Transform KDE desktop into Apple Mac OS X

July 11, 2006 Posted by Anonymous

One of the biggest motivation for a lay person in buying an Apple Mac - apart from its robust high-end hardware and its OS stability - is its beauty. Over the years, Apple has pioneered new ways of easing the desktop users life with its well designed desktop OS - Mac OS X. Many people who set their eyes on an Apple Mac for the first time will be tempted to buy it.

What if I told you that you can make your Linux OS look and feel like an Apple Mac ?

The panel in KDE with the MacOSX look and feel

Now-a-days a lot of development has been taking place in Linux on the usability front and some of the projects such as XGL are worth the efforts put into it. But for the die-hard Mac enthusiast who would settle for nothing less than a desktop which looks like the original, it is possible with some effort to make a Linux desktop look like a Mac OSX one by clever use of icon sets, wallpapers and themes.

Earlier I had explained how to convert your GNOME desktop to look like Mac OS X. Now it is possible to create an exact imitation of Apple's OS X look using a project called Baghira. In fact Arnaud, a Baghira user has written a very good tutorial to convert your KDE desktop to look like an Apple Mac OS X desktop. The tutorial is pretty detailed in its explanation of the steps and is replete with screenshots.

6 comments:

: 7/11/2006 03:41:00 PM; What about transforming GNOME

Nice Howto
: 7/11/2006 03:55:00 PM; Hi,

I've been reading your blog for a while now - really enjoy it. Lots of very useful tips. I was using Kubuntu until Dapper was released. I then changed to Ubuntu - mainly because there was less on the menu's which made it a lot simpler for my girlfriend who uses my laptop. Anyway, you say you've been successful at getting Gnome to look a little like a Mac OSX. Could you share how you did that? I'd like to make my Gnome look a lot better!
Thanks and keep up the good work!

Jeremy
Ravi: 7/11/2006 05:12:00 PM; Jeremy,
I had downloaded the icon sets and background images from the gnome-look.org website. Perhaps you might find the following link useful for the same. It uses the GTK2 theme with metacity as well as a collection of mac osx icons and backgrounds. Check out the end result of this transformation here.
keed: 7/12/2006 05:53:00 PM; macs are attractive. maybe one day when the money is right i could get one. for now am sticking with debian.
: 7/14/2006 01:17:00 AM; You might want to try out this tutorial for tweaking Gnome to look similar to OS X. It's for Ubuntu, but it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to another distribution.
: 7/27/2006 05:28:00 AM; Make Ubuntu look like OSX
[http://users.utu.fi/ljtaim/ubuntuosx.php]