Do you want to make Ubuntu look like Mac OS X? If so, we’re going to show you how to do it, step-by-step.
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The whole point of using Linux is that you can do things like this
It doesn’t matter whether you have a bad case of Apple envy, or you simply appreciate the design aesthetic of Apple’s OS; there’s nothing wrong with aping the appearance of a rival operating system.
After all, the whole point of using Linux is that you are free to do things like this — and hey: you certainly can’t make macOS look like Ubuntu!
How To Make Ubuntu Look like a Mac
A stack of mac GTK themes, icon sets, fonts and cursors are available for Linux, just a quick Google away.
The ones included below are the ones we use/think give you the best Mac-like look on your Linux box, But don’t be afraid to explore DeviantArt, GitHub and other avenues if our choices don’t quite match with your tastes.
1. Pick the Right Desktop Environment
GNOME Shell
To achieve the most Mac-like look on Linux you need to use the most appropriate desktop environment and that is GNOME Shell.
This is not a slight against other desktop environments (DEs) as Unity, Budgie, MATE and Cinnamon can all be moulded to resemble Cupertino’s computing OS too.
But GNOME Shell is the most customisable desktop environment. This is a key ask in a task like this. GNOME Shell lets you theme and re-arrange everything you need to with the least amount hackery or fuss.
If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later you already have everything you need to get started, so skip ahead.
But if you don’t have GNOME Shell installed on Ubuntu you will need to install it first.
This is easy. Just click the button below and follow in the on-screen prompts (select ‘lightdm’ as the display manager when asked):
You’re also going to need to the GNOME Tweaks tool in a few steps time, so install that now too:
Once both installations are complete you need to logout and select the ‘GNOME Shell’ session from the Unity Greeter:
A word on using Unity
One thing GNOME Shell can’t offer, that the Unity desktop can, is global menu support.
Now, I don’t consider this to be a negative as more and more applications use use Client Side Decorations, making the need for a global menu redundant.
But if having an omnipresent set of app menus stripped across the top of the screen is part of the Mac experience you don’t wish to lose, stick with Unity.
2. Install a Mac GTK Theme
The single easiest way to make Ubuntu look like a Mac is to install a Mac GTK theme.
Our top recommendation is the ‘macOS Mojave’ theme by Vinceluice. This is a near-enough pixel-perfect clone of Apple’s OS skin, and is available in light and dark versions. It’s one of the best designed Mac GTK themes out there (it also has a matching GNOME Shell theme).
The ‘macOS Mojave’ theme requires GNOME 3.20 or later, so you’ll need to be running Ubuntu 16.10 or later to use it.
If you’re running the older Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release you can use the competent ‘macOS Sierra’ clone created by the B00merang project:
Tip: How To Install GTK Themes
Once you download your chosen macOS theme from the link(s) above, you will need to install it.
To install themes in Ubuntu first extract the contents of the archive you downloaded, then move the folder inside to the
~/.themes
folder in your Home directory.If you do not see this folder press
Ctrl + H
to reveal hidden folders. Next, find the .themes folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.Finally, to change theme, open
GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance
and select your chosen theme (and the GNOME Shell theme, if you also downloaded one).3. Install a Mac Icon Set
Next grab some a Mac Icon set for Linux. A quick Google will throw up a bunch of results. Most, sadly, aren’t complete enough to function as a full icon set, so you’ll also want to use (and in some cases manually specify) a fall back icon theme like Faba, or Papirus.
To avoid all of that hassle you may wish to use the fabulous ‘La Capitaine‘ icon pack.
What’s great about La Capitaine is that it’s a proper Linux icon set, with custom macOS inspired icons for many Linux apps and not just a direct port of mac icons to Linux. It’s also totally open-source, and is available to download from Github.
How to Install Icon Themes
Once you’ve downloaded your chosen theme from the link(s) above you need to install it. To do this first extract the contents of the archive you download, then move the folder inside to the
~/.icons
folder in your Home directory.If you don’t see this folder press
Ctrl + H
to view hidden folders. Next, find the .icons folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.Finally, to apply, open
GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance
and select your chosen theme.Ubuntu For Mac
4. Change the System Font
If you’ve used Mac OS X / macOS at some point in the past few years you’ll know it has clean, crisp system typography.
