It’s no secret that Gnome developers are quite fond of Mac OSX which is clearly visible when having a look at the desktop (especially the now “old” Gnome Classic desktop) plus the file manager Nautilus and some other individual applications. Ubuntu too is very similar to Mac OSX is many aspects and if it isn’t for that Application launcher (on the Left side), it’s an almost Mac OSX replica.
After doing a bit of a tweak you can convert both Gnome and Ubuntu Unity (to some extent) to look like Mac OSX. But if you’ve been wandering about a GNU/Linux distribution that’s designed keeping Mac OSX users in mind plus works right out of the box (multimedia codecs, etc) then Pear OS (based on France) might be worth trying.
Yesterday they released the latest version, Pear OS 3.0 code named “Puma”.
Some of the main features…
*. It uses the Gnome 3.2.1 (aka Gnome Shell).
*. Based on Ubuntu (developers have used the Ubuntu Minimal installation disc image) and Debian.
*. Easily install AMD & Nvidia GPU drivers.
*. Comes with the Kernel 3.0.0.14.
*. Some apps to name: Opera Web Browser, Shotwell, Clementine as the music player, Pear App Store, Bleachbit (a comprehensive system cleaner) and a whole other apps that comes with Gnome Shell, etc are again just a few to mention.
It supports both 32 bit and 64 bit architectures but both ISO disc images are beyond 700MB (964MB and 825MB) so you’ll need a USB device or a DVD to install it.
It also requires a decent amount of system resources to run such as:
*.Intel or AMD processor (No CPU speed to be found but anything 500Mhz would be the minimal I suppose).
*. 1GB of RAM.
*. 6GB of HDD Space.
If you’re interested you can give a it a try by going over to this Pear OS home page which also includes additional information such as documentation, screenshots, a forum, info on GPU driver installations etc as well.
