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- Is there some really amazing Mac only software that would justify the effort ?
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.
by Alien1Being - Most of the apps on macos are for fixing os behaviors that make no sense.
- Glyphs is like the only game in town for font editing. I’m an Omnigraffle enjoyer too.by ashton314
- > 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.
by Archit3ch - 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.by wwweston
- 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.by tensor
- Will it run xcode build tools?by tootie
- From the FAQ on the Discord:
*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.
by stuaxo - Would be nice to run Final Cut Pro on Linux without having to pay an arm and a leg for the actual machine. It's a really expensive toy :(by SilentM68
- 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.)
- It runs on Rosetta w/ a few fixes.
https://gist.github.com/JoshCooley/095b80f9639a4dc7e762208ae...
by joombaga - 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.
by BillStrong - 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.
- You don’t have to run the latest photoshop. (Or Lightroom..)
I run the last version I could fully buy before it went subscription based. It’s great.
by testing22321 - Very neat.
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
by 999900000999 - There’s always Reaper.by nnevatie
- You wouldn’t want to run it without instruments and effects I’d imagine.by pacifika
- 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.by tgv
- > All I want for Christmas is Logic on Linux.
Linux has a terrible audio subsystem. First you'd have to write CoreAudio for Linux, which would not be easy.
by dosisking - Give Reaper a try, it works very well on linux and you can even use VSTs.
- 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.
by Melonai - Cool that it exists, but I honestly don't even know which mac exclusive program I would want to install.by nonestdeus
- NotePlan for me. No replacement for it despite my efforts with Obsidian.by cromka
- Might be useful to run ARM mac apps on ARM Linux vs using Wine + an x86 emulation layer.by Gigachad
- Photoshop / Adobe apps are mainly holding me back from switching to Linux completely.
- 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.
by jeremyjh - 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:
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.> 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.by rvz - What allows Wine to run so many Windows apps that there's not an equivalent for MacOS? Is it lack of interest? Is it a technical thing? I'd even be willing to limit to x86 apps. Or maybe there is and I'm just really out of touch??by dylan604
- Quibble: it'll run anything that runs on open source Darwin. You won't be running anything needing macOS frameworks.
- 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..
by ay