
Virtualize OS X on Linux - grodola
http://grodola.blogspot.com/2016/10/virtualize-osx-on-linux.html
======
voltagex_
While I like this idea a lot, the gist of this is somehow
[https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/boxes/vagrant-box-
os...](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/boxes/vagrant-box-osx) hasn't
been DMCA'd yet.

You also have no idea how [http://files.dryga.com/boxes/osx-
mavericks-0.1.0.box](http://files.dryga.com/boxes/osx-mavericks-0.1.0.box) was
built (which is my main bugbear with Docker and Vagrant images), which kext
hacks were used, whether the image has been tampered with etc etc.

Edit: okay, this was a bit harsh. It looks like the creator of the images only
uses them on a Mac OS host - so no kext hacks needed like if you were building
a Hackintosh. I'd still rather a script of some kind that took a dmg installer
and built this image. It looks like [https://github.com/radeksimko/vagrant-
osx](https://github.com/radeksimko/vagrant-osx) will do something like that -
linked from Andrew's repo, so thanks!

~~~
Hello71
> uses them on a Mac OS host - so no kext hacks needed like if you were
> building a Hackintosh

why would the host be relevant at all

~~~
voltagex_
VirtualBox and VMware don't "support" virtualisation of OS X on non-OS X
platforms. You either have to hack your VM, or the guest installer.

~~~
kbutler
"hack" is a bit strong.

You can install MacOS on current virtual box on Windows with only a text file
modification.

The issue is that the MacOS license only grants permission to use it in VMs on
Apple hardware.

~~~
voltagex_
Can a vanilla OS X DMG / ISO be installed with this text file modification?
(last time I looked, you had to replace one of VirtualBox's DLLs on Windows,
for example)

~~~
kbutler
Yes (though I misspoke - it's changing VirtualBox settings, rather than text
file mod)

[http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/309654-run-vanilla-
os...](http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/309654-run-vanilla-os-x-el-
capitan-sierra-yosemite-or-mavericks-in-virtualbox-5010-on-a-windows-host/)

Starts with an installer from the Mac App Store to make an install DVD, or a
physical Snow Leopard DVD, no DLL replacement or kernel modifications.

------
EvanAnderson
Google cached it before it disappeared:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pcBDnIR...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pcBDnIRztgcJ:grodola.blogspot.com/2016/10/virtualize-
osx-on-linux.html)

~~~
wyclif
I wonder why it was taken down. It's a decent post.

~~~
djsumdog
Apple

~~~
graydsl
These notorious Apple hit squads again...

------
symlinkk
It's really sad that the only way to get macOS running in a virtual machine is
with hacks and tweaks. I'm working on a cross platform desktop app written in
Qt and while it should theoretically work on macOS I haven't had a chance to
actually try it, because I don't own any Apple computers. Apple is shooting
themselves in the foot.

~~~
developer2
> Apple is shooting themselves in the foot.

How is that exactly? A huge majority of developers in your situation go out
and buy a Mac; another hardware purchase in their pocket. This is part of
their business strategy: developers are forced to participate, and by and
large they do just that.

It hurts _you_ far more than it does Apple by refusing to participate. If you
believe you're "hurting Apple" by not developing for their platform, think
again. Even if your software is free to download, it's not Apple that suffers
- it's your (potential) users; and they will blame _you_ , not Apple, for the
lack of support.

Apple wins this battle every time. Welcome to the ecosystem. :)

~~~
jiiam
> Apple wins this battle every time. Welcome to the ecosystem. :)

Yes, that's true, but we can also start being sincere about the fact that the
whole story is BS. I've been recently assigned a mac by my university (never
used one before) and I have to say that the ecosystem is at least unhealthy.

Maybe mac users don't really care, but having to install a third party
software for common tasks like reverse scrolling, keeping the system from
going to sleep, writing to NTFS, are symptoms, in my opinion, of a too much
strong top down interaction between the os and the user. Same goes for the
whole "OSX only on Apple hardware" story.

