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A Mac-like experience on Linux

benoau 1y ago
I think Pop OS! + Toshi for keybindings is the best Mac-like experience. Toshi gives me all the main Mac keyboard shortcuts and in recent years Pop OS has built in something close enough to Spotlight and the dock, that covers the things I find most important about the Mac experience.
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  Now‘s not the best time to try Pop OS!, unfortunately, as they’ve been focused on Cosmic. They’re making progress, though, so I hope the benefits of Cosmic will pan out, and we’ll soon be in the best time to try Pop OS!.
- nogridbag 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing Toshi. I've been very interested in Cosmic DE recently and have been playing with it with a Virtual machine. Will definitely try Toshi tonight! I used to use Windows and using control key for everything was leading me to have severe wrist pain. That ended ~14 years ago when I was forced to use Macbooks for work. The position of the command key and using my stronger thumb for all shortcuts is so vastly superior to stretching my pinky to reach control. It's bizarre the rest of the industry is still stuck with this design. I wish system76 and pop os would be strongly opinionated about this and design their laptops and keyboards to be more mac-like and use something like Toshi as the default. I had a mini rant about this on reddit recently. I still find it bizarre that System76 made the launch keyboard with a different layout for the super key than their laptops.
politelemon 1y ago
What's the most stable distro for trying out plasma, any recommendations would be good. Ideally I'd like to run Steam games. Another question, does plasma use Wayland?
- albingroen 1y ago
  I use it with Arch and it’s very stable. It does use Wayland.
- jaykru 1y ago
  CachyOS is a great way to get started. Plasma has both X11 and Wayland backends.
- fsmv 1y ago
  It is preinstalled on steam deck
- LorenDB 1y ago
  Bazzite is basically a third-party SteamOS clone that is intended to run on all devices. It has a Plasma version available. https://bazzite.gg https://bazzite.gg
  - omnimus 1y ago
    I would agree that immutable atomic linux desktop is the future. I would go broader than Bazzite and say you can pick from whole range of similar flavors that might fit you a bit better https://universal-blue.org/ https://universal-blue.org/ for example https://getaurora.dev/en https://getaurora.dev/en is KDE. It's worth saying that one advantage of atomic linux is that you can easily switch between the flavors.
- kombine 1y ago
  Fedora KDE edition is quite stable for me, though it is cutting edge.
  - steve1977 1y ago
    In my experience, Fedora strikes quite a good balance. It’s cutting edge, but not bleeding edge ;)
- samgranieri 1y ago
  I’m enjoying using Kubuntu. Yes it runs on Wayland.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
I guess everyone will have their own preferred niche option, but I'm disappointed the author didn't even mention elementaryOS. If they tried it and discarded it as they did Gnome, I'd be curious to know why.
- wltr 1y ago
  I tried it like a decade ago, when I was a macOS fan. It was such a cheap rip-off with not even visual (not to say functional) things being consistent and very much off. However, these days I have no idea. I forgot they even existed. Would love to read someone else’s experience as well.
pjmlp 1y ago
Including a nice IDE (KDevelop), and a full stack framework experience with the maturity of Qt and KDE own extensability on top. Microsoft could take some lessons for COM tooling out of how KDE does plugins and inter application IPC.
raffael_de 1y ago
At my jobs I'm consistently offered to choose between a Windows ThinkPad or a Mac (the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak). I'd really appreciate a Gnome/Cinnamon/xfce4/KDE/...-like experience on Mac. Even a Windows XP-like experience would be a very welcome improvement.
mtillman 1y ago
Mac-Like is quite the stretch. I’ve always found KDE to be the least attractive desktop environment. It’s like the devs spent a decade copying windows and then finally realized that was a mistake and now it’s in sort of a limbo where it looks disjointed. Every kde guide I run across is a tutorial on how to make kde look like something else. Still an excellent group of devs working on it of course. My first task if I still used Linux would be how to make kde look like Enlightenment.
- munchlax 1y ago
  A truly Mac-like experience would be locked down, unable to even run your own binaries unless you bless them.
  - maleldil 1y ago
    You can run random binaries on macOS just like you can on Linux.
- esseph 1y ago
