9 ms·

WhiteSur: macOS-like theme for GTK desktops

296 points by nateb2022 2y ago

derefr 2y ago
The part of macOS I miss when using a Linux desktop isn't how macOS looks, it's how you interact with it. • I miss the keyboard shortcuts. Not only what they are, but also the strict conformity macOS apps have to using the same set of keyboard shortcuts for everything. (Did you know that Cmd+[ and Cmd+] work as "Back" and "Forward" in the Finder; in both Safari and Chrome and Firefox; and even in the iTunes Music Store views in Music.app? Did you know that Cmd+Shift+[ and Cmd+Shift+] work to move between tabs in literally every app that has tabs — including things you wouldn't normally think of as "tabs", e.g. the sheets of a spreadsheet in Numbers?) • I miss the Menu Bar. Specifically, I miss app menus in the Menu Bar. I know there are some themes with UI hacks that can trick Linux applications into disgorging their toplevel menu bars into some global faux Menu Bar — but that assumes that apps even have toplevel menu bars. Many Linux apps don't; they have top-level right-click menus, or top-level hierarchical modal navigation sidebars. And because of this, Linux apps also mostly just "have" keyboard shortcuts — toplevel window keyboard listeners. Whereas in macOS apps, all keyboard shortcuts are really keyboard accelerators for app-menu entries. Which means that everything you can do with the keyboard, you can also find in app's menu; the app's menu is an exhaustive access-point for all of the app's behaviors. And everything you can do in the menu, can be bound to a custom accelerator, or wired up with shell automation/scripting, or exposed to an accessibility device, or full-text-searched using the now-universal search box that appears under the Help app-menu. (Also, for those with not-so-tall screens, having the app's top-level menus pulled out into the Menu Bar means that if you 1. make an app full-screen and 2. set the shell to hide the Menu Bar when an app is full-screen, then you can reclaim the vertical screen real-estate of the app's top-level menu, with them just appearing — along with the rest of the Menu Bar — only when you hover the top of the screen. There'd be no sensible way to reclaim this same chunk of screen real-estate in fullscreened apps with internal top-level menu bars.) • I miss the carefully-thought-out filesystem organized around bundle directories. Apps are bundles; plugins are bundles; libraries/frameworks are bundles. There are no installers, no package managers; bundles just sit where they sit, and then their Info.plist metadata can be auto-discovered by the OS (through Spotlight indexing, gated by Gatekeeper allow-listing), and registered with weak-reference semantics. (That is: drop an app that opens filetype X onto your computer — suddenly that filetype knows it can open in that app. First time you actually try it, Gatekeeper notices you haven't actually said you trust the app yet, and warns you. Remove the app, and the filetype associations automatically get purged — they were technically just a cache/index of the app-bundle's Info.plist, after all, so if the canonical association entries go away, the cache entries go away too.) This also means that macOS "libraries" and "plugins" don't have to spew themselves across half the filesystem; they both just bundle everything up and present themselves as a single file — one that has no default interaction verb, and so "tucks its protected members away", without actually being inconvenient to dig into, the way a shared object with embedded resources would be. • A specific point of the above: I miss disk images. Not so much the ones apps come in — Apple themselves invented a better alternative to those with integrity-verified .xip files (with support, through Safari, for auto-self-extraction, and for auto-Gatekeeper-vouching when the archive is Apple-signed. Sadly these never spread to third-party support, and Apple themselves stopped using them in favor of just distributing things like Xcode through the Mac App Store.) Rather, I miss the deep UI integration with sparsebundle disk images. When I use macOS, I use sparsebundles for everything — they're technically disk images, but in practice, they just act like archive files, growing in size along with your usage rather than having a preallocated size. Unlike your average Linux loopback image, they're actually directories (bundles!) consisting of a bunch of 4MB "band" files. The "sparse" part is "sparse" like sparse-file support, but it works in a completely filesystem-oblivious way: the sparsebundle block-device layer notices whenever a given band would be updated to contain entirely zeroes — and just deletes the underlying band file instead. Mounting a sparsebundle that lives on a remote SMB share is the most low-latency, IO-efficient way I've ever seen of interacting with many small files (such as a remote git worktree.) It's no wonder macOS internally uses sparsebundle-mounts-over-SMB for Time Machine backups. (And they can be encrypted easily, too — not just with a custom passphrase, but also with a key held in a macOS Keychain — which doesn't have to be your default one!)
- jcgl 2y ago
  I'm not at all a Mac person, but this whole comment was a really interesting read. Regarding the shortcut-listeners-not-accelerators things in Linux, is it really not equivalent when an app uses a fully featured toolkit like Qt that (presumably) has support for specifying the semantics of various controls? Aside: I still miss the Unity desktop environment that Ubuntu used to have. It had its flaws for sure (e.g. poor performance and relying on a patched version of Mutter), but its implementation of a global menu was just superb. The ergonomics of having it at the top of the screen were great, and having each entry be searchable was a breath of fresh air. I've been happy enough with KDE Plasma for a while now, but would jump at the chance to have that global menu with search again.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  As much as I appreciate desktop Linux (particularly with Windows getting worse by the minute) it really kills me that these points can’t be fully replicated under it. All the DEs are geared for Windows-like or tablet-OS-like experience first and foremost, with a few niche oddballs mimicking unices of old. WMs are predominantly hyperminimalist tiling things. There’s nothing that reproduces a Mac desktop experience beyond the most superficial level.
- necovek 2y ago
  Gtk menus used to have a feature where you could hover over a menu item, press a key combination, and a shortcut for that menu item was updated to it (and shown in the menu too). It did lead to some confusion (if you accidentally do that while the menu is open), but this is only to show that technically, this was all possible. However, "Linux apps" have really always been either Gtk apps, or Qt apps, or KDE or GNOME apps (yes, different from bare Gtk/Qt), or Fltk, or... Thus providing consistency has been an uphill battle, and distributors mostly tries for a couple core pieces: Gtk + Qt + LibreOffice + Firefox.
- ggm 2y ago
  came here to say this, you said it betterer. looking like OSX isn't "enough" or "sufficient" or even really the point. Being self consistent about the meta-key mapping and operational interactions is. Being able to write something equivalent to applescript to emulate any mouse/pointer action. being able to RELY on keyboard mappings. tools which expose how the underlying system works, window/desktop switching, panning, relocating. I do want to say that some things, TM for instance, are work mostly. There are quirks in TM such as eating all your SSD's free space to store TM history and the pruning approach which means things like df report what they want you to know about disk occupancy, and things like wear levelling/trim are necessarily hidden a bit, because what you see is not actually the total of what is being done.
alberth 2y ago
Probably don't want to use the trademarked Apple logo and Finder icon in this theme (as seen in the top screenshot). And I don't see exactly what's different in the "Default" -> "Majave" Nautlis style ... But otherwise, the theme looks quiet nice.
- bdcravens 2y ago
  Default the sidebar is full height
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  The difference is whether the sidebar ends below the tile bar, or goes through the title bar.
  - wk_end 2y ago
    It's so subtle it almost seems like parody.
- runjake 2y ago
  Or the copyrighted Launchpad, Activity Monitor, App Store, Music, and Safari icons in the screenshot.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    Pretty easy to avoid copyright by making your own icons then you are left with trademark. I'm honestly at that point not sure if there is an issue you aren't offering a confusingly similar product. Mac isn't offering an icon pack they merely have one. At least they don't appear to have ever gone after Macish icon themes legally.
