macOS look for Ubuntu MATE

I finally decided to listen to the funny noises my hard drive was starting to make - including slow starts, intermittent crashes, ... you get the idea. I got myself a shiny new SSD and installed yet another Linux variant, but sticking to the KDE desktop, so the Making (Manjaro) KDE look like macOS pages are still valid. I made some improvements to some of my scripts, because they would not work any more due to a different Python location, more secure process environment permissions, ...: wallpaper.py now requires  exportEnvironment.sh to copy environment variables to ~/.Xenv, because DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS cannot be acquired from the desktop process' environment anymore. Both of these scripts should run on startup, see System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart . fix-OSX-ElCap.py now includes an additional symbolic link to openhand. Needless to say, having an SSD instead of a (still fairly quick) SSHD makes working on my machine much more fun - esp...

The OSX El Capitan mouse cursors is my favorite theme at the moment. There are two drawbacks, however: The theme doesn't install from the KDE control panel (it comes with an installer script which you have to run manually). The theme seems to be incomplete I finally addressed those issues... Install the Cursor Scheme Download the theme (most current version) from gnome-look.org . Extract it and copy it so that is available for all users, especially for the login screen: t ar xvjf ~/Downloads/OSX-ElCap-\(KDE\).R2.tar.bz2  sudo mv OSX-ElCap-\(KDE\)/OSX-ElCap /usr/share/icons/ sudo chown -R root:root /usr/share/icons/OSX-ElCap/ Fix Missing Cursors I wrote a small Python script to create the missing links. I might add another few links in the future and I didn't want to have a ln -s cascade somewhere. Instead, I prefer adding another key/value pair to a hashmap and let the script do all the work... #!/bin/python import os, sys CURSOR_THEME = "/usr/share/...

A Sunday morning well spent. I finished part 2 of my instructions to make Manjaro KDE look like macOS . Have a look, enjoy and maybe try it yourself.

Looking back at the configuration it didn't seem to be that much. However, when writing up all the steps, taking screenshots, taking care of every detail, I soon discovered that I will need more than one page to describe all the customization. Anyway, I just finished  part 1 if making (Manjaro) KDE look like macOS. Have a look and maybe you'll try it yourself...

I have customized Ubuntu MATE to look like MacOS for quite a while now. I found a comment on Gnome Look including a lovely screenshot of a panel. This one is looking far better, especially the notification area: So, now I'm working on customizing Manjaro KDE. Made good progress so far - once I'm done I'll provide detailed instructions, just as I did for Ubuntu MATE . Update: Here is the first part of making (Manjaro) KDE look like macOS .

After long digging and playing with CSS, I finally fixed the font weights and colors in the global application menu. See my updated page Making Ubuntu MATE look like macOS .

I have always liked the Apple design and finally someone in my town decided to sell one - quick and easy decision 😀. So I now had the display on my desk, connected via to my laptop via Display Port - great display, almost better sound. But I couldn't control brightness nor use the iSight camera, so I set to work. Check out the results: Using Apple LED Cinema Display in Ubuntu MATE .

After spending hours (days!) troubleshooting the lightdm webkit greeter which would just show a mouse cursor on a black screen, I decided to start from scratch on my home machine. Re-installed Ubuntu MATE, configured lightdm webkit greeter and got ... the same result. Just by chance I noticed the greeter on my laptop screen, which usually has the lid closed ... d'oh ... This is the hard way to find out that the webkit greeter only uses a single monitor. Found the relevant info searching the net: Need to get the display IDs using xrandr , HDMI-3 in my case Modify /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf : Add display-setup-script=xrandr --output HDMI-3 --primary to the [Seat:*] section. Done!

Finally found some time to work on the page. Installed virtual machine and configuring and downloading ... configuring and downloading ... Somewhat sad to learn that things got much easier. I may need to "downgrade" the configuration on my everyday PC...

About a your ago, looking for a Linux distribution which can be easily customized to look like macOS, I found Ubuntu MATE which seems to be the only Ubuntu distribution left supporting the Mac-style global menu. After much time spent customizing I thought it was time to retrace my steps using a fresh Ubuntu MATE 18.10 installation in a virtual machine and share my experience. Just need to start now... Check out  Making Ubuntu MATE look like macOS .