I’m on board that we need to become independent from big tech. As someone who is fond of the Mac user experience, from choosing hardware to how you navigate through apps, I need a guide to make the switch, so if you know of any great guides for Mac users, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Edit: you have all been very useful. I now know a bit more how to start and what it would mean to switch!
Ignore people telling you you have to use GNOME. Use whatever looks good to you. I actually have a KDE Plasma desktop with a Mac-like layout. The DE doesn’t matter much though.
Gnome Desktop will be the most familiar UI and workflow for you. Other than that, just take note of your existing software stack, and check to see which will also have Linux builds to install.
Really depends on what is considered nice about MacOS. Just had a new on-boarding with someone who really liked their Mac keybindings and it seems getting those dialed in is nicer (easier? better?) on KDE. I’d also generally gravitate towards Gnome for Mac users though.
As a piece of advice for OP: Accept the use of keybindings over the touchpad. Mac has done a great job and I have not seen a Linux laptop/distro combination that nails it. Search for the pain-points after switching and ask about it (kindly) on a community like this.
You must be using some junk touchpads then. I have two that work just as they would on a Mac. No issues.
Even the gestures? Mac’s gesturing system for the UI and all native and most non native apps is why I stay with it.
The MacOS specific ones like zooming out to show all active windows in a workspace, or flipping to the next app aren’t there because, well…that’s MacOS specific.
All the more universal ones like pinch to zoom, scrolling…etc are all there. I actually used an Apple TouchPad for years just because I had it around. Worked fine.
You can also run a simple plugin in Gnome to map custom gestures to whatever you want if needed.
For keybinds, there is the project Toshy which redirects keys to emulate Mac bindings. It has some issues but works pretty well in my experience
I’m a long term Mac user and have been periodically playing with Linux because I want to fully switch eventually. (full disclosure I currently still have a MacBook I use as well as a Linux desktop)
I’ve tried Ubuntu, Debian, Elementary, and probably a few others I’ve forgotten, but the first one I’ve really felt is a viable daily driver OS is Bazzite. This is because it largely just works out of the box, such that you only need to install and tweak extra things if you really want to.
I strongly recommend Bazzite, and I personally prefer the Gnome variant.
Bazzite gives you:
- easy way to update everything in one place
- “App Store” like application to find most apps you’ll need
- all the basic drivers and utilities you’ll need out of the box
- a “Files” application that feels like Finder
- a “Document Viewer” application that feels like Preview (although it’s not as powerful)
- a quick search feature that’s a lot like Apple’s Spotlight, and honestly is way more reliable than Spotlight in more recent macOS releases
- multitouch trackpad gesture support out of the box
- a Settings app that is pretty straightforward to navigate and controls most of the things you would care about
- There are other settings apps for finer tweaking. I know that sounds confusing, but Linux people wouldn’t complain if it wasn’t possible to change every detail somehow. Bazzite does a good job of making the important stuff accessible in the main settings app IMO, so you generally don’t have to worry about the deeper options.
Here’s a guide to get you started:
- Go here: https://bazzite.gg/
- Fill out the dropdowns (Q: What hardware are you using? A: Desktop, Q: Who is the vendor of your primary GPU? A: this depends, it’s important to get it right, ask for help if you are unsure, Q: What desktop environment do you prefer? A: I recommend gnome, but KDE is great too, Q: Do you want Steam Gaming Mode? A: No, I want a traditional desktop experience)
- Click the “download Bazzite …” button
- Make a USB stick into a bootable Bazzite installer (I recommend using https://etcher.balena.io/)
- Boot your computer from the USB stick. How to do this depends on the motherboard, but generally means holding down a key while booting (on a Mac it’s Option, on other computers it’s often something like Del or F2 or F12 or something) This will bring you to a menu that you navigate with keyboard arrows until you find the option to boot from the USB
- Follow the steps from the installer. It’s pretty user friendly.
Note that this will delete all data in the USB you use and the drive you install Bazzite on
Once you have installed Bazzite, here are a few programs I’d recommend (these can be found in the “Bazaar”, which is an “App Store” like way to get programs.
- VLC (like QuickTime in macOS, but honestly VLC is way more powerful)
- LibreOffice (there are a couple FOSS Office suite options, this is the one I personally recommend)
- KdenLive (video editing - like iMovie or Final Cut)
- GIMP (like Adobe Photoshop)
- Disk Usage Analyzer (like DaisyDisk on Mac), if you’ve ever used that
- Mailspring (I haven’t found an email app that is quite as nice as Apple’s but Mailspring is the one I’m currently using)
If you have any other questions let me know! I’m happy to help.
I’ve been daily driving Bazzite with Gnome too for the last few weeks! It works perfectly fine, but I was weirdly unhappy with the aesthetic of it, despite knowing for a fact that I love Gnome, especially the bare-bones Gnome that CachyOS has.
I only found out about Gnome extensions a few days ago while trying to get rid of the ugly Bazzite Logo in my top bar. It’s probably super obvious to anyone else, but those extensions make such a huge difference and playing around with different ones is absolutely worth it!
OP, if you do end up going with Bazzite, go to the “Extension Manager” and toggle a few of those on or off to see the difference! Getting new ones is super easy too!Yeah the extensions are important. I have my top bar completely hidden until I open quick search. I like the aesthetic of a completely clear screen with just my desktop background and my windows (I also generally configure macOS this way as well).
as a mac & linux user since 2002 and i had a time machine to do it all over again but correctly this time; i would go with a linux first vendor like system76 or tuxedo or any other vendor that uses 100% open source hard/software. (ie coreboot/libreboot).
linux can work on almost all hardware (including mac) but you’re mileage is going to vary a lot and only the linux first vendors can give you an experience that rivals mac and windows.
