> If I were them I’d just port one of the many macOS looking desktop environments like whatever ElementsryOS or PopOS uses to FreeBSD and build from there. That’s obviously more productive, but productivity can be boring because it’s real and not a hobby project. :P
I’m not sure how much productive it’d be in the long run, at least if faithfully replicating macOS is the goal. PopOS is bailing on GNOME (what it had been using) in favor of a bespoke DE because modifying GNOME had become too much of a pain, even for their relatively modest changes. Pantheon (elementary’s DE) closely resembles GNOME for likely similar reasons.
Not that any of the other DEs would serve as better bases, unfortunately. No matter what making a Mac-style DE is going to be a steep uphill climb.
> Not that any of the other DEs would serve as better bases, unfortunately. No matter what making a Mac-style DE is going to be a steep uphill climb.
No idea what the Elementary, helloSystem, Etoile, etc. folks are messing around about. The Cappuccino Project's Aristo is the best base to start with, and arguably looks better than Aqua. (I was never a fan of Aqua's overshined blue dialog buttons and scrollbars.)
>No matter what making a Mac-style DE is going to be a steep uphill climb.
I looked more into the project, his goal is actually to replicate the macOS from the 90s to early 2000s. I’m optimistic about a goal like that, but it’s more about the QA that comes with these sorts of higher level projects. I don’t think they have the resources to make something as out of the box as Ubuntu unless they use elementary or pop as their basis.
That being said, why can’t they just branch off into a DE with easy installation on BSD or any *nix loke XFCE or MATE? From what I’ve seen, they don’t have a real reason to even use FreeBSD.
This way they’d increase the likelihood of adoption but maybe at the trade off of supporting multiple platforms which I’d imagine can be a pain.
I agree that using FreeBSD as the base OS probably isn't necessary, but it does make sense if they're trying to provide an alternative to macOS, with the macOS userland much more closely resembling FreeBSD's than GNU's. There are BSD-styled Linux distros that could serve this purpose too, though.
The problem with using almost any existing DE as a base is that Linux DEs are all inclined toward non-mac UI paradigms (most being Windows-like and a couple iPad-like), which means required changes will be numerous and deep. So much so that the benefit of not starting from scratch is dubious.
I’m not sure how much productive it’d be in the long run, at least if faithfully replicating macOS is the goal. PopOS is bailing on GNOME (what it had been using) in favor of a bespoke DE because modifying GNOME had become too much of a pain, even for their relatively modest changes. Pantheon (elementary’s DE) closely resembles GNOME for likely similar reasons.
Not that any of the other DEs would serve as better bases, unfortunately. No matter what making a Mac-style DE is going to be a steep uphill climb.