Linux desktop imitating OSX

This is my second article about how to modify your Gnome Linux Desktop tolook like OSX desktop. My first article is one year old and sincethat, there has been many changes in both, my knowledge and availability of thesoftware and themes. This article is not written in such a detail than thefirst one. Rememberthat you can always take a look at the old article too. And I have also writtenOrange-look guide forUbuntu which contains some good tips. This article answers better to questionWHAT than HOW. What do I need if I want to imitate OSX? And not so much "howcan I change my wallpaper" stuff.
Original design of the user interface that is imitated here was created byApple inc.
you can discuss about this article and OSX-modifying in general at Ubuntuforumsinthis thread. There is also a discussonthread in finnish.
I decided to write another guide, because my first guide became surprisinglypopular. There are about 1000 unique visitors per day on my site and 26000unique users per month. That is a lot more than I suspected andever hoped. Thank you all!
Click to enlarge
Why I wrote this article?
Ok, there are almost always misunderstandings when people modify their OSto look some other OS. This is NOT about "I want a mac" or "I want OSX".If I would want a mac, I would go and buy one of those. No, this is simplyabout having fun by imitating and finding the limits of Gnome desktop.I ofter read that Gnome is considered very plain and not very configurable.I can‘t agree with that. Gnome is usable and simple, but yet very powerfulland it is possible to modify Gnome into anything you want. Now, I challengeKDE and OSX users to do the same. Can you make your KDE to look OSX as well asGnome can imitate it? Or can you change your OSX to look Gnome, KDE or Windows?I doubt it, but I love to be proved wrong! ;)
Just to be clear, I don‘t want that OSX-look would be the default look of the Gnome.Gnome is beautiful with Tango icons and it should continue to follow it‘sown clean and usable style. I‘m glad I made that clear. :) Now, let‘s begin...
Desktop Effects
OSX has some nice desktop effects like expose and magic lamp. Those not onlymake your desktop look good, but also improve usability. Of course, not alleffets are good for usability and that‘s why Linux gives you a choice of whicheffects to use. At the moment there are two seperated projects for Linux thatboth provide 3D-desktop effets. There isCompiz that is more stable and faster,and then there isBeryl that is bleeding edge and has many extra effects. Thesetwo projects are going to be merged in the near future (probably they alreadyare when you read this).

Screenshot illustrating "magic lamp" effect when window is minimized to the dock.
I won‘t discuss installing and configuring Compiz or Beryl in this article fortwo reasons. First, there are dozens of HOWTO-guides, which tell you how to dothat. Second, Beryl and Compiz are depricated and there will be a new project soon.
Basic elements of the OSX desktop
OSX has a desktop with icons as almost all desktop environments has. What givesOSX it‘s unique look is a dock that works as application launcher and taskmanagerat the same time. Another element is an application menubar that is located on the topof the screen. This bar displays current application‘s menu and some system tray icons,clock etc. This differs from all the other desktop environments as fas as I know.
Emulating OSX Dock
Screenshot of Avant-window-navigator emulating OSX-dock.
There are many open source projects that aims to offer OSX-dock style dock forLinux desktop. There areKXDocker,avant-window-navigator,kiba-dock andGnome-dock (which is actually a techology demo). My favouritesareNeil J. Patel‘s Avant-window-navigator and Gnome-dock that was written byMacSlow.In the screenshot above you can see Avant-window-navigator that is my current choice.It can be easily modified to look like OSX-dock and it works as application laucherAND taskbar. There are also nice plugins for it that allows applications to changeicon on dock. This allows Gaim to use status icons on bar and Rhythmbox to displayalubm art as icon.
Displaying some of the Avant-window-navigator plugins.Emulating OSX menubar
OSX has only one menubar on the screen at the time. This menubar is displayedat the top of the screen with clock and system tray icons. Gnome doesn‘t havethis kind of bar at default, but it is possible to make one. What you need isgnome-panel that is 24 pixels high. Use OSX-like background image for your panel.You can download it below. Just select the one that is correct to your resolution.If there is not version available for your resolution, it‘s not difficult tocreate one with GIMP.
Screenshot of Gnome-panel that is modified to look like OSX menubar
Background for 800x600
Background for 1024x768
Background for 1280x1024
Background for 1366x768
Background for 1440x900
Now that we have a panel with nice and shiny look, it‘s time to add some gnome-appletsto it. To imitate OSX I recommend you to use clock applet, notification-areaapplet, deskbar-applet, macmenu-applet and some menu-applet to add that applelogo. Deskbar is a user interface for Tracker and Beagle that you can use fordesktop search. Macmenu-applet is the trickiest one here. Gnome doesn‘t supportthis kind of behaviour for default so you‘ll need to patch GTK-librarys with somecode that AqD provided to the community. You can read more about macmenu-appletand patches atUbuntuforums.System tray icons are based on the current icon theme. So the correct way to changethem is to change the icon-theme.
I had to modify AqD‘s mac menu a little bit to get it work with myGTK-theme andLucida Grande (size 10) font. You can download this version from here(This is not available before I have a confirmation that this projectis released under GPL). Try which one works for you. I take NOresponsibility at all. :)
Boot screen
I couldn‘t find a decent OSX-look-a-like bootpslash theme for Linux. So again,I did it myself. This is the great thing with the Linux. You can always do thingsby your self if it‘s not provided already. I created an usplash theme that triesto imitate OSX boot screen. There is one difference though. In real OSX bootscreen there is a nice round animation and in my theme there is a progress bar.Maybe in the future I‘ll learn how to make that animation to Linux boot screen.I think that it‘s possible to do it with usplash.
I‘m not a usplash theme guru yet, so this theme is not perfect. Especially itdoesn‘t support widescreen resolutions. If you have 4:3 resolution monitor theneverything is ok. If you have widescreen resolution then there will be blackbars on both sides of the bootimage. If you know how to fix this, please contactme. Below is a screenshot of my current usplash theme, which you can downloadfromhere.

