Is there like some sort of Linux layer for macOS? I’ve seen some projects that can only run on Linux because they require the Linux kernel to work. Something like Cygwin maybe.
Thanks
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Answer
I haven’t come across any Linux-on-macOS system other than full virtualisation with software such as VMWare Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox, or xhyve.
macOS does implement (most of) POSIX; it also shares some of the BSDs’ APIs such as kqueue/kevent, plus of course a bunch of custom user-kernel APIs, some of them inherited from Mach. There’s also an X11 implementation. (although the results are rarely particularly attractive) A lot of Linux kernel APIs do have macOS equivalents, even if they’re not identical. You should be able to port many (most?) projects which currently only work on Linux to the Mac; the amount of effort involved will of course vary. It’ll usually be easier if it already works on a BSD.
You’ll need to be more specific to get a more specific answer.