    - runjake 2y ago
      Apple regularly cease and desists unauthorized parties using their icons and other likenesses over the years. I’m not aware of an instance where one of those recipients have refused and went to court with Apple.
Retr0id 2y ago
It's been a long time since I last installed a theme of any kind. In my past experiences, there was always aesthetic jank at the "boundaries" of themed vs unthemed elements. The "Fix for libadwaita (not perfect)" subheading doesn't inspire confidence - not a knock on this specific theme, just one of the hazards of theming in general.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Also, plugins (and themes) have a short expected lifetime on Gnome because it is tedious for a maintainer to adapt the plugin to the high rate of churn in Gnome.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    IIRC GNOME also doesn’t have much of an official plugin API, which makes the situation that much worse. Plugins just have to tinker with GNOME internals and hope for the best.
    - jeroenhd 2y ago
      There is an extension API: https://gjs.guide/extensions/development/creating.html https://gjs.guide/extensions/development/creating.html The API isn't guaranteed to be backwards compatible, though, so you do need to occasionally update your extension code when a new version of Gnome comes out.
- al_borland 2y ago
  My issue tends to be that themes that try to emulate a different OS can only do it in style, not in function. So while a screenshot might look similar, it won't function in the same way as the OS it's trying to be, which leads to compromises all over the place... and the aforementioned jank. Gnome, for example, doesn't have a minimize concept. There is an extension to add it, but it's janky and feels weird. No amount of theming is going to change this, when the underlying system wasn't designed around it.
  - 2y ago
runjake 2y ago
The middle "stoplight" button is 1-2 pixels higher than the others for me. Is this one purpose? It looks this way in the screenshot, as well, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me.
- wruza 2y ago
  The green one? I checked the first screenshot in paint.net, they all equal. Maybe gamma/balance issues?
  - runjake 2y ago
    Thanks. That’s probably it.
- wtallis 2y ago
  Are you wearing glasses with high-index lenses that cause significant chromatic aberration?
  - runjake 2y ago
    I have a few different eye issues, which is why I had the caveat in my original comment. %-)
_lvbh 2y ago
Surprising to see this up here. I used it for a few years and I do still believe Apple generally has better design than most gnome/kde themes. Gnome is unfortunately quite buggy and I've switched off since
bloomingkales 2y ago
I use this on windows to not feel dirty: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1787090/MyDockFinder/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1787090/MyDockFinder/
- SahAssar 2y ago
  > not feel dirty What is the dirty part referring to? MacOS, Windows or Linux?
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    Windows UI is just unattractive to me. You can be a trillion dollar company and have no recourse on fixing your design quality.
    - margana 2y ago
      That's just personal preference. It works the other way around too.
      - diath 2y ago
        It's not a matter of personal preference, Windows UI is objectively atrocious. Like what is this even? Why does Windows need 20 different ways to handle context menus? https://i.imgur.com/uLLiMxS.png https://i.imgur.com/uLLiMxS.png
        p_ing 2y ago
        Someone is complaining that a contextual menu is contextual?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        diath 2y ago
        The "context" in "context menu" means displaying different options depending on the context of the UI/where you clicked, not having 20+ different ways to render the menus depending on the flavor of the Windows UI API you chose.
replete 2y ago
Use this on Fedora, mostly works great apart from a few apps for whatever reason do their own thing.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  > works great apart from a few apps for whatever reason do their own thing. Frankly, that's also my experience using real macOS.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Doing your own thing in macOS is a cardinal sin. I know it might be unavoidable depending on the tooling you are using, but, still... Don't.
    - replete 2y ago
      Not really, you can tweak a lot with the right CLI commands, and the desktop experience is not constantly being messed with or your settings reverted, as is the case with Windows and its forced updates.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        We can all agree Windows is the canonical example of what not to do with a GUI since Windows 1.
    - grvbck 2y ago
      Unless you are Kai Krause and very determined to make some users love your GUI while the rest scream in agony.
  - replete 2y ago
    I am referring to how some window buttons not rendering macOS style in some linux applications.
- Mad_ad 2y ago
  are they Flatpaks?
Synaesthesia 2y ago
I noticed Mac OS dock clones never use the same scaling method as Apple's. That's because they patented it!
- comex 2y ago
  Huh, I never knew that. But it looks like those patents have expired: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434177B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434177B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8640045B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8640045B2/en (in any case, this particular theme uses exact copies of some Apple icons [albeit apparently redrawn], suggesting the author probably wasn’t worrying much about IP rights.)
- Aurornis 2y ago
  This theme isn’t shy about copying various icons and bits from macOS, so I doubt that’s it.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  7. The computer system of claim 6, wherein said others of said plurality of tiles each has a left edge and a right edge located at distances d1 and d2 from said cursor, and is moved to a position such that said left edge has a distance d1 from said cursor and said right edge has a distance d2′ from said cursor wherein: d 1 ′=S×sine(π÷2×d 1 ÷W) d 2 ′=S×sine(π÷2×d 2 ÷W). 8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein said at least one of said plurality of tiles is scaled by a factor of: 1+(d2′−d1′)÷(d2−d1). This is... not an invention.
bsimpson 2y ago
It shows the stoplight-style close widgets on the right in the first screenshot and the left on the later ones. Is that configurable? It looks like the apps in the example are designed to use the space all the way up to y=0, so I didn't expect to be able to move them to the left, but it looks uncanny on the right. There's a difference between convention and brand infringement. I'd be down to try a theme that moved the widgets to a familiar place, but showing the Apple menu on a non-Apple system is a bridge too far.
- c-hendricks 2y ago
  It's configurable: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/gnome-window-buttons https://www.baeldung.com/linux/gnome-window-buttons
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  There are certain terms that indicate membership in a particular set like management, sales, HR that include for a greater understanding of the particular field and a kind of othering of the rest of the human species because one's field is at odds with the rest of the population. EG only sales entertains the fantasy that it is serving the population by connecting needs and products. The rest of us recognize the cat stalking in the tall grass. "Brand Infringement" is one of those terms. Apple ought to be worried that Samsung is copying look and feel of their iphone because they are directly attempting to entice their customers away from their most profitable market. A theme for 0.5% of 1% of existing users of another OS to make their environment look like Mac carries none of the risk. Finding out if our judicial system actually considers it so it would probably require 2 parties and hundreds of thousands to a few mil to decide. A threatening letter might well shut something down to no benefit to anyone and at a cost of good will. So perhaps disengage boring business mode and enjoy nice things. After all do you really feel morally bad about theming your own desktop as if you should be respecting someone's "brand identity"
cf100clunk 2y ago
LinuxScoop has been working on macOS-like themes for KDE, Gnome, and XFCE over the years and versions: https://invidious.baczek.me/channel/UCNnUnr4gwyNmzx_Bbzvt29g?sub_confirmation=1 https://invidious.baczek.me/channel/UCNnUnr4gwyNmzx_Bbzvt29g...
iknowstuff 2y ago
