Re: Mac GUI

From: Rod Smith (rodsmith_at_nessus.rodsbooks.com)
Date: 07/12/03 

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:24:02 -0400

In article <xdIPa.2378$AD3.2195@lakeread04>,
        "Buck Turgidson" <jc_va@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> Got an opportunity to play with a Mac with OS X today, and it seemed
> very nice. Very similar to Linux - a GUI with Unix underneath.
>
> Is there any hope of the Mac GUI or Safari browser being ported to
> Linux?

There are "themes" for both KDE and GNOME that are based on the MacOS X
GUI. These will give your windows that OS X "look and feel," and may do
the same for buttons, menus, etc., in the host environment, but they
won't duplicate every aspect of the Mac OS X GUI. As that GUI, and the
API underlying it, are proprietary and are the main distinguishing
feature of MacOS X, it seems unlikely that they'll become available for
Linux. I have heard of some efforts to re-implement NeXTStep to one
extent or another, though. As MacOS X's Aqua is based on NeXTStep, these
projects may be of interest to you:

http://www.gnustep.org/
http://www.afterstep.org/
http://www.windowmaker.org/

As to Safari, it's actually based on Konqueror, the Web browser for KDE:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6565

I've not used Safari very extensively, but I believe the relationship is
strongest at the HTML-rendering level, not the user interface level. You
might not know they're cousins to look at them, but under the surface
they're closely related. According to the article I just referenced,
Apple has contributed its changes to the rendering engine back to the
community. I don't know if those changes have made their way into the
versions of Konqueror that are shipping now, though. If nothing else, the
use of a common rendering engine should make it more likely that more Web
sites will work well with Konqueror in the future. 

-- 
Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

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