Make Ubuntu look like OS X | Hacker News Reader

Make Ubuntu look like OS X

tanu.wordpress.com

15 pointstan133750 comments

I love that you can configure Ubuntu this much, but frankly, I would never want it to look like OS X.

"Im a big fan of apple user interfaces though they lack a bit in functionality and obviously they are very expensive unless you have lot of money"

This reminds of a great JWZ quote: Linux is only free if your time has no value.

LOL.. come on, you are still in BSD age.. take a look at ubuntu and then say!

I booted up Ubuntu just now. I support the JWZ quote. Ubuntu is the best Linux has ever been, but there's no competition in any way with OS X, and I'd probably choose Windows 7 over it if it didn't instantly support all my drivers.

This is attracting a lot of downvotes, but I'll restate what I said in more certain phrasing: If your operating system doesn't support my drivers without my having to do work, then you have failed to make your operating system easy to use. Say what you will about Windows, and I'll say a lot, it has never failed to give me audio/video, which Ubuntu has failed to give me every time I've used it.

OS X works only on a limited set of hardware. I can't install it on any netbook. I can't even legally run it on any new laptop under $1000. The vast majority of people who install linux have 0 problems on thousands of different kinds of computers from a decade old to new netbooks to supercomputers.

Moreover, OS X also has numerous problems with peripherals. I bought a camera, standard usb camera sold by the millions, and there are no OS X drivers for it. I spent hours scouring the web and installing various programs into this location and that location. Supposedly those drivers support some cameras, maybe even mine. But no, to this day I cannot use skype video on my Mac Mini. On my Ubuntu partition, it works with 0 configuration. Plug it in and I'm done.

Another example: a shared printer. In Ubuntu jaunty, there's a brilliant dialog that automatically finds and sets up a shared printer with a few clicks. My friend Jeremy tried to set up the same printer with his Macbook Pro, and he asked me, we poked around, couldn't find it. We got a cryptic error message that said something about 'could not find bla...'. We tried for a few hours searching online to no avail. Today, he goes upstairs to physically plug in the printer directly every time he wants to print.

He tells me that for most Mac problems you have to spend a few hours searching online and you might find some blog post where someone mentions a trick. No, OS X is where Linux was 10 years ago when I was using Debian. Worse, because Debian always had apt-get, so I had lots of good free software at my fingertips. Ubuntu is far ahead in terms of being painless, and it improves every 6 months...

You must have really weird software. OS X, Linux (and BSD), and Windows all suck in different ways. One way that they all don't suck is out-of-the-box hardware support, all three OSes support most common hardware just fine. I run Debian Unstable and I don't think I've ever explicitly installed a driver, everything is in the default install. (I think Intel is mostly to thank for this situation on Linux; Intel has written great wireless and video drivers, so if you have Intel hardware, everything is likely to work really well.)

So if hardware is not a problem, it comes down to the software. Everyone uses the same web browser on all three platforms, so it's not that. Linux has better terminal editors and support for programming. (I ditched OS X after never getting emacs to work right.) Nautilus and Finder are about the same, although I do not like to use a GUI for managing files. Linux lets me choose, OS X forces its opinion on me. (I also don't like manually arranging windows; OS X forces me to do that anyway. It doesn't even have working "maximize".)

Anyway, I spend maybe an hour every two weeks caring for and feeding Debian, and that means all my software is always up to date. On my OS X machine, I spend less than that, but every piece of software I have is outdated since it is too annoying to manually update everything.

YMMV, but Ubuntu is probably a fine OS for 90% of computer users (especially with OO.org 3).

Huh! Perhaps it's a fault of the virtualization software, then? I'm using a Macbook Pro, the drivers of which I'd assume are in fairly common use, but I can't get audio to work properly. Would virtualization have anything to do with that?

Software like VMWare or Parallels usually makes a fake audio device available. One that has nothing to do with the actual audio hardware in your Mac. They both probably emulate a Soundblaster 16 or so. Which should work fine on anything from Windows to Ubuntu running virtualized.

The maximize on Mac OS X works, then concept is different from Windows. Maximize does not necessarily mean "fill the whole screen with one window" under OS X, but that doesn't mean it is broken. Play around with Preview to get it.

I've played with it. Apparently the algorithm is, "generate one random number and set the window height to that, generate a second random number and set the width to that".

Ok, than you don't get it. I've decided to make a mini-tutorial about this. I will update at this place when it's ready. Stay tuned (if you want).

I can tell how much attention went into the look & feel of OS X when the spacing on the status bar icons in those screenshots really irks me.

Hm. I've been an OS X user since 2003, and I didn't really notice that (in the conversion) until you mentioned it.

That and the gradients, the look of the graphite buttons, the folders, the log-out button where Spotlight ought to be (there's no launcher bar equivalent that could be themed to look like Spotlight?), the spacing on the dock, the theming on the dock, the glowy ball, the spacing of the scroll bar on the Finder, the unnecessary Finder chrome (for people who don't know, all side and bottom chrome on OS X Leopard is 1px unless otherwise specified, and I don't understand why some developers are stupid enough to re-add the chrome Apple did away with)...