Cute but Gnome already has a fairly macOS-like interface, really well polished, with great HIG, but with its own flair.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  I really appreciate Gnome's minimalism. It tries to do as little as possible and stays out of the way most of the time.
  - nu11ptr 2y ago
    I like it too, but I'm in the minority. Everyone always whines about it, but honestly I don't interact with the DE much. I run like 5 programs and switch between them. I just need a good launcher, task switcher and for it to look pretty doing it. That's it.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Sometimes I also open the file manager. Most of the file heavy lifting is done in the terminal, but, sometimes, the GUI is the way to go when you are not sure what you want to do.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
The metrics are wrong, and they can be looked up from Apple’s Design Resources.
Kalanos 2y ago
For normies, does this work on Ubuntu?
OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
I was at a Ubuntu conference in Korea a few years ago and there was this kid with a Macbook running Linux but it was themed perfectly to MacOS. It was all very amusing until he tried to present and the HDMI didn't work.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > It was all very amusing until he tried to present and the HDMI didn't work. Let me guess... Nvidia?
  - ramon156 2y ago
    I cannot stress enough how much the nvidia situation pisses me off. I've had to convince colleagues that their bad experience is with nvidia drivers, not linux. If your only solution is to buy a completely different version of a laptop to fix jankyness, most people would just say fuck it and opt for a macbook instead. It's a shame people dismiss linux because of that experience, but I cannot blame them.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Currently at least, it’s much easier to get a laptop without any Nvidia GPUs. I always tell people to get the boring machines because those will be the solid ones.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      I know Linux since 1995's Summer, starting with Slackware 2.0, and UNIX since Xenix in 1993, have subscripted to Linux Journal from 1995 until it stop publishing, got most Walnut Creek CD-ROMs, and plenty of other UNIX stuff. Yet, I run Windows/macOS as desktop between private devices and work ones, eventually I decided to start spending my weekends doing other stuff other than making GNU/Linux run on laptops supporting 100% of the hardware, even when bought with Linux pre-installed like on my, now dead of old age, Asus netbook.
      - badsectoracula 2y ago
prymitive 2y ago
I think that the default Gnome theme is fantastic, unique and very elegant. It has nothing to be ashamed of even when compared to macOS look and feel.
- pjerem 2y ago
  I’m not the last to criticize (relatively, I respect the things I’ve got for free) Gnome but yes, aesthetically, I prefer Adwaita to macOS.
- amlib 2y ago
  Considering it used to look like this¹ it's no wonder why people (including me) were desperate to theme it. It took until the last two or so years for me to not care to do that because the default look and feel of gnome is now pretty good. Still, I wished they offered some more adjustments rather than just a paltry selection of accent colors (you can't even select a specific color...) [1] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gnome3config.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gnome...
rcarmo 2y ago
I have been using this for years, and love it. The only real niggle I have is that some of the document icons are actually old Windows icons and not Mac ones.
karparov 2y ago
I've never understood the appeal of such themes. If you really love to have an Apple logo in the top left corner, why not buy the original? What's the point?
- encom 2y ago
  To spare oneself the misery of using Apple hardware, I assume.
  - tredre3 2y ago
    > To spare oneself the misery of using Apple hardware, I assume. Come on, the pain (insofar that you experience pain) comes from the OS, not the hardware.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      I think macOS is a perfectly fine Unix operating system. I use it with MacPorts and it does everything I need the exact way I expect it to be.
      - p_ing 2y ago
        It's only UNIX 03 when you look at it funny. And not UNIX as shipped. Why MacPorts and not brew?
        rbanffy 2y ago
        It seems better built and based on the solid BSD ports architecture. Also, brew broke my machine a vouple times too many. It’s there, installed, but nothing it does is in the PATH. I keep it because I need to help other engineers who bet their machines on it behaving well.
        rswail 2y ago
        When I moved to OSX from Linux for work, there was the choice of homebrew, which blasted crap all over /usr and screwed around with SIP, vs MacPorts that worked within the constraints of the way OSX works, including frameworks and versioning for things like Java and Python. MacPorts just works, installs everything under /opt and integrates the ports into the OSX world, including things like launchctl services etc.
hei-lima 2y ago
I use it, and it's really very good and beautiful. However, I set everything to dark colors. But there's something that really bothers me, and none of the fixes work: I can't get the cursor to work in GTK applications! It always switches to the default. It's not the theme's fault, as this happens with all the others...
_fat_santa 2y ago
I'll be honest my experiences with themes for Linux have been quite poor. Even with good ones it works for some apps but not others and you end up spending all your time fixing edge cases or just dealing with some windows not looking right. My solution has been to just use the default Ubuntu theme that ships with Gnome. I find that theme just seems to work the best across most of my apps with a few small exceptions, compare this to other themes I've tried where only like half of the windows look right. I'm sure there are better themes out there and I could achieve perfect consistency if I dug deep enough and tweaked enough things. But at least in my case I already spend many hours on my computer coding and something like desktop theming is super low on my list, it's one of those things I just need to work because I don't have time to be focusing on that crap. The same goes for my desktop environment. I am well aware that Gnome is not the best and if I put it enough effort I could have a dream setup with XFCE or one of the many tiling window managers. But for me it just goes back to not having time, the thing I love about Gnome is that even though it may be more of a resource hog, it just f*king works.
- andrepd 2y ago
  I've used Mint-X/Y (the default theme for Linux Mint on Cinnamon) for over a decade now, and my experience has always been great.
  - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
    Mint doesn’t enable snaps by default either, which makes it the superior choice over Ubuntu anyways.
- Fnoord 2y ago
  If you want Ubuntu theme but with different accent color, there is Yaru [1]. [1] https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru
- kristopolous 2y ago
  personally I don't get it. If I wanted a macbook, I'd get a macbook. These things are cute and fun, ok, but do people actually want to use it?
nullifidian 2y ago
This reminded me of the anti-theming sentiment in the gnome developer community https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/
- mountainriver 2y ago
  This is peak nonsense
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    In the mid 2000's, I loved trying different themes. These days I just take whatever is the default for Gnome, which is remarkably sane, usually more comfortable than a Mac, and consistent. Some themes solve real problems, especially for the visually impaired, but that's not the norm. It's a fun work of art, but the utility is always limited. More often than I like to admit, I was left with a broken desktop after attempting to uninstall a theme that didn't work well enough (or at all), and that couldn't be fixed by installing another on top of it. There are more pressing issues in Gnome than to provide a stable theme API.
  - skerit 2y ago
    Gnome also made it _a lot_ harder to override the default Adwaita theme in libadwaita applications. Not impossible, just very annoying. This happened together with a GTK UI redesign, turning it into yet another flat UI.
  - panzi 2y ago
    Open source is about taking back control over your software. The sentiment of that website is absurd to me. What I do on/to my own system is nobody else's business. (Though I don't really change much of the theming myself. Changed a few colors slightly and of course the desktop wallpaper.)
    - aprilnya 2y ago