  KDE really has a "lot going on". I've managed to find a setup with Gnome that largely gets out of my way and operates quickly enough.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I agree that "mac-like" is a stretch. It's not about being pixel-perfect (as mentioned in the blog post) but rather about very different behaviors and philosophies, and of course even if you enable the optional global menu half the programs don't populate it.
Arubis 1y ago
A little offtopic, but I'd like the _reverse_ -- a Linux-like experience on the Mac. Mac hardware and underlying macOS so I can run my favorite native apps and tap into the cleanly-syncing ecosystem, but with a non-hacky tiling window manager, relatively stable text-based locations for configuration, permissions/access patterns that don't change under my feet on every system update, and sane, smooth networking.
- mgrandl 1y ago
  Same. Aerospace, Yabai and co are great efforts, but it’s just all so hacky and frustrating.
- hmokiguess 1y ago
  Oh gosh please, I would love to use Niri / Hyprland on macOS — that is the one major driving force keeping me in between the two. I would also gladly move permanently to Linux if it had full iCloud support, with stuff like native iMessage at least
  - Arubis 1y ago
    I consistently use Amethyst.app and it’s okay I guess? It’s great compared with other tiling on macOS, but compared to niri and sway et al it’s a shade.
- MomsAVoxell 1y ago
  I replaced my laptop with an iPad+Smart Keyboard, and a ClockworkPi uConsole. With this small collection of devices I have the best of all possible worlds. I only wish there were a better X server for iOS these days. VNC is a bit fiddly.
samgranieri 1y ago
I’ve been using Linux on and off for the past two weeks for software dev. Tried Omarchy, but tiling managers aren’t my cup of tea. I tried gnome, but it felt like I was using an iPad at first. Put on some extensions, but it still didn’t feel right to me. Ive been using KDE Plasma and it seems like a good working environment.
commandersaki 1y ago
Was a big fan of the dock about 25 years ago when I used Window Maker. Over that time spotlight and its ilk innovated the launching apps bit, and so, at least for me there is no reason to have it anymore, yet on a mac I cannot make it go away permanently (yes auto hide works - and its become a bit of a pain to set the auto hide delay because the underlying option has changed over the years, but I really just don't want it running at all).
a022311 1y ago
As a daily GNOME user, this is inaccurate. OP is comparing each DE's out-of-the-box experience which is obviously not meant to be left untouched. Both GNOME and KDE have hundreds of extensions that augment functionality in various ways. For a macOS-like experience on GNOME not much is needed: - A dock like the one provided by the excellent Dash-to-dock extension - Toolbar buttons like fullscreen and minimize can be easily enabled from GNOME Tweaks or with the `gsettings` CLI. They can even be moved to the left side of the title bar. - Desktop icons are available by default, I know because I explicitly disable them. - The "system tray" is supported with the AppIndicator extension - Lots of customization options are available in GNOME too in the Control Center, through GNOME Tweaks and the `gsettings` CLI. - Extensions like Blur My Shell and Rounded Window Corners can bring the experience even closer to the recent macOS one (I'm not aware of any Liquid Glass extensions at the moment). Shell themes are a thing too, you can change anything. Ubuntu bundles most of this much friendlier GNOME experience as the default. I wonder what distro OP chose. Personally, I think KDE doesn't have that much to offer over GNOME, except maybe stability and KDE connect for phone integration.
- NaN1352 1y ago
  Exactly, the article makes no sense. Dash-to-dock is fantastic.
- AlphaCerium 1y ago
  I think the fact that GNOME extensions break/need to be updated with each DE upgrade is a great reason to pick KDE over GNOME.
  - shoeb00m 1y ago
    My experience has been that while gnome extensions can break with updates. KDE’s built in customization is already buggy as hell. So your choice is to either use gnome for a generally good experience and disable extensions when something breaks, or use kde and not know what feature will break what. Gnome team probably made the (correct) choice that they couldn’t reasonably maintain a massively customizable de with their resources.
  - 1y ago
alphazard 1y ago
I remain fascinated that we can have whole communities of people like r/unixporn building many user experiences that look great, but the two biggest linux desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) look like fingerpainting compared to macOS. Clearly there are people who know how to write the software that makes the user interfaces, and clearly there are people good at designing beautiful interfaces, and all of it is FOSS for anyone to copy or build on, but for whatever reason no one can manage to put these two together, such that the big DE's look as good as macOS by default.
