How to run Linux gui apps on macOS (e.g. via XQuartz) I'm trying to run some Linux applications on macOS. I have installed XQuartz but if I attempt for instance to run firefox it does something - i.e. the firefox process can be seen by ps:

$ps -ef | grep firefox
  502 29337 29230   0 11:59AM ttys032    0:00.01 X /Users/steve/Downloads/firefox/firefox


.. But it does not show up as an X app:

So which additional steps are required to get Linux binaries to run?
You can't launch the Linux version of Firefox on macOS, because it is a binary for Linux calling libraries from Linux and calling system calls of Linux.

You have to build a macOS version of Firefox on macOS from the source tree you download from here:

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/


through the traditionnal steps:

./configure
make
/usr/bin/sudo make install


And during the configure step, you will have to take care to use the standard sets of X11 libraries (disclaimer: I didn't test this).