Forgive the naivety, but what graphical Linux apps are people trying to run that don’t have native MacOS builds? In my experience, Linux GUIs are generally written in Qt or GTK, both of which are multi-platform.
I don’t doubt that they exist, I’m just struggling to think of a popular example.
That's not the use case. The use case is running apps from a remote Linux host as a local window. A performant VNC for specific windows if you will.
For example, you could run VS Code on that machine as a window on your Mac. A more real world example is people accessing guis (e.g. matlab) on lab clusters.
The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra.
1. I'd really like to run my development environment for things under Siri for its tiling window management but for better or worse I'm deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem for everything else, this looks like it could be a really nice way of doing it (possibly once multi monitor support is in).
2. There are still a few applications which have supported Linux builds but no support for macOS (Iridium's Niagara Workbench application for configuration of building management systems springs to mind here). Since Apple ended support for Quartz this has been a bit of a pain to deal with.
But in the field of integrated circuit design there’s lots of apps that are Linux-only. I’ve tried to run some of them in containers on Mac. But XQuartz is awful.
If they ever transitioned to Wayland perhaps this would let us run these apps on Mac in a nice way.
On the other hand some of them have started getting ARM builds (for running simulations on certain cloud environments) so maybe native Mac GUI builds could happen someday soon.
Really? X11 forwarding with XQuartz has never been a superior experience in modern times IMO. In my experience, it’s been bloated, slow, and just janky to use compared to other alternatives.
I can’t speak to Cocoa-Way, as this is the first I’ve heard of it, but anything has to be a better overall experience than XQuartz.
Wayland natively isn’t built for forwarding the way X11 is. Waypipe fixes this, providing an X11 protocol equivalent for Wayland. This project is a waypipe client for macOS.
https://github.com/neonkore/waypipe proxies Wayland over a network. It’s straightforward enough in theory: Wayland core is just a communications protocol plus shared memory; so you just need to forward the messages, and detect and send changes in the shared memory. Not the cheapest thing, but perfectly tractable. Of course, there are also more difficult extensions, like GPU integration, but that sort of thing was a problem for X as well.
I've been using Linux on the desktop for decades at this point. KDE Plasma is my current favorite and I've been using it for a few years now. It has everything you'd want in a desktop (maybe a bit more), looks great, and is very fast even on modest hardware.
My current job has me using MacOS on an M3 Pro Macbook and I find it barely tolerable compared to KDE. Usually when I want to do something new or change some configuration, either there is no way to do it, or it's hidden behind some key combination that I never would have guessed. I would describe the overall feel of MacOS as "syrupy." When using the mouse or typing, there is almost always some kind of barely-perceptible latency. Nothing is ever crisp and instant. (This isn't specific to this machine, it feels the same way on every Mac I've borrowed.) It's sort of like someone decided that the only way to make it smooth was to also make it slow.
It really isn’t. There are a great many people who use macs for work but who do not like Apples design choices. And that number has skyrocketed even further since Liquid Glass was pushed onto people.
In fact one of the front page articles today is literally calling macOS “ugly” in the title.
I don't want KDE but I would much prefer gnome to macos desktop, I think it's both prettier and more functional, and that's not a tahoe thing. I hate finder too, and don't see any way to properly use an alternative.
To be honest, I agree a little bit because I remember from my time at customizing KDE that everyone wanted it to make it look like Mac OS
but it feels a bit of peer-pressure/cool-factor, people used to like how Mac OS look but after Tahoe, I feel like most people don't.
To be honest, I am on mac right now but I really like Niri/Hyprland and to a degree KDE as well. I definitely feel like those were immensely more customizable and I miss that customizability, even if some people might use that customizability to make it look like MacOS default.
Honest question: why use MacOS at all then? If you prefer KDE, why not run a system that KDE natively supports? Is it a particular MacOS application? Or is it that Linux support on Mac hardware is not good enough?
I think there are many use cases for this software.
For example, you may not want to run some graphical applications directly on your Mac for security, isolation or testing purposes.
If this software turns out to be lower latency than RDP and CRD, I could also see it being very useful for accessing a remote graphical workstation (e.g.: running heavy software on an beefy machine in a data center instead of taking up resources on my skinny laptop).