- hokumguru 1y ago
  Yes Mac might always reign supreme (given the latest design changes though I’m not quite sure…) but both DEs will still probably be head and shoulders above Windows forever.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Like most things, because actually doing it is a lot of hard thankless work that involves saying no to people a lot. Linus is basically famous for saying "no", there's a reason for that.
  - alphazard 1y ago
    It strikes me as a just a question of taste. No one has to do any significant extra work. Someone just has to recognize e.g. why white space matters, or wasted space, or contrast matters, and then make the necessary changes to the defaults. It's not like we are arguing about the subjectivity of favorite colors. The basics that macOS, r/unixporn and even Windows get right and GNOME gets wrong are better understood as facts about the human visual system, and how the typical human performs when confronted with the interface.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Iunno, I write GTK4 apps and don't have any real gripes with the toolkit. My biggest issue is the color scheme, besides that I think the Libadwaita look is much easier-on-the-eyes than post-Big Sur macOS. Certainly makes a better use of screen real estate.
iJohnDoe 1y ago
I've tried a bunch of Linux GUIs. The only two that had a chance were Mint and elementaryOS.
Bigsy 1y ago
Seems like the worst of both worlds. I wouldn't swap my mac hardware for anything so have to do my best to live with macOS but I would take any other OS over it. I just try my best to say inside a terminal if I can.
- rufus_foreman 1y ago
  >> Seems like the worst of both worlds Before the Silicon Mac chips, installing Linux on Mac hardware was the best of both worlds. Asahi doesn't work for me so far, sadly.
- reacharavindh 1y ago
  This. I don’t care much for MacOS. It pretty much gives me a terminal and browser and gets out of the way. But, the hardware, and drivers…. I can reliably shut the lid and open up at a different place and continue working. The battery last atleast a full working day. Displays text sharply. Touchpad works like no other. I can’t imagine dealing with Linux without these conveniences.
  - d3Xt3r 1y ago
    I daily-drive an M1 MBA and a ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 running Linux (Bazzite), and the experience (in terms of convenience and reliability) is identical for the most part. In fact I actually prefer the screen on my ThinkPad, the 1200p OLED display is just so much more crisper and vibrant, it's been great for gaming and media consumption. In saying that, the touchpad experience on the MBA is a touch better, and of course, the battery life is much better on the MBA (as is the thermal effeciency). In spite of these minor shortcomings, I'm super happy with my ThinkPad in terms of just how stable and reliable it's been under Bazzite/KDE, like never once have I had any issues with the suspend-resume functionality - something that even Windows machines struggle with every now and then. If only the Snapdragon ThinkPads had first-class Linux support like the x86 ones do... I reckon they can come pretty close to the MacBooks in terms of battery life, unfortunately they're not quite there yet.
armadyl 1y ago
There are also GNOME themes if you want a FOSS approximation of macOS: https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme
- rcarmo 1y ago
  I’ve stuck to WhiteSur :)
flkiwi 1y ago
This is fascinating. I haven't used a dock in macOS in many years. Nor desktop icons (they're there, but I never really see the desktop). I don't really even use the global menubar much either. I guess I use macOS like gnome these days, probably because gnome is more like an evolution of pre-OS X operating systems (more like, not exactly like) than an iteration of OS X/macOS. That's an amusing result because I don't even use gnome on linux (I'm all niri now). As for KDE, it's an extraordinary project. It is a genuine accomplishment. It's just not for me, because, for me, it's far too distracting, with options and configuration and more options on that invading the unsettled war zone that is my brain.
TheFuzzball 1y ago
I have been looking into Desktop Linux recently because macOS has taken a bit of a quality dip. GNOME - I'm never going to pronounce it guh-nome, please stop, it's embarrassing - seems to have a strong alignment with the old macOS philosophy. It's opinionated. It also clearly copies macOS: Epiphany and the Settings app being prime examples. I installed NixOS on an old T2 MacBook Pro, and it's... awful. Things just don't work, or don't work properly. It actually reminds me of running macOS on PCs back in the day (osx86, etc). GNOME 49 is headed in the right direction I think, but Desktop Linux is still in an absolute state.
