Comment by cosmic_cheese

Comment by cosmic_cheese 2 days ago

It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them.

I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…

bsimpson 2 days ago

So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it.

That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge.

There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.

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necovek a day ago

I believe menus were available "via API" since an a11y push in GNOME before 2.0 release (atk library and friends).
What was impossible was to stop apps from showing the usual menu bar inside the window.
Obviously, with something so core to the system, plenty of devils in the details.

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cosmic_cheese 2 days ago

Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.

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- upboundspiral a day ago
  
  I have the widget for global menu right now in KDE Wayland. Its supported by all QT apps, and there's a wayland protocol pull request for it (unfortunaly stalled, as is tradition). Overall I like it a lot - enough of the apps I use support it (if you're a GTK fan then tough luck).
  merge request: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
  
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  cosmic_cheese a day ago
  
  Thanks for sharing. Would you happen to know if Electron apps might surface the same menus they do under macOS via this protocol? Between Qt and Electron a lot of stuff would be covered.
  
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  pseudalopex a day ago
  
  You would have to use xwayland I think.[1]
  [1] https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/34335
  
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freedomben 2 days ago

Gnome with a persistent app drawer is relatively Mac-like. With a couple settings tweaks and possibly extensions, it can get pretty close. Even out of the box it feels a lot more mac-like than windows-like to me, but of course everybody is a bit different.

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cosmic_cheese 2 days ago

Some of the broad strokes are there, but the details are what matters. Gnome extensions also come with the problem of breaking every other update which quickly becomes irritating.

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- freedomben a day ago
  
  Yeah quite fair, and also gnome extensions breaking every other update does indeed quickly become irritating. It's hard to believe it's now 2026 and that is still an issue
  
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NamlchakKhandro a day ago

what does this even mean?

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cosmic_cheese a day ago

There are major differences in the design between Windows and Mac desktops, and generally speaking, Linux desktop environments function more like Windows than they do macOS.
The biggest difference is probably that under Windows-style environments, applications/processes and windows are mostly synonymous — each window represents an independent process in the task manager. In a Mac-style environment, applications can host multiple windows each, so for example even if you've got 7 Firefox windows open, there's only one host Firefox process. This is reflected in the UI, with macOS grouping windows by application in several difference places (as opposed to Windows, where that only happens in the taskbar if the user has it enabled).
"Windows style" also comes a number of other patterns, such as a taskbar instead and menubars attached to windows (as opposed to a dock and a single global, system-owned menubar under macOS).
"Mac style" comes with several subtleties that separate it from e.g. GNOME. Progressive disclosure is a big one. Where macOS will keep power user features slightly off to the side where they're accessible but unlikely to confuse non-technical users, GNOME just omits the functionality altogether. It also generally implies a greater level of system-level integration and cross-functionality from apps (including third party), lending to a more cohesive feel.

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- pseudalopex a day ago
  
  Windows is more window centered. And macOS is more application centered. But many Windows and Linux applications use 1 process or 1 host process for all windows. This includes Firefox.
  
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