Native GTK apps on macOS are often more broken than running it in a VM or Parallels, in my experience. I used to use Gitg on macOS and it was a terrible experience all around.
Try building Inkscape or GIMP from source on macOS and see how "multi-platform" those GTK apps feel in practice. Even when a Mac build exists, it is often skinned oddly or lags because somebody has to carry Mac patches against an old fork.
This is for the long tail. The compositor path dodges a pile of volunteer-port churn and runs the Linux build directly, which is a lot more appealing for niche GUI tools and dev apps that barely get maintained on Linux, never mind macOS.
I need something like this for android, termux-x11 is a good start but if termux gets wayland support or there is a way to expose wayland sockets from the android native linux VM, the only thing missing is a native rendering compositor for a smoother experience
This looks like slop? The README is full of emojis and kind of incoherent, there are no implementation details, there claims to be a Metal backend that doesn't seem to exist, etc.
This is definitely not worth using. It doesn't even say what hypervisor its using. Is it using QEMU? Docker? Podman? Lima? Colima?
And also this chart is super weird:
Solution Latency HiDPI Native Integration Setup Complexity
Cocoa-Way Low Yes Native windows Easy
XQuartz High Partial X11 quirks Medium
VNC High No Full screen Medium
VM GUI High Partial Separate window Complex
A standard VM will always be the easiest to set up by far. And latency should be the same across all 4. I mean after all it's a VM running on your local machine. Honestly I don't even know what it means when it says "Latency".
I also looked at some of the code and it's using OpenGL 3.3 Core which is... super old. But it makes sense in the context of this being LLM-generated since most of its training data is probably OpenGL 3.3 Core code....
Overall this project is very strange. It makes me feel more confident in my skills, AI isn't all that great. It's all hype. You can get to the frontpage of HN. And if you're
Peter Steinberger you can get acquired by OpenAI for a billion dollars. But that's about it. The code isn't getting any better.
This reminds me of that C-compiler-in-Rust publicity stunt by Anthropic. There's no substance. It's just a headline.
Now, if only macOS still had the ability to drop to a Darwin shell without a GUI at all… we could just have a nice UNIX with something like KDE or COSMIC, brew as our package manager… what a dream.
TBH, I would love to install GNU or BSD on my M4 Max Mac Studio. What I really wanted is a modern UNIX workstation. My Studio’s price/performance was the best available, so that’s what I bought. Now, I am happy with that purchase except for the constant diminution in software quality from Apple.
Many of the keyboard commands are configurable in settings, complete with switching cmd and ctrl keys around.
Or you can get used in a week or two when switching, this is what I did years ago and now for me Win/Linux is confusing and find the location of the command key more ergonomic on a Mac.
Incredibly L take.
macOS keyboard commands are great for working in the terminal since system shortcuts use a different key and don't interfere with control codes
agree. I guess it's a force of habit, but I am so used to the cmd+<whatever> (specially copy & paste) shortcuts, that I configured them into my linux desktop to behave the same way
Being limited to just control and alt definitely cuts down on the options. Conversely, having MacOS command key act as “super” in Emacs opens up some possibilities.
Super key for most keybinds is much nicer than windows in my opinion, where it is entirely wasted on opening the start menu. On Linux it gains a few functions based on the desktop environment but not much.
The use of the Windows key extends far beyond the start menu. Builtin functions include window management, invoking programs on the taskbar, locking the computer, invoking Explorer and Settings, invoking and controlling accessibility functions like Magnifier. The Microsoft Power Toys add a lot of functions using the Windows key by default as well, like screen snipping, screen OCR, color picking, enhanced clipboard, and many more.
My problem is that I don’t use the majority of these functions at all. Command I can use for almost everything no matter how frequent or infrequent. It also replaces most “ctrl+shift” binds which is a great plus for me.
Absolutely. I went through great lengths to install Asahi on my work M1, only to have most things not work (RTFM). So when one is forced to use MacOS, may it round corners in hell, for work…
As someone that switches between MacOS (dayjob) and Linux (my own PCs) workstations daily - I wish I could do the opposite for Linux. MacOS keyboard shortcuts are just way more intuitive to me, and they are way more consistent across applications.
I don’t doubt that they exist, I’m just struggling to think of a popular example.
