Comment by skynetv2
17 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.
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> of course NeXT Mach is one of the most widely-ported kernels of all time...
actually the broader Mach kernel, not specifically the NeXT variant, is the one with a documented history of extensive portability
The NeXT variant did run on the following architectures:
1. Motorola 68k (the original NeXT hardware had 68030 and 68040 chips)
2. Intel x86 (NeXTSTEP 3.1 for Intel was released in 1993)
3. HP PA-RISC (I have an OPENSTEP 4.2 CD that can run on Motorola 68k, x86, PA-RISC, and SPARC hardware)
4. Sun SPARC
5. 32-bit PowerPC (Rhapsody, the original Mac OS X 1.0 that was essentially still Rhapsody, and of course Mac OS X from Cheetah through Leopard)
6. 64-bit PowerPC (Power Mac G5 and iMac G5)
7. Intel x86-64 (starting from Mac OS X Tiger all the way to macOS Tahoe)
8. 32-bit ARM (iOS on early iPhones with 32-bit ARM chips)
9. 64-bit ARM
I could be forgetting other platforms, but these are the ones I know from the top of my head.
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.
> soldered RAM
Hold on a minute.
It's not "soldered". It's integrated with the SoC. The benefit is memory latency and bandwidth.
If you know Framework, their entire mission is to build upgradeable laptops, and they keep delivering. Now they also wanted to build an incredibly powerful, but small and quiet desktop. They went directly to AMD, asked their engineers to make the memory upgradeable. AMD worked really hard and said not possible, not unless you want all of these cores to sit idle.
https://frame.work/blog/framework-desktop-deep-dive-ryzen-ai...
The world has moved on. Just as you no longer have discrete cache chips or discrete FPUs, you can't do discrete memory anymore - unless you don't need that level of performance, in which case CAMM is still an excellent choice.
But that's not what Apple does. M1 redefined the low-end. It will remain a great choice in 5 years, even when macOS kills it off - Asahi remains very decent.
> The world has moved on
we're talking about laptops, right?
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This description really resonates with me, so I guess I’m a potential user.
I’ve been running macOS most of my life. In college I ran Linux on my laptops, but I switched back to macOS as the user experience was better - I could spend far less time messing with things and instead rely on system defaults and first party apps.
Year by year though I feel more like I don’t own my computer. I’ve tried switching back to Linux, but I always give up because despite the freedom, it starts feeling like a chore. Even Asahi Linux on macOS hardware I couldn’t get into.
The rayvnOS vision is something I could get behind. A fully packaged, macOS-like user experience, where the default settings are good and things work out of the box. I’d LOVE to have that as on option.
Linux compatibility or even macOS binary compatibility matters less to me than, say, an out of the box Time Machine like backup tool based on ZFS snapshots. So FreeBSD makes sense from that perspective.
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.
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I guess drivers are important, which is a good reason for choosing FreeBSD :)
It's a shame that OpenDarwin didn't continue. PureDarwin seems to exist, but progress is understandably slow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system
https://www.puredarwin.org/#beta
> Also, is there such a need for running macOS apps on a non-macOS?
Arguably there's a need for running macOS apps on macOS even. E.g. my parents are stuck having an old Intel Mac Pro around on an old OS for a few 32-bit programs (not sure if it changed, but IIRC you couldn't run an OS that supported them as a VM on Apple Silicon). Pretty soon Rosetta 2 will go away as well.
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.
I use KDE because it lets me emulate a macOS-like paradigm better than Gnome or other options can.
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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.
...
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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.
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Lucky, here Linux lives on servers, or desktop VMs.
Except for the trackpad, alas.
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.
> Would the energy be better spent in making Linux more stable or usable for the general public?
Linux is stable and widely used, whether as Android, Ubuntu, WSL on Windows or Crostini on ChromeOS (itself Linux under the hood).
The general public buy products like Macs, Lenovos, Steam Decks, Chromebooks or Frameworks. Nobody buys a "Linux".
Linux and it's ecosystem are features of those products, not products themselves.
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.
I'm not referring to the kernel at all. It's the morass of the userland—three decades of catering to the expectations of IBM PC/windows users have led to... inconsistent and underwhelming results. If I wanted to use 1980s UX, I would have switched to windows or linux decades ago.
But what am I saying? Consistent emacs bindings across all text forms is actually from the 1970s. Maybe I'm the problem....
If it is no longer closed, it might proliferate just like Linux once it gathers a critical amount of users. :)
Mac OS without the background ads garbage or the constant blocking of call-home requests would be nice.
Spelled windows wrong
Where are you seeing ads?
what are you smoking ?