Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Darnix – Darwin Built with Nix
The Darwin kernel (XNU) has been open source since 1999. But "open source" and "you can actually build and boot it" are very different things. XNU depends on proprietary tooling, kexts, and a bunch of open source projects published without a build system. Darnix builds the whole thing with Nix. The kernel, the filesystem, the boot image, all the way to a running QEMU instance. We patched XNU to run on QEMU without kexts, ported HFS+ from a kernel extension into the kernel itself, fixed GRUB's Mach-O loader, and wired it all together as a flake. The build is fully sandboxed. No root, no…
Darnix makes the Darwin kernel (XNU) buildable and bootable from source using Nix, addressing the gap between open-source code and actually running it. The project patches XNU for QEMU compatibility, integrates HFS+… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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Contribute to oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel development by creating an account on GitHub.
20h ago · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hello, this is Edgar! We are open sourcing nix-ninja, an incremental build system for Nix that leverages dynamic derivations. For those unfamiliar, Nix is a powerful package manager and build system that ensures reproducible builds via strict dependency isolation. However, one of its limitations has been that it builds packages as monolithic units - if you change one source file, Nix rebuilds the entire package from scratch. nix-ninja solves this by bringing compilation unit level granularity to Nix builds. It targets ninja build files, a format for describing build graphs output by popular…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Flox▲375Hey Everyone! Ron here, part of the NixOS Foundation and building Flox. Just coming out of this years NixCon and pretty excited to show hn below :) As of today, NVIDIA officially recognizes Canonical, SUSE, CIQ, and Nix—via Flox—as supported distributors for CUDA. Full blog - https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/developers-can-now-get-cud... This is a huge win for the Nix community. For years, CUDA on Nix was possible but painful—builds could take hours, and redistributing prebuilt binaries was blocked by NVIDIA's licensing requirements. NVIDIA's growing engagement with key…
2024 · flox.dev · its alternatives →
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Hi HN community, I’m Zach, founder and CEO of Warp, and am excited to show you Warp, a fast Rust-based terminal that’s easy to use and built for teams. As of today, Warp is in public beta and any Mac user can download it. It works with bash, zsh, and fish. The terminal’s teletype-like interface has made it hard for the CLI to thrive. After 20 years of programming, I still find it hard to copy a command’s output; I always forget how to use `tar`; and I always have to relearn how to move my cursor. To fix fundamental accessibility issues, I believe we need to start innovating on the terminal,…
2022 · warp.dev · its alternatives →
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Hi there! I've been on-and-off working on TacOS for a few months, which follows some UNIX-derived concepts (exec/fork, unix-style VFS, etc) and is now able to run a port of Doom, with a fairly small amount of modifications, using my from-scratch libc. The performance is actually decent compared to what I expected. Very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Virby is a module for nix-darwin that configures a lightweight linux VM as a remote build machine for nix, allowing linux packages to be built on macOS.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hello HN! Showing off the first version of Munal OS, an experimental operating system I have been writing in Rust on and off for the past few years. https://github.com/Askannz/munal-os It's an unikernel design that is compiled as a single EFI binary and does not use virtual address spaces for process isolation. Instead, applications are compiled to WASM and run inside of an embedded WASM engine. Other features: * Fully graphical interface in HD resolution with mouse and keyboard support * Desktop shell with window manager and contextual radial menus * PCI and VirtIO…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hello! This is Edgar and Robbie and we built nix-snapshotter. nix-snapshotter brings native understanding of Nix packages to containerd. We built this because Nix is a great fit for making efficient containers. They don't need an OS because Nix captures all dependencies exactly. However, the current process of creating Nix images is subpar because one needs to transform Nix packages into a format that container runtimes understand. Using nix-snapshotter, instead of downloading image layers, packages come directly from the Nix store. Packages can be fetched from a binary cache or built on the…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hello HN! I want to show you MyNixOS.com - a website I've been working on this year to make it easy to create and share Nix and NixOS configurations. Nix is a powerful tool to deploy software in a reproducible way, and with NixOS you can control your whole operating system through a declarative configuration. Starting out with Nix was exciting, but it definitely had a challenging learning curve. This made me start building a website focused on making it easier to create and share Nix flakes, which are the core unit of software deployment in Nix. Using the website, you can create flakes…
