How to make your Zorin 15 Core desktop look like a Mac!

For those of us like myself who are too skint to pay to upgrade their ZorinOS and want their desktop to look like MacOS, fear not! It's possible to transform your desktop without having to pay to upgrade.


OK so we are going to look up noobslabs on your preferred search engine (i use duckduckgo, personally!) the term you will want to enter into the search engine is noobslab macbuntu 18.04

THIS LINK should be the first result. If it isn't, then just click on the words "this link" which is where i've hyperlinked to the relevant page in this post.

P.S. The link I've linked to above will contain instructions on how to do a FULL Mac makeover, which also includes more applications such as Albert (Linux alternative to MacOS' Spotlight), the MacOS Icons and MacOS Wallpapers.


In my case, I only want the mac theme for my application windows, the cursors, the dock and the launchpad. If you just want to recreate my minimalist mac setup, then keep reading below for the instructions.

Also, full credit to Noobs Lab they put togethter the PPA with all these applications inside of it, not me. I'm just sharing their work and modifying it slightly to accommodate for ZorinOS 15



INSTALLING THE DOCK

We are going to be using a dock application called Docky.

open up the terminal with CTRL+ ALT + T, then type in the following:

Code:

sudo apt install docky

sudo apt-get update

If the terminal doesn't open via the following shortcut, then just open it in the start or applications menu.

Next you will want to open up docky from the start or applications menu, depending on which theme you currently use on your copy of Zorin15.

Once opened, you should get an option screen. On the "Docks" screen, you will want to go to the theme option. Click on the dropdown menu and select glass or transparent

From the Docks menu, you can also change the size of the icons, set the dock's hiding preferences (autohide, intellihide, window dodge, etc.), change the percentage of the zoom when you hover over the icons on the dock and check/uncheck the tickbox that allows you to set Docky to run at start-up when you log in on each new session.



INSTALLING THE THEME AND CURSORS/ICONS

copy and paste these commands into the terminal, one at a time. you will have to enter your password when installing the PPA onto your system

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/macbuntu
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install macbuntu-os-icons-v1804
sudo apt-get install macbuntu-os-ithemes-v1804

then you will want to go to gnome tweaks and go to appearance. Click on the Applications dropdown, under the Themes heading, and you can find the macbuntu themes there. I chose the 'MacBuntu-OS 3.2 High-SIerra-Dark-Master' from the dropdown, but you can choose from the other themes such as mojave and yosemite. there's even options for XFCE, mate cinnamon and GNOME.

Under the themes header, you can also find the options for the cursors. Click on the Cursor dropdown there and select Macbuntu-OSX-cursors.

After that, we are going to go into Zorin appearance and click on 'Desktop'. Under the 'Interface' header, we are going to look for the option which says 'Titlebar Buttons' and then we are going to click on 'LEFT' instead of right (which is the ZorinOS default)



INSTALLING THE LAUNCHPAD

WARNING!!! INSTALL THIS NEXT APPLICATION AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! to quote Noobs Lab - "Slingscold may not work with some desktop environments and you see the blank launcher."

For this bit, we are going to download an application called Slingscold.

in an earlier section of this tutorial, we've already downloaded Noobs Lab's PPA so we can just copy and paste the following commands into the terminal

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install slingscold

then you go to the zorin start/applications menu and click on slingscold to test that it's in working order. if you're happy with how it looks, then you can just click in the blank space between the apps to exit slingscold. once you've done that, open up nautilus (the file manager) and go to usr/share/applications then scroll down til you see the slingscold icon. drag and drop the slingscold icon onto the docky dock, and now you should be able to access slingscold from docky.


So now your copy of Zorin 15 Core should look more like MacOS High Sierra. If you like this how-to then feel free to comment below. Also, if I missed anything out or made any errors, feel free to correct me as i'm new to this forum.