by either directly mapping functions to those available on Linux, wrapping native functions to bridge the ABI incompatibility, or providing a re-implementation on top of other native APIs,' the project page notes.ĭoležel, who started Darling a year ago, described the project and its progress in an e-mail interview with Ars. 'Darling needs to provide an ABI-compatible set of libraries and frameworks as available on OS X. and execut them.'īut there is a ways to go. The name 'Darling' combines Darwin and Linux. Darling works by 'pars executable files for the Darwin kernel. Darwin is Apple's open source operating system, which provides some of the backend technology in OS X and iOS. 'The aim is to achieve binary compatible support for Darwin/OS X applications on Linux, plus provide useful tools that will aid especially in application installation,' Doležel's project page states. A developer from Prague named Luboš Doležel is trying to change that with ' Darling,' an emulation layer for OS X. There has been no robust equivalent allowing Mac applications to run on Linux, perhaps no surprise given that Windows is far and away the world's most widely used desktop operating system.

Linux users who want to run Windows applications without switching operating systems have been able to do so for years with Wine, software that lets apps designed for Windows run on Unix-like systems.