[GLLUG] X Window Managers

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 12 December 2002 15:40, after a long battle with technology, 
Paul Donahue wrote:
> So I am troubled to say that I have been drawn in by the GUIness and
> overall tasty look and feel of OS X. The only reason I am willing to
> admit this is due to OS X's obvious linux backend.

ITYM "BSD-running-on-Mach-microkernel backend".

> So my issue is.. I want MY linux box to be as sexy and GUI (proounced
> gooey) as OS X. I dig the sweet little animations, taskbar and such.
> However.. I run debian. I love debian, I am not rich and cannot to
> drop serious cash on a fast mac and have lots of PC's.
>
> Does anyone know of any window managers that are extremely close to
> OS X's (I forget what it's actually called right now) or know of a
> hack to get X's running on XFree 4.0?

OS X's window manager is totally and irrevocably tied to OS X itself and 
has architecture-specific hacks for performance.  There is *no* way to 
run it on Linux/BSD on x86.  Running it on Linux/BSD on PPC is not 
going to work either, since it depends on the Quartz rendering engine, 
which is not going to be ported to Linux/BSD anytime soon.

> I feel in a bit of a rut as I have been using WindowMaker for the
> past 5 years, and although I'm happy with it, it's lost it's WOW
> factor.

I think the closest you'll get to OS X's GUI on Linux is KDE 3.03 with 
the "Mosfet's Liquid" addon and appropriate KDE control panel settings.  
With KDE, you can have the application menu at the top of the screen, 
there are OS X-style buttons available, and Liquid looks similar but 
not the same as Aqua.  The eye-candy factor of KDE is pretty good, but 
it will never be exactly the same as OS X's.

-- 
   Screw up your courage!  You've screwed up everything else.
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see