PS: Post Snake Mac OS
- Watch CNN streaming channels featuring Anderson Cooper, classic Larry King interviews, and feature shows covering travel, culture and global news.
- Hello, It’s not really optimal to still not get a arm64 version: ARM 64 bit instruction set is better than 32 bit. It’s probably the one that’ll remain in a few years as, for an architecture supposed to be energy efficient, ARM was not so clean at it’s core: 2 to 3 instruction sets for 32bits versions with usual 32 bits fixed size set, variable size Thumb one and maybe even Jazelle.
Definition of - senses, usage, synonyms, thesaurus. Online Dictionaries: Definition of Options Tips.
Do you want to make Ubuntu look like Mac OS X? If so, we’re going to show you how to do it, step-by-step.
The whole point of using Linux is that you can do things like this
It doesn’t matter whether you have a bad case of Apple envy, or you simply appreciate the design aesthetic of Apple’s OS; there’s nothing wrong with aping the appearance of a rival operating system.
After all, the whole point of using Linux is that you are free to do things like this — and hey: you certainly can’t make macOS look like Ubuntu!
How To Make Ubuntu Look like a Mac
A stack of mac GTK themes, icon sets, fonts and cursors are available for Linux, just a quick Google away.
The ones included below are the ones we use/think give you the best Mac-like look on your Linux box, But don’t be afraid to explore DeviantArt, GitHub and other avenues if our choices don’t quite match with your tastes.
1. Pick the Right Desktop Environment
GNOME Shell
To achieve the most Mac-like look on Linux you need to use the most appropriate desktop environment and that is GNOME Shell.
This is not a slight against other desktop environments (DEs) as Unity, Budgie, MATE and Cinnamon can all be moulded to resemble Cupertino’s computing OS too.
But GNOME Shell is the most customisable desktop environment. This is a key ask in a task like this. GNOME Shell lets you theme and re-arrange everything you need to with the least amount hackery or fuss.
If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later you already have everything you need to get started, so skip ahead.
Ps: Post Snake Mac Os Catalina
But if you don’t have GNOME Shell installed on Ubuntu you will need to install it first.
This is easy. Just click the button below and follow in the on-screen prompts (select ‘lightdm’ as the display manager when asked):
You’re also going to need to the GNOME Tweaks tool in a few steps time, so install that now too:
Once both installations are complete you need to logout and select the ‘GNOME Shell’ session from the Unity Greeter:
A word on using Unity
One thing GNOME Shell can’t offer, that the Unity desktop can, is global menu support.
Now, I don’t consider this to be a negative as more and more applications use use Client Side Decorations, making the need for a global menu redundant.
But if having an omnipresent set of app menus stripped across the top of the screen is part of the Mac experience you don’t wish to lose, stick with Unity.
2. Install a Mac GTK Theme
The single easiest way to make Ubuntu look like a Mac is to install a Mac GTK theme.
Our top recommendation is the ‘macOS Mojave’ theme by Vinceluice. This is a near-enough pixel-perfect clone of Apple’s OS skin, and is available in light and dark versions. It’s one of the best designed Mac GTK themes out there (it also has a matching GNOME Shell theme).
The ‘macOS Mojave’ theme requires GNOME 3.20 or later, so you’ll need to be running Ubuntu 16.10 or later to use it.
If you’re running the older Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release you can use the competent ‘macOS Sierra’ clone created by the B00merang project:
Tip: How To Install GTK Themes
Once you download your chosen macOS theme from the link(s) above, you will need to install it.
To install themes in Ubuntu first extract the contents of the archive you downloaded, then move the folder inside to the ~/.themes folder in your Home directory.
If you do not see this folder press Ctrl + H to reveal hidden folders. Next, find the .themes folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.
Finally, to change theme, open GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance and select your chosen theme (and the GNOME Shell theme, if you also downloaded one).
3. Install a Mac Icon Set
Next grab some a Mac Icon set for Linux. A quick Google will throw up a bunch of results. Most, sadly, aren’t complete enough to function as a full icon set, so you’ll also want to use (and in some cases manually specify) a fall back icon theme like Faba, or Papirus.
To avoid all of that hassle you may wish to use the fabulous ‘La Capitaine‘ icon pack.
What’s great about La Capitaine is that it’s a proper Linux icon set, with custom macOS inspired icons for many Linux apps and not just a direct port of mac icons to Linux. It’s also totally open-source, and is available to download from Github.
How to Install Icon Themes
Once you’ve downloaded your chosen theme from the link(s) above you need to install it. To do this first extract the contents of the archive you download, then move the folder inside to the ~/.icons folder in your Home directory.
If you don’t see this folder press Ctrl + H to view hidden folders. Next, find the .icons folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.
Finally, to apply, open GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance and select your chosen theme.
4. Change the System Font
If you’ve used Mac OS X / macOS at some point in the past few years you’ll know it has clean, crisp system typography.
‘Lucida Grande’ is the familiar Mac system font, though Apple uses a system font called ‘San Franciso’ in recent releases of macOS.
