{"slug": "ravynos", "name": "ravynOS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 9, "warners": 1, "score": 4.428, "rising": 2.35, "first": "2025-11-20", "latest": "2026-08-31", "why": "It would be awesome using what is essentially a community-driven clone of macOS", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "It would be awesome using what is essentially a community-driven clone of macOS", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "ravynos.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://ravynos.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["ravynOS", "RavynOS", "ravynos"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 792246080, "item_id": 49515380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515380", "by": "ErroneousBosh", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "as a Mac OSX replacement, it's quite jaw-dropping", "excerpt": "Because there is nothing to screenshot. Others have speculated that the UI looks like ass. Some have said \"Mac OS window chrome with Win 95 GUI controls. Yeah, no. See for yourself. This is the most recent release on their github page. I considered posting it to my Youtube account to gain some of that much-needed eyeballs and attention, but it's 11pm and I'm not doing that shit, I'm not playing that game. Here is wha", "context": "", "use_case": "Mac-like desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source"}, {"id": 792164592, "item_id": 49510287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510287", "by": "Lizard5260", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should take a look at ravynOS!", "excerpt": "You should take a look at ravynOS! https://ravynos.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS-compatible OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "ReactOS 0.4.16"}, {"id": 741326864, "item_id": 46332929, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332929", "by": "reactordev", "date": "2025-12-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done", "excerpt": "That may be true but a large core of it is still BSD. In fact, it\u2019s so BSD that one could create a BSD distro based off FreeBSD and achieve binary compatibility on x86. Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done. There\u2019s a lot of BSD under the hood of macOS still today in Darwin. A mix of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. [0] https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project"}, {"id": 735980064, "item_id": 45998754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998754", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It would be awesome using what is essentially a community-driven clone of macOS", "excerpt": "I'm not affiliated with ravynOS, but I've been periodically following the project for a few years. The main page (https://ravynos.com/) expresses the philosophy of ravynOS: \"We love macOS, but we\u2019re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS \u2014 an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD.\" rayvnOS seems to be designed for people who love macOS, particu", "context": "daily-drove Macs 2006-2021, now Windows PCs", "use_case": "macOS-like OS on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 735973568, "item_id": 45998348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998348", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hopefully projects like ravynOS and the similar HelloSystem", "excerpt": "I've been paying attention to this project periodically over the past few years. It would be nice to have a FOSS clone of macOS, similar to how FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku are FOSS clones of MS-DOS, Windows, and BeOS, respectively. The only thing is that this project has been quite slow going, which is similar to the histories of FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku, where it took a long time for those projects to get to a us", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 736051760, "item_id": 46003235, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003235", "by": "niek_pas", "date": "2025-11-21", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the actual screenshots of the current OS (https://ravynos.com/screenshots) are... really rough.", "excerpt": "> the little mini screenshots look gorgeous because it replicates MacOS. I have the opposite reaction. To me the screenshots look like someone tried to replicate macOS but failed. The text antialiasing is off, the font is different (and worse), the border-radii on menus are off, etc. Besides, the actual screenshots of the current OS (https://ravynos.com/screenshots) are... really rough.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}]}], "who": [{"by": "linguae", "context": "daily-drove Macs 2006-2021, now Windows PCs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998754", "date": "2025-11-20"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["mac-like desktop os", "macos-compatible os", "macos-like os on freebsd"], "compared": [{"slug": "darling", "name": "Darling", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212", "title": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506978", "title": "ReactOS 0.4.16", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49511534", "title": "RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46326519", "title": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 3, "warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 792246080, "item_id": 49515380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515380", "by": "ErroneousBosh", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "as a Mac OSX replacement, it's quite jaw-dropping", "excerpt": "Because there is nothing to screenshot. Others have speculated that the UI looks like ass. Some have said \"Mac OS window chrome with Win 95 GUI controls. Yeah, no. See for yourself. This is the most recent release on their github page. I considered posting it to my Youtube account to gain some of that much-needed eyeballs and attention, but it's 11pm and I'm not doing that shit, I'm not playing that game. Here is wha", "context": "", "use_case": "Mac-like desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source"}, {"id": 792189200, "item_id": 49511825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49511825", "by": "tech234a", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "See also: https://www.darlinghq.