Is there a DE close to OSX 10.10

[sonniesonnig]

Hey Ubuntu Community,

is there a environment which is looking close to the new OSX and whichs funkctionality is also pretty similar?

[Frogs Hair]

The global menu is a feature of Unity only AFAIK . The most similar looking dock would be GLX/Cairo and is available for different DE's.

[sonniesonnig]

Hm, its not just the dock. Plank is the dock of my choice. But this overall fitting and modern and fine look is missing in any DE I know.

[yancek]

There is a distribution called "Macpup", based on Puppy Linux, pretty lightweight distribution which uses Enlightenment as the default window manager and provides a user interface resembling that of Apple's Mac OS X. Whether it looks the way you want, I don't know as I've never used a Mac.

http://macpup.org/

[michaelg81]

I'm a Mac user and the closest thing was Pear OS. However, it's owner sold it to an unnamed company and it was pulled from distribution (and subsequent forks advised to cease development). Closest remaining in my experience is elementaryOS, which I've enjoyed for most of this year. However, it's based on ubuntu 12.04, so is not the latest and greatest (a new version, based on 13.04 is due out soon, I think).

I run eOS Luna in a Parallels VM on a Mac (Intel quad i5) with a single core, 4GB RAM, and 75GB of disk space.

I've not tried Macpup, but it sounds like it might be good for an old laptop. Thanks for the tip, yancek.

[MikeCyber]

Have a look here:

http://distrowatch.com/

Elementary is a good choice or modify any DE with cairo-dock etc.

[buzzingrobot]

If you think of OS X as only an interface with a top panel and a dock, then those elements are available out of the box in any number of Linux distributions.

If you want to retain the look of OS X, you'll need to find a theme that approximates it.

Elementary OS comes closest to OS X in achieving consistent adherence to design guidelines, as long as you stay with apps from the Elementary team. They have no way, of course, of enforcing their standards within the broader community.

Beyond appearance, OS X has capabilities and tools not available in Linux, or only available with serious juryrigging.

[Rob Sayer]

... Beyond appearance, OS X has capabilities and tools not available in Linux, or only available with serious juryrigging.

You ain't kidding. You certainly wouldn't be able to impress a mac user because the first thing they're going to try is the 4 finger on the touchpad desktop display, which is akin to the ubuntu cube. You won't have a hope in hell doing that on a linux box. Apple uses a lot of proprietary hardware.

While there may be some themes that'll make it look OS X like, I wouldn't recommend installing them if they aren't in the tested ubuntu repos. I won't even install app software from a 3rd party unsupported ppa unless I just can't do what it does from the repos. No way in hell would I do it for something involving the OS or DE.

Linux is already very Mac like. Or should I say that OS X is very Linux like ... Steve Jobs said that, literally, when OS X was first released. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually use the linux kernel but it's also a Unix derivative, with additional data/file structures.

I just reinstalled Lubuntu 14.04.1 on my netbook ... Lubuntu 14.04 was just too buggy so I installed Xubuntu 14.04. But the latter seems a lot slower than I remember it being when I used it before. Lubuntu 14.04.1 is much better, and it's frakking fast. I find I actually like the idea of using a butt ugly DE that looks something like something from the 90s, but works very much like a Mac ...

[buzzingrobot]

already[/I] very Mac like. Or should I say that OS X is very Linux like ... Steve Jobs said that, literally, when OS X was first released. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually use the linux kernel but it's also a Unix derivative, with additional data/file structures.

OS X is actually a Unix, while Linux is technically a Unix-workalike, not that it makes any real difference. OS X's heritage traces, in part, back through Jobs' Next project and eventually to the BSD side of Unix. The kernel, though, is neither traditional BSD or Linux, and, obviously, a very considerable amount of the OS is unique.

Apple's advantage with hardware is, I think, not so much that it's all unique to them, but that they can pick and choose. While most PC box vendors sell on very small margins, and make hardware choices driven by cost, Apple sells on higher margins and has the flexibiility of choosing hardware components based on something other than cost.

When they decide to use, say, a specific Nvidia card in a product, they have the financial resources to insure Nvidia makes enough of those cards to satisfy their requirements. And they have the big advantage of being able to write a driver targetting that specific card.

They also have the resources that allow them to manufacture critical components themselves if a vendor can no longer deliver them. Few, if any, of their competitors can do that. They appear to be positioning themselves to make CPU's for iPhones and iPads, which is no small undertaking.

I used OS X from the beginning through Lion. One of its greatest strengths is the quality and diversity of software created by independent commercial OS X developers. Best in the business, as far as I'm concerned.

[Rob Sayer]

Doesn't Apple use the Mach kernel? So while they may have BSD certification (since they use the BSD libraries) it wouldn't actually really be Unix.