Darling is a translation layer that lets you run macOS software on Linux, not an emulator, it's like wine but for MacOS apps.
Oh come on, we could have lived in a world where the translation layers are called WINE and DINE!
for those not familiar, this basically lets you run command line tools. anything with a GUI will not work.
I've been hoping this project makes significant progress for the last few years to run GUI apps. unfortunately it's been slow as there's not as much interest in getting Mac apps to run on Linux as there is with WINE. that said, I don't fault them, it's a daunting task and wine has the benefit of three decades of progress under their belt.
Everything starts somewhere, but I wonder what macOS cli’s are the target for this tool that doesn’t have a Linux equivalent
CLI's are likely not specifically the target. I suspect the CLI is just the "low hanging fruit" and core set of software that needs to be supported before you build up to a fully functional GUI apps.
Seeing how the majority of CLI apps available on the Mac are ported over from Linux in the first place, what is even the point?
For software that’s currently available on both Windows and MacOS, how does the performance of the Windows version under Wine compare to the MacOS version under Darling?
Wine is much, much better at this point. In particular, Darling doesn’t have much support for GUIs yet, so unless it is a command line tool you probably want to stick with Wine.
I imagine if Darling gets as well supported it would be better. But it will not be optimized as much, even though the core architecture may be way more similar
Anyone have experience with it? I'm trying to think of something that is MacOS only that I care about to test it with, but coming up empty.
Haven't tried it yet, but I can see myself using it in the future. It could be great for automating Mac/iOS development and administrative workflows. I don't think you can compile, sign, notarize, or inspect Mac/iOS apps without Xcode tools (which are, of course, Mac-only). It's a pain in the ass to operate Mac VMs for such purposes, and it's only getting more difficult as time goes on. IIRC Apple only allows 2 guest VMs per host now.
Not sure if there are any non-Mac tools to work with dmg files (Mac disk images).
If GUI support is sufficiently developed in the future, there are plenty of Mac apps I would like to run. iPhone app support on Linux would be an absolute game-changer.
It took an hour or two to compile and takes up about 5GB of space. The only program I'm really interested in is Xcode, which doesn't work at the moment.
I mean they have lots of MS Apps, Adobe stuff, some video editors and all that, maybe MS apps on macOS are less hard to run
If in the future it ever gets good support for gui's and is stable. For sure gone try Qlab.
It's simple the best show control software I tried yet. But for now I will be using Linux show player or borrow a MacBook.
Safari is by far the best browser for battery performance. I'm uncertain if this would translate over to safari running in darling when it supports guis fully.
I don't really understand the appeal of this. What command line software is there on MacOS that there isn't an adequate equivalent to on Linux?
Its a first step. And then some day complex software can run, even though I have the feeling that has all shady DRM stuff inside
For me the appeal is potentially being able to verify that my code at least compiles and has basic functionality on Darwin. No idea if this can be useful for anyone other than developers.
I'm a Windows user so this is even less relevant to me, but I can't think of a single program or application I would even want that's only on Mac.
The only one of those I've ever heard of is Final Cut and I have Premier Pro already. I'm going to assume I can get a pretty solid alternative for any of the rest as well.
Uhm, if that happens, maybe the devs could use something like qemu or a specialized fork of it?
Cool. Do you know if this project will support PowerPC-era Mac OS X apps or if that makes any difference? There are a bunch of quirky and fun games that could avoid being lost to time if an "emulator" can run them.