RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source

XNU has some interesting features.

It’s Mach based, so it has Mach ports, which are an IPC system that is fairly heavily used by macOS.

It has DriverKit, which is a C++ framework for drivers that’s got morecsuppirt than the usual Unix driver model.

Mach-O does more than ELF, and enables the two-layer namespacing that makes macOS able to manage dynamic linking dependencies better than ELF.

Nothing really earth-shattering but interesting enough. And far easier to build a macOS environment on than FreeBSD.

I honestly think the kernel interface is by far the easiest part of building a MacOS compat layer. The userland is gigantic, super complex, and totally closed source. That's the hard part.

AFAIK all macos software only talks to the kernel via userland APIs - so there's no particular benefit to basing ravynOS on XNU anyway. (Just the opinion of a layman.)

The Tn chip.

Prior to that, modern Macs were just PCs. Then Apple started to introduce, and then depend upon, their unique hardware.

Then the ARM migration using proprietary CPUs and GPUs really kicked it up a level. The OS relies on the hardware, which is unique to Apple now.

I’m super confused as to what is missing in the FOSS world, how does it “have little to offer?” It really sounds like you just like the macOS style and want a clone of it, and that’s certainly fine as a desire or a request, but if you like macOS, macOS is already available. For what logical reason should a project be copying macOS?

I would absolutely agree that a logical reason is to run macOS apps on other platforms, but other than that, the macOS operating system and its design is nothing incredibly exciting, unique, or unattainable elsewhere.

You’ve established that a Linux desktop environment in macOS style alone is not sufficient, and that makes me wonder what details of the underpinnings is Linux getting wrong compared to Mac? Is launchd superior to systemd? Is Metal superior to Vulkan? Is container superior to docker/podman in Linux? I think in a lot of cases the macOS underpinnings are quite inferior to those on offer by the FOSS world. Not in every case, of course, but a whole lot of Apple’s low level tools are half-baked and weird.

I think we need to articulate what is actually wrong with Linux or other FOSS alternatives as far as their underpinnings because I am really coming up short.

Heck, macOS and FOSS alternatives share a whole lot of identical low level tools underpinnings, like how you can run your favorite shell in either OS or even install Homebrew on Linux. (Another hot take: Linux package management is vastly superior to macOS or any other operating system on the market).

This idea of the design ethos being superior on Mac…was that true with Liquid Glass too? Are we going to exclude from our analysis every time Apple rushes out the next big Ui redesign to meet marketing deadlines and fixes it in subsequent updates like they’ve done multiple times in the past?

I look at befuddling aspects of the macOS design ethos like the fact that the menu bar will just silently truncate items when you run out of space or the fact that there’s a giant notch on the screen as evidence that maybe the macOS design ethos is nothing to envy.

Maybe macOS design is merely “pretty good” and not actually something that significantly far above and beyond its competitors.

Again, I applaud the idea of making software to run macOS apps outside of the propriety ecosystem just like the tools we use to run Windows apps in FOSS operating systems. However, I don’t think users looking for macOS design ethos or platform quality are starved of options.

The project says it’s in pre alpha so that’s to be expected