Turn Your Ubuntu Hardy to Mac OSX Leopard
Updated: The updated version of this tutorial for Ubuntu Intrepid can be found at Turn Ubuntu Intrepid into Mac Leopard.
You can’t really turn a Linux system to a Mac, but you definitely can make your Ubuntu Hardy looks like a Mac OSX Leopard.
If you want to change this
into
, follow the steps below.
Before we start…
First, create a folder in your Home and name it Mac_files. Download the following files to the Mac_files folder.
Using Archive manager, extract the three Mac4Lin zip files Modified Mac4Lin theme and Mac4Lin wallpaper to the Mac_files folder.
Apply Mac OSX Leopard Theme
Go to System->Preferences->Appearance.

Select Install and select the Mac4Lin GTK theme (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Metacity Theme/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4.tar.gz).

Next, click Install again and select the Mac4Lin icon theme. (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_Part2_v0.4.tar.gz /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_modified.tar.gz). When prompted, select “Apply new themes“.
Click Install again and select the Mac4Lin mouse cursor theme. (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Cursor Theme/Mac4Lin_Cursors_v0.4.tar.gz). Select “Apply new themes” when prompted.

Click ‘customize’ and choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Go to the “Window border” tab, choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Click Close.

On the top, go to the Background tab. Click Add and select the Leopard wallpaper. (/home/username/Mac_files/Wallpapers/Leopard.jpg). Click Close to terminate the Appearance window

Install the Dock (Avant Window Navigator)
Open a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and type
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
and add the following lines to the end of the file:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
Save and close the file. In your terminal, type
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk
Go to System->Preferences->AWN manager. On the left, click on the Theme. On the right, click Add and navigate to the Mac_files folder. Select the Elegant_glass.tgz file. Check the bullet beside the Elegant glass theme and click Apply.

Next on the left, click on the Applet icon. On the right, scroll down to the stack Applet. Highlight it, then click Activate. This will add the Mac Leopard stack to your dock.

Before you launch the AWN, remove the bottom panel from the desktop first. Right click on the bottom panel and select “delete this panel”. Open AWN via Applications->Accessories->Avant Window Navigator. Once it is activated, you can simply drag and drop the applications into the dock.
Install OSX Fonts
Open a terminal and type the following:
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
This will Install the Microsoft core fonts.
Next, copy the OSX fonts to the fonts folder
cd /usr/share/fonts
sudo tar xvzf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/OSX_Fonts.tar.gz
Configure the fonts:
cd/
sudo tar xvjpf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/fontconfig.tbz -C /etc/fonts
Open the Appearance window (System->Preferences->Appearance) and select Fonts tab. Select the following fonts according to the image below. Click Close.

Change the traffic light window control to the left
In the terminal, type
gconf-editor
This will bring up the gconf-editor window. Scroll down to App->Metacity->general. On the right, double click on the button_layout and change the content to ‘close,minimize,maximize:menu’ (without the quote). Click Ok and close the gconf-editor.


Change the menubar
Remove all the icon and applications on the left side of the top panel. Right-click on the icon and select ‘Remove from panel‘. You will left with something like this:
![]()
On the right of the top panel, remove the logout icon. Still on the right hand side of the top panel, right click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Search for files‘. This will add the spotlight icon to the panel.

On the extreme left, right-click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Main Menu‘. This will add the apple icon on the left. You can now log out and shut down from the Apple dropdown menu (same as Mac OSX).

Next, we are going to install globalmenu so as to display the menubar for each application. In your terminal,
cd Mac_files
wget http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/files/gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
tar zxvf gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
cd globalmenu
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
If you have any errors when installing the package, try
sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite *.deb
If you are having some installation problems with the gnome-globalmenu-applet, try
sudo apt-get install -f
Once finished, right click on the top panel and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Global Menu Applet‘.

You might not see anything initially. Log out and log in again, you should now see the menubar for each application showing on the panel.
If your globalmenu is of a different shade of grey from the rest of the panel (as shown in the image below), right click on any empty space on the panel and select ‘Properties‘. Go to Background tab and select ‘Background image’. Under the selection, go to /home/username/.themes/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4/gtk-2.0/Panel and select panel-bg.png. Click OK. (Updated: If you can’t find the .themes folder, right-click and select ‘show hidden files‘.)
![]()
Drag the globalmenu to the left just beside the Apple icon. Right click on the globalmenu and select ‘Preferences’. Tick the box beside ‘Display the title of the current application‘ and put maximum width 100. Select the font to be Lucida Grande Bold. Click Apply and OK. You should now have a desktop that resemble Mac Leopard.

![]()
Configuring the Login screen
Click on the Apple icon, go to System->Administration->Login Window. On the Local tab, click Add. Navigate to the path /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GDM Theme and select the file Mac4Lin_GDM_v0.4.tar.gz. Check the box beside the newly installed theme to activate it.

Underneath, there is a color selection field, select it and key in the number E5E5E5 into the color code field.

Click Ok. Log out. You should see the login screen as the diagram below.

