Think of the ABI, or Application Binary Interface, as the engine of the car - it can vary greatly between makes and models, and you probably won't be able to trade your Chevy engine into a Volvo very easily.ĭarling would in this analogy be putting the Chevy engine in a Volvo's chassis, and compiling from source would be like just getting out of your Chevy and getting into the Volvo. Think of the API, or Application Programming Interface, as something like a car's dashboard - everything is visible to the driver of the car, and you can get into someone else's car and find his different dashboard just as easy to figure out. It depends on being able to compile and link the code. GNUStep only works on the source-code (API) level, so it works if a program is open-source and uses Apple's Cocoa GUI (NOT 'Aqua' which is proprietary). It was shockingly complete when I tried it, in terms of how much it seemed capable of doing versus how little seems to use it in the wild. GNUStep implements the Cocoa APIs of NeXTStep and OS X. OS X and Linux are much more compatible at the API level than the ABI level. It probably won't run what you want just yet, unless it's text-based.Īs long as the developers of the OS X program released their source code and used cross-platform libraries (such as QT, GTK, X11, GNUStep or WxWidgets) you should be able to re-compile an OS X program for linux.

As of mid-2019, it can run many command-line programs, and according to their homepage appears to be approaching the point where it can run some rudimentary graphical software as well. Currently it only runs some command-line OSX programs, though. Darling ( link) is a project that aims to become analogous to wine.

Pendrive linux mac os x