      Did you read the whole page? It’s not about people who theme their own system, it’s about distros that ship themes pre-installed
nancyp 2y ago
But why fake it? Mac osx has the worst ux for window management.
- cafeinux 2y ago
  Great, it should integrate perfectly with GNOME then!
  - amlib 2y ago
    I used to be KDE nut until version 4 came around. I stuck for a while but once gnome 3 got a few years of development on it's back I started liking it more over the direction KDE took. Nowadays I just use GNOME and think their design and HIG works really well across multiple different devices. Be it a desktop with a big screen and tons of real estate for lots of windows showing up concurrently, running on a cramped notebook screen with mostly just a single FS widnow or two side by side or as a "couch" experience on my HTPC, with a great interface for a "ten foot UI" usage. I've also heard some good feedback on how well it works on a phone/tablet context but haven't had the chance of trying that my-self. Perhaps the GNOME project is on the right track for converging all those computing experiences in one in a way that makes sense, specially compared to the train wreck that microsoft's attempt unifying stuff in windows 8/mobile was.
    - cafeinux 2y ago
      Disclaimer: I use GNOME on my main computer and on my small-factor, touch screen enabled, couch laptop. In terms of usability and UX, there loads of things that frustrate me. They seem to be due to design choices that the dev team made and that they don't intend to change anytime soon, so I know I'm stuck with them as long as I stick with GNOME. For that reason, I also know that someday I'll probably just snap (no, Canonical, not you) and switch DE. But for now I don't have the mental room, energy nor time to do so, so I just deal with my frustrations and stick with what Just Works™. I have to use Windows and MacOS at $dailyJob anyway so I'm used to having a subpar experience with my OS. On the touch screen side, they indeed nailed it, as far as I can tell. I do have the occasional driver issue, due to my laptop being an obscure and not really well supported model, but the UX is far more enjoyable on my laptop than on my main computer. There's still much work to do to have a unified experience à la Apple, or as Microsoft envisioned it at the time, but they did make Linux usable on small touch screens. It feels like GNOME has a touch-screen first approach, which is good on one hand, and bad on the other.
lxe 2y ago
I've been a fan of the Author's other theme: Orchis https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme
ritcgab 2y ago
This is good work. But my desktop has looked identical for the last five years, and I wish it would stay the same for the next ten years.
InMice 2y ago
Sometimes I wonder what the desktop linux experience would be like if all the total effort put in was focused on the unification of userspace instead of endless fragmentation. That said, I still respect this effort :)
winrid 2y ago
Still no icon preview in file picker though right? :)
- JamesMcMinn 2y ago
  I'm not able to test this right now, but my understanding is that this was fixed (after 20+ years?) with this merge: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/1560 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/156...
  - winrid 2y ago
    Oh yeah! I'll have to see why my distro isn't picking this up yet.
amelius 2y ago
What's with all the sideways traffic lights?
lionkor 2y ago
This is not entirely on topic, but hopefully interesting enough: I used to rice my KDE setup very much. It was like a hobby. I often tried out other DEs, other window managers, messed around with colors, themes, extensions, and so on. I was unable to replicate my setup on another machine, so I always had e.g. my laptop "ugly", and my main machine pretty. About two years ago, or so, I switched to i3. I have a single config file where I changed the color and the primary keybinds, and I adjusted the bar and the runner to be easier to use. It's two config files. I copy them around and all my systems look and behave the same. They're ugly, and they get out of my way. I don't get to adjust anything, because more than 98% of the pixels on my screen are apps I'm running. I don't see my desktop environment, I don't have to deal with it, it just works and I got used to it. I am incredibly productive on it when I want to be, and I can focus entirely on entertainment or writing when I want that. Not a single animation outside of one's inside apps ever plays. If I open an app, it's the right one because I typed the name, and it opens instantly. On windows, I type the name of an app, and right before I hit enter, the search changes and launches something else. I haven't worried about GTK vs Qt themes even once since switching. I don't have window decorations. I just have my workspaces, my code, by browser, and I forget that I have a window manager. I'm not going back for a while, and using KDE, Gnome, or even the Windows GUI, feels slow and clunky.
- ckocagil 2y ago
  I made my DEs somewhat pretty but never got too deep into ricing. Then I switched to i3-gaps. But I still spent a lot of time configuring and comparing terminal emulators, shell prompts, completion, vim plugins, iommu/vfio... At one point I got sick of it all and decided to switch back to Windows/MacOS, not configure anything too heavily, install tools when I need them, and use all tools as vanilla as possible. Besides not having to maintain all this stuff I also realized I could then ssh into any machine and not miss my customized tools.
- teo_zero 2y ago
  > On windows, I type the name of an app, and right before I hit enter, the search changes and launches something else. This shouldn't happen. If KeePass, for example, is the best guess for an app beginning with k, ke, or kee, it must also be for keep, keepa, etc. I've never experienced what you report. Except if I misspell the app name; then it's plausible that the reaction to my last (wrong) keypress happens while my hand is in flight towards the Enter key.
0x20cowboy 2y ago
I’ve been looking for, (and I’d even pay for) an os9 platinum theme that worked in 2025 (wayland or newer GTK).
- guerrilla 2y ago
  Yes, this is what I need. I've yet to find any good Platinum theme for Linux since I left OS 9 for Linux. It's the one thing I really miss.
sys_64738 2y ago
I used to want Linux to look like Mac OS X but the current Mac OS interface is just plain awful IMNHO. Fo me, I just stick to Linux Mint as it is (mostly) consistent from release to release.
- gavmor 2y ago
  You're in luck, there's a workable setup for that! https://github.com/benchristel/LynX https://github.com/benchristel/LynX
inatreecrown2 2y ago
The last time I tried to make another OS look like macOS it made me feel so nostalgic for it that I just went back to the Mac.
xarope 2y ago
Since this seems on point, I've been using mint the last few years, thanks to cognitive fatigue fighting gnome3 and KDE. What's the state of KDE w/Plasma nowadays?
- kombine 2y ago
  Plasma has become very good especially after version 6 release with Wayland. I apply a light configuration to my setup once and then it gets out of the way. When I need to adjust something - I know I can find a corresponding setting, but I rarely touch configuration these days.
simondotau 2y ago
To reduce an interface like macOS to its superficial appearance is to misunderstand what an interface is. The problem with "mimic" themes is that aesthetic similarity implies functional similarity, which no theme gets anywhere close to replicating.
ho_schi 2y ago
I use the default theme of GNOME. * It is nice, calm and frugal. * UI is presented exactly as developers want it. * No work for me. Searching for a theme costs time. * I don't need hide Linux. Why? GNOME looks better than macOS. Where theming matters - for me - is the shell and source-code, because readability is crucial and I want it nice. I also care about it on the TTY with screen.
- daghamm 2y ago
  Thank you. This is exactly how I feel. libadawita has been a game changer. Now gnome suddenly has the best looking apps among all DEs and platforms. I hope WhiteSur is useful for OSX developers using GTK, but please keep it out of gnome and Linux.
kuon 2y ago
I tried many theming configuration but I always end with small but nasty little bugs like white on light gray icons in some app or wrong padding in others. It is very hard to have a consistent theme across all Linux apps. I realize that the gazillion of UI api on Linux makes it hard/impossible but I think it should be more of a priority.
- daghamm 2y ago
  Why do you need to theme everything when it always result in a broken UI? Please see this thread https://github.com/bragefuglseth/fretboard/issues/30 https://github.com/bragefuglseth/fretboard/issues/30
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

