Mac-On-Linux?

[benjetta96]

New to the forums, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong section.

I came across an emulator I had never noticed before, Mac-On-Linux. Has anyone tried it? If so, criticisms? I've found very little information for it online, and I would like to know a little more about it before I use it.

Thanks in advance,



Ben.

[Cat_7]

Hi,

It seems it hasn't been developed for a long time. It requires a Linux PowerPC installation to run Mac OS.
Not many people here run Linux on PowerPC hardware, so your chance of getting more info is limited.

Best,
Cat_7

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

MOL is (was) not really an emulator, it runs a virtual machine on PowerPC natively, so both host OS and guest OS need to be for PowerPC. If I remember well, various MacOS, MacOSX, and Linux versions could be run in MOL, the latest MacOSX being 10.3.

[Ambassador]

Wouldn't it be possible to use MOL within a QEMU PPC Virtual Machine?

[adespoton]

Should be, but I've tried that to no avail. However, the MOL code has been pilfered by the QEmu and OpenBIOS teams, which is where the new functionality we're eagerly awaiting is coming from. There was a Google Summer of Code on integrating it a few years back, but it was never finished then. Now it appears to be almost done, with the last few glitches being currently ironed out (I'm not sure by who).

[cdoublejj]

Should be, but I've tried that to no avail. However, the MOL code has been pilfered by the QEmu and OpenBIOS teams, which is where the new functionality we're eagerly awaiting is coming from. There was a Google Summer of Code on integrating it a few years back, but it was never finished then. Now it appears to be almost done, with the last few glitches being currently ironed out (I'm not sure by who).

and what function might that be?

[adespoton]

Should be, but I've tried that to no avail. However, the MOL code has been pilfered by the QEmu and OpenBIOS teams, which is where the new functionality we're eagerly awaiting is coming from. There was a Google Summer of Code on integrating it a few years back, but it was never finished then. Now it appears to be almost done, with the last few glitches being currently ironed out (I'm not sure by who).

and what function might that be?

I believe it's mentioned in these forums (there's a thread on it), but it's proper EFI emulation in OpenBIOS and full PPC MMU emulation in QEmu, I believe, plus the framework to virtualize a standard Mac architecture around the processor and firmware. These are the bits that have been preventing SheepShaver, PearPC and other emulators from working with MacOS 9.1-9.2, Apple Rhapsody PPC, BeOS PPC, OS X Public Beta and OS X 10.0.

PearPC actually has MMU emulation in the development tree, but this is not enabled as it is incomplete due to lack of documentation and testing. It's possible that the work done on QEmu could be ported to PearPC to fill in the missing bits, but PearPC hasn't been actively developed since 2007 I believe. Neither has Mac-on-Linux (orignal branch), Mac-on-Mac, and the core of SheepShaver and BII haven't really been messed with since 2009-ish I believe.

Someone correct me if any of the above info is wrong, as I went from memory instead of looking it up.

[cdoublejj]

would that make 10.6 VMable or some other 10.x with classic and rossetta support? oi know parallels can VM OSX but, it lacks hardware acceleration.

[adespoton]

would that make 10.6 VMable or some other 10.x with classic and rossetta support? oi know parallels can VM OSX but, it lacks hardware acceleration.

This is a completely different issue, for which we have a completely different thread. 10.4* through 10.9 run on the Intel architecture, and can spawn a virtual machine using VirtualBox/Parallels/VMWare Fusion when run on an Intel host. 10.6 does indeed have rosetta support, by which it can run PPC software in emulation. It will NOT do "classic" mode, which requires the host to have a PPC processor, but any software that's carbon-compatible** should run just fine in a 10.6 VM.

Mac-on-Linux enabled any PPC-based computer to run MacOS in a virtual environment on top of the Linux host. There was also a Mac-on-Mac that let you run a PPC Mac OS on top of a PPC Mac host; it was a spinoff of Mac-on-Linux, and didn't get very far before the plug was pulled due to announcements that Apple was moving to Intel.

What the whole QEmu/OpenBIOS updates do is provide a virtual PPC via emulation, on top of which they can virtualize numerous hardware configurations -- sort of a combination of emulator and virtual machine. With this, we *should* be able to run software designed only for Macs with an MMU, which is a set of software that has never been fully emulated and virtualized until now (it needs both).

*10.4.5 and later come in an Intel flavor as well as a PPC flavor.
**can't depend on any hardware that's not available on a modern computer.

[cdoublejj]

can you link me to thread where we can discus running Rosetta enable OSXs with HW acceleration in VM/emulation?

[adespoton]

can you link me to thread where we can discus running Rosetta enable OSXs with HW acceleration in VM/emulation?

Most recent location:
http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewto ... 065#p45668

I do it via VirtualBox, myself (with 2D and 3D HW acceleration enabled).