My parents have this old 2015 MacBook Air that they wanted to use but couldn’t due to no security updates and slow running. I convinced them to let me load up fedora on it instead of junking it. They only really need it for some basic document writing, email, and web surfing so I figured this is perfect for them.
Made a bootable drive with Fedora 43 work station on it, figured gnome would be the most Apple like spin. Everything went super smooth until I realized that the WiFi drivers weren’t installed lol. I also didn’t have a Ethernet adapter for usb-a so I had to overnight it to me while my parents swore I bricked their Mac all night. Got the adapter this AM, hooked it up, installed the drivers and other necessary tweaks, and viola! This Mac has new life.
So far my parents are liking it and understanding it (even though my mom seems more excited about the snoopy wallpaper and Firefox theme, lol). Getting their emails on thunderbird was driving me crazy. Nothing to do with thunderbird, they just didn’t know their passwords smh. All in all not bad. To new Linux converts
Gnome is closer out of the box.
But you can make KDE work almost exactly like macOS. The top bar context menu, power menu, bottom dock, left-hand window buttons, etc.
It just involves changing a bunch of settings.
Yeah KDE is incredibly flexible. You can get most of the way there downloading a Global Theme from KDE's settings menu (such as MacOS Big Sur) - that lays out all the panels, including the top bar context menu, power menu, dock, left sided window buttons. There are then some extra visual themes such as cursors, icons that people can get separately if they really want to completely mimic a Mac.
I personally use Fedora plasma on my thinkpad. Love it even though I’ve done like no customizing of it. I chose gnome for my parents cause I wanted a close out of the box experience…and I also wanted to play with Fedora workstation 43 before upgrading my plasma os
KDE is genuinely incredibly flexible - you can make it into pretty much any GUI that exists. The default windows like set up is fine, but there are so many easy tweaks and changes you can make to get it however you want. I have a floating dock-like set up instead of a window-like taskbar, with application launcher, icon-only view, system tray, clock and power button.
For simple tweaks yoy can right click on most component of your KDE panels and select "Show alternatives..." to see different official versions of the same component. For example, the Application Launcher offers an alternative Application Menu with cascading menus like an old-school windows start menu, or a full screen gnome-like Application Dashboard. And there are also loads more user made tools if you right click and select "Add or Manage widgets". Every component of the desktop is a widget and can be moved, swapped out, duplicated or replaced.
I in the process of doing that, but the most problematic thing is the keyboard shortcuts IMO. All the apps have their own default shortcuts, all defaulting to ctrl + * instead of cmd + *
What are the advantages?
KDE can be set up such that a ex-mac-user barely has to re-learn anything.
The difference is that while gnome looks a lot like MacOS, it isn't exactly like it in terms of layout. An ex-mac-user will look for certain things in certain places, and won't always find them. (such as power off/restart being up in the left corner)
Meanwhile, the customizability of the KDE desktop means you can manually put the same things in the same places as on MacOS. You can put a krunner search button in the same spot as the spotlight search button. You can make a panel that behaves like the dock, floating and shrinking to fit the number of icons in it. You can have a top panel with a power menu on the left end, and you can display a global menu to the right of it. Even the krunner keybind is the same, and spotlight people tend to pickup krunner like nothing.
Finally, the KDE settings application seems to be the most similar to the modern MacOS settings application.
The big caveat being that the user will need someone who can instruct them with setting this up, or who can set it up for them.
It's really not that difficult with a Global Theme; anyone can do it. There are step by step tutorials on line (such as this one from howtogeek) for people who want to do it manually. The benefit of manual is if there is a major KDE update it is more likely to be completely unaffected; very rarely Global Themes can break and need their own updates.
The Mac ones are the 2nd most popular in the Global Theme store and well maintained though.
Thank you for elaborating!