![Ubuntu One For Mac Os Ubuntu One For Mac Os](/uploads/1/0/7/9/107961625/181968760.png)
‘Lucida Grande’ is the familiar Mac system font, though Apple uses a system font called ‘San Franciso’ in recent releases of macOS.
A quick Google should turn up plenty more information (and links to download San Francisco font) but be aware that neither font is not licensed for distribution — so we can’t link you to it, sorry!
Thankfully there’s an open-source alternative to ‘Lucida Grande’ called Garuda. It’s even pre-installed out of the box on Ubuntu, so you don’t need to go on a font safari to find it.
Head to
GNOME Tweak Tool > Fonts
and set the ‘Windows Titles’ and ‘Interface’ fonts to Garuda Regular (or any other font you wish).If you use Unity you can use Unity Tweak Tool to change the font on Ubuntu.
5. Add a Desktop Dock
Ask people what a Mac desktop looks like and chances are they will mention its ubiqutious desktop dock. This is a combined application launcher and window switcher.
If you opted to use GNOME Shell back in Step 1 install the excellent Dash to Dock extension from the GNOME extensions site. This dock can be adjusted, tweaked and tune to look exactly like its macOS counterpart.
Dash to Dock doesn’t look very mac-ish by default so you will want to dive in to the
GNOME Tweak Tool > Extensions > Dash to Dock > Appearance
to change the colour to white, and lower the opacity.Plank Dock
If you chose to stick with the Unity desktop you can set the Unity Launcher to hide (
System Settings > Desktop > Behaviour
) and install Plank, a desktop dock, to handle app launching and window switching:Plank can be configured with all sorts of themes too, making it easy to replicate the Mac OS X experience. Gnosemite is a faithful mac Plank theme worth a look.
That’s it; we’ve achieved our aim to make Ubuntu look like a Mac — now it’s your turn.
We’d love to see a screenshot of your mac-inspired creation so do feel free to share one in the comments.
Developer(s) | Canonical Ltd. |
---|---|
Initial release | May 13, 2009; 11 years ago |
Written in | Python[1] |
Operating system | Ubuntu 9.10 – 13.10 Mac OS X10.6 and higher Microsoft Windows iOS Linux Android |
Platform | Launchpad Ubuntu OS Ubuntu Forums Ubuntu One Ubuntu One Music Store Ubuntu Software Center |
Available in | English |
Type | Cloud service & single sign on service |
License | Server-side: Proprietary[2] Client-side: GPLv3[3] |
Website | Formerly one.ubuntu.com at the Wayback Machine (archived March 28, 2014) |
Ubuntu One is an OpenID-based single sign-on service operated by Canonical Ltd. to allow users to log onto many Canonical-owned Web sites. Until April 2014, Ubuntu One was also a file hosting service and music store that allowed users to store data 'in the cloud'.
The service enabled users to store files online and sync them between computers and mobile devices, as well as stream audio and music from cloud to mobile devices.
In April 2014, Canonical announced that the cloud storage and synchronization features would be shut down at the end of July 31 of 2014, leaving the sign-on features intact.[4]
Features[edit]
Ubuntu One had a client application that ran on Ubuntu 9.04 and later, Windows XP or newer, and Mac OS X10.6 and higher. Other Linux distributions not running GNOME were supported through a console client.[5] The source code is available through launchpad and can easily be compiled for other Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD.[6] There was an Ubuntu One music app for iOS devices.[7] A free Ubuntu One account offered 5 GB of storage.
The Ubuntu One service was similar to Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Play Music, Amazon Cloud Player. Its client code was written in Python. It used Twisted for its low-level networking and Protocol Buffers for protocol description. Data was synced over a custom protocol called 'u1storage', and stored on Amazon S3.[8]
Ubuntu One offered automatic upload of photos taken from Android mobile devices for immediate synchronization across computers; integration with Mozilla Thunderbird for contacts and with Tomboy for notes due to the access to the local CouchDB instance.[9] It also had capabilities for purchasing DRM-free music while synchronizing them automatically with an Ubuntu One Account via the Ubuntu One Music Store (in partnership with 7digital).
Ubuntu One published APIs for developers wishing to build applications with file and data synchronization or music streaming.