So no, Apple isn't shooting temselves in the foot, but surely they are
disrespecting the end user. You can excuse that by saying that it is business,
but I would reply that it is still true and by avoiding to talk about it we
are implicitly doing Apple a favor by hiding the issues with what would
otherwise be a great piece of software. We should say more often that these
practices are bad for the consumer.

~~~
72deluxe
Reverse scrolling? It's an option on the touchpad / mouse settings to scroll
naturally/unnaturally isn't it?

Going to sleep - it's under power options in Settings.

Also writing to NTFS is not a problem they care about. When's the last time
you wrote to ext4 or HFS+ on Windows natively without extra tools?

It's exactly the same here - they support HFS, HFS+ and FAT32 and VFAT.
Windows supports NTFS and FAT32 and VFAT. Do we get upset with Microsoft
because they don't support HFS+?

~~~
jiiam
> Reverse scrolling? It's an option on the touchpad / mouse settings to scroll
> naturally/unnaturally

Yes, but do you want to have different setting for your trackpad and mouse at
the same time? You need a third party software. It's not as bad as I told the
story

> Going to sleep - it's under power options in Settings

But I don't want to open the settings and change the behavior of the whole
system if I right now need to have it awake for 10 minutes. Sure I could
launch `caffeinate` on a terminal, but a clickable applet would be better. But
of course it's either paid or buggy.

> writing to NTFS is not a problem they care about.

As to say, they don't care about something very basic that their users might
need and don't need much implementation.

In fact I think you can simply `mount -t <ntfs_or_something>` your drive or
add a line to `/etc/fstab`, but you won't have it in finder.

> When's the last time you wrote to ext4 or HFS+ on Windows natively without
> extra tools?

This just makes windows a worse OS. If you compare it to a real OS, like your
favorite linux variant, you can.

> Do we get upset with Microsoft because they don't support HFS+?

Actually I do. This is exactly what I'm talking about: it's just a business
practice to enforce their own standards, since the whole implementation
wouldn't be so hard: they could just add a pop up upon installation that says
"This software is not guaranteed to work, use at your own risk".

In the end, it is clear that a OS which support more FSes (especially the most
widespread ones) is better than the same OS without that feature, and I say we
should complain that we can't get it.

~~~
72deluxe
So if I'm right, you're complaining that MacOS and Windows aren't Linux?

I think you are expecting the wrong thing from the OS. How do you keep Windows
awake for 10 minutes only? Proper NTFS support on Linux is only recent (and I
don't think it supports all the excellent features of NTFS).

If an OS vendor adds in support for something that is only partial or offers
messages regarding "this isn't really supported", either a) nobody would use
it, or b) people would use it and complain. It is safer to release something
complete, or not at all. And since "typical" Mac users aren't trying to mount
ext4, ReiserFS, XFS or NTFS on their machines I can see why they would not
support it.

For comparison, when's the last time you used COM or DCOM on Linux or Mac?
When's the last time you ran a Cocoa app on Linux? Does it sicken you that
RedHat and SUSE won't pull their finger out and support these technologies?
Why doesn't RedHat release a driver for SQL Server ODBC support independent of
Microsoft? They must be attempting to force their own Linux-centric monopoly!

You can see how foolish this sounds. It is based on unrealistic expectations.

------
Svenstaro
Don't Apple EULAs forbid emulating OSX on non-Apple hardware? I might be
mistaken, of course, but I think I recall something like that.

~~~
glandium
IIRC, it's even worse than that, the EULA forbids running OSX as a guest OS
under a host OS that is not OSX.

~~~
awalton
I don't think this is correct - the Mac OS X server license said as long as it
was running on Xserve hardware you were okay - we run and support macOS VMs on
ESXi:
[https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?langu...](https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1000131)

~~~
wila
The linked KB article only talks about VMware Fusion not ESXi :)

I am aware about the statement that ESXi running on Mac Hardware is supposed
to be legal.

However if you install bootcamp on your hardware, install Windows in the
bootcamp partition and then use VMware Workstation/Player to try and run OS X
/ macOS you can't. That is not legal.