It's not worth it to go on. It irritates me so much that people would make an attempt like this in the first place. Every small detail irks me.

Do you ever actually use your computer, or do you just stare at the spacing between icons?

If a novice took over the layout of your favorite publication, offline or off, you'd probably notice.

Having a desktop environment where things "look right" is, to me, the same as working in a room that is clean and tidy.

People who are educated in micro typography (The field of Graphic Design distinguised between macro and micro typography), see this difference instantly and everywhere. It's like reading: onec learned you automatically process whe you see letters.

What about the other way around? I have been using linux for years now but recently I bought a new macbookpro. I am amazed by the way OSX handles battery life and suspend/resume but everything else doesn't even compare to gnome/compiz; gnome is so much more customizable! Was anyone in a similar situation? What did you do? Shift to OSX?

One bit of discomfort OS X causes me is that it uses the "Command" (or clover) key instead of the usual Control (Ctrl) key. Switching between GNU/Linux and OS X is a pain keyboard-wise.

Also, I prefer the way Gnome handles switching between windows on a given virtual desktop (via Alt-Tab) -- without changing virtual desktops on you. It works right on Gnome. Why can't Apple at least provide an option to have their Cmd-Tab work correctly?

Another nice thing about Ubuntu is updating your software. OS X can update itself, but Ubuntu's `aptitude` lets you update everything you have installed.

As for me, I'm stuck on OS X at work for the time being and would prefer to be using an Ubuntu (with Gnome) setup.

I'd much rather make OS X more like Ubuntu.

I like my macbook, but a lot of software just doesn't run on it. I'd also like it if xmonad worked for all windows, not just X windows.

Can't you run Gnome/KDE on OS X?

Probably, but how does that help? Those are desktop environments, what I want is a tiling window manager.

I'd have thought you could install the window manager along with everything else.

He wants OS X native apps to be managed with a tiling window manager. Not possible, although this would be a large usability improvement for many users. (It's ugly though, so my bet is that this will never happen. Get a Linux box and start thinking for yourself.)

There is a tool in the repos that reproduces the macos global menu on the top of the screen. I never tested it, it seems to work only with gtk-apps i think.

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/

Cool, I could never love an OS that didn't have a standard menu bar.

It looks kinda ok, but all the keyboard shortcuts and cmd instead of ctrl would expose the fake immediately.

Funny how there are no articles about making OSX look like Ubuntu...

That's a moot point, because it's not possible to theme Mac OS X.

that is incorrect: http://magnifiqueapp.com/ is an app that allows Mac OS X to be themed

Well of course it's possible to hack any piece of software to do anything that another piece of software can do, but what the poster meant was that the particular function of theming the graphical engine of OS X is completely unsupported.

Except for the fact that all the theme files of OS X are modifiable and hackable to your heart's desire. The fact that no large theming community exists for OS X is that Aqua is a very, very satisfying theme.

The nth "Make _______ (fill in the blank with any OS) look like OS X" web post. Its like putting a Mercedes Benz car body on a BMW chassis.

You should maybe pick different manufacturers to clarify your point.

Repeat after me: A theme is not a OS.

If you want OS X, get OS X86 or just get a Mac. And I say that as a Windows-user.

At the same time, we judge things that we don't know by its look.

For people who don't know what difference between OS X and Unbuntu, the theme is the OS.

This happens everywhere. Racism is one of this bias. We tends to judge non-white as criminals in certain situations.

I don't tend to judge non-white as criminals. I tend to judge white man in black suits wearing sunglasses and big moustaches as criminals.

But you judge a person by look, right? That's the bias I was talking about. As a non white person, I can feel when people look at me walking on the street and their uneaseness in 4am in Harlem, NYC.

As long as human judge things by looks (I did not say this is good thing. I've been trying to remove biases in my perception in search for enlightenment since my teenager time from readings in Taoism/Buddhism), we will all suffer from a lot of misconnections to great things.

What is OS X86?

OS X on arbitrary non-Apple x86 hardware.

Also known as a hackintosh.

A polished turd doesn't look like OSX.

I can't stop laughing about people telling it doesn't look like osx. alright its not osx. it works for me, and im happy for it!

What makes this different from any other theme? Why submit this one to Hacker News? Because attempts to dupe OS X have been around for a decade now; the existence of this one isn't newsworthy unless it's a nonshitty theme, but that's not the case.

Well can't you see the theme ? differentiate it. Just because you don like, doesn't mean no one likes it. Its for the one who like it, if you don't like it just ignore why discourage me or others ?

Because sharing nice-looking things isn't the point of Hacker News.

Aside: I personally feel like this is awful. I'm a Linux user now, but I was a Mac OS user for a long time, and everything I loved in its design is lacking from this one.

come on don tell me what to share on hacker news! i know the rules..

It may not be against the written rules but it's certainly against the spirit of the site, which evidently you do not understand.

alright you win, i can't convince the novice! i got better things to hack..

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