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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 50.0 ms ] threadI 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.
Microsoft could take some lessons for COM tooling out of how KDE does plugins and inter application IPC.
I only wish there were a better X server for iOS these days. VNC is a bit fiddly.
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.
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.
https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme
https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme
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.
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.
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?
- 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).
https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 is a good summary of where things were after a year or so.
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.
1. proxy icons on document windows
2. column view for drill-down ui's especially in file managers