For example, you could run VS Code on that machine as a window on your Mac. A more real world example is people accessing guis (e.g. matlab) on lab clusters.
The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra.
1. I'd really like to run my development environment for things under Siri for its tiling window management but for better or worse I'm deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem for everything else, this looks like it could be a really nice way of doing it (possibly once multi monitor support is in).
2. There are still a few applications which have supported Linux builds but no support for macOS (Iridium's Niagara Workbench application for configuration of building management systems springs to mind here). Since Apple ended support for Quartz this has been a bit of a pain to deal with.
But in the field of integrated circuit design there’s lots of apps that are Linux-only. I’ve tried to run some of them in containers on Mac. But XQuartz is awful.
If they ever transitioned to Wayland perhaps this would let us run these apps on Mac in a nice way.
On the other hand some of them have started getting ARM builds (for running simulations on certain cloud environments) so maybe native Mac GUI builds could happen someday soon.
What issues are you seeing with it? I use it pretty heavily and have no complaints…
I can’t speak to Cocoa-Way, as this is the first I’ve heard of it, but anything has to be a better overall experience than XQuartz.
My current job has me using MacOS on an M3 Pro Macbook and I find it barely tolerable compared to KDE. Usually when I want to do something new or change some configuration, either there is no way to do it, or it's hidden behind some key combination that I never would have guessed. I would describe the overall feel of MacOS as "syrupy." When using the mouse or typing, there is almost always some kind of barely-perceptible latency. Nothing is ever crisp and instant. (This isn't specific to this machine, it feels the same way on every Mac I've borrowed.) It's sort of like someone decided that the only way to make it smooth was to also make it slow.
In fact one of the front page articles today is literally calling macOS “ugly” in the title.
but it feels a bit of peer-pressure/cool-factor, people used to like how Mac OS look but after Tahoe, I feel like most people don't.
To be honest, I am on mac right now but I really like Niri/Hyprland and to a degree KDE as well. I definitely feel like those were immensely more customizable and I miss that customizability, even if some people might use that customizability to make it look like MacOS default.
For example, you may not want to run some graphical applications directly on your Mac for security, isolation or testing purposes.
If this software turns out to be lower latency than RDP and CRD, I could also see it being very useful for accessing a remote graphical workstation (e.g.: running heavy software on an beefy machine in a data center instead of taking up resources on my skinny laptop).
This is for the long tail. The compositor path dodges a pile of volunteer-port churn and runs the Linux build directly, which is a lot more appealing for niche GUI tools and dev apps that barely get maintained on Linux, never mind macOS.
I did a similar thing with X11, but I didn't like so much.
Bit by bit, Apple is loosing it's Desktop position. It all starts at the developers. At soon, every person will be a "developer".
Anything I want sandboxed or “grouped”.
Work on a project -> open the relevant container.
Similar to parallels window integration mode.
It’s all from shortcomings to have a hierarchical view on your data and applications.
Goal: isolation. Security-wise, and focus-wise
The dependency list is also...something: https://github.com/J-x-Z/cocoa-way/tree/main/vendor
And also this chart is super weird:
A standard VM will always be the easiest to set up by far. And latency should be the same across all 4. I mean after all it's a VM running on your local machine. Honestly I don't even know what it means when it says "Latency".I also looked at some of the code and it's using OpenGL 3.3 Core which is... super old. But it makes sense in the context of this being LLM-generated since most of its training data is probably OpenGL 3.3 Core code....
Overall this project is very strange. It makes me feel more confident in my skills, AI isn't all that great. It's all hype. You can get to the frontpage of HN. And if you're Peter Steinberger you can get acquired by OpenAI for a billion dollars. But that's about it. The code isn't getting any better.
This reminds me of that C-compiler-in-Rust publicity stunt by Anthropic. There's no substance. It's just a headline.
TBH, I would love to install GNU or BSD on my M4 Max Mac Studio. What I really wanted is a modern UNIX workstation. My Studio’s price/performance was the best available, so that’s what I bought. Now, I am happy with that purchase except for the constant diminution in software quality from Apple.
It would then essentially run android on macos as well, I do feel like it should be possible.
Here some history on how the command key came to be https://www.folklore.org/Swedish_Campground.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key