This has always confused me.

apple hardware -> ESXi -> macOS == OK

apple hardware -> macOS -> Fusion -> macOS == OK

apple hardware -> Windows -> Workstation -> macOS == not OK

------
pooper
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider... ==> default: Box
'AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx' could not be found. Attempting to find and
install... default: Box Provider: virtualbox default: Box Version: >= 0 ==>
default: Loading metadata for box 'AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx' default: URL:
[https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-
osx](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx) ==> default:
Adding box 'AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx' (v0.2.1) for provider: virtualbox
default: Downloading: [https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/boxes/vagrant-
box-os...](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/AndrewDryga/boxes/vagrant-box-
osx/versions/0.2.1/providers/virtualbox.box) An error occurred while
downloading the remote file. The error message, if any, is reproduced below.
Please fix this error and try again.

The requested URL returned error: 500 Internal Server Error

------
jamesu
One thing which always bugs me about OSX vms is there is still no way of
running OpenGL or Metal applications on them. Not even qemu-system-ppc
emulates a suitable GPU, even though there are a bunch of emulators for 7th-
generation game consoles which have come quite far in emulating gpus with
similar style architectures which could probably be adapted.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
> One thing which always bugs me about OSX vms is there is still no way of
> running OpenGL or Metal applications on them

This is more or less true for most virtualization solutions (with the
exception of KVM on Linux where apparently you can use your video card from
the VM). For example VirtualBox emulates OpenGL 2 and DirectX 9 for Windows
guests. Vmware is a bit better and it can emulate OpenGL 3, didn't checked if
this works with a macOS guest ...

------
gravypod
I wish Apple would port their DE/WM to Linux and Free it with a license that
says something along the lines of "you can install this if you paid for it".
I'd easily pay 100$ for the Apple DE/WM suite sitting over my distro.

I guess this is the closest you can get (aside from using Elementary OS).

~~~
AceJohnny2
God, I wish the opposite! After years of using AwesomeWM [1], now that I'm
stuck in OS X for work I feel like I'm tied down and handicapped.

While I'm around, anyone know the keyboard shortcut to UNminimize a window?

[1] [https://awesome.naquadah.org/](https://awesome.naquadah.org/)

~~~
tvmalsv
Another method is to ⌘-tab to the minimized app, and while still pressing ⌘,
hold down the Option key and release ⌘.

Not very elegant and it won't work if the app has a mix of minimized and non-
minimized windows, but I usually don't have a mix. If that's the case, you can
still use notyourwork's method above.

~~~
pritambaral
I liked how some WMs handle windows of same application. I can Alt-Tab to a
window of an app, and then — without releasing the Alt key — Alt-` to a
different window of the same app.

On Kwin, for example, going from Alt-Tab to Alt-` smoothly filters out all the
non-same-app windows.

Alt-Tab => Alt-` is also much easier than ⌘-tab => ⌘-Option => Option

I'd think OS X's WM would have ⌘-tab => ⌘-`

~~~
AceJohnny2
OS X does have ⌘-` to switch between (unminimized) windows of a given app.

------
nickysielicki
[https://github.com/AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-
osx#downloads](https://github.com/AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx#downloads)

Can hosting these images get you sued?

~~~
mcescalante
Doesn't look like hosting it alone would. In the readme, there's a section
about licensing:

"Apple's EULA states that you can install your copy on your actual Apple-
hardware, plus up to two VMs running on your Apple-hardware. So using this box
on another hardware is may be illegal and you should do it on your own risk."

------
alberthier
Updated URL: [http://grodola.blogspot.com/2016/10/virtualize-osx-on-
linux_...](http://grodola.blogspot.com/2016/10/virtualize-osx-on-
linux_53.html)

------
vonklaus
Just came from the Signal disappearing messages thread. This blog post too
seems to have disappeared...

~~~
0942v8653
Not sure why it isn't working for you, but here's a snapshot of the page:
[http://archive.is/5Hrgu](http://archive.is/5Hrgu)

~~~
vonklaus
Hmmm. It does load now. I was previously getting the "blog article you are
looking for does not exist" screen. Thanks.

~~~
alphapapa
Strange, I loaded the page just now and got "Sorry, the page you were looking
for in this blog does not exist."

------
desireco42
And gone...

