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Welcome to the dark side...

Are you used to the fine, nay supurb, user interface of that operating system from Cupertino?

Moving to linux for the flexibility, stability, or just the pure joy of having the source?

I know just the thing for you:

This is a light weight, fairly configurable window manager that does a good job of imitating the look-and-feel of the Apple's GUI; only it's a little more configurable, and it will run on your linux box.

Sure, sure, WindowMaker has a Macintosh theme, and AfterStep too, and probably others, but this is just Macintosh-Like, and it's a very small program (about 121K binary, uses about 1200K in RAM the way I run it (it was closer to 700K before I added extra desktops and keybindings)).

The source compiled and installed for me without trouble under RedHat versions 5.1, 6.1, and 6.2 and on Debian 2.2 (all on PC hardware), but the documentation is a little sparse, and the supplied configuration file isn't all that it could be. So you might want to have a look at mine, which results in this screen shot (1024x768--big file) on my work machine.

If you look closely at my configuration file, you'll see that I'm getting file-manager services from the X Window Finder. Mlvwm is not Gnome or KDE compliant, so you'll need to pick file manager if you want to have a "desktop". Another possiblity is KiDEr.

BTW: If you have need to use unix machines, and like macs, you might want to look at my Macintosh Nuclear Physics Resources Page.

• First and foremost: it looks and feels like a mac!
  Well, mostly, but it does have round corners.
• It's small.
• Virtual desktops...as many as you'd like.
• Configurable window decorations. Look like System 7 or Mac OS 8! You can have (or not have) close boxes, zoom boxes, and shade boxes in the title bars! You can have (or not have) scrollbars going either way! You can have (or not have) resizing tabs! You an configure all of this on the basis of a window's X Class resource!
• Balloon help provides an easy way to learn a window's X Class resource.
• Mac like menubar. It'll be right there at the top of the screen where you expect it. It has an "application menu" which provides access to all your desktops, and all your windows, and lets you hide them, just like your mac.
• Configurable menu bar. It can have a "Help menu"! It can swallow applications so you can have a clock, a load monitor, eyes, etc. up there. More importantly, it can be configured on a per-application basis, and communicate with the program by sending key events.
• Windowshade! You can "roll" windows up to get them out of the way.
• The window manager can recover its state on a restart.
• All that and much, much more...

• First and foremost: it looks and feels like a mac! At least one otherwise sane and rational friend, doesn't like the macintosh HI. If you're like him, the mlvwm isn't for you.
• Many (most) style options cannot be changed without editing the config file and restarting the window manager.
• Floating windows don't get the floating pallet look.
• All configuration is done be editing a text file with sometimes cryptic syntax. What a mess! Feel free to use my mlvwmrc file as a starting point if that will help.
• The menubar sits up there eating up 25ish pixels of your screen and isn't necessarily very useful. (making good use of the "Apple" menu is part of the answer here...)

Copyright David McKee 1999-2002. All rights reserved.