I’m talking about the System 7/8/9 days of macOS. I really like the aesthetic and workflow in the older macOS versions (call me a masochist) and I’m hoping if someone knows of something that already exists. I know there are plenty of skins/themes that hearken back to Windows 95/98, but most of what you find online when you look for “Linux like macOS 9” is things that make it look like modern macOS.
Look into GNUstep and related projects maybe? I’m not sure how close it is to pre-NS Mac (that was OS X iirc?) but it might be close enough.
About 25 years ago, I used something called mlvwm which was designed to look like System 7.
I ran this on a 486 and later on a Duron system with something called “bochs” that let me run a full System 7 in a container.
A quick search shows that it is still around and has been forked by a couple of people.
Pantheon desktop from elementaryOS.
You can use it on their distro (Ubuntu based with lots of curated apps) or on its own (you can still get access to their curated apps, just not in the store)
EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood. You want classic Mac. I’d say get Xfce4 and theme it yourself then.
- PlatiPlus for window manager theme
- Platinum Gtk2 Theme
- Platinum9 for the Icons
Here’s an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/4l9tlp/xfce_another_nine_based_os_9_based_theme/
But how do you put the menu bar in the panel? I don’t see any such xfce plugin anywhere, neither you’re mentioning it. That’s the stickiest point trying to emulate Mac.
Thanks!
Can’t believe I didn’t find those, guess I should have searched for platinum. Guess I’m off installing xfce.
I found this post, but it refers to System 6: https://hexbear.net/post/786438
I did a quick search on r/unixporn (I just put in “System N”) and found several posts, mostly about System 6 and System 9. Usually they post the links to the dotfiles in the comments. Good luck.
By the way, I don’t think you’ll find a specific distribution or desktop for what you want. You’ll have to customize several things separately, look for documentation, dotfiles, etc.
If someone could port AUX’s UI, that would be perfect.
And as a fellow System 6/7 fan, it’s love, not masochistim. Long live the spatial Finder!