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "ReactOS 0.4.16"}, {"id": 792164592, "item_id": 49510287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510287", "by": "Lizard5260", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should take a look at ravynOS!", "excerpt": "You should take a look at ravynOS! https://ravynos.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS-compatible OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "ReactOS 0.4.16"}, {"id": 741326864, "item_id": 46332929, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332929", "by": "reactordev", "date": "2025-12-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done", "excerpt": "That may be true but a large core of it is still BSD. In fact, it\u2019s so BSD that one could create a BSD distro based off FreeBSD and achieve binary compatibility on x86. Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done. There\u2019s a lot of BSD under the hood of macOS still today in Darwin. A mix of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. [0] https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project"}, {"id": 736051760, "item_id": 46003235, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003235", "by": "niek_pas", "date": "2025-11-21", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the actual screenshots of the current OS (https://ravynos.com/screenshots) are... really rough.", "excerpt": "> the little mini screenshots look gorgeous because it replicates MacOS. I have the opposite reaction. To me the screenshots look like someone tried to replicate macOS but failed. The text antialiasing is off, the font is different (and worse), the border-radii on menus are off, etc. Besides, the actual screenshots of the current OS (https://ravynos.com/screenshots) are... really rough.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 736036240, "item_id": 46002265, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46002265", "by": "jjuran", "date": "2025-11-21", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "ravynOS is moving to Darwin.", "excerpt": "You're in luck: ravynOS is moving to Darwin.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 736030177, "item_id": 46001886, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46001886", "by": "jjuran", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "which I donated to the ravynOS project", "excerpt": "If you're okay with a System 6 appearance, I've already made one , for Advanced Mac Substitute . I do appreciate Alan Kay's thinking, in particular his talk \"Normal Considered Harmful\" My own high-level language, Varyx, has somewhat LISPy internals and is very dynamic \u2014 for exa", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 736028288, "item_id": 46001768, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46001768", "by": "mk89", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Well, there is actually a lot of ObjC.", "excerpt": "I think it's in the frameworks folder, e.g., https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos/tree/main/Frameworks/AppKit Edit: also CoreServices https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos/tree/main/CoreServices/WindowServer Well, there is actually a lot of ObjC.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 735980064, "item_id": 45998754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998754", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It would be awesome using what is essentially a community-driven clone of macOS", "excerpt": "I'm not affiliated with ravynOS, but I've been periodically following the project for a few years. The main page (https://ravynos.com/) expresses the philosophy of ravynOS: \"We love macOS, but we\u2019re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS \u2014 an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD.\" rayvnOS seems to be designed for people who love macOS, particu", "context": "daily-drove Macs 2006-2021, now Windows PCs", "use_case": "macOS-like OS on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 735976752, "item_id": 45998547, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998547", "by": "rhet0rica", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "ravynOS currently uses the GNUstep libobjc2 runtime", "excerpt": "A lot of these questions are answered here: https://ravynos.com/faq To summarize... There is a WINE-analogous project, called Darling: https://www.darlinghq.org/ The goal for ravynOS is to be analogous to ReactOS. Much like ReactOS and WINE, ravynOS and Darling share a lot of Cocoa code. For the problem of OpenStep implementations specifically, a bespoke software stack has the benefit of being able to put Mach messag", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}, {"id": 735973568, "item_id": 45998348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998348", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hopefully projects like ravynOS and the similar HelloSystem", "excerpt": "I've been paying attention to this project periodically over the past few years. It would be nice to have a FOSS clone of macOS, similar to how FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku are FOSS clones of MS-DOS, Windows, and BeOS, respectively. The only thing is that this project has been quite slow going, which is similar to the histories of FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Haiku, where it took a long time for those projects to get to a us", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS"}]}