Darling Simulator: Run OS X Apps on Linux

GNU/Linux users can run popular Windows-exclusive applications using WINE, but they don't have a similar emulator to run popular Mac applications.

Now, a Hungarian developer named Luboš Dolečel is trying to change this situation. He is developing an OS X emulation layer called Darling. The name "Darling" combines Darwin and Linux, with Darwin being Apple's open-source operating system. The way Darling works is by using the Darwin kernel to parse Mac executable files, then loading them into memory for execution. Compared to WINE, developing Darling is relatively easier because OSX is a UNIX-based operating system. Dolečel doesn't need to implement all the system APIs; creating a simple wrapper is sufficient. Apple has also released the source code for some of the lower-level components of OS X, and the GNUstep project provides an open-source implementation of Apple's Cocoa API. However, Dolečel still faces many challenges to overcome, and Darling is currently in its early stages. He is not the first developer to attempt creating an OS X emulation layer, as others eventually abandoned their efforts for various reasons.