Published Mar 27, 2023, 9:00 AM EDT
Jayric is a Forensic Science graduate with over five years of writing experience and a passion for reverse engineering and hardware.
His tech journey kicked off in childhood with an old hand-me-down Nokia N91, where he repackaged Java games like a Symbian port of Pokémon Blue to tweak TMs and Poké Dollars. By high school, he was flashing custom Android ROMs and trading modded games for lunch money, and in college, he learned C/C++ and electronics on a TI Tiva C LaunchPad, then went on to create DIY projects ranging from USB security keys to home automation devices.
Jayric now enjoys writing at MUO to keep sharing and learning about tech while honing his own craft. Outside of tech, he enjoys grinding CS2 and Dragon Nest, lifting weights, running daily 5Ks, and reading in his greenhouse.
A DMG is a type of image file developed by Apple to distribute software for macOS. The format also serves as a way for Mac users to compress and archive their files. Since macOS and Linux have some similarities under the hood, it may be possible to mount and even run some macOS apps on Linux.
If you are using Ubuntu and have a DMG file you want to open, the easiest way would be to convert the DMG to an ISO file. This way you can mount the file just like any other ISO file in Ubuntu.
How to Convert DMG to ISO on Ubuntu
To successfully convert the DMG file to ISO, we will first need to convert the DMG to an IMG file. We will use a command line tool known as dmg2img.
Let’s start by opening up a terminal and installing the program using the following command:
sudo apt install dmg2img
Once installed, you can use the tool to convert your DMG file to an IMG file by using:
dmg2img /dmg/file/locaton/file.dmg
Now that you have a mountable IMG file, we can use Brasero to convert the IMG file into ISO. But before that, we’ll first need to mount the IMG file in order for Brasero to see it.
Let’s mount the IMG by making a mount point. Use the command:
sudo mkdir /directory/location/mount_point
Although the DMG has been converted to IMG, the contents inside the image file are still configured in Apple’s HFS+ filesystem. As as solution we can use:
sudo modprobe hfsplus
We are now ready to mount the IMG in Ubuntu. To do so, use the following command:
sudo mount -t hfsplus -o loop /img/file/location/file.img /mount/point/location
With the IMG file mounted, we can now use Brasero to convert the file into ISO.
Let’s install Brasero by opening a terminal and using:
sudo apt install brasero
After installation, open up Brasero and click on Data project. Then hit the plus icon located on the top left of the window, which will open up a menu where you can select your mounted file to convert. Go ahead and select and Add the mount point folder where the IMG file is mounted.
Once added, hit Burn and select the directory where the output will be located. You can also change the name of the output through the field located at the top of the window. After that, you can now hit Create Image to convert the image file into ISO.
Congratulations! You have now successfully convert DMG to ISO.
How to Mount an ISO Image on Ubuntu
Since ISOs are natively supported by Ubuntu, you can easily mount one and view all of its contents.
To mount an ISO image in Ubuntu, you’ll first need to make a mount point folder to mount the image file.
Let’s make a mount point and add the HFS+ module by using:
sudo mkdir /mount/point/location/foldernamesudo modprobe hfsplus
Now that you have created a mount point folder, let’s mount the ISO image by using:
sudo mount -t hfsplus -o loop /iso/file/location/file.iso /mount/point/location
Now that the ISO has been mounted, you can now view all the contents of the image files.
To unmount the ISO, you can use the following command:
sudo umount /mount/point/location/folder
How to View DMG Contents Through p7zip
Oftentimes, DMGs are compressed to save space and bandwidth. In these instances, you can easily browse all the contents of a DMG by simply extracting the image file. This will save you time if you only need to browse and take contents out of the DMG.
To extract image files, we’ll use a tool known as p7zip. Although you can use and install the official 7-Zip port on Linux, we'll be using p7zip as it is simpler to install. Both p7zip and 7-Zip Linux are ports for the popular 7-zip software used on many Windows machines. But unlike 7-zip, p7zip does not have a GUI and only works through a command line interface.
To install p7zip in Ubuntu, open up a terminal and use the following command:
sudo apt install p7zip
Once installed, you can then extract the contents of your compressed DMG file by using:
7z x file.dmg
And that’s how easy it is! You should now be able to browse through all the contents within a DMG without the need to convert or mount the DMG itself.
Is It Possible to Install DMG Software on Ubuntu?
So we’ve covered how to convert, mount, and browse a DMG in Ubuntu. This begs the question, can you run a DMG application in Ubuntu?
Since macOS and Linux both use a bash shell and support various Unix utilities, it may be possible to run a DMG application (macOS) software on Linux.
This, however, will have several major challenges, such as the difference in file systems. Linux may also not have packages and dependencies that the software requires, plus little support from the developers and the community.
With that said, there are emerging third-party applications that you can use to run macOS apps on Linux. One example is Darling, an open-source program that acts as a compatibility layer for macOS apps to work on Linux. It's like Wine, but for macOS programs instead of Windows.
So, yes, if you put in the time to properly configure the DMG using a third-party application, you might be able to run an unmodified macOS app on Linux.
But to run a DMG on Linux without any third-party applications is very unlikely, unless you port the software yourself.
DMGs Are Tricky to Handle on Linux
Congratulations! Although it may require a bit of a process, you now know how to mount and convert most DMG files to ISO in Ubuntu. And if you know that the DMG only contains media files, you may as well skip the whole mounting and converting process and simply extract the contents through p7zip or 7-ZIP.
If you are planning to run a macOS app packaged within a DMG without any modifications, you will have to look for software such as Darling to act as a compatibility layer. There isn't yet a stable way to run unmodified macOS apps within Linux, but work is underway.