One of the best things about Linux is the freedom to do almost anything you want with it. So when I started using Ubuntu Linux, one of the first things I did after a fresh install is customizing it to look and behave like Apple’s OS X. It’s a hack to get the best of both worlds: a taste of the OS X experience because it is a great operating system and still be able to use free and open-source software that is Linux. Both OS traces its roots to Unix so that should take care of any philosophical hang-ups and make customization easy.

There are a lot of good tutorials out there, just make sure that it’s up to date and it matches your Linux distro or flavor of Ubuntu. As for me, I’ve stopped customizing my Ubuntu installation to look & behave like OS X mainly for two reasons: appreciation for the GNOME desktop environment and my minimalist attitude towards software, eye-candy like fancy animations or icon sets should be as light on system resources as possible. It’s also the reason I loved Google Nexus phones because it ran on stock or pure Android.

More than a month since going back to using Ubuntu as my main OS and it’s only been a couple of days since I changed the default wallpaper and the biggest customization so far is the installation of GNOME Tweaks tool to refine small bits of the OS: showing what day of the week it is, the battery percentage, managing Workspaces and replacing the default dock with Dash to Dock.

The last piece of customization is installing “Albert” an app launcher similar to macOS Spotlight. Everything was wrapped up by adding shortcuts to my most-used websites and apps. With that, my personal Ubuntu setup is now complete.

If you’re also using Ubuntu and have made your own customization, feel free to share about it in the comments below or slide into my inbox with some screenshots. I’d love to see what you came up with.