Is there any equivalent to wine for running Mac applications?

Is there anything to run applications designed for OS X in Linux without having OSX, similar to how you can run Windows applications on Linux using Wine without having Windows?

Macha

Posted 2009-10-26T20:26:04.370

Reputation: 4 772

4If there were such a thing that actually worked do you think you'd have difficulty finding it? – Hasaan Chop – 2009-11-23T19:58:45.810

indeed. If it's free and it works, you'd find it. If it's free but doesn't work, you don't care. If it's not free it defeats the purpose (just buy OSX). – o0'. – 2009-11-25T11:31:52.347

btw you might not need to buy the most recent OSX, you could buy an older, used one (i.e. cheaper). – o0'. – 2009-11-25T11:32:55.870

For what it's worth, I've heard of no such software. – Lawrence Velázquez – 2009-11-26T08:33:07.140

Well whoever wants the 100 rep then should post "There is none" in an answer, or an answer which is actually wrong will end up getting it. – Macha – 2009-11-29T18:41:12.133

2If no one manages to get 2 upvotes, there will be no accepted answer and no one will get the 100 points. It seems fair that way, especially considering the answer really is "there is none". – alex – 2009-11-29T21:10:32.633

Answers

It seems that you're looking for an implementation of the Carbon/Cocoa frameworks used in Mac OS X.

I'm pretty sure that there doesn't exist an implementation complete enough to run Mac apps with. The only similar projects of any weight that I can find are Cocotron and GNUstep, both of which seem to implement only portions of the Cocoa API, and even then only for cross-platform development. I would be shocked if you could run any substantial Mac program on Linux with one of these projects.

Lawrence Velázquez

Posted 2009-10-26T20:26:04.370

Reputation: 929

There is Darling. However, this is relatively young project and currently it has a lot of limitations. Here are few quotes from its site:

Darling is a translation layer that allows you to run unmodified MacOS binaries on Linux. In its nature, it is similar to the well-known Wine project.

...

Currently, Darling is capable of running many console tools or applications. Examples include Apple’s Toolchain, Midnight Commander and many other packages from Rudix.org. While this may not be very interesting for end-users, every project must start with a rock-solid foundation to remain viable in the future.

...

At this point, does not yet run MacOS application with a GUI. For more information, review the Project Status. Developers are always welcome to join the project - take a look at Low Hanging Fruit.

Lissanro Rayen

Posted 2009-10-26T20:26:04.370

Reputation: 278

-3

I have never come across a thing, but a quick google on it yielded interesting things, here's one such results here. Other than that, it would be interesting to see how such an emulation for a pre-Mac Intel era i.e. PowerPC can be achieved, let alone binaries for powerpc running on a x86 processor. However, since MacOSX is a derivative of BSD, why not get the sources for the macosx program that you wish to run and recompile it targeting your system?

Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.

t0mm13b

Posted 2009-10-26T20:26:04.370

Reputation: 723

It would be best to tell why this was down-voted for everyone to see. It would help others to post answers better here and better themselves also on superuser.com. Thanks for the time to read it. :) – t0mm13b – 2009-11-29T21:14:53.510

2Wine is an open-source implementation of the Win32 API, not a hardware emulator. Similarly, Macha is looking for a Linux implementation of the Mac OS X APIs, not hardware emulation for Apple hardware. – Lawrence Velázquez – 2009-11-29T21:25:38.913

Also, Mac OS X already has PowerPC emulation software included: http://www.apple.com/rosetta/

– Lawrence Velázquez – 2009-11-29T22:16:15.517