Crazy Question: Mac Audio Drivers

chris319 · 11-03-2012, 11:09 PM

Here is a crazy question about audio hardware drivers. Has anyone ever considered the possibility of developing an emulator which would adapt Mac OS X hardware drivers to Linux? Practically all audio hardware manufacturers publish OS X drivers for their hardware. Inasmuch as OS X is based on *nix, could some kind of emulator run a Mac driver written for the hardware and make it look like a Linux driver to Linux?

Clearly, what I know about hardware drivers could be written on the point of a pin with room left over.

hunternet93 · 11-05-2012, 06:52 AM

That's not a bad idea. Some low-level translation would be necessary, as Mac OS X's kernel (Mach, I believe) and Linux probably have different APIs (or whatever they're called) for modules. I know some Windows drivers for wireless cards and such can be used with Wine and NDisWrapper, maybe something similar could be done.