Screenshot of my usplash theme. This image is lacking the progress bar.
Wallpaper and desktop icons
Wallpaper isn‘t really a part of OSX, because everyone can change that. It stillcreates a nice illusion if you use the wallpaper that is used to see on other OS.That‘s why, if you want real OSX-look then you should also use OSX-wallpaper. Getthe wallpaper fromhere.
Well, I don‘t have much to say about desktop icons. There are only few and thereis nothing special about them. Just create desktop icons as you have used to.

Screenshot of clean Gnome desktop that is modified to look like OSX.
Fonts
OSX uses Lucida Grande font. You can download this and other mac fonts fromhere. Below isa screenshot of my font settings. I also recommend you to add this.fonts.conffile under your home directory. It improves font rendering after X has beenrestarted.
My font settings on Gnome.
Login screen
Gnome uses GDM as a graphical login screen. There are many nice OSX-lookingthemes available, but none of them was good enough for me. So I took the bestone and modified it a little bit. Only a little, but it‘s all about details. ;)You can download GDM-theme fromhere. It‘snot perfect, but I really don‘t care. It‘s about 5 seconds on my screen and that‘sit. This theme is based onAppleLinux theme.
Screenshot of GDK-theme.
System themes
I didn‘t find GTK-theme that would imitate OSX as well as GTK allows. That‘swhy I decided to create my own theme that I based on Glossy P theme, which wasa good starting point. I used some of the graphics directly from Glossy P andsome I did by myself. It‘s not a prefect copy of OSX, because there are somelimitations in GTK that I can‘t get around. You can download my GTK-theme fromhere.
At the moment I use Beryl compositing and it‘s emerald window manager. There isa great OSX Tiger theme for emerald which you can download fromhere.

Application specific themes
Unfortunately, not all GTK-applications uses icon-theme icons. For example Gaim,Terminal Server Client and Liferea has their own icons, which cannot be affected bychanging the global icon-theme. Also Firefox and Thunderbird has themes that areout of the scope of global Gnome themeing. I don‘t have time and energy to writeguide to all of those programs, but you should read my two previous articles, whichdiscuss this in more detail. Here I will just offer few links and that‘s it.
iFox theme for Firefox
Apple Mail theme for Thunderbird
OSX-theme for Gconf-editor
OSX-theme for Liferea RSS-reader
Icons
Icons are essetial part of the desktop design. OSX has nice glossy icons andGnome has... well... gnome has icons. I‘m glad to see that Gnome started to useTango style icons which is a huge improvment, but those doesn‘t really fit to OSXlook that we are trying to imitate here. I have created a nice and full coveringicon-theme for Gnome that uses real OSX icons and other cool icons made by talentedpeople. Only the problem is, that I don‘t have copyrights and I‘m uncertain can Irelease them here without gettig problems to myself.
I advice you to create your own theme by collecting OSX-style icons from theinternet. There are plenty of icons available for example atDeviantArt.

Polishing user interface
It‘s all about details. Espesially when you are trying to imitate something orsomeone. So here are some final tips that I recommend you to do. First removethat gnome-splash screen. There is no use for that and it‘s not very elegant.Below is a screenshot where "Show splash screen on login" is unchecked. Do the same.

Another thing that I did is that I removed icons from menus. This gives a cleanerlook, but it also might make your desktop less usable. At least in Gimp thoseicons are very handy. Anyway, here is a screenshot of my menu & toolbar settings.

All in all, keep things simple! Do not add dozens of icons to your desktop. :)