Run linux files on mac

Bring Linux apps to the Mac Desktop with Docker

If you use Linux as your host operating system then with one or two commands you can have most graphical Linux applications up and running on your desktop in seconds. Package managers like apt-get , yum and pacman make installing new software almost seamless. If you are running an XWindows server (which you probably are) then getting a graphical application to appear on your screen from a remote Linux system or a Docker container can be as simple as setting the DISPLAY environmental variable.

But macOS though?

Many applications that exist for Linux also exist for Mac: Chrome, FireFox, VLC Player, Slack, Arduino IDE etc. In some cases they have been ported and re-built natively and even optimized to take advantage of the OS.

So why would you want to run Linux versions of apps on your Mac?

Here are a few reasons why you may want to use Docker to run Linux applications on macOS:

• To access to newer versions of software
• To test various versions of the same software simultaneously
• To use tools which may not be ported to macOS yet
• For sandboxing an application:
• To tighten up on security
• or to isolate and/or spy on network traffic

Since Docker provides a sandboxed environment for applications that means you can add/remove just the capabilities you want and tighten up on security.

Several paid tools exist for macOS to isolate network traffic and push it down different HTTP proxies or SOCKS tunnels depending on custom rulesets. This is ideal if you frequently work on public WiFi networks or behind a restrictive corporate network. By using your own hosted proxy server or VPN you can protect some or all of your traffic. So why pay for something you can do for free with Docker?

Slack for Linux running on the Mac Desktop in El Captain

Step-by-step

Here’s what you need to do to bring X11 to your Desktop.

1. Install an X11 server

An X11 server exists for MacOS which allows applications like XTerm to run and display output on your local computer. It’s packaged up as the XQuartz project and can be installed with brew:

$ brew install Caskroom/cask/xquartz ==> brew cask install Caskroom/cask/xquartz ==> Creating Caskroom at /usr/local/Caskroom ==> Downloading https://dl.bintray.com/xquartz/downloads/XQuartz-2.7.9.dmg ################################## 100.0% 

2. Build your Dockerfile

Once you have XQuartz set up you can then install your favourite graphical Linux apps into a Debian container or whichever distribution you prefer.

FROM debian:stretch ENV LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8 ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8 RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \ apt-transport-https \ ca-certificates \ curl \ gconf2 \ gconf-service \ gvfs-bin \ hunspell-en-us \ libasound2 \ libgtk2.0-0 \ libnotify4 \ libnss3 \ libxss1 \ libxtst6 \ locales \ python \ xdg-utils \ libgnome-keyring0 \ gir1.2-gnomekeyring-1.0 \ libappindicator1 \ --no-install-recommends \ && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* RUN echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen \ && locale-gen en_US.utf8 \ && /usr/sbin/update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ADD ./slack-desktop-2.1.0-amd64.deb ./ RUN dpkg -i slack-desktop-2.1.0-amd64.deb ENTRYPOINT ["slack"] 

I adapted this Dockerfile from one that Jess Frazelle came up with. It appeared to be broken when I tried it so I’ve added some more packages to fix the runtimes errors I encountered.

You may also be asking yourself why I’ve added slack from the local filesystem instead of using wget or curl . If you need to fetch the binary from a specific HTTP proxy or VPN tunnel then you may not want Docker to handle that.

Run this before building the Dockerfile or move it back into the file itself as a RUN step:

$ wget https://downloads.slack-edge.com/linux_releases/slack-desktop-2.1.0-amd64.deb 

Most packages are available in package repositories or PPAs so apt-get could be used, but Slack is an exception to the rule.

3. Set up XQuartz for network connections

By default XQuartz will listen on a UNIX socket, which is private and only exists on local our filesystem. This means Docker won’t be able to access it.

Install and run socat to create a tunnel from an open X11 port (6000) through to the local UNIX socket where XQuartz is listening for connections:

$ socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\" 

This will block, so open a new tab or terminal.

4. Start the application

Build your Dockerfile, then start it by passing in an environmental variable for the DISPLAY so your graphical application knows where to show itself. Change the IP address of 192.168.0.15 to whatever you see on ifconfig .