296 points by nateb2022 2y ago

The part of macOS I miss when using a Linux desktop isn't how macOS looks, it's how you interact with it. • I miss the keyboard shortcuts. Not only what they are, but also the strict conformity macOS apps have to using the same set of keyboard shortcuts for everything. (Did you know that Cmd+[ and Cmd+] work as "Back" and "Forward" in the Finder; in both Safari and Chrome and Firefox; and even in the iTunes Music Store views in Music.app? Did you know that Cmd+Shift+[ and Cmd+Shift+] work to move between tabs in literally every app that has tabs — including things you wouldn't normally think of as "tabs", e.g. the sheets of a spreadsheet in Numbers?) • I miss the Menu Bar. Specifically, I miss app menus in the Menu Bar. I know there are some themes with UI hacks that can trick Linux applications into disgorging their toplevel menu bars into some global faux Menu Bar — but that assumes that apps even have toplevel menu bars. Many Linux apps don't; they have top-level right-click menus, or top-level hierarchical modal navigation sidebars. And because of this, Linux apps also mostly just "have" keyboard shortcuts — toplevel window keyboard listeners. Whereas in macOS apps, all keyboard shortcuts are really keyboard accelerators for app-menu entries. Which means that everything you can do with the keyboard, you can also find in app's menu; the app's menu is an exhaustive access-point for all of the app's behaviors. And everything you can do in the menu, can be bound to a custom accelerator, or wired up with shell automation/scripting, or exposed to an accessibility device, or full-text-searched using the now-universal search box that appears under the Help app-menu. (Also, for those with not-so-tall screens, having the app's top-level menus pulled out into the Menu Bar means that if you 1. make an app full-screen and 2. set the shell to hide the Menu Bar when an app is full-screen, then you can reclaim the vertical screen real-estate of the app's top-level menu, with them just appearing — along with the rest of the Menu Bar — only when you hover the top of the screen. There'd be no sensible way to reclaim this same chunk of screen real-estate in fullscreened apps with internal top-level menu bars.) • I miss the carefully-thought-out filesystem organized around bundle directories. Apps are bundles; plugins are bundles; libraries/frameworks are bundles. There are no installers, no package managers; bundles just sit where they sit, and then their Info.plist metadata can be auto-discovered by the OS (through Spotlight indexing, gated by Gatekeeper allow-listing), and registered with weak-reference semantics. (That is: drop an app that opens filetype X onto your computer — suddenly that filetype knows it can open in that app. First time you actually try it, Gatekeeper notices you haven't actually said you trust the app yet, and warns you. Remove the app, and the filetype associations automatically get purged — they were technically just a cache/index of the app-bundle's Info.plist, after all, so if the canonical association entries go away, the cache entries go away too.) This also means that macOS "libraries" and "plugins" don't have to spew themselves across half the filesystem; they both just bundle everything up and present themselves as a single file — one that has no default interaction verb, and so "tucks its protected members away", without actually being inconvenient to dig into, the way a shared object with embedded resources would be. • A specific point of the above: I miss disk images. Not so much the ones apps come in — Apple themselves invented a better alternative to those with integrity-verified .xip files (with support, through Safari, for auto-self-extraction, and for auto-Gatekeeper-vouching when the archive is Apple-signed. Sadly these never spread to third-party support, and Apple themselves stopped using them in favor of just distributing things like Xcode through the Mac App Store.) Rather, I miss the deep UI integration with sparsebundle disk images. When I use macOS, I use sparsebundles for everything — they're technically disk images, but in practice, they just act like archive files, growing in size along with your usage rather than having a preallocated size. Unlike your average Linux loopback image, they're actually directories (bundles!) consisting of a bunch of 4MB "band" files. The "sparse" part is "sparse" like sparse-file support, but it works in a completely filesystem-oblivious way: the sparsebundle block-device layer notices whenever a given band would be updated to contain entirely zeroes — and just deletes the underlying band file instead. Mounting a sparsebundle that lives on a remote SMB share is the most low-latency, IO-efficient way I've ever seen of interacting with many small files (such as a remote git worktree.) It's no wonder macOS internally uses sparsebundle-mounts-over-SMB for Time Machine backups. (And they can be encrypted easily, too — not just with a custom passphrase, but also with a key held in a macOS Keychain — which doesn't have to be your default one!)

jcgl 2y ago
I'm not at all a Mac person, but this whole comment was a really interesting read. Regarding the shortcut-listeners-not-accelerators things in Linux, is it really not equivalent when an app uses a fully featured toolkit like Qt that (presumably) has support for specifying the semantics of various controls? Aside: I still miss the Unity desktop environment that Ubuntu used to have. It had its flaws for sure (e.g. poor performance and relying on a patched version of Mutter), but its implementation of a global menu was just superb. The ergonomics of having it at the top of the screen were great, and having each entry be searchable was a breath of fresh air. I've been happy enough with KDE Plasma for a while now, but would jump at the chance to have that global menu with search again.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
As much as I appreciate desktop Linux (particularly with Windows getting worse by the minute) it really kills me that these points can’t be fully replicated under it. All the DEs are geared for Windows-like or tablet-OS-like experience first and foremost, with a few niche oddballs mimicking unices of old. WMs are predominantly hyperminimalist tiling things. There’s nothing that reproduces a Mac desktop experience beyond the most superficial level.
necovek 2y ago
Gtk menus used to have a feature where you could hover over a menu item, press a key combination, and a shortcut for that menu item was updated to it (and shown in the menu too). It did lead to some confusion (if you accidentally do that while the menu is open), but this is only to show that technically, this was all possible. However, "Linux apps" have really always been either Gtk apps, or Qt apps, or KDE or GNOME apps (yes, different from bare Gtk/Qt), or Fltk, or... Thus providing consistency has been an uphill battle, and distributors mostly tries for a couple core pieces: Gtk + Qt + LibreOffice + Firefox.
ggm 2y ago
came here to say this, you said it betterer. looking like OSX isn't "enough" or "sufficient" or even really the point. Being self consistent about the meta-key mapping and operational interactions is. Being able to write something equivalent to applescript to emulate any mouse/pointer action. being able to RELY on keyboard mappings. tools which expose how the underlying system works, window/desktop switching, panning, relocating. I do want to say that some things, TM for instance, are work mostly. There are quirks in TM such as eating all your SSD's free space to store TM history and the pruning approach which means things like df report what they want you to know about disk occupancy, and things like wear levelling/trim are necessarily hidden a bit, because what you see is not actually the total of what is being done.

alberth 2y ago

Probably don't want to use the trademarked Apple logo and Finder icon in this theme (as seen in the top screenshot). And I don't see exactly what's different in the "Default" -> "Majave" Nautlis style ... But otherwise, the theme looks quiet nice.

bdcravens 2y ago
Default the sidebar is full height
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
The difference is whether the sidebar ends below the tile bar, or goes through the title bar.
- wk_end 2y ago
  It's so subtle it almost seems like parody.
runjake 2y ago
Or the copyrighted Launchpad, Activity Monitor, App Store, Music, and Safari icons in the screenshot.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Pretty easy to avoid copyright by making your own icons then you are left with trademark. I'm honestly at that point not sure if there is an issue you aren't offering a confusingly similar product. Mac isn't offering an icon pack they merely have one. At least they don't appear to have ever gone after Macish icon themes legally.
  - runjake 2y ago
    Apple regularly cease and desists unauthorized parties using their icons and other likenesses over the years. I’m not aware of an instance where one of those recipients have refused and went to court with Apple.

