps circa 2002-2012 that just no longer runs on anything, even later Intel Macs.
I used to enjoy a cute little Pacman clone called Pac the Man X, for example, and I just don't know how I could run this today. Seems to reliably take down any emulator I've thrown at it - presumably it's using some kind of graphics acceleration that's not emulated. (Suggestions welcome.)
https://gist.github.com/JoshCooley/095b80f9639a4dc7e762208ae...
You can also emulate PPC Mac OS X and pass through devices, but I have not tried to do this, so your mileage may vary.
It is easier to emulate 10.7+ versions than 10.6, but you can get it to work from 10.4 with work.
EDIT: although it looks like some try, e.g. https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1776 https://github.com/darlinghq/darling-xnu/pull/16
Sadly, the fact that there's no response to some serious PRs implementing major frameworks (https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1725) is not exactly a sign of an actively-managed project. Hopefully someone steps in or forks it.