- amlib 1y ago
  whats a T2 MacBook Pro?
  - zuhsetaqi 1y ago
    It’s an Intel MacBook with an Apple T2 Security Chip.
WillAdams 1y ago
I wish we could go back to trying for a NeXT-like experience. Windowmaker hasn't been updated since 2023, Nextspace in almost a year, Etoile even longer.... At least the GnuStep folks are still at it. Anyone know of a good distro for the Raspberry Pi for this?
hysan 1y ago
This mirrors my thoughts but as someone who has/is trying to bend KDE into a mac-like experience, there are other big road blockers to getting the same smooth workflow: - the global app menu doesn’t work for most apps because GTK based ones yanked support and generally don’t implement it. With Firefox being the most commonly recommended browser and it still not supporting this, you have a glaring hole in having a unified UX in daily usage - consistent and common shortcuts for main functionality. Having everything tied to CMD and being the same in all apps makes for a predictable UX. While you can achieve it with remapping (ex: toshy), I’ve found the experience to have just enough rough edge cases that it breaks me out of my flow constantly - configurable 1:1 gestures and other non-keyboard centric accessibility features. At the end of the day, every Linux DE is keyboard centric. If you have disability issues that make it hard to stay on your keyboard, then I think macOS generally has the nicest feel (meaning lowest chance of hitting an edge case or bug). GNOME has stability but lacks the breadth of UX features while some other DEs have a greater breadth and configurability but lacks the stability Overall, you aren’t going to ever get a truly mac-like experience on Linux because no one is specifically targeting the same UX design goals. You can try to tweak things endlessly, but you’ll end up spending more time working out bugs than actually using the system. If you plan to use Linux, be prepared to change your workflow and pick the DE whose design goals most closely match what you’re willing to adopt. P.S. - I don’t mention aesthetics because I think everyone who brings that up detracts from the actual UX differences. At the end of the day, if you can match the UX entirely, then how the DE looks doesn’t matter. I mean look at how Liquid Glass is changing the look entirely. Yet the core UX principles are still the same and that’s what really matters (for those looking for a mac-like experience).
rcarmo 1y ago
Gnome plus Whitesur-gtk-theme would have been a much better choice. I’ve been using it for many years now and it is a great experience. https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 is a good summary of where things were after a year or so.
hulitu 1y ago
> A Mac-like experience on Linux Gnome is not like Mac. Who would have thought ? /s I don't like Gnome but, like the author of the article, i have more than one choice. Ranting that apples are not oranges only wastes people time.
nikolay 1y ago
For well over a decade, Linux has been more comfortable than macOS. The only drawback is that there are plenty of high-quality apps for macOS that are not available on Linux. If there were a straightforward way for developers to write once and deploy anywhere, Linux would have been the number one desktop OS.
- knighthack 1y ago
  The one interesting thing (as a heavy user of both OSes) is that since the past decade there now are plenty of high-quality games (if those count for apps) on the Linux, that still don't work as well or as plentifully on Mac. Linux is bound to be the number one gaming machine in time; general apps aside.
  - nikolay 1y ago
    Yes, that's a game changer. I also wonder why businesses and governments continue to use Windows and macOS. In many aspects, Linux is more intuitive, almost all major software supports it, and the free office software is fully featured, beautiful, and free.
andrekandre 1y ago
> And in my opinion, KDE Plasma fits the bill. same for me too, but i miss two features from macos that no desktop environment on linux reproduces to my knowledge: 1. proxy icons on document windows 2. column view for drill-down ui's especially in file managers
nsonha 1y ago
The only thing I slightly like from MacOS is the behavior when you maximize a window and it's automatically a new space. The rest of the DE is inferior to both windows and Linux. Windows sucks but in execution not concepts. The Dock might have been invented by MacOS and it's the dumbest idea to have now infected most Linux DEs.
joemcnuggets 1y ago
Elementary is way more better if you want a simple well-designed desktop