Retr0id 2y ago

It's been a long time since I last installed a theme of any kind. In my past experiences, there was always aesthetic jank at the "boundaries" of themed vs unthemed elements. The "Fix for libadwaita (not perfect)" subheading doesn't inspire confidence - not a knock on this specific theme, just one of the hazards of theming in general.

hollerith 2y ago
Also, plugins (and themes) have a short expected lifetime on Gnome because it is tedious for a maintainer to adapt the plugin to the high rate of churn in Gnome.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  IIRC GNOME also doesn’t have much of an official plugin API, which makes the situation that much worse. Plugins just have to tinker with GNOME internals and hope for the best.
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    There is an extension API: https://gjs.guide/extensions/development/creating.html https://gjs.guide/extensions/development/creating.html The API isn't guaranteed to be backwards compatible, though, so you do need to occasionally update your extension code when a new version of Gnome comes out.
al_borland 2y ago
My issue tends to be that themes that try to emulate a different OS can only do it in style, not in function. So while a screenshot might look similar, it won't function in the same way as the OS it's trying to be, which leads to compromises all over the place... and the aforementioned jank. Gnome, for example, doesn't have a minimize concept. There is an extension to add it, but it's janky and feels weird. No amount of theming is going to change this, when the underlying system wasn't designed around it.
- 2y ago

runjake 2y ago

The middle "stoplight" button is 1-2 pixels higher than the others for me. Is this one purpose? It looks this way in the screenshot, as well, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me.

wruza 2y ago
The green one? I checked the first screenshot in paint.net, they all equal. Maybe gamma/balance issues?
- runjake 2y ago
  Thanks. That’s probably it.
wtallis 2y ago
Are you wearing glasses with high-index lenses that cause significant chromatic aberration?
- runjake 2y ago
  I have a few different eye issues, which is why I had the caveat in my original comment. %-)

_lvbh 2y ago

Surprising to see this up here. I used it for a few years and I do still believe Apple generally has better design than most gnome/kde themes. Gnome is unfortunately quite buggy and I've switched off since

bloomingkales 2y ago

I use this on windows to not feel dirty: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1787090/MyDockFinder/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1787090/MyDockFinder/

SahAssar 2y ago
> not feel dirty What is the dirty part referring to? MacOS, Windows or Linux?
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  Windows UI is just unattractive to me. You can be a trillion dollar company and have no recourse on fixing your design quality.
  - margana 2y ago
    That's just personal preference. It works the other way around too.
    - diath 2y ago
      It's not a matter of personal preference, Windows UI is objectively atrocious. Like what is this even? Why does Windows need 20 different ways to handle context menus? https://i.imgur.com/uLLiMxS.png https://i.imgur.com/uLLiMxS.png
      - p_ing 2y ago
        Someone is complaining that a contextual menu is contextual?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        diath 2y ago
        The "context" in "context menu" means displaying different options depending on the context of the UI/where you clicked, not having 20+ different ways to render the menus depending on the flavor of the Windows UI API you chose.

replete 2y ago

Use this on Fedora, mostly works great apart from a few apps for whatever reason do their own thing.

Wowfunhappy 2y ago
> works great apart from a few apps for whatever reason do their own thing. Frankly, that's also my experience using real macOS.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Doing your own thing in macOS is a cardinal sin. I know it might be unavoidable depending on the tooling you are using, but, still... Don't.
  - replete 2y ago
    Not really, you can tweak a lot with the right CLI commands, and the desktop experience is not constantly being messed with or your settings reverted, as is the case with Windows and its forced updates.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      We can all agree Windows is the canonical example of what not to do with a GUI since Windows 1.
  - grvbck 2y ago
    Unless you are Kai Krause and very determined to make some users love your GUI while the rest scream in agony.
- replete 2y ago
  I am referring to how some window buttons not rendering macOS style in some linux applications.
Mad_ad 2y ago
are they Flatpaks?

Synaesthesia 2y ago

I noticed Mac OS dock clones never use the same scaling method as Apple's. That's because they patented it!

comex 2y ago
Huh, I never knew that. But it looks like those patents have expired: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434177B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434177B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8640045B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8640045B2/en (in any case, this particular theme uses exact copies of some Apple icons [albeit apparently redrawn], suggesting the author probably wasn’t worrying much about IP rights.)
Aurornis 2y ago
This theme isn’t shy about copying various icons and bits from macOS, so I doubt that’s it.
michaelmrose 2y ago
7. The computer system of claim 6, wherein said others of said plurality of tiles each has a left edge and a right edge located at distances d1 and d2 from said cursor, and is moved to a position such that said left edge has a distance d1 from said cursor and said right edge has a distance d2′ from said cursor wherein: d 1 ′=S×sine(π÷2×d 1 ÷W) d 2 ′=S×sine(π÷2×d 2 ÷W). 8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein said at least one of said plurality of tiles is scaled by a factor of: 1+(d2′−d1′)÷(d2−d1). This is... not an invention.

bsimpson 2y ago

It shows the stoplight-style close widgets on the right in the first screenshot and the left on the later ones. Is that configurable? It looks like the apps in the example are designed to use the space all the way up to y=0, so I didn't expect to be able to move them to the left, but it looks uncanny on the right. There's a difference between convention and brand infringement. I'd be down to try a theme that moved the widgets to a familiar place, but showing the Apple menu on a non-Apple system is a bridge too far.

c-hendricks 2y ago
It's configurable: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/gnome-window-buttons https://www.baeldung.com/linux/gnome-window-buttons
michaelmrose 2y ago
There are certain terms that indicate membership in a particular set like management, sales, HR that include for a greater understanding of the particular field and a kind of othering of the rest of the human species because one's field is at odds with the rest of the population. EG only sales entertains the fantasy that it is serving the population by connecting needs and products. The rest of us recognize the cat stalking in the tall grass. "Brand Infringement" is one of those terms. Apple ought to be worried that Samsung is copying look and feel of their iphone because they are directly attempting to entice their customers away from their most profitable market. A theme for 0.5% of 1% of existing users of another OS to make their environment look like Mac carries none of the risk. Finding out if our judicial system actually considers it so it would probably require 2 parties and hundreds of thousands to a few mil to decide. A threatening letter might well shut something down to no benefit to anyone and at a cost of good will. So perhaps disengage boring business mode and enjoy nice things. After all do you really feel morally bad about theming your own desktop as if you should be respecting someone's "brand identity"

cf100clunk 2y ago

LinuxScoop has been working on macOS-like themes for KDE, Gnome, and XFCE over the years and versions: https://invidious.baczek.me/channel/UCNnUnr4gwyNmzx_Bbzvt29g?sub_confirmation=1 https://invidious.baczek.me/channel/UCNnUnr4gwyNmzx_Bbzvt29g...

iknowstuff 2y ago

Cute but Gnome already has a fairly macOS-like interface, really well polished, with great HIG, but with its own flair.

rbanffy 2y ago
I really appreciate Gnome's minimalism. It tries to do as little as possible and stays out of the way most of the time.
- nu11ptr 2y ago
  I like it too, but I'm in the minority. Everyone always whines about it, but honestly I don't interact with the DE much. I run like 5 programs and switch between them. I just need a good launcher, task switcher and for it to look pretty doing it. That's it.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Sometimes I also open the file manager. Most of the file heavy lifting is done in the terminal, but, sometimes, the GUI is the way to go when you are not sure what you want to do.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

The metrics are wrong, and they can be looked up from Apple’s Design Resources.

