distribution-macOS Alternatives

distribution-macOS reviews and mentions

• Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2025

  > Half of the initial mac os x kernel was ripped off freebsd, giving pretty much nothing back.

  That is all open source.

  https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...

• Lingering Mac Office 2008 workaround
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2024

  Though the blog post was written last year regarding macOS Ventura, the same hack is still present in the Sequoia code base[1,2]:

  > M I C R O S O F T H A C K !

  > It turns out that the Mac Office (2008) rolled their own solution to roots. The X509Anchors file used to hold the roots in old versions of OSX. This was an implementation detail and was NOT part of the API set. Unfortunately, Microsoft used the keychain directly instead of using the supplied APIs. When the X509Anchors file was removed, it broke Mac Office. So this file is now supplied to keep Office from breaking. It is NEVER updated and there is no code to update this file. We REALLY should see if this is still necessary

  [1] https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...

  [2] https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/security_certific...

• macOS Sequoia is available today
  16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Sep 2024

  I can't know what "-dirty" implies, but https://github.com/jqlang/jq/commit/cff5336 is a pretty random commit from 2022 :-(

  https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO... hasn't been updated with a "jq" directory yet

• Codestral: Mistral's Code Model
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 May 2024

  I get the utility of a laptop that runs 20 hours on battery and slips in the side pocket of my carry-on or shoulder bag. (The Mac can also split between RAM and GPU.) Mixtral 8x22 and Llama 3 70b stream at roughly the same speed as last year's GPT-4.

  > closed up MacOS

  https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...

  https://asahilinux.org/

  I prefer the "utility" of BSDs, but that's just a preference.

• Hackintosh: OpenCore EFI for HP Pavilion Aero 13 Laptop
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Feb 2024

  Every Christmas break I always hope I'll have the emotional energy to dig back into https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin#readme and see if I can get it to boot, even on VirtualBox, let alone some hackintosh friendly hardware like OP did

  I am super, super cognizant that the devil's in the proverbial details, but they sure do seem to publish a lot of macOS into the open <https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...> so my interest is to map out the parts that are missing

  I'm also aware that Darling exists (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38423469 ) but if it's anything like Wine -- no, thank you. The only reason Wine (and their CrossOver friends) are required to exist is because there's no suitable open source release of Windows, so emulating the bugs is glucose cheaper. I had high hopes for ReactOS when I was in college, but I think they're just pushing that rock uphill (although I am super glad the project exists)

  Having said all of that, don't overlook that even if I snapped my fingers and had a PureDarwin built 14.3 .iso this very second, the supply chain for x86_64 applications for any such OS is likely going the way of the dodo, since it won't be in a vendor's best interest to dedicate resources to building releases for what they assume is a dead platform

• macOS 13.5 source code released
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2023

  To be fair, linking to the Releases page when there are no release notes are all here was completely useless for browsing. Linking directly to the tag on the Git repo would make it obvious that submodules are being used and allows browsing directly:

  https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...

  I doubt most readers on HN are going to clone this locally and I also doubt anyone expects a release archive to contain Git submodules. This isn't to fault the repo authors, since we have to note that there isn't an actual "GitHub Release" here, it's just the automatic archive from GitHub for a certain tag.

• Unbekannte Berufe
  1 project | /r/de | 27 May 2023
• Any good vendors still out there without a subscription model?
  1 project | /r/sysadmin | 18 May 2023

  Vendors have been selling you open-source software since the '80s. Here's macOS 13.2's open-source components. Darwin isn't really a thing any more, but around half of what Apple doesn't distribute any more is open source as well.

• RDP Server for Mac? Looking for a way to control my MAC from my Windows machine (No VNC)
  3 projects | /r/MacOS | 9 May 2023
• Aero OS: A new modern operating system made in Rust, now able to run the Links browser, Alacritty and much more!
  6 projects | /r/rust | 16 Apr 2023
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