Thank you for saying this. I wonder which vendor is best value for money.
you should also know that it’s a double edged sword if you go with linux first vendors because you’ll likely never learn from resolving your own technical difficulties that arise as a result of hardware that is not 100% linux compatible.
i learned so much from putting linux on my windows & mac hardware; that it enabled me tow work on linux professionally for the last 21 years. switching to linux first hardware 5-ish years ago made my knowledge of people facing issues atrophy, so i bought windows first hardware to re-acquaint myself.
I think I can live with that
You should probably start by listing the programs you need. Everything else such as gaming/customization is distro specific.
Appreciate what you are doing. You made the right choice
dude, you need to narrow your query way, waaay down. are you ditching the mac and getting a PC? are you gonna rock them side by side until you transition? desktop? gaming? laptop? converting an existing macbook to linux? which one? intel? pre-T2, post? which wifi? what’s your daily software stack you depend on?
all the listed things are possible, some easier, some less so, but, respectfully, nobody’s gonna write up an all-cases guide for your lazy ass. so, hop to it, state your use case and ping back.
I’ve gotten a lot of useful advice! I wasn’t looking for a write up, but an existing guide out there. I’m happy with everything people have written.
a bunch of that is wrong; people here read “what’s the best thing for this” as “what do you use” and treat it as rooting for a team. I’d still urge you to write up a more detailed post, but you do you.
That is one of the things I learned. It’s hard to know what I need without knowing what I could need. Sometimes you don’t know what you use until it’s missing.
From a Linux beginner: I switched from mac with 0 knowledge of Linux. Did some searching, found Ubuntu Budgie, haven’t switched since. I bring it up cuz I was specifically looking for something that looked Mac similar, and it came up. It’s not as Mac as I originally thought, but I find it pretty approachable so I figured I’d share.
I think some more advanced users have issues with Ubuntu, I’ll leave them to comment. There may also be better options for Mac feel, perhaps those mentioned. For me, this was Mac enough I haven’t switched away and I haven’t gone back. Happy searching! :)
I landed on KDE and I don’t worry about it matching my Mac desktop, though you certainly could. The thing I miss most is the Finder, oddly. There’s not much in Linux world that gives Miller columns, unfortunately.
I’ll mention that if you like your Mac keyboard, or just want to keep using the familiar shortcuts, check out Toshy. It remaps the keys so that command still does what you expect it to do.
To add to all the other answers about what to use and whatnot: try a few distros and desktops out by putting them on a flash drive and booting from the flash drive (this is the same process for typical installations)
Distro, or who the linux based OS is built, updated, and distributed by, mostly matters long term, but something that will keep working and be stable (in the colloquial sense, not technical sense like for servers), and that has a friendly and welcoming community, are definitely things to look for. Mint and ubuntu both have stellar reputations in both of these regards, though many folks (including me) have issues with decisions being made by the ubuntu folks these days. Fedora is pretty stable but has less of a big community with support for new people, and manjaro has a lot of newer users and is built around serving newer linux users, but the project is sometimes run in an awkward way that can cause issues if you’re not choosing to manage your packages with intentionality (thats what I hear anyway). Debian is rock solid, and I dont know much about the community, but the versions of software available in the repos may be old unless you’re installing a flatpak
Keep in mind, not all distros will support every desktop, so you may find your chosen desktop isnt available on the distro you find most interesting. You can theoretically install whatever desktop on whatever distro, but as a new user I dont reccomend doing this.
Definitely try out a few different desktops. “Desktop environments” are bundles of software that make up the desktop graphical user interface, and will make a big difference in the look and feel, and general user experience that you have on linux. There are a bunch of options- the two biggest projects are GNOME and Kde plasma. Gnome has a reputation for being more mac-like out of the box and has very specific workflows and usage patterns, and kde, more windows like and flexible to what the user wants. But both are customizable. Kde has lots of built in settings and options, gnome offers very few, but supports user made extensions that change the desktops look and behavior. Give both a try and try out the customizations for each (play with kde settings, see if you can make it more what you want. Install some gnome extensions, see what the options look like). Cinnamon is another desktop thats very windows-like but has a great user experience. Xfce is a well run project but predominantly aimed at being lightweight so it runs well on older hardware, you’re less likely to be in its target demographic
I recently switched my parents old Macbook with a random Dell Notebook running ZorinOS and they’re pretty happy with it so far! So maybe that could be an option for you? Their guides are very easy to follow as well - https://help.zorin.com/
I’d also recommend installing UTM on your Mac and paying string with different distros in a virtual environment.
I’d recommend Fedora KDE Plasma.
Get a usb drive and try out different distros before committing. With Linux you can make use of a feature called LiveUSB which allows you to boot from USB a full usable operating system without changing anything in your filesystem.
The steps here should work for any distro not just Ubuntu. https://documentation.ubuntu.com/desktop/en/latest/how-to/create-a-bootable-usb-stick/
Once created, restart your mac and hold alt when you hear the chime and select the USB drive from the boot screen. Spend sometime in the new OS, get a feel for it, and if you like it you can install, if not, restart and you will be back in macOS as if nothing happened.
I think you just have to make the jump and install a distro on your computer while accepting that it’s not because you don’t like the first distro that all of them are the same.
Once the first step is done and your old OS isn’t around anymore, you’ll be forced to find something suited to your needs.
Do you plan on installing Linux on your Mac? If it’s Intel based it’s easy, but if it’s an M model your choices are more restricted…
I’m planning on getting a new laptop, which of course is a whole other ball game.
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They share a few small visual elements, like a top panel and “dock”, but using them are completely different experiences.
MacOS is in reality closer to KDE than Gnome. That being said, almost every Linux desktop environment and Windows are closer to each other than MacOS. MacOS is quirky in comparison to all of them.