A quick Google should turn up plenty more information (and links to download San Francisco font) but be aware that neither font is not licensed for distribution — so we can’t link you to it, sorry!
Thankfully there’s an open-source alternative to ‘Lucida Grande’ called Garuda. It’s even pre-installed out of the box on Ubuntu, so you don’t need to go on a font safari to find it.
Head to GNOME Tweak Tool > Fonts and set the ‘Windows Titles’ and ‘Interface’ fonts to Garuda Regular (or any other font you wish).
If you use Unity you can use Unity Tweak Tool to change the font on Ubuntu.
5. Add a Desktop Dock
Ask people what a Mac desktop looks like and chances are they will mention its ubiqutious desktop dock. This is a combined application launcher and window switcher.
If you opted to use GNOME Shell back in Step 1 install the excellent Dash to Dock extension from the GNOME extensions site. This dock can be adjusted, tweaked and tune to look exactly like its macOS counterpart.
Dash to Dock doesn’t look very mac-ish by default so you will want to dive in to the GNOME Tweak Tool > Extensions > Dash to Dock > Appearance to change the colour to white, and lower the opacity.
Plank Dock
If you chose to stick with the Unity desktop you can set the Unity Launcher to hide (System Settings > Desktop > Behaviour) and install Plank, a desktop dock, to handle app launching and window switching:
Plank can be configured with all sorts of themes too, making it easy to replicate the Mac OS X experience. Gnosemite is a faithful mac Plank theme worth a look.
That’s it; we’ve achieved our aim to make Ubuntu look like a Mac — now it’s your turn.
We’d love to see a screenshot of your mac-inspired creation so do feel free to share one in the comments.
Due to certain recent developments, It’s become clear to us that it’s necessary to update and improve our OSX VM guide. A lot’s changed since we wrote it, and rolling in those changes will make the process much more user friendly and accessible to newer VFIO users.
So here’s part 1 of our attempt at making this process easier and more straightforward.
This site is ad-free and always will be. Consider supporting us on Patreon if you like our work and want to see more from us.
Prerequisites for a basic OSX VM
- A CPU supporting SSE 4.2 (most modern ones do)
- 64gb+ free space for VM image
- working basic knowledge of linux
Prerequisites For 3D Acceleration
- A Desktop with modern virtualization extensions and functional IOMMU
- Spare GPU to pass to the VM
- A linux install with a Qemu installation and configured to enable relevant platform features.
- If you want Mojave or future versions of OS X, you must have a 700 series nvidia GPU or an AMD gpu without the reset bug. (Generally 280X and older as long as they have a UEFI VBIOS)
Disclaimers and Warnings
- The vast majority of laptops won’t work, and using an eGPU to make them work is not covered in this guide.
- Using software acceleration and not doing passthrough will degrade performance to some degree
- No hackintosh project is update safe, and you will likely need to upgrade clover at points to maintain functionality.
- We do not condone software piracy. We don’t offer support for those who obtain commercial software through illegitimate methods.
- Pay attention to Apple ID related steps if you plan on logging in with a pre-existing account. Like any other hackintosh, you risk a temporary ban from apple if you don’t take proper measures.
Basic Setup
First, install a few prerequisite packages. You’re going to need qemu, python, pip, click, request, git, and all the relevant dependencies. So run:
then install click and request:
From here, you’re gonna need to use git to get the macOS-Simple-KVM repo from github:
Make sure to do this in a working directory where you want the VM files to live. The jumpstart script defaults to 10.15 Catalina. If you would rather install mojave, or high sierra, just run it with the corresponding argument, e.g. ./jumpstart --high-sierra, --mojave, or --catalina
The jumpstart script should make the recovery media for your VM to install from. After it finishes, simply create a qcow2 image by running
Ps: Post Snake Mac Os X
and adding these 2 lines to the end of the included basic.sh script
where MyDisk is the name of your image.
You may also want to change the mac address listed in line 23 (-device e1000-82545em ...) of ./basic.sh at this point to avoid Apple ID issues, as the provided one is not unique. a new mac address can be generated easily by running openssl rand -hex 6 sed 's/(..)/1:/g; s/:$//' and pasting the output into the mac= argument. You can also just generate a new mac address in the virt-manager GUI at a later stage (don’t log in in the meantime.)
From here you can boot your new VM by running ./basic.sh.
Basic Installation
Your vm should, after a short while, boot into clover, and then an OS X recovery partition. From here, click “Disk Utility” and format the image you created using the “Erase” button. Be sure not to format the recovery disk or the small partition labeled ESP.
After that, exit disk utility and click “reinstall OS X.” Follow the prompts and grab a coffee. This bit can take a while.
Hopefully by now, you have a basic working OS X VM.
From here, there are a few common tweaks you may want to do to improve performance and useability:
Change VM Resolution
Once you’re in the VM, you can change its resolution by editing config.plist in the clover ESP.
Start by copying ESP.qcow2 and renaming the copy something like ESP.qcow2.bak. Do the same for the firmware folder.
