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4/10

Porthole

A community catalog of macOS binaries verified to run on Linux ARM64 via Kakehashi, with one-click install and per-app user reports on what works.

Target user

Asahi Linux and Linux ARM64 enthusiasts who want to run specific macOS apps without a full VM

Features
  • Searchable catalog of macOS binaries with per-app compatibility ratings
  • One-click install via the kakehashi (kh install) wrapper
  • Per-app user reports on what works and what does not
  • 'I need this app' voting board to prioritize which macOS binaries to add next
Why now

Kakehashi's Show HN (32 points, 16 comments) is the first viable macOS-on-Linux-ARM userspace; Asahi Linux and Apple Silicon dev kits are growing but lack a curated catalog of runnable apps.

Signals · overall 4/10
Demand
2/10

Asahi Linux shows ~86,719 total installs on its public stats page; Kakehashi has only 69 GitHub stars and the Show HN drew just 32 points/16 comments — the intersection of Asahi users who specifically want to run macOS binaries is at best a few hundred people.Asahi Linux install statisticsGitHub - wie-project/kakehashi

Whitespace
4/10

No existing catalog exists, but the underlying ecosystem is too thin to catalog meaningfully — Kakehashi explicitly lists only 7-Zip and curl as verified, with GUI apps and frameworks explicitly marked 'Not a product claim (yet)'.GitHub - wie-project/kakehashi

Monetization
2/10

No evidence of willingness to pay; the community expects free/open-source tooling (Asahi itself is donation-funded), and niche CLI-compatibility trackers have no proven paid model.Asahi Linux - About

Longevity
3/10

Kakehashi is a single-maintainer experimental project with 1 fork and pre-alpha status; Apple can change Mach-O internals, code signing, or syscalls at any time, putting the entire premise at risk.GitHub - wie-project/kakehashi

Feasibility
8/10

A community-submitted compatibility catalog is a straightforward web app (DB + submissions + comments), trivially buildable; the hard work is Kakehashi itself, which is out of scope.GitHub - wie-project/kakehashi

Show HN: Kakehashi – Experimental userspace to run macOS binaries on Linux ARM · 32 points · 16 commentsHacker News · 2026-08-02 (today)