An Ubuntu One account gave users access to the Canonical Store, Launchpad, Ubuntu One and other Ubuntu services; an Ubuntu One account allowed users to store files within the cloud, store their contacts details within the interface, access the Ubuntu One Music Store to buy music from and activate the Ubuntu Software Center. Other sites that support OpenID authorization also had support for Ubuntu One.[10]
History[edit]
In June 2013, the Ubuntu Single Sign On account was re-branded under Ubuntu One as part of consolidating Canonical's online services under the Ubuntu One brand. Also, the announcement identified Ubuntu Pay as another service to come under the brand. Following a security breach in July 2013, Canonical put the Ubuntu Forums under the brand, meaning that Forum users now log in using Ubuntu One, rather than with the previous username-password system.
On April 2, 2014, Canonical announced shutting down of select Ubuntu One services. As of the day of announcement, it was no longer possible to purchase storage space or music. File services would be unavailable from June 1, but existing users were allowed to download their content until July 31, when all stored data would be permanently deleted.[4][11] Canonical explained that they were not willing to make more investment in Ubuntu One, which would be required to compete with other services. Instead, their priority is making a 'converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops.'[4] The company also announced plans to release the source code for the Ubuntu One server software to the public under an open-source license. The shutdown of cloud storage and synchronization services does not affect the single sign-on function of Ubuntu One, which will remain in place.
On July 31, 2014 the service was shut down and all of the users' files were deleted.
In August 2015 Canonical released the file syncing code under the GNU AGPL. Some other server parts remain to be released with no ETA.[12][13]
Linux Os Vs Ubuntu Os
Reception[edit]
Ubuntu One has been criticized within the Ubuntu community for using proprietary server software.[14][15]
There was no native client integration for the Kubuntu variant of the Ubuntu operating system, as of January 2013.[16][17] Kubuntu integration was under development and had also received a grant from the Google Summer of Code 2010.
Further criticism concerned the unclear revenue share that would be granted to the community.[18] The Amarok development team announced that they would not add support for the Ubuntu One Music Store to the Amarok media player for the moment,[19] unlike the Magnatune media store, which returns 10% of the revenue produced via the interface to Amarok.[20]
Storage[edit]
Storage was out-sourced to Amazon S3.[21]Files stored in the Ubuntu One file stores were not encrypted.[22]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'What is Ubuntu One'. 13 May 2009. Archived from the original on 6 March 2011.
- ^'Ubuntu One Servers in Launchpad'. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
Other/Proprietary
- ^'One license notice example'. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
- ^ abcSilber, Jane (2014-04-02). 'Shutting down Ubuntu One file services'. Canonical Blog. Canonical. Retrieved 2014-04-05.
- ^'UbuntuOne Packages for Fedora | Maxiberta's Blog'. Maxiberta.com.ar. Retrieved 2013-06-19.
- ^'Ubuntu One Client in Launchpad'. Launchpad.net. Retrieved 2013-06-19.
- ^'Ubuntu One: Downloads'. Archived from the original on 2011-08-09. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
- ^'Ubuntu One Technical Details'. Ubuntu.com. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^'Relaxed Ubuntu 9.10: CouchDB to be Integrated - Linux Magazine Online'. Linux-magazine.com. 2009-10-15. Retrieved 2010-01-26.
- ^Ubuntu One. 'What's this?'. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
- ^Brodkin, Jon (2014-04-02). 'Ubuntu One storage and music service shut down by Canonical'. Ars Technica. Retrieved 2014-04-05.
- ^https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/08/10/ubuntu-one-file-syncing-code-open-sourced
- ^https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers/+bug/375272
- ^'Bug #375272 in Ubuntu One Servers: 'Server software is closed source' — Launchpad'.
- ^Bradley M. Kuhn (2010-01-14). 'Back Home, with Debian!'. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
UbuntuOne's server side system is proprietary software with no prospects of liberation.
- ^'Launchpad bug #375145 - Ubuntu One should have a KDE client'. Retrieved 2012-01-08.
- ^'Using Ubuntu One in Kubuntu'. Retrieved 2013-10-24.
- ^Jonathan Corbet (March 2, 2010). 'The Ubuntu One music store and free software for profit'. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
- ^Kretschmann, Mark. 'Ubuntu One Music Store integration • KDE Community Forums'. Retrieved 16 April 2010.
- ^'buckman's magnatune blog: Giving money to open source'. Retrieved 2011-12-03.
- ^'Ubuntu One/TechnicalDetails - Ubuntu Wiki'.
- ^'Ubuntu One : Help : FAQs-Are my files stored on the server encrypted?'. Retrieved 16 Dec 2012.
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ubuntu_One&oldid=917754072'