From there, boot into the VM, open a terminal and run sudo diskutil list. The 256MB disk is the one you want. Mount its first partition by running sudo diskutil mount diskXsY (where X and Y are the disk and partition numbers)
Open finder, navigate to “EFI” in the left bar under volumes, navigate to the clover folder, and open config.plist. There should be a section of this file that looks like this
Change this value to your desired resolution, e.g. 1920×1080. Note that some odd/intermediate resolutions like 1366×768 may not work well. Try to stick to more common 16:9, 16:10 and 4:3 form factors.
Increasing CPU/Memory
This process can increase overall performance if you have more than the default resources available to you. For memory, simply change the -m 2G line in basic.sh to a higher value. For CPUs, replace -smp 4,cores=2 with -smp cpus=X,cores=X,threads=1,sockets=1 where X is the number of threads you want to pass through. If you want to pass more than 8 threads, add to the number of sockets for every 8 cores as well. When and if you switch your configuration to virt-manager, DO NOT change the thread topology or model settings via the GUI. This can cause issues with clover and the boot process. If you do need more cores, just virsh edit and follow the same rules as above and do not change the cpu model type.
Switching to Virt-Manager
This will give you a GUI to launch and manage your VM with, making other adjustments and customizations easier. You’ll also need this for part 2 of the guide. Just install virt-manager and you can get started.
First things first: back up your ESP image and firmware folder as described in the resolution change section. Boot your VM, and press escape at the first UEFI dialog. Type exit, hit enter. This should bring you to the OVMF configuration menu. Navigate to Device Configuration > OVMF Platform Features, and set the resolution to the same value as your VM resolution. If you did not change your VM resolution, set it to 1280×720. Hit f10, Y, then press escape until you’re in the main dialog. hit continue and boot into the VM. Shut it down fully, then Boot again to make sure the change didn’t cause any issues.
Next, enable libvirt by running systemctl enable libvirtd.service virtlogd.service and systemctl start libvirtd.service and virtlogd.service. Open virt-manager and make sure you see Qemu/KVM in the connections window. Double click the connection and check the value for Virsh URI. If it’s qemu:///system then run every virsh command mentioned here with sudo.
Download the generic XML we provide here. Find and replace all instances of YOURPATH with the absolute path that corresponds to your VM’s firmware and image files. After you’ve edited the xml, run virsh define OSX.xml (use sudo if your URI is qemu:///system instead of qemu:///session) in the same working directory you saved your XML to.
Restart Libvirt by running systemctl restart libvirtd.service virtlogd.service and open up virt-manager. You should have a VM named OSX under the Qemu Connection in the main window.
If you’ve already extensively customized your qemu script, you can run ./make.sh --add. This script is included in the repo. Edit the XML before defining, using uuidgen to create a new UUID to avoid issues with apple ID. The xml we provide will do so automatically.
If you get network startup errors, simply remove the NIC device in virt-manager and re-add it, manually specifying the device type to e1000-82545em. This should also generate a new MAC address. On Arch, you may get an error like:
To fix this, install ebtables and dnsmasq and try again.
Some distros (e.g. manjaro) come with badly configured or incompatible firewalls too. If you get an error saying NAT failed to connect or that the default virsh network is inactive, and running virsh net-start defaultdoesn’t resolve the issue, you should try manually setting FirewallBackend= in /etc/firewalld/firewalld.conf to iptables
If you get Permissions errors related to your qcow images on boot, simply remove the affected qcow images and re-add them as sata devices. Virt-manager will ask if you want it to fix the permissions. Click yes.
If you get an error on startup similar to Error starting domain: path /dev/dri/bypath/pci-0000:00:02-0-render is not accessible. No such file or directory and you created your XML with ./make.sh --add, then it may have erroneously assigned a device to your qxl graphics. Simply edit your XML with virsh edit and remove the entire line containing that entry.
Troubleshooting
Qemu refuses to start after running basic.sh:
Check to make sure you have all dependencies installed. You have to manually install packages like virglrenderer and spice on some distributions. If your error includes unknown attribute type for SMBIOS, then your version of Qemu isn’t recent enough to support this project. You can try updating it by compiling a more recent version yourself or installing it through a 3rd party repo. The oldest version to support this feature is 2.8.
The Installer doesn’t have any listed hard drives:
Make sure you generated your qcow image, added it to basic.shand formatted it to hfs+ in Disk Utility before starting the installer.
Installer fails with “Failed to Contact Validation Server”
Check your internet connection and firewall settings and try again. If it still doesn’t work, make sure your system time is correct.
UI is tiny:
You can change your VM resolution to a better supported one in the ESP, like 1920×1080, or use a tool like Enable-HiDPI-OSX to regain scaling functionality.
Part 2 of this guide covers GPU and Device Passthrough, CPU and IO optimizations, as well as other ways to improve your virtualized OSX experience. Special thanks to Foxlet for providing most of the groundwork for this new guide.
Consider Supporting us on Patreon if you like our work, and if you need help or have questions about any of our articles, you can find us on our Discord. We provide RSS feeds as well as regular updates on Twitter if you want to be the first to know about the next part in this series or other projects we’re working on.