Kalanos 2y ago

For normies, does this work on Ubuntu?

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago

I was at a Ubuntu conference in Korea a few years ago and there was this kid with a Macbook running Linux but it was themed perfectly to MacOS. It was all very amusing until he tried to present and the HDMI didn't work.

rbanffy 2y ago
> It was all very amusing until he tried to present and the HDMI didn't work. Let me guess... Nvidia?
- ramon156 2y ago
  I cannot stress enough how much the nvidia situation pisses me off. I've had to convince colleagues that their bad experience is with nvidia drivers, not linux. If your only solution is to buy a completely different version of a laptop to fix jankyness, most people would just say fuck it and opt for a macbook instead. It's a shame people dismiss linux because of that experience, but I cannot blame them.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Currently at least, it’s much easier to get a laptop without any Nvidia GPUs. I always tell people to get the boring machines because those will be the solid ones.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I know Linux since 1995's Summer, starting with Slackware 2.0, and UNIX since Xenix in 1993, have subscripted to Linux Journal from 1995 until it stop publishing, got most Walnut Creek CD-ROMs, and plenty of other UNIX stuff. Yet, I run Windows/macOS as desktop between private devices and work ones, eventually I decided to start spending my weekends doing other stuff other than making GNU/Linux run on laptops supporting 100% of the hardware, even when bought with Linux pre-installed like on my, now dead of old age, Asus netbook.
    - badsectoracula 2y ago

prymitive 2y ago

I think that the default Gnome theme is fantastic, unique and very elegant. It has nothing to be ashamed of even when compared to macOS look and feel.

pjerem 2y ago
I’m not the last to criticize (relatively, I respect the things I’ve got for free) Gnome but yes, aesthetically, I prefer Adwaita to macOS.
amlib 2y ago
Considering it used to look like this¹ it's no wonder why people (including me) were desperate to theme it. It took until the last two or so years for me to not care to do that because the default look and feel of gnome is now pretty good. Still, I wished they offered some more adjustments rather than just a paltry selection of accent colors (you can't even select a specific color...) [1] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gnome3config.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gnome...

rcarmo 2y ago

I have been using this for years, and love it. The only real niggle I have is that some of the document icons are actually old Windows icons and not Mac ones.

karparov 2y ago

I've never understood the appeal of such themes. If you really love to have an Apple logo in the top left corner, why not buy the original? What's the point?

encom 2y ago
To spare oneself the misery of using Apple hardware, I assume.
- tredre3 2y ago
  > To spare oneself the misery of using Apple hardware, I assume. Come on, the pain (insofar that you experience pain) comes from the OS, not the hardware.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    I think macOS is a perfectly fine Unix operating system. I use it with MacPorts and it does everything I need the exact way I expect it to be.
    - p_ing 2y ago
      It's only UNIX 03 when you look at it funny. And not UNIX as shipped. Why MacPorts and not brew?
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        It seems better built and based on the solid BSD ports architecture. Also, brew broke my machine a vouple times too many. It’s there, installed, but nothing it does is in the PATH. I keep it because I need to help other engineers who bet their machines on it behaving well.
      - rswail 2y ago
        When I moved to OSX from Linux for work, there was the choice of homebrew, which blasted crap all over /usr and screwed around with SIP, vs MacPorts that worked within the constraints of the way OSX works, including frameworks and versioning for things like Java and Python. MacPorts just works, installs everything under /opt and integrates the ports into the OSX world, including things like launchctl services etc.

hei-lima 2y ago

I use it, and it's really very good and beautiful. However, I set everything to dark colors. But there's something that really bothers me, and none of the fixes work: I can't get the cursor to work in GTK applications! It always switches to the default. It's not the theme's fault, as this happens with all the others...

_fat_santa 2y ago

I'll be honest my experiences with themes for Linux have been quite poor. Even with good ones it works for some apps but not others and you end up spending all your time fixing edge cases or just dealing with some windows not looking right. My solution has been to just use the default Ubuntu theme that ships with Gnome. I find that theme just seems to work the best across most of my apps with a few small exceptions, compare this to other themes I've tried where only like half of the windows look right. I'm sure there are better themes out there and I could achieve perfect consistency if I dug deep enough and tweaked enough things. But at least in my case I already spend many hours on my computer coding and something like desktop theming is super low on my list, it's one of those things I just need to work because I don't have time to be focusing on that crap. The same goes for my desktop environment. I am well aware that Gnome is not the best and if I put it enough effort I could have a dream setup with XFCE or one of the many tiling window managers. But for me it just goes back to not having time, the thing I love about Gnome is that even though it may be more of a resource hog, it just f*king works.

andrepd 2y ago
I've used Mint-X/Y (the default theme for Linux Mint on Cinnamon) for over a decade now, and my experience has always been great.
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  Mint doesn’t enable snaps by default either, which makes it the superior choice over Ubuntu anyways.
Fnoord 2y ago
If you want Ubuntu theme but with different accent color, there is Yaru [1]. [1] https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru
kristopolous 2y ago
personally I don't get it. If I wanted a macbook, I'd get a macbook. These things are cute and fun, ok, but do people actually want to use it?

nullifidian 2y ago

This reminded me of the anti-theming sentiment in the gnome developer community https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/

mountainriver 2y ago
This is peak nonsense
- rbanffy 2y ago
  In the mid 2000's, I loved trying different themes. These days I just take whatever is the default for Gnome, which is remarkably sane, usually more comfortable than a Mac, and consistent. Some themes solve real problems, especially for the visually impaired, but that's not the norm. It's a fun work of art, but the utility is always limited. More often than I like to admit, I was left with a broken desktop after attempting to uninstall a theme that didn't work well enough (or at all), and that couldn't be fixed by installing another on top of it. There are more pressing issues in Gnome than to provide a stable theme API.
- skerit 2y ago
  Gnome also made it _a lot_ harder to override the default Adwaita theme in libadwaita applications. Not impossible, just very annoying. This happened together with a GTK UI redesign, turning it into yet another flat UI.
- panzi 2y ago
  Open source is about taking back control over your software. The sentiment of that website is absurd to me. What I do on/to my own system is nobody else's business. (Though I don't really change much of the theming myself. Changed a few colors slightly and of course the desktop wallpaper.)
  - aprilnya 2y ago
    Did you read the whole page? It’s not about people who theme their own system, it’s about distros that ship themes pre-installed

nancyp 2y ago

But why fake it? Mac osx has the worst ux for window management.