2022 · mynixos.com · its alternatives →
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Keystone▲125We kept hitting the same wall: you clone some arbitrary repo and just want it to run without any configuration work. So we built Keystone, an open source tool that spins up a Modal sandbox, runs Claude Code inside it, and produces a working .devcontainer/ config (Dockerfile, devcontainer.json, test runner) for any git repo. We build on the dev container standard, so the output works with VS Code and GitHub Codespaces out of the box. Main use cases: reproducible dev/CI environments, self-describing repos, and safely sandboxed coding agents. Our goal is to encourage all repos to…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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This is my operating system that I've been working for the past 2 years. All of the code is written exclusively by me except from ported software. banan-os has a monolithic kernel targeting x86 (i686) and x86_64 architectures. The project consists of bootloader, kernel and userspace libraries (libc, libGUI, libFont, ...). It also uses my custom C++ standard library partly based on stdc++. Currently I have basic TTY and GUI environment with some of the basic UNIX utilities like cp, ls and stat. I have basic support for USB (keyboard/mouse/storage), disks (NVMe, AHCI), custom…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A Simple Unix-like operating system. Contribute to ozkl/soso development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16GF
Hello HN! For the past few months, I've been building a Nix-specific CI service, and quite a few people have been productively using it, so I thought I'd Show HN it. You might be wondering why build a Nix-specific CI. It turns out its quite hard to get a really good CI setup for Nix without spending a lot of time or money on it (or both), and even then solutions don't tend to be optimal. Garnix, on the other hand, handles everything, and simply. Just create an account, install the GitHub app on the repositories you want, and you're good to go! Each package gets its own GitHub check, and…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 17AO
We're two college students building an XR(AR/VR) native Operating System with a custom kernel. We're also Open Source so feel free to check our GitHub Repository- https://github.com/manaskamal/XenevaOS . The journey hasn't exactly been easy, we've been criticized by a lot saying that whatever we're doing is impractical and that we're too ambitious. Regardless, we've been committed to reach our goal. Here to answer all questions and doubts. Answering one question beforehand because we know someone is going to ask it - Q: Why use your own kernel/ Why don't you use…
2025 · getxeneva.com · its alternatives →
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A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, I’m Surya and I’m excited to show you WarpBuild! WarpBuild provides fast, secure `x86-64` and `arm64` Github actions runners. This speeds up your workloads by 30%, at half the cost, and takes ~2mins to get started. We’ve been seeing pretty good results since we opened up signups a week ago and I’ve shared some numbers publicly here [1]. Currently, we support linux runners for Github organizations (not personal accounts) and MacOS support is coming soon (~Jan). The way the runners work is deceptively simple: Runners are assigned to hardware that is ideal for build workloads with fast…
2023 · warpbuild.com · its alternatives →
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Try DGX Spark playbooks using Nix on DGX OS, or install NixOS on your DGX Spark for the full Nix experience. The repository provides USB images and a NixOS module with settings for DGX Spark systems. This works on the NVIDIA DGX Spark itself and also on the Asus Ascent GX10. See my 5 minute lightning talk from Planet Nix for an intro: https://youtu.be/AvK_gi_snJE?si=MPKv3iiuS9B5elIE
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Shuru is a lightweight sandbox that spins up Linux VMs on macOS using Apple's Virtualization.framework. Boots in about a second on Apple Silicon, and everything is ephemeral by default. There's a checkpoint system for when you do want to persist state, and sandboxes run without network access unless you explicitly allow it. Single Rust binary, no dependencies. Built it for sandboxing AI agent code execution, but it works well for anything where you need a disposable Linux environment.
Feb 2026 · shuru.run · its alternatives →
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I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available. There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.
2025 · christopherdrum.github.io · its alternatives →
- 23FA
I built Fresh to challenge the status quo that terminal editing must require a steep learning curve or endless configuration. My goal was to create a fast, resource-efficient TUI editor with the usability and features of a modern GUI editor (like a command palette, mouse support, and LSP integration). Core Philosophy: - Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve. - Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust. - Extensibility: Uses…
Dec 2025 · sinelaw.github.io · its alternatives →
- 24WFWget-finder▲130
Since some days ago I’ve been playing with bifrost-build, a github repository with recipes for building static linux binaries. The recipes are no different from other linux distributions where an…
2015 · javier.io · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →