Ubuntu Smartens Up, Takes Some Cues From Mac OS X

Giles Turnbull ()

20100309-ubuntu.jpg

Free, open source operating system Ubuntu will take on a new look in its forthcoming 10.04 release.

Gone is the brown, in comes the auberginey-purple. It’s actually quite appealing and obviously takes a lot of cues from OS X (the file manager windows) and iPhone (the menu bar and its plain white icons).

Reaction among Ubuntu users has been mixed. On ZDNet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asks Can Ubuntu out-sexy Apple?:

“To me, the UI does indeed look … well … a bit Mac-like. But that might not be a bad thing. One of Mac’s major selling points is simplicity, and while Linux has a long way to go before it’s ready for the computing masses, giving the OS a more refined look might help people feel at home with the OS.”

He also points out that window controls in this theme have moved from top-right to top-left, another OS X-like feature. Some users aren’t terribly happy about that. But Ubuntu is very flexible – if they don’t like the default theme, they can easily switch to another.

DON'T MISS
Microsoft Denies Mac Users Hijacked Window Display

I’d say it’s less of an attempt to “out-sexy” OS X, and more of an attempt to just bring things up-to-date. The brown theme served Ubuntu well for many years but it looks old-fashioned compared to Snow Leopard and Windows 7. It needed a fresh look and this one is smart, yet subdued.

20 comments »

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in News, OS X, Software |

  • Pete Mayhem

    It really looks half-assed though. The brown human icons are still everywhere just making it look like a bad skin job. Hopefully they’ll update it all by the April release…

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    I prefer Ubuntu to Windows, and have had my window controls on the left for some time now, but this release looks a lot like Tiger, actually. I’ve always felt the windows in Ubuntu were a little on the clunky side. I think this release would look better if the windows themselves got a shades-of-grey charcoal look and the icons got an update as well. Either way I’ll be updating my virtual machine.

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    Is it even legal for them to be pretty much ripping off OS X??

    I have to be honest, I’ve never used Ubuntu so I am only going on what i can see in the above picture, and to me, it looks like 80% of that screenshot has features taken directly from OS X.

    Is that legal? Is it allowed? Does OS X even have a copyright on their UI?? Again, don’t shoot me for asking, im just generally asking the question :-)

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    You can’t copyright the standard logos for WiFi, Bluetooth, Sound, and a text-based date stamp.

    What else looks the same to you?

  • http://janston.yolasite.com/ Paul Callanan

    NOW IS THE TIME.

  • Michael

    Ok, so Ubuntu is using purple in their theme. Most of the features in the screenshot, such as file manager, where already in Ubuntu before Lucid. Just because both Ubuntu and Mac use purple doesn’t mean they are “copying” Mac or are trying to be just like them. Get over it, seriously…

  • Poppa

    You can’t beat using a Mac but with most Linux distros, you can download and change most of the settings and themes to look like Mac OSX with icons and a dock and even change the boot screen to the Apple boot screen,Win XP you can install Rocket Dock.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJbSCnB7Tvo&feature=related

  • Ross

    @Andrew MacDonald
    It’s almost not worth fighting the same battles over again, but here goes…

    Almost all the GUI elements of OS X and Windows have existed in some other OS BEFORE they were in OSX/Windows. Not always open-source OSes, but other close source OSes too. Almost all modern GUI conventions in use are based on prior art, and therefore not subject to copyright.

  • Nick

    I just changed to Ubuntu 9.10 on my netbook, but kept a dual boot with Windows 7 on my laptop. I also installed the Mac4lin aqua theme and dock. Today i saw a real Mac for the first time and was amazed that it looks exactly the same! The 10.04 looks exactly like 9.10 apart from the colour. I may use it if it has more features.

  • http://ObamaPacman.com ObamaPacman

    @Ross,

    The “prior art” theory is just a myth.

    Apple actually developed a lot of the modern GUI. However MS tricked / forced Apple to provide a license to copy.

    Ubuntu has no such license, however due to lack of money, it’s unlikely Apple will sue.

  • Janne

    The bar on the top of the screen serves a totally different purpose in GNOME (and Ubuntu) than it does in MacOS. In Mac, the bar contains application-menu, in GNOME it does not. GNOME has it’s app-menus in the app-windows, like Windows does. The GNOME-menu contains few system-level menus (like the applications-menu). Only similarity is that both GNOME and MacOS have notification-icons and the like.

    Just because GNOME has a bar at the top of the screen does not mean that it’s copying MacOS. It also has taskbar on the bottom of the screen, so is it a copy of Windows or MacOS? It can’t really be both.

  • Austin

    @Nick

    the mac4lin theme does not look “exactly the same” please, I had it on my laptop before I installed 10.04, mostly as a joke, and I sucked. 10.04 is awesome though.

    Unix / Linux desktops have been using this style of ui for a long time. If you think apple orginated this you are terribly misinformed. Plus if you actually use it, you’ll see it’s a lot different.

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    @Ross,

    Thanks for the clarification mate :-)

  • Ross

    *Sigh*
    @ObamaPacman

    You are exactly the person that makes the debate a weary one.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface

    “There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox’s PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh, but it is clear that the influence was extensive.”

    PARC User Interface

    originated with the Xerox Alto
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

    “The PARC User Interface consisted of graphical elements such as windows, menus, radio buttons, check boxes and icons. The PARC User Interface employs a pointing device in addition to a keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative acronym WIMP, which stands for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device.”

    At that point several manufactures adopted and evolved the GUI to point it is today. Apple did of course contribute, but to claim they came up with all or even a majority of the GUI interface conventions we use to today is fallacy.

  • http://h-manga.info SadistiX

    About damn time they made Ubuntu not ugly

  • Gazoobee

    @Ross: You missed the entire point of the comment you were so rudely making fun of. Just because PARC made crude versions some of these things first doesn’t invalidate the posters’ argument.

    Did you know that before Mac there were no such things as *overlapping* windows for instance? Windows in PARC’s system were incapable of that.

    They thought of some of the ideas the modern GUI is based for the first time but certainly not all and they implemented them rather badly. Apple developed their nascent ideas and added a lot of their own as well. Microsoft on the other hand just copied shamelessly from anyone they could find. That’s why early versions of Windows were also incapable of overlapping.

    Apple identified that need, figured out the code for doing it, and a lot else besides.

  • David Chu

    Ohhh… Nice! I’m glad to hear that Ubuntu is progressing. Before I moved to OS X, I was a hardcore Ubuntu fan. Now if they could only get everything to work out of the box without having to bring up the command line.

  • http://rishi89.com Hrishikesh Choudhari

    It seems that Mark Shuttleworth really is keen on getting a uniform UI for Ubuntu.

    But even to an amateur’s eye the current UI doesnt look good.

    The initial version of this proposed skin had awful scrollbars.. I named them “thunder thighs”..

    Plus there’s a lot of wasted screen space in the windows layout..

    The Elementary Nautilus package has a much better layout.. and uses screen space frugally..

  • porkchop1234

    The only way Apple could sue someone for OS infringement is if they could prove that the the OS in question had the same script architecture as OSX. OSX and the Ubuntu Linux based OS kernel are nothing alike therefore forget about any lawsuits. Having a GUI setup that looks slightly similar just doesn’t cut it in a court of law if it did MS would have lost their shirts years ago.

  • porkchop1234

    P.S.
    I’m glad to hear the Linux community is trying to progress their OS and simplify things for the end user its long overdo in my opinion.