$ wget https://downloads.slack-edge.com/linux_releases/slack-desktop-2.1.0-amd64.deb $ docker build -t slack:2.1.0 $ docker run -e DISPLAY=192.168.0.15:0 --name slack -d slack:2.1.0 

For extra points you could:

• Use docker-compose to make starting/stopping the app easier and manage the container
• Bind-mount an options directory so the container can ‘remember’ your communities. I.e.
• -v /home/alex/.slack:/root/.config/slack
• Use a script to find the IP address to insert into the DISPLAY variable.
• Create a docker-compose.yml file for easy starting/stopping of the application. (See below)

4.1 Note on proxies:

If you want an app such as Slack to use a HTTP_PROXY then you can pass in the environmental variable at runtime. Here’s an example with a docker-compose.yml file for convenience:

version: "2.0" services: slack: image: slack:2.1.0 environment: - HTTP_PROXY=http://192.168.0.10:8080 - HTTPS_PROXY=http://192.168.0.10:8080 - DISPLAY=192.168.0.10:0 volumes: - .slack_config:/root/.config/Slack networks: - default 

5. Wrapping up

X11 forwarding from Docker to Linux is fast and can be accelerated by sharing additional resources such as /dev/video0 or /dev/shm , unfortunately this is not possible with Docker on macOS. When forwarding apps from Docker to XQuartz you may find that they do not run correctly or have unexpected lag. This may be because hardware acceleration and use of the GPU is not available, but the applications may still be useable enough for you to get the benefits.

See also:

Acknowledgements:

Most of what I’ve outlined above came from reading a Github issue from 2015: Docker issue #8710.

For examples of running popular Linux apps on the Linux Desktop see Jess’ Containers on the Desktop blog post.

Let me know if you know of any way of accelerating the performance of X11-forwarded apps on macOS. Or if you have any other tips or hacks, send me a tweet @alexellisuk or post a comment.

Alex Ellis

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How to Install Linux Software on a Mac with MacPorts

MacPorts is a command-line package manager for macOS. If you’re familiar with apt-get or yum from Linux, then you know what a package manager does. It handles downloading, installing, updating and managing certain applications and their dependencies within macOS. With MacPorts you can install Linux applications on macOS from the command line.

What can I install?

Most of these applications are open-source, command-line utilities, but there are a fair share of “real” open-source, GUI-based applications. as well.

Like any package manager, MacPorts searches a library of downloadable software. When you find what you need, MacPorts downloads and installs the appropriate software and dependencies in the right place. This saves you the trouble of downloading repositories from GitHub and building software from source packages while still getting access to a wide range of Linux’s best command-line tools and GUI applications.

If you read our post on Homebrew, you know that macOS is missing some “standard” Linux terminal commands out of the box. Mac users won’t find common command-line tools like nmap or wget , and there’s no native package manager on the Mac to provide them. You can also use MacPorts to install open-source software like GIMP.

Installing MacPorts

MacPorts requires the latest version of Xcode for your OS version. You can download Xcode from the Mac App Store or Apple’s developer website.

While you can run most of the MacPort commands without Xcode, you won’t be able to run many of the packages until you install it.

Installing Xcode Developer Tools

1. Open Terminal and use the command below to trigger the installation of macOS’ developer tools:

2. Click “Install” in the pop-up box.

3. Wait for the files to download and install.

Installing the MacPorts Package

If you already have the Xcode and the developer tools installed, you can jump right to this step.

1. Download the latest release of MacPorts from GitHub. Make sure you scroll down to choose the version that matches your version of macOS. At the time of publication, there is no version of MacPorts for Apple’s newest OS, High Sierra.

2. Install the package from your Downloads folder.

3. Open a new Terminal window and run the command port.

If that command returns “MacPorts 2.4.1” and provides a slightly different-looking command prompt, then you’re ready to rock!

Install Linux Apps with MacPorts

To install some Linux apps on macOS with MacPorts, we will first need to search for the relevant programs.

1. To see a gigantic list of all available packages, open Terminal, type port list and press Enter.

3. Obviously, that’s a lot to look through. We can use the port search command to find something specific. Let’s search for nmap using the command below:

4. That returns a few matching packages. The first one, just called “nmap,” is the one we’re looking for.

5. To get more information about that package we can use the info command:

6. That returns some specific information about nmap. That all looks good, so we can install with the command below:

Note the sudo prefix which will require your admin password to fire.

7. Depending on the package you’re installing, there might be a large list of dependencies. These are software packages that your desired port relies on, and you’ll need to install them alongside your port of choice. Type “Y” and press “Enter” to accept the installation.

8. When the installation is complete, you can run the command as you would on Linux via Terminal.

Conclusion

MacPorts is a powerful package manager that will connect you to a huge array of open-source binaries and applications that you can download and install on demand. If you want to learn more of the application’s commands, you can check out the MacPorts Guide for more information.

Alexander Fox is a tech and science writer based in Philadelphia, PA with one cat, three Macs and more USB cables than he could ever use.

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