New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS
github.com83 points by kasajian 4 hours ago
83 points by kasajian 4 hours ago
> A BSD-based OS project that aims to provide source and binary compatibility with macOS® and a similar user experience.
I am curious - what is the motivation for this project?
Is it to replicate macOS? - If yes, why?
Is it to provide application compatibility on a non-macOS? If yes, why a full OS? Why not take the route like Wine or other such layers that make compatibility possible? Also, is there such a need for running macOS apps on a non-macOS? Who is the target audience?
Would the energy be better spent in making Linux more stable or usable for the general public?
If its just a hobby, sure, that is well & good.
A lot of these questions are answered here: https://ravynos.com/faq
To summarize...
There is a WINE-analogous project, called Darling: https://www.darlinghq.org/
The goal for ravynOS is to be analogous to ReactOS. Much like ReactOS and WINE, ravynOS and Darling share a lot of Cocoa code.
For the problem of OpenStep implementations specifically, a bespoke software stack has the benefit of being able to put Mach messaging into the kernel, where it is much more performant.
They chose the FreeBSD kernel over Darwin for the sake of hardware compatibility (though of course NeXT Mach is one of the most widely-ported kernels of all time...)
There is also overlap with GNUstep, helloSystem, and other projects in the broader "open-source Mac/NeXT" space, though ravynOS (obviously) prefers BSD/MIT/Apache-style licensing over GNU-style licensing. Nevertheless, ravynOS currently uses the GNUstep libobjc2 runtime, a bit like how most of the Unix world used to depend on gcc.
> There is a WINE-analogous project, called Darling: https://www.darlinghq.org/
Missed opportunity to call it Cider.
There's already been a Cider; it used some Wine code to ease porting games to MacOS.
I'm not affiliated with ravynOS, but I've been periodically following the project for a few years.
The main page (https://ravynos.com/) expresses the philosophy of ravynOS:
"We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD."
rayvnOS seems to be designed for people who love macOS, particularly its interface, its UI guidelines, and its ecosystem of applications, but who do not like the direction that Apple has moved toward under Tim Cook (soldered RAM, limited and inflexible hardware choices, notarization, iOS-influenced interface changes, increased pushiness with advertising Apple's subscription services, etc.) and who would be unhappy with either Windows or the Linux desktop.
Speaking for myself, I used to daily-drive Macs from 2006 through 2021, but I now daily-drive PCs running Windows due primarily to the lack of upgradable RAM in ARM Macs. I'm not a big fan of Windows, but I need some proprietary software packages such as Microsoft Office. This makes switching to desktop Linux difficult.
It would be awesome using what is essentially a community-driven clone of macOS, where I could continue using a Mac-like operating system without needing to worry about Apple's future directions.
On the Unix side of things, I believe the decision to base ravynOS on FreeBSD rather than on Linux may make migrating from macOS to ravynOS easier, since macOS is based on a hybrid Mach/BSD kernel, and since many of the command-line tools that ship with macOS are from the BSDs. This is known as Darwin. It's not that a Mac clone can't be built on top of Linux, but FreeBSD is closer to Darwin than Linux is.
So somehow running MacOS in 2025 on hot, loud, horrible battery life x86 based computers is a good thing?
Not to mention x86 Mac apps are not long for this world. I can’t think of a single application I would miss moving from Macs to Windows. It’s more about the hardware and the integration with the rest of my Apple devices.
Notes and Reminders are extremely good at what they do, and the synchronization with their iOS equivalents is flawless from what I can tell… and fat chance you get to uproot such a thing to a non-Apple OS.
Third party apps other than for media editing seem to be rare, I think Apple has gobbled or rug pulled much of its independent software vendor ecosystem.
Apple Mail also is in my eyes the only generic mail client out there that really “gets it”.
Thunderbird has always felt clunky in comparison and the recent redesign just made it a different kind of clunky. Everything else is either too minimal (Geary), tries to clone old style Outlook (Evolution), or is tied to/favors a particular provider (Gmail, Outlook, etc).
I have the same sentiment. I am forced to use a MacBook in my new job while waiting for them to procure a laptop that I can put Linux on. I can say that Linux with KDE Plasma desktop is in almost every way superior to Mac OS. Much better UX, configurability and core applications. And even little things are more polished and thought through compared to what a trillion dollar company was able to produce. It's really beyond me how people use Apple products, and it's the absolute majority of them in my field.
“Better” is largely subjective. For some (including myself), a Windows-like paradigm like KDE uses is not desirable, and UI papercuts like the many that KDE has are highly visible.
