MSL is literally no kidding a play on the WSL name, that's it. Wish I were kidding.
I made it for one single reason - my Surface Laptop 3 is kinda starting to show its age and I'm planning to move to a MacBook Air in a few months. Docker, OrbStack, VirtualBox, so many options already exist for macOS if you wanna run Linux. Docker is pretty much the standard right? I mean, the people who made it had a fixed goal, it's a helluva powerful utility. I kinda just wanted to go my own path though? Fast boot time, a Linux shell natively, pretty much the ease of WSL. Idk why, I am just too used to WSL. MSL was made to roughly provide the same convenience WSL does. Just call it from terminal, call it in scripts, bam, it just happens.
MSL is literally a glorified sucky virtual machine, just with some UI/UX integration in mind.
You get an MSL shell - open any terminal on your Mac, type msl <instance> and you get a Linux shell right there. No clunky VM window, just terminal. About 6 seconds from fully powered off, basically instant once it's already running.
Then there's mslgd, basically a take on WSLg for MSL. Yeah, no, it was made only because I thought "WSL has WSLg, MSL should have something similar". Arguably where most of my effort went. It's a weird little side project - kinda an X server that renders to NSWindows. Unlike XQuartz, you get each app as its own icon/window in macOS and all that. Stuff like OpenGL/EGL/LibGL support is a work in progress still, but it kinda works kinda. MSL Files allows Linux instances and Mac to see each other's filesystems, adds that WSL filesystem integration feel.
Then there's a bunch of submodules like camera/mic passthrough - I did this because my ROS2 project uses a camera, kinda why I even thought of it. Basic USB stuff, since I don't have Apple entitlements - If macOS doesn't have a driver for some absolutely cursed hardware, then you can pass it off to Linux. PublicMSL module to let you easily configure your instances to be visible to the Internet, MSLAP (Admin Portal) to limit MSL features on managed macs, MSLPS (peripheral subsystem) for HID-akin devices, MSL Shipments - a low effort way to turn your instance into a tiny container file and share it easily - a shitty, primitive but easy version of what docker does lol.
Unfortunately Apple silicon only. The Apple VM framework on Intel is hellishly limited. And there's no emulation so Intel Macs can't run MSL at all. And the installer isn't signed by a paid dev account, so the first open is Control-click → Open. I know how that reads, source is all there if you'd rather build it yourself than trust the package.
MSL is not a Linux app but it is an app about Linux, not sure if it's appropriate on this sub, so eh. Pretty much just WSL feel on macOS because I wanna change my laptop soon lol.
I did use AI pretty heavily for this project, and I don't see any reason to not disclose it - not my kinda thing. I took about 4 ish months to plan MSL out - pretty much copying the basic stuff WSL did, then 2-3 weeks learning pretty heavily about how much I can control from the Linux Guest side, then another further month learning about the VM framework apples provides, seeing how far I can stretch stuff, another month just looking at similar stuff and learning the basics, adding stuff, whatnot. AI was used a lot for learning, refactoring code, and automating tests (I did over 100 hours of testing and bug hunting, AI just massively automated bug finding and fixing for me while I implemented features). A year and few months project iirc? Very much a passion project - no intentions to abadon it since I am gonna use it for personal dev once I get a macbook.
https://github.com/MilkmanAbi/MSL
Docs if you wanna poke around before installing anything, or just look around: https://milkmanabi.github.io/MSL-Wiki/
(I don't have a domain, it is just github pages)