I think Pop OS! + Toshi for keybindings is the best Mac-like experience. Toshi gives me all the main Mac keyboard shortcuts and in recent years Pop OS has built in something close enough to Spotlight and the dock, that covers the things I find most important about the Mac experience.

actuallyalys 1y ago
Now‘s not the best time to try Pop OS!, unfortunately, as they’ve been focused on Cosmic. They’re making progress, though, so I hope the benefits of Cosmic will pan out, and we’ll soon be in the best time to try Pop OS!.
nogridbag 1y ago
Thanks for sharing Toshi. I've been very interested in Cosmic DE recently and have been playing with it with a Virtual machine. Will definitely try Toshi tonight! I used to use Windows and using control key for everything was leading me to have severe wrist pain. That ended ~14 years ago when I was forced to use Macbooks for work. The position of the command key and using my stronger thumb for all shortcuts is so vastly superior to stretching my pinky to reach control. It's bizarre the rest of the industry is still stuck with this design. I wish system76 and pop os would be strongly opinionated about this and design their laptops and keyboards to be more mac-like and use something like Toshi as the default. I had a mini rant about this on reddit recently. I still find it bizarre that System76 made the launch keyboard with a different layout for the super key than their laptops.

politelemon 1y ago

What's the most stable distro for trying out plasma, any recommendations would be good. Ideally I'd like to run Steam games. Another question, does plasma use Wayland?

albingroen 1y ago
I use it with Arch and it’s very stable. It does use Wayland.
jaykru 1y ago
CachyOS is a great way to get started. Plasma has both X11 and Wayland backends.
fsmv 1y ago
It is preinstalled on steam deck
LorenDB 1y ago
Bazzite is basically a third-party SteamOS clone that is intended to run on all devices. It has a Plasma version available. https://bazzite.gg https://bazzite.gg
- omnimus 1y ago
  I would agree that immutable atomic linux desktop is the future. I would go broader than Bazzite and say you can pick from whole range of similar flavors that might fit you a bit better https://universal-blue.org/ https://universal-blue.org/ for example https://getaurora.dev/en https://getaurora.dev/en is KDE. It's worth saying that one advantage of atomic linux is that you can easily switch between the flavors.
kombine 1y ago
Fedora KDE edition is quite stable for me, though it is cutting edge.
- steve1977 1y ago
  In my experience, Fedora strikes quite a good balance. It’s cutting edge, but not bleeding edge ;)
samgranieri 1y ago
I’m enjoying using Kubuntu. Yes it runs on Wayland.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Wowfunhappy 1y ago

I guess everyone will have their own preferred niche option, but I'm disappointed the author didn't even mention elementaryOS. If they tried it and discarded it as they did Gnome, I'd be curious to know why.

wltr 1y ago
I tried it like a decade ago, when I was a macOS fan. It was such a cheap rip-off with not even visual (not to say functional) things being consistent and very much off. However, these days I have no idea. I forgot they even existed. Would love to read someone else’s experience as well.

pjmlp 1y ago

Including a nice IDE (KDevelop), and a full stack framework experience with the maturity of Qt and KDE own extensability on top. Microsoft could take some lessons for COM tooling out of how KDE does plugins and inter application IPC.

raffael_de 1y ago

At my jobs I'm consistently offered to choose between a Windows ThinkPad or a Mac (the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak). I'd really appreciate a Gnome/Cinnamon/xfce4/KDE/...-like experience on Mac. Even a Windows XP-like experience would be a very welcome improvement.

mtillman 1y ago

Mac-Like is quite the stretch. I’ve always found KDE to be the least attractive desktop environment. It’s like the devs spent a decade copying windows and then finally realized that was a mistake and now it’s in sort of a limbo where it looks disjointed. Every kde guide I run across is a tutorial on how to make kde look like something else. Still an excellent group of devs working on it of course. My first task if I still used Linux would be how to make kde look like Enlightenment.

munchlax 1y ago
A truly Mac-like experience would be locked down, unable to even run your own binaries unless you bless them.
- maleldil 1y ago
  You can run random binaries on macOS just like you can on Linux.
esseph 1y ago
KDE really has a "lot going on". I've managed to find a setup with Gnome that largely gets out of my way and operates quickly enough.
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
I agree that "mac-like" is a stretch. It's not about being pixel-perfect (as mentioned in the blog post) but rather about very different behaviors and philosophies, and of course even if you enable the optional global menu half the programs don't populate it.

