Hi everyone, I’m Drew Owen. I’m building Macaque Classic, an experimental Linux desktop inspired by the feel of Mac OS 9, for modern PCs. I wanted to introduce myself and share what I’ve been working on.
The desktop uses Debian 13, labwc for its Wayland session, and Python/PySide6, alongside my native Classic Control Strip. It has traffic-light window controls, light and dark themes, a classic file manager, built-in utilities, and classic desktop sounds. The goal is to bring that old-school desktop feel to modern Linux hardware.
It’s still a testing preview. We’ve reached the desktop in VirtualBox with VMSVGA and 3D acceleration, but hardware support and the installer need more testing. I’m especially interested in feedback on window behavior, accessibility, and laptop controls.
Development is AI-assisted. No general project redistribution license has been selected yet; dependency licenses remain in effect. This is an independent Linux project with no Apple ROMs or OS image bundled, and it does not implement Mac OS 9 application compatibility.
My account cannot post links yet, so I’ll share the source, screenshots, and download details when permitted. For now, I’d love to hear which classic desktop features you miss most, and what would make a project like this useful to you.
Thanks for taking a look!