Liquid Glass for Linux? PearOS makes another Mac move - how it looks now

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I've been keeping an eye on PearOS for some time. I covered PearOS before, calling it a Linux distro that makes your old laptop feel like a Mac .

Since that original review, the developers have decided to up the ante and bring about a Liquid Glass-like look for the distribution. And although PearOS still has its quirks -- the development "team" consists of one person, which means progress is slow -- the latest release has a new base, a new design, and a "new everything."

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The new release is still based on Arch Linux and KDE Plasma, and is still promising the new desktop environment, Soda, but that portion of the project is still listed as "currently unavailable." This latest version is called NiceCore and has started adding what the developer is calling a "Liquid Gel" design.

You can see what the developer is doing with Liquid Gel on the official PearOS website . I figured the NiceCore version of PearOS would include some of the Liquid Gel bits. What I saw was pretty spiffy. I'm not 100% certain if NiceCore included the Soda/Liquid Gel desktop, but I do know that this version does include the new installer (more on that in a bit). I'm not convinced that what I'm seeing is Liquid Gel, but it's still a gorgeous desktop.

This is where things are a bit dicey with PearOS. To be perfectly honest, I remember the installation of the previous iteration to be equally as dicey. However, this time around, it seemed the