About This (fake) Mac

A highly customizable "About this Mac" that is missing in most macOS rices.

I don't have enough time to continue developing this thing anymore. The "Overview" tab is already fully functional at the moment. Any fork of this repository in order to continue the development is welcome.

Introduction

• I love macOS, because it profits both advantages of Linux and Windows: a Unix shell, and the abundance of popular industry standard softwares (like Microsoft Office, Adobe *, ...). The most important thing is that its UI is soooo stunning!
  I had used it for about a year on a Hackintosh until upgraded to a more powerful machine, but it is powered by an AMD Ryzen CPU. So, no more Hackintosh. I found my way (back) to Arch Linux and KDE Plasma (actually I had used them prior to macOS) and did all the ricing stuff (you can find my setup here). I realized that all macOS rices ever always miss one thing: the "About this Mac" window. That's why I created this - a simple GTK 3.0 application to mimic it.
• This software is still under development and not fully tested.
• This software is released under the GNU GPLv3 license.

Dependencies

• bash
• neofetch
• dmidecode

Installing

• Get and apply a GTK macOS theme first. WhiteSur-dark-gtk is highly recommeded.
• Download the png file of your distro logo (transparent background recommended) and take note of its path because the program will require it later.
• Git clone this repo to somewhere.

  cd about-this-mc
  cd src
  make install

Running

• Run from the terminal:

  about-this-mc

• On the first run, the program will ask you to generate a configuration file.
• More command line arguments are available in the help document of the program:

  about-this-mc help

• If you want to use it with something like Kpple Menu, execute the following command:

  about-this-mc &

Given that you have already had the configuration files generated.

Configuration file

• Since generating the system info to mimic the macOS style requires root access, so I decided to generate and write the system info to a json file (first run only). Upon next launches, the script will read and display the system info stored in the mentioned file. As a consequence, you will have to re-configure the program each time you upgrade your hardware or your distro, or else the information will stay the same, but this process is not very time-consuming.

• The program allows you to freely create, load and manipulate the configuration files. You can edit your displayed system specifications to suit your needs.

• You will be guided to create one upon your first time launching the program.

• The configuration file is a json file, and it has the following properties:

  • distro_image_path: A string denoting the path of the distro image.
  • distro_image_size: A list, consists of the size of the given image (members must be numeric).
  • distro_markup: A pango markup string, denoting the format of the displayed distro name.
  • distro_ver: Clear enough.
  • hostname: Device name. It can be laptop models on laptops.
  • cpu: Clear enough.
  • memory: RAM.
  • startup_disk: The label or name of the device where / is mounted.
  • graphics: GPU name.
  • serial_num: Clear enough.
  • overview_margins: A list consist of 4 numbers respectively denotes the left, right, top and bottom margin of - the overview window (members must be numeric).
  • section_space: A numeric value speciying the gap between the distro name/ver section, the system info section and the two bottom buttons section.
  • logo_space: A numberic value repensenting the gap between the distro logo and the info column.
  • system_info_command: The command run when 'System Info' button is clicked (have not implemented).
  • software_update_command: The command run when 'Software Update' button is clicked (have not implemented).
  • font-family: The font family for the whole program. Must be null if not specified (default font will be used) (have not implemented).

• Sample config file 1:

  {
  "distro_image_path": "/home/ngocphat/local/share/about-this-mc/distro-logo.png",
  "distro_image_size": [
      160,
      160
  ],
  "distro_markup": "<span font-size='xx-large'><span font-weight='bold'>Arch Linux</span></span>",
  "distro_ver": "5.10.11-arch1-1",
  "hostname": "20UD0001CD ThinkPad T14 Gen 1",
  "cpu": "2.100GHz AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U",
  "memory": "16.0 GB 3200 MHz DDR4",
  "startup_disk": "nvme0n1p1",
  "graphics": "AMD ATI 07:00.0 Renoir",
  "serial_num": "L1XXXXX02GE",
  "overview_margins": [
      60,
      60,
      60,
      60
  ],
  "section_space": 20,
  "logo_space": 60,
  "system_info_command": "",
  "software_update_command": "",
  "font-family": null
  }

• Sample config file 2 (for faking a MacBook on macOS rices):

  {
  "distro_image_path": "/home/ngocphat/local/share/about-this-mc/bigsur.png",
  "distro_image_size": [
      160,
      160
  ],
  "distro_markup": "<span font-size='xx-large'><span font-weight='bold'>macOS </span>Big Sur</span>",
  "distro_ver": "Version 11.0.1",
  "hostname": "MacBook Pro 2020 (Early, 13-inch)",
  "cpu": "2.100GHz AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U",
  "memory": "16.0 GB 3200 MHz DDR4",
  "startup_disk": "Macintosh HD",
  "graphics": "AMD Radeon RX Vega 5 2 GB",
  "serial_num": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
  "overview_margins": [
      60,
      60,
      60,
      60
  ],
  "section_space": 20,
  "logo_space": 60,
  "system_info_command": "",
  "software_update_command": "",
  "font-family": "San Francisco Display"
  }

Roadmap

• Implement font changing.
• Implement "Storage" tab.

Changelog

v0.2 (04/02/2021)
- System information generation done.

v0.1 (02/02/2021)
- Initial build.