Configure usplash screen
usplash is the screen that you see when your computer is booting up. We are going to change it to show the white apple screen. In your terminal,
sudo apt-get install startupmanager
Go to System->Administration->Start-Up Manager Go to Appearance tab. Click on the ‘Manage bootloader theme‘. Click Add and navigate to the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GRUB Splash/appleblack.xpm.gz. Check the box “Use background image for bootloader menu” and select ‘appleblack”.


Next, click “Manage usplash theme”. Click Add and add the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/USplash Theme/osx-splash.so. Click OK. Select OSX-splash from the dropdown box.
Now reboot. You should see the following images:


Creating Dashboard effect
We will use a combination of screenlets and Compiz widget plugin to achieve the dashboard effect.
Install Screenlets
sudo apt-get install screenlets compizconfig-settings-manager
Go to System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effect Setting. On the Left, click on Desktop. On the right, put a check beside ‘Widget layer’

Go to Accessories->Screenlets. Activate the widgets that you want to display. Right click on the widget and select ‘Properties’. Go to Options tab and select ‘Treat as widget’. Do this for all the widgets that you have activated.

You can now see your dashboard in action by pressing F9.

Done. You have completed the transformation of your Ubuntu desktop to Mac OSX Leopard.
Some screenshots:
Tags: Leopard, Linux, Mac, transformation, Ubuntu








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[Click to close]498 Responses
This looks pretty much identical to OSX, incredible. I am a satisfied Voyeur
having a bit of trouble with the whole thing cant get the sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk to work and am a lil scared to continue on with out it if you can help contact me at jww80906@yahoo.com plz thank you!
hey damien, your theme worked but i m getting a problem in installing the global menu, it is showing it in the ADD TO PANEL but when i add it it says “panel encountered a problem while loading “OAFIID:gnome_GlobalMenuApplet”".. a little bit help would be apreciated.. Thanks
I’m trying to do the same on openSolaris but I don’t know why it is not working. I can’t event extract those files successfully. Any glue ?
Thanks,
@Selim
Pal,that theme cannot be installed on OpenSolaris,i don’t know either if OpenSolaris can be installed and modify its theme
when I try to install the AWM manager I get this
daddy-dupont@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Couldn’t find package avant-window-navigator-trunk
daddy-dupont@ubuntu:~$
I’m getting what Nicholas is getting, any help would be great
NVM, fixed that. Just not finding everything
f3ar and Nicholas–
I had the same problem you two did. Any program (AWN or Avant) that you can’t get to work in terminal, you can usually find in the ‘Ubuntu Software Center’ under applications – thats how I had to do it anyways.
To the author of this article: Thanks for the info man. My system looks IDENTICAL to a mac.
I was having the same problem with the AWN Dock along with Avant. I got Cairo-dock instead. Works great!
theme works fine and looks awesome! i just cant install global menu applet without error!! plz help! thx
Installing from the Gnome Global Menu PPA worked for me: http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/InstallingonUbuntu
I had to reboot to see it in the “add to panel” menu.
How does this work for ubuntu 9.10? Some features such as the font changes and startup do not work for ubuntu 9.10 and i have searched and all i can find information for is the Hardy version not Karmic Koala, I’m new to Ubuntu basically because I strongly dislike MS Windows. If I can get some help from someone that would be greatly appreciated.
Hey um for some reason my awn isn’t showing the Mac Leopard stack. When i insert [sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk] into the terminal i keep getting 99% [Connecting to wine.budgetdeicated.com (81.171.111.247)] so im not sure what i should do from here =(
Don’t install it w/command line. Use Synaptic Package Manager. Installed on 9.10 without a hitch.
For Karmic (9.10)
Before apt-get update i needed to add the key:
sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7D2C7A23BF810CD5 ; gpg –export –armor 7D2C7A23BF810CD5 | sudo apt-key add -
apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk was enough to install avant.
on the last screenshot how did you made that minimize effect or what ever it is i want to know :D cheers
can I install this on ubuntu notebook remix?
I have installed Ubuntu 9.10, why i can`t install Global Menu? Until the fonts i go, but when i try to install the Global Menu; i can`t all the rest. If someone can help me? I really apreciated, Thank You!!!
I am running Ubuntu Serve 64 bit with the desktop installed. I am having some problems installing the Mac desktop…
1) sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk
does not work
Ed
When i go to (system–> preferences) AWN Manager isnt there PLEASE HELP
After i type
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk
in the terminal it does a bunch of stuff then i get this message
W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net hardy Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 7D2C7A23BF810CD5
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
im am new to ubuntu, and wanted to download ubuntu v9.10.
is this tutorial compatible with 9.10? like will all the features work such as the login screen and the fonts? or do i need to change something?
or can i just install ubuntu hardy and then update to koala and still keep all the changed settings?
thanks!
can u do all these changes on ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala with the same commands
Thanks for tips. Very useful.
Hey, nice one. But the links are broken. Could you restore them please? I love this theme, i’ve used it for 4 months and reinstalled ubuntu, but now the links are broken.
Same difficulty here. Could you please fix the links?
A good tutorial, though I am not a big fan of the Mac look. Still shows the versatility of Linux.