Arubis 1y ago

A little offtopic, but I'd like the _reverse_ -- a Linux-like experience on the Mac. Mac hardware and underlying macOS so I can run my favorite native apps and tap into the cleanly-syncing ecosystem, but with a non-hacky tiling window manager, relatively stable text-based locations for configuration, permissions/access patterns that don't change under my feet on every system update, and sane, smooth networking.

mgrandl 1y ago
Same. Aerospace, Yabai and co are great efforts, but it’s just all so hacky and frustrating.
hmokiguess 1y ago
Oh gosh please, I would love to use Niri / Hyprland on macOS — that is the one major driving force keeping me in between the two. I would also gladly move permanently to Linux if it had full iCloud support, with stuff like native iMessage at least
- Arubis 1y ago
  I consistently use Amethyst.app and it’s okay I guess? It’s great compared with other tiling on macOS, but compared to niri and sway et al it’s a shade.
MomsAVoxell 1y ago
I replaced my laptop with an iPad+Smart Keyboard, and a ClockworkPi uConsole. With this small collection of devices I have the best of all possible worlds. I only wish there were a better X server for iOS these days. VNC is a bit fiddly.

samgranieri 1y ago

I’ve been using Linux on and off for the past two weeks for software dev. Tried Omarchy, but tiling managers aren’t my cup of tea. I tried gnome, but it felt like I was using an iPad at first. Put on some extensions, but it still didn’t feel right to me. Ive been using KDE Plasma and it seems like a good working environment.

commandersaki 1y ago

Was a big fan of the dock about 25 years ago when I used Window Maker. Over that time spotlight and its ilk innovated the launching apps bit, and so, at least for me there is no reason to have it anymore, yet on a mac I cannot make it go away permanently (yes auto hide works - and its become a bit of a pain to set the auto hide delay because the underlying option has changed over the years, but I really just don't want it running at all).

a022311 1y ago

As a daily GNOME user, this is inaccurate. OP is comparing each DE's out-of-the-box experience which is obviously not meant to be left untouched. Both GNOME and KDE have hundreds of extensions that augment functionality in various ways. For a macOS-like experience on GNOME not much is needed: - A dock like the one provided by the excellent Dash-to-dock extension - Toolbar buttons like fullscreen and minimize can be easily enabled from GNOME Tweaks or with the `gsettings` CLI. They can even be moved to the left side of the title bar. - Desktop icons are available by default, I know because I explicitly disable them. - The "system tray" is supported with the AppIndicator extension - Lots of customization options are available in GNOME too in the Control Center, through GNOME Tweaks and the `gsettings` CLI. - Extensions like Blur My Shell and Rounded Window Corners can bring the experience even closer to the recent macOS one (I'm not aware of any Liquid Glass extensions at the moment). Shell themes are a thing too, you can change anything. Ubuntu bundles most of this much friendlier GNOME experience as the default. I wonder what distro OP chose. Personally, I think KDE doesn't have that much to offer over GNOME, except maybe stability and KDE connect for phone integration.

NaN1352 1y ago
Exactly, the article makes no sense. Dash-to-dock is fantastic.
AlphaCerium 1y ago
I think the fact that GNOME extensions break/need to be updated with each DE upgrade is a great reason to pick KDE over GNOME.
- shoeb00m 1y ago
  My experience has been that while gnome extensions can break with updates. KDE’s built in customization is already buggy as hell. So your choice is to either use gnome for a generally good experience and disable extensions when something breaks, or use kde and not know what feature will break what. Gnome team probably made the (correct) choice that they couldn’t reasonably maintain a massively customizable de with their resources.
- 1y ago

alphazard 1y ago

I remain fascinated that we can have whole communities of people like r/unixporn building many user experiences that look great, but the two biggest linux desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) look like fingerpainting compared to macOS. Clearly there are people who know how to write the software that makes the user interfaces, and clearly there are people good at designing beautiful interfaces, and all of it is FOSS for anyone to copy or build on, but for whatever reason no one can manage to put these two together, such that the big DE's look as good as macOS by default.