cafeinux 2y ago
Great, it should integrate perfectly with GNOME then!
- amlib 2y ago
  I used to be KDE nut until version 4 came around. I stuck for a while but once gnome 3 got a few years of development on it's back I started liking it more over the direction KDE took. Nowadays I just use GNOME and think their design and HIG works really well across multiple different devices. Be it a desktop with a big screen and tons of real estate for lots of windows showing up concurrently, running on a cramped notebook screen with mostly just a single FS widnow or two side by side or as a "couch" experience on my HTPC, with a great interface for a "ten foot UI" usage. I've also heard some good feedback on how well it works on a phone/tablet context but haven't had the chance of trying that my-self. Perhaps the GNOME project is on the right track for converging all those computing experiences in one in a way that makes sense, specially compared to the train wreck that microsoft's attempt unifying stuff in windows 8/mobile was.
  - cafeinux 2y ago
    Disclaimer: I use GNOME on my main computer and on my small-factor, touch screen enabled, couch laptop. In terms of usability and UX, there loads of things that frustrate me. They seem to be due to design choices that the dev team made and that they don't intend to change anytime soon, so I know I'm stuck with them as long as I stick with GNOME. For that reason, I also know that someday I'll probably just snap (no, Canonical, not you) and switch DE. But for now I don't have the mental room, energy nor time to do so, so I just deal with my frustrations and stick with what Just Works™. I have to use Windows and MacOS at $dailyJob anyway so I'm used to having a subpar experience with my OS. On the touch screen side, they indeed nailed it, as far as I can tell. I do have the occasional driver issue, due to my laptop being an obscure and not really well supported model, but the UX is far more enjoyable on my laptop than on my main computer. There's still much work to do to have a unified experience à la Apple, or as Microsoft envisioned it at the time, but they did make Linux usable on small touch screens. It feels like GNOME has a touch-screen first approach, which is good on one hand, and bad on the other.

lxe 2y ago

I've been a fan of the Author's other theme: Orchis https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme

ritcgab 2y ago

This is good work. But my desktop has looked identical for the last five years, and I wish it would stay the same for the next ten years.

InMice 2y ago

Sometimes I wonder what the desktop linux experience would be like if all the total effort put in was focused on the unification of userspace instead of endless fragmentation. That said, I still respect this effort :)

winrid 2y ago

Still no icon preview in file picker though right? :)

JamesMcMinn 2y ago
I'm not able to test this right now, but my understanding is that this was fixed (after 20+ years?) with this merge: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/1560 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/156...
- winrid 2y ago
  Oh yeah! I'll have to see why my distro isn't picking this up yet.

amelius 2y ago

What's with all the sideways traffic lights?

lionkor 2y ago

This is not entirely on topic, but hopefully interesting enough: I used to rice my KDE setup very much. It was like a hobby. I often tried out other DEs, other window managers, messed around with colors, themes, extensions, and so on. I was unable to replicate my setup on another machine, so I always had e.g. my laptop "ugly", and my main machine pretty. About two years ago, or so, I switched to i3. I have a single config file where I changed the color and the primary keybinds, and I adjusted the bar and the runner to be easier to use. It's two config files. I copy them around and all my systems look and behave the same. They're ugly, and they get out of my way. I don't get to adjust anything, because more than 98% of the pixels on my screen are apps I'm running. I don't see my desktop environment, I don't have to deal with it, it just works and I got used to it. I am incredibly productive on it when I want to be, and I can focus entirely on entertainment or writing when I want that. Not a single animation outside of one's inside apps ever plays. If I open an app, it's the right one because I typed the name, and it opens instantly. On windows, I type the name of an app, and right before I hit enter, the search changes and launches something else. I haven't worried about GTK vs Qt themes even once since switching. I don't have window decorations. I just have my workspaces, my code, by browser, and I forget that I have a window manager. I'm not going back for a while, and using KDE, Gnome, or even the Windows GUI, feels slow and clunky.

ckocagil 2y ago
I made my DEs somewhat pretty but never got too deep into ricing. Then I switched to i3-gaps. But I still spent a lot of time configuring and comparing terminal emulators, shell prompts, completion, vim plugins, iommu/vfio... At one point I got sick of it all and decided to switch back to Windows/MacOS, not configure anything too heavily, install tools when I need them, and use all tools as vanilla as possible. Besides not having to maintain all this stuff I also realized I could then ssh into any machine and not miss my customized tools.
teo_zero 2y ago
> On windows, I type the name of an app, and right before I hit enter, the search changes and launches something else. This shouldn't happen. If KeePass, for example, is the best guess for an app beginning with k, ke, or kee, it must also be for keep, keepa, etc. I've never experienced what you report. Except if I misspell the app name; then it's plausible that the reaction to my last (wrong) keypress happens while my hand is in flight towards the Enter key.

0x20cowboy 2y ago

I’ve been looking for, (and I’d even pay for) an os9 platinum theme that worked in 2025 (wayland or newer GTK).

guerrilla 2y ago
Yes, this is what I need. I've yet to find any good Platinum theme for Linux since I left OS 9 for Linux. It's the one thing I really miss.

sys_64738 2y ago

I used to want Linux to look like Mac OS X but the current Mac OS interface is just plain awful IMNHO. Fo me, I just stick to Linux Mint as it is (mostly) consistent from release to release.

gavmor 2y ago
You're in luck, there's a workable setup for that! https://github.com/benchristel/LynX https://github.com/benchristel/LynX

inatreecrown2 2y ago

The last time I tried to make another OS look like macOS it made me feel so nostalgic for it that I just went back to the Mac.

xarope 2y ago

Since this seems on point, I've been using mint the last few years, thanks to cognitive fatigue fighting gnome3 and KDE. What's the state of KDE w/Plasma nowadays?

kombine 2y ago
Plasma has become very good especially after version 6 release with Wayland. I apply a light configuration to my setup once and then it gets out of the way. When I need to adjust something - I know I can find a corresponding setting, but I rarely touch configuration these days.

simondotau 2y ago

To reduce an interface like macOS to its superficial appearance is to misunderstand what an interface is. The problem with "mimic" themes is that aesthetic similarity implies functional similarity, which no theme gets anywhere close to replicating.

ho_schi 2y ago

I use the default theme of GNOME. * It is nice, calm and frugal. * UI is presented exactly as developers want it. * No work for me. Searching for a theme costs time. * I don't need hide Linux. Why? GNOME looks better than macOS. Where theming matters - for me - is the shell and source-code, because readability is crucial and I want it nice. I also care about it on the TTY with screen.

daghamm 2y ago
Thank you. This is exactly how I feel. libadawita has been a game changer. Now gnome suddenly has the best looking apps among all DEs and platforms. I hope WhiteSur is useful for OSX developers using GTK, but please keep it out of gnome and Linux.

kuon 2y ago

I tried many theming configuration but I always end with small but nasty little bugs like white on light gray icons in some app or wrong padding in others. It is very hard to have a consistent theme across all Linux apps. I realize that the gazillion of UI api on Linux makes it hard/impossible but I think it should be more of a priority.

daghamm 2y ago
Why do you need to theme everything when it always result in a broken UI? Please see this thread https://github.com/bragefuglseth/fretboard/issues/30 https://github.com/bragefuglseth/fretboard/issues/30

deleted 2y ago

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