HOW TO: Fedora looks & feels like Mac OS X Mojave

Introduction

In this tutorial I will show you how to get some features and the layout of OS X on your Fedora.

For the Hater who will say “You want it to look like a Mac, buy one”.

I know there are some who will say “if you want it to look like os x, buy a MacBook”, some of my work colleagues reacted in the same way… But, I have 2 MacBooks (1 MacBook Pro mid 2011, 1 MacBook Pro mid 2018). The 2018 is from work and just bad. With the keyboard, the keys regularly lock up and the speakers randomly start noisy. And I don’t buy it for 3000€ electronic trash! I’m completely satisfied with my Mid2011 MacBook, but it’s no longer updateable, so I bought a Lenovo for programming on the couch. But for the development Windows is out of question -> that´s why i started using Fedora. And here I would not like to do without some features I am used to as a long time Apple user therefore this tutorial!

Prerequisites

• Fedora 29 or 30
• Gnome 3
• Small Linux KnowHow

Design before Functionality

Following Apple’s motto - design before functionality (otherwise the new MacBooks wouldn’t be so buggy) we start with the look, the appearance. In order to be able to make different settings on Gnome we first have to install Gnome-Tweaks

sudo dnf install gnome-tweaks

After we install tweaks, pls restart your System. Or just log out and in. Next, we need to download our desired OS X themes. Here you can find the icon pack “OS Catalina” the theme “Mojave-dark” and the shell theme “mcOS11-Shell.zip”. After downloading the files, we extract the content and move it to /usr/share/themes or icons:

sudo tar -xvf Mojave-dark.tar.xz --directory /usr/share/themes/
sudo tar -xvf OS_Catalina.tar.xz --directory /usr/share/icons/
sudo unzip mcOS11-Shell.zip && mv mcOS11-Shell /usr/share/themes/

Next we download the Apple Typical font “roboto”, unzip the content and install the fonts (just double click on the .ttf file):

sudo unzip roboto.zip

Now we have all the files, themes, icons, fonts and so on we need for a nice OS X UI under Gnome3 & Fedora. Next we have to configure Gnome. For this we start Gnome tweaks. In the next screenshots you can see which things have to be configured:

1. Extensions > User Themes > enable - for your Shell Theme
   1. For Appearance we have to make changes to Applications, Icons and Shell:
   2. For the correct font we have to set Interface Text & Legacy Window Titles to Roboto Bold and Document Text to Roboto Regular
   3. As last step we only have the Window Titlebars. Here we activate the titlebar buttons “Maximize” and “Minimize” and set the Placement to “left”.

Now your Fedora should looks like a Mac OS X!

Let´s add the functionality

Here is a short overview of what we will add:

• The dock
• Gesture control (change the workspace with 3 fingers, for example)
• Hide Top Panel
• Windows in Maximize gets its own workspace. Info: All these functionalities are installed directly via Gnome Extensions. If you already have a Chrome on your Fedora, I recommend to use this chrome extension Gnome Shell-Integration to avoid the manual installation and it works much better with this extension, because it analyzes your current Gnome & Fedora version. After the installation of your extensions, i would recommend to restart your operating system. ### Manual Extension Installation #### Extended Gestures

   git clone https://github.com/mpiannucci/gnome-shell-extended-gestures
  sudo cp -r gnome-shell-extended-gestures/[email protected] /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
  

  Maximize to Workspace

  git clone https://github.com/rliang/gnome-shell-extension-maximize-to-workspace ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]
  gnome-shell-extension-tool -e [email protected]
  

  Dash to Dock

  git clone https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock.git
  cd dash-to-dock/
  make install
  

  Now you can configure your gestures and other extensions in tweaks. I hope you enjoy your Fedora with the OS X look.

If you are also interested in “How to get the dynamic wallpaper from mojave” check this https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/06/macos-mojave-dynamic-background-linux

PS. which currently still annoys me, maximize only creates a new workspace but doesn’t open the application in fullscreen (f11 shortcut). If necessary, I will soon write my own Gnome extension for this. If you are interested in it, please write it in the comments and check my Github account regularly, maybe it is already there when you read that tutorial ;)