hokumguru 1y ago
Yes Mac might always reign supreme (given the latest design changes though I’m not quite sure…) but both DEs will still probably be head and shoulders above Windows forever.
wredcoll 1y ago
Like most things, because actually doing it is a lot of hard thankless work that involves saying no to people a lot. Linus is basically famous for saying "no", there's a reason for that.
- alphazard 1y ago
  It strikes me as a just a question of taste. No one has to do any significant extra work. Someone just has to recognize e.g. why white space matters, or wasted space, or contrast matters, and then make the necessary changes to the defaults. It's not like we are arguing about the subjectivity of favorite colors. The basics that macOS, r/unixporn and even Windows get right and GNOME gets wrong are better understood as facts about the human visual system, and how the typical human performs when confronted with the interface.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Iunno, I write GTK4 apps and don't have any real gripes with the toolkit. My biggest issue is the color scheme, besides that I think the Libadwaita look is much easier-on-the-eyes than post-Big Sur macOS. Certainly makes a better use of screen real estate.

iJohnDoe 1y ago

I've tried a bunch of Linux GUIs. The only two that had a chance were Mint and elementaryOS.

Bigsy 1y ago

Seems like the worst of both worlds. I wouldn't swap my mac hardware for anything so have to do my best to live with macOS but I would take any other OS over it. I just try my best to say inside a terminal if I can.

rufus_foreman 1y ago
>> Seems like the worst of both worlds Before the Silicon Mac chips, installing Linux on Mac hardware was the best of both worlds. Asahi doesn't work for me so far, sadly.
reacharavindh 1y ago
This. I don’t care much for MacOS. It pretty much gives me a terminal and browser and gets out of the way. But, the hardware, and drivers…. I can reliably shut the lid and open up at a different place and continue working. The battery last atleast a full working day. Displays text sharply. Touchpad works like no other. I can’t imagine dealing with Linux without these conveniences.
- d3Xt3r 1y ago
  I daily-drive an M1 MBA and a ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 running Linux (Bazzite), and the experience (in terms of convenience and reliability) is identical for the most part. In fact I actually prefer the screen on my ThinkPad, the 1200p OLED display is just so much more crisper and vibrant, it's been great for gaming and media consumption. In saying that, the touchpad experience on the MBA is a touch better, and of course, the battery life is much better on the MBA (as is the thermal effeciency). In spite of these minor shortcomings, I'm super happy with my ThinkPad in terms of just how stable and reliable it's been under Bazzite/KDE, like never once have I had any issues with the suspend-resume functionality - something that even Windows machines struggle with every now and then. If only the Snapdragon ThinkPads had first-class Linux support like the x86 ones do... I reckon they can come pretty close to the MacBooks in terms of battery life, unfortunately they're not quite there yet.

armadyl 1y ago

There are also GNOME themes if you want a FOSS approximation of macOS: https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme

rcarmo 1y ago
I’ve stuck to WhiteSur :)

flkiwi 1y ago

This is fascinating. I haven't used a dock in macOS in many years. Nor desktop icons (they're there, but I never really see the desktop). I don't really even use the global menubar much either. I guess I use macOS like gnome these days, probably because gnome is more like an evolution of pre-OS X operating systems (more like, not exactly like) than an iteration of OS X/macOS. That's an amusing result because I don't even use gnome on linux (I'm all niri now). As for KDE, it's an extraordinary project. It is a genuine accomplishment. It's just not for me, because, for me, it's far too distracting, with options and configuration and more options on that invading the unsettled war zone that is my brain.

