ravynOS

Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD.

We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD.

ravynOS is an open-source operating system based on FreeBSD, CMU Mach, and Apple open-source code that aims to be compatible with macOS applications and has no hardware restrictions.

This is a developer preview image that’s mainly intended for helping build the system. Our new windowserver now supports running in a vm! It should also work on any hardware supported by FreeBSD-CURRENT (15.0) with at least 2GB (8GB recommended) RAM.

On 2022-02-14, we decided to abandon the current path of using X11/KDE desktop components and write from scratch a new UI that will align better with our goals. A very early UI on the new WindowServer is starting to take shape as of 2022-07-27. Thanks for your patience as we work to make ravynOS the best possible version.

Due to incomatibilities with FreeBSD drivers, we have had to take another detour to write a windowserver that supports framebuffer rendering, allowing VMs to function. As of 2024-10-11, this new windowserver is mostly functional with supporting native ravynOS applications.

Project Goals

Features that you’d love.

We intend to bring many of the features you’ve come to love from macOS to ravynOS such as clean design, global menus, and drag-and-drop installs. These features are currently either in development, or on our roadmap:

Apps

We’ve got your apps covered.

Soon we hope to have many apps supported on our system, but currently only native ravynOS applications are working with our new windowserver. We hope to soon support the following:

Get Involved

Don’t be shy, come talk.

If this sounds like your dream system, please help us make it a reality! We’ve got a Discord, IRC, and Matrix. Chats are bridged. There's also a Telegram group (not currently bridged).

Spotlight

Sometimes we get covered.

Linuxiac covered pygmy marmoset.


Before our rebrand:

This article appeared on Phoronix.

XDA recently wrote about us.

Bryan Lunduke covered airyxOS and helloSystem on Substack.

Console issue #67 featured us along with an interview!

LinuxGameCast gave an early version a look in their LWDW episode 287.