14 DAY TRIAL // Pear OS Linux was a very successful Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that wanted to provide an experience similar to Mac OS X. That operating system is gone now, but Pearl Linux wants to replace it.
Pear OS Linux managed to have quite an impact on the community, despite the fact that it was offering an almost identical experience to the Mac OS X desktop.
In this case, not the originality of the OS was the driving force, but its resemblance. To be fair, there are lots of ways to customize a Linux distro so that it looks like Mac OS, but the end result is usually just in the neighborhood and not something really specific.
The fact that Pear OS Linux provided an almost 1 to 1 parity to the features of the Mac OS X desktop, with the normal differences that you would expect, is also the reason why it disappeared. It's still unclear what happened though.
It might be that the developers of that OS were forced by Apple to close it down or they received an offer to sell the project. In any case, the distro was shut down in the first months of 2014.
A lot of people really missed the OS, and there have been some unsuccessful attempts to start it again. Nothing really materialized, but now it looks that Pearl Linux is trying to do the same thing. It remains to be seen if the devs will continue to work on it or if it will be buried along with all the others.
Pearl Linux is still a long way from Pear OS Linux
The mission statement for this distribution is clear, but it still has a long way to go until it reaches the same kind of quality. For the moment, it's just a curiosity, but the developer needs to do much more than this.
"A complete Linux operating system designed for the apple user looking to make the change. No it's not a Mac, I do like my Mac but don't like paying for all the software. Pearl is loaded with software from the graphics end to the multimedia end. Also has plenty of Office Software to meet all your needs. The main Pearl desktop is xfce however soon we will have both Mate and LXDE as well," wrote the developer, who remains unknown, at least for now.
There are a few caveats that need to be mentioned. For example, it shouldn't carry the 1.0 version number. It's a very unstable operating system. It doesn't work from a USB stick and it crashes in virtual environments.
Some of the functions are still out of place and they don't really match the Mac OS X target. It feels more like a heavily tweaked Xubuntu, which is probably right. The fact that it's based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS doesn't seem to help very much.
In any case, give it a try and tell us what you think about it. You can download Pearl Linux 1.0 right now from Softpedia.