There are objective criteria that macOS definitely fails at. Various government agencies here in the states can't use macs even if they wanted to due to lack of #a11y support or the ability to load their own root cert stores.
I agree with you that for MOST people, MOST of the complaints boil down to "I just don't like the Mac UX," but there are organizations that cannot tolerate the risk of forcing employees to use equipment that doesn't follow even the basics of section 508 or DoD guidance.
I don't keep the record of every thing that I don't like about MacOS, but here's some:
- cannot keep natural scrolling for trackpad whilst having the expected scrolling behaviour for the mouse
- needs an external app for fractional display scaling
- screenshot tool is objectively inferior to that in Plasma, eg. not clear how to annotate a screenshot or copy it to clipboard
- Dolphin file browser is has cleaner and simpler UI, is more configurable and has a built-in terminal which is super handy.
...
macOS has markup tools for screenshots (or any image) built right into Quicklook and Preview. It’s not as rich as something like SnagIt, but it’s good enough for adding some text, arrows, shapes, redactions, etc.
Can’t comment on the others but I copy screenshots to the clipboard multiple times a day in macOS and have done for years. Very frequently I send them via Screen Sharing to another Mac and paste there, something I value hugely.
Dolphin is one of the things about KDE that bothers me, due to the way its windows are laid out and how they use margins/spacing. It just feels “wrong” in a way that even most other Linux file managers (including more full featured ones that still have a menubar) don’t.
Just curious... did your employer agree to getting you a Lennucks Bocks 'cause you asked nice or were they frightened of running afoul of one of the many #a11y or security evaluation frameworks?
It would be great if it runs on mac too. macOS doesn't have much compatibility with itself.
I would much rather emulate linux apps on a more stable and consistent OS than vice versa. The sheer number of toolkits and window managers leaves my head spinning, and unifying their behavior even before you can begin to improve it feels like a nightmare.
I personally don't care much about the dock or the look and feel or whatever; I just want access to the usability of macos without having to accept how closed it is.
It's hard to get a more consistent and stable kernel than Linux, not counting academic or experimental kernels w/o extensive hardware support.
If it is no longer closed, it might proliferate just like Linux once it gathers a critical amount of users. :)
I've been paying attention to this project periodically over the past few years. It would be nice to have a FOSS clone of macOS, similar to how FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku are FOSS clones of MS-DOS, Windows, and BeOS, respectively.
The only thing is that this project has been quite slow going, which is similar to the histories of FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku, where it took a long time for those projects to get to a usable state. It is a lot of work cloning an operating system, especially with an aim for binary compatibility. The Linux kernel benefited from the fact that there was an entire GNU ecosystem of tools that can run on Unix, and even in that case, the GNU ecosystem was seven years in the making in 1991 when the first version of the Linux kernel was released. It would've taken much longer for Linux to have been developed had GNU tools not existed.
Writing an entire operating system is long, hard work, even when provided the resources of companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Hopefully projects like ravynOS and the similar HelloSystem (https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/) will lead to FOSS clones of macOS eventually, even if we need to wait another 5-10 years.
Sometimes it strikes me that something like this might be one of the better litmus tests for AI — if it’s really good enough to start 10x-ing engineers (let alone replacing them) it should be more common for more projects like this should begin to accelerate to practical usability.
If not, maybe the productivity dividends are mostly shallow.
This is so cool, the little mini screenshots look gorgeous because it replicates MacOS. I’m not sure if a lot of people feel the same but over the years I always thought it was a shame that Linux’ overall UX and aesthetics seemed a little bit more rushed and “crowd sourced” (in the sense that it felt diverse in terms of ui opinions and taste etc). It almost makes me want to try Linux again just for that look and feel (because I love my Mac’s but would like something different and more free)
It doesn't seem to be their focus, but this could be amazing for macOS build machines, and servers. There have been a number of changes in recent years focussed on improving the security of macOS when used as a Desktop OS. These work well for their intended purpose, but they have made macOS harder and harder to deploy headlessly, and use as a server.
I hope to see this become an open source OS that runs the full xcode command line suite, deploys easily to headless machines, and inherits FreeBSD's server hardware compatibility.
The website looks sleek, I get the impression that the ui for the os will be the same. But then when I look at the screenshots, it look like macOS stuck in 2008.
Can it run stock macOS programs like Photos? I want a non-chaotic way to import my old fart's iPhone galleries without a Mac Mini (HEIC and Lives are annoying), and docker-osx/vm's don't work for everyone.
They say source-compatible, not binary-compatible.
GNUstep failed to get traction, I doubt they can do much better.
This has been a slow going effort for a few years now, it's not "new".