In today's open source roundup: Will the Darling project ever be able to run popular OS X applications in Linux? Plus: A review of GhostBSD 4.0 by DistroWatch, and Birds Linux 4.0 for students released Wine is very well known in the Linux community since it lets you run Windows apps on your Linux computer. But Darling, it’s counterpart for running OS X apps in Linux, has never gotten as much attention. A redditor reminds us that the Darling project is alive and kicking. According to Reddit: Just reminding everyone that Darling still exists. Darling is like Wine, but for running OS X apps. More at Reddit It’s been ages since I even thought of the Darling project. I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of the demand for OS X applications in Linux. I’m sure there are a few here and there that Linux users might appreciate, but I never saw Darling as being as in-demand as Wine since most people seem to need Windows apps far more than those from OS X. And the Darling project itself didn’t exactly imbue me with confidence when it included this text on the front page of the site: “At this point, it is unlikely that Darling will run your favorite OS X application.” While I can appreciate the honesty of the Darling developers, it also made me feel that the project might never get to the point of being useful enough for a significant amount of Linux users to care about it. The Darling project status page indicates that it can currently run “many console tools or applications.” So it’s not like you can grab a copy of your favorite desktop OS X application and then run it in Linux. It seems that Darling is still at a very early stage of development, and nobody knows when popular OS X desktop applications will work in it. It could be a very long time or never, depending on the application and the progress the developers make with Darling. We’ll see though, I hope I’m wrong in my skepticism. It’s always good for people to have choices, and if some Linux users want to run OS X apps then good for them. The Darling thread on Reddit has more than 680 upvotes already, so perhaps there’s more interest in it than I thought. If you want more information about the project, be sure to read the Darling FAQ and intro page. And if you’re a developer that wants to contribute to Darling, see the Developer zone page. GhostBSD 4.0 review DistroWatch has a review of GhostBSD 4.0 According to DistroWatch: There are aspects of GhostBSD I did enjoy. I like that the project is still supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit machines and I like the developers make it easy to transfer their images to both optical media and USB thumb drives. I appreciate the streamlined system installer, even if I did run into some problems with it. I like that the MATE desktop has a small helper problem that will let us change the layout so MATE can be easily customized to suit the user. I suspect most of my problems with GhostBSD boil down to problems with video drivers, particularly where my desktop computer is concerned. Hopefully, people with different hardware will enjoy a better experience than I did. Lately I’ve heard a lot of people taking an interest in FreeBSD-based operating systems and I like to think GhostBSD could be a good fit for people who want to get up and running with a FreeBSD desktop system with as little effort as possible. More at DistroWatch DistroWatch You can download GhostBSD 4.0 in 32-bit or 64-bit to check it out. The GhostBSD site also has community resources that include a newsletter, mailing lists, blogs and forums. And the support page offers an FAQ, documentation, and a wiki. I have not had a chance to give this version of GhostBSD a try, but I agree with DistroWatch that a more desktop-oriented version of BSD is definitely welcome. Hopefully the GhostBSD developers will continue to improve on it in future releases. Birds Linux 4.0 released Birds Linux is a fork of Sabayon Linux that is geared toward students. According to Francesco Milesi on Google+: Birds Linux is a free and open source Linux operating system, a fork of the Gentoo-based Sabayon Linux distribution. Birds Linux incorporates numerous pre-installed applications that can be used as scientific algorithms to calculate pH, as well as solutions of equations and inequations. More at Francesco Milesi on Google+ I’m not a student, and I’ve never liked math so Birds Linux is definitely not my cup of tea. But your mileage may vary, and it could be quite useful if you’re a student. Check out this video of Birds Linux in action: You can get more information on the Birds Linux site. The distro is available for download in 64-bit. What’s your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. Open Source