TheFuzzball 1y ago

I have been looking into Desktop Linux recently because macOS has taken a bit of a quality dip. GNOME - I'm never going to pronounce it guh-nome, please stop, it's embarrassing - seems to have a strong alignment with the old macOS philosophy. It's opinionated. It also clearly copies macOS: Epiphany and the Settings app being prime examples. I installed NixOS on an old T2 MacBook Pro, and it's... awful. Things just don't work, or don't work properly. It actually reminds me of running macOS on PCs back in the day (osx86, etc). GNOME 49 is headed in the right direction I think, but Desktop Linux is still in an absolute state.

amlib 1y ago
whats a T2 MacBook Pro?
- zuhsetaqi 1y ago
  It’s an Intel MacBook with an Apple T2 Security Chip.

WillAdams 1y ago

I wish we could go back to trying for a NeXT-like experience. Windowmaker hasn't been updated since 2023, Nextspace in almost a year, Etoile even longer.... At least the GnuStep folks are still at it. Anyone know of a good distro for the Raspberry Pi for this?

hysan 1y ago

This mirrors my thoughts but as someone who has/is trying to bend KDE into a mac-like experience, there are other big road blockers to getting the same smooth workflow: - the global app menu doesn’t work for most apps because GTK based ones yanked support and generally don’t implement it. With Firefox being the most commonly recommended browser and it still not supporting this, you have a glaring hole in having a unified UX in daily usage - consistent and common shortcuts for main functionality. Having everything tied to CMD and being the same in all apps makes for a predictable UX. While you can achieve it with remapping (ex: toshy), I’ve found the experience to have just enough rough edge cases that it breaks me out of my flow constantly - configurable 1:1 gestures and other non-keyboard centric accessibility features. At the end of the day, every Linux DE is keyboard centric. If you have disability issues that make it hard to stay on your keyboard, then I think macOS generally has the nicest feel (meaning lowest chance of hitting an edge case or bug). GNOME has stability but lacks the breadth of UX features while some other DEs have a greater breadth and configurability but lacks the stability Overall, you aren’t going to ever get a truly mac-like experience on Linux because no one is specifically targeting the same UX design goals. You can try to tweak things endlessly, but you’ll end up spending more time working out bugs than actually using the system. If you plan to use Linux, be prepared to change your workflow and pick the DE whose design goals most closely match what you’re willing to adopt. P.S. - I don’t mention aesthetics because I think everyone who brings that up detracts from the actual UX differences. At the end of the day, if you can match the UX entirely, then how the DE looks doesn’t matter. I mean look at how Liquid Glass is changing the look entirely. Yet the core UX principles are still the same and that’s what really matters (for those looking for a mac-like experience).

rcarmo 1y ago

Gnome plus Whitesur-gtk-theme would have been a much better choice. I’ve been using it for many years now and it is a great experience. https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 is a good summary of where things were after a year or so.

hulitu 1y ago

> A Mac-like experience on Linux Gnome is not like Mac. Who would have thought ? /s I don't like Gnome but, like the author of the article, i have more than one choice. Ranting that apples are not oranges only wastes people time.

nikolay 1y ago

For well over a decade, Linux has been more comfortable than macOS. The only drawback is that there are plenty of high-quality apps for macOS that are not available on Linux. If there were a straightforward way for developers to write once and deploy anywhere, Linux would have been the number one desktop OS.

knighthack 1y ago
The one interesting thing (as a heavy user of both OSes) is that since the past decade there now are plenty of high-quality games (if those count for apps) on the Linux, that still don't work as well or as plentifully on Mac. Linux is bound to be the number one gaming machine in time; general apps aside.
- nikolay 1y ago
  Yes, that's a game changer. I also wonder why businesses and governments continue to use Windows and macOS. In many aspects, Linux is more intuitive, almost all major software supports it, and the free office software is fully featured, beautiful, and free.

andrekandre 1y ago

> And in my opinion, KDE Plasma fits the bill. same for me too, but i miss two features from macos that no desktop environment on linux reproduces to my knowledge: 1. proxy icons on document windows 2. column view for drill-down ui's especially in file managers

nsonha 1y ago

The only thing I slightly like from MacOS is the behavior when you maximize a window and it's automatically a new space. The rest of the DE is inferior to both windows and Linux. Windows sucks but in execution not concepts. The Dock might have been invented by MacOS and it's the dumbest idea to have now infected most Linux DEs.

joemcnuggets 1y ago

Elementary is way more better if you want a simple well-designed desktop