I’m the developer of Cocoa-Way, an open-source Wayland compositor and Linux application frontend for macOS.
The project originally started as an experiment: could a Linux Wayland application connect to a compositor running natively on macOS, instead of being displayed through XQuartz or a conventional remote desktop?
The current version can connect applications from Apple Container, Docker, OrbStack, or remote Linux systems. It can also host nested compositors such as niri and Hyprland. On my local Apple Container setup, niri can maintain a 60 FPS desktop session and run multiple applications, with the practical limit mostly determined by the memory assigned to the Linux environment.
The longer-term direction I’m considering is something closer in spirit to WSLg:
- Linux environments are managed in the background.
- Linux applications can be launched without manually dealing with Wayland sockets or container commands.
- Application windows are presented through the macOS window system.
- Clipboard, audio, input, HiDPI, files, and application lifecycle are integrated with macOS.
- A full Linux desktop remains available as an optional mode.
There are still important limitations. Apple Container does not currently expose a proper guest GPU path, so graphics-heavy workloads can be substantially slower than native Linux. Browsers in particular can lose a significant amount of performance, even though ordinary desktop interaction is already usable locally.
I’m interested in how macOS users would actually want such a system to behave.
Would you prefer:
Individual Linux applications integrated into the macOS desktop;
A complete Linux desktop in a native macOS window;
A lightweight development environment mainly for terminals and engineering tools;
Or is this simply too niche compared with a normal VM or remote desktop?
I’m not trying to present this as a finished WSL replacement. I’m trying to determine whether a native Linux application subsystem is a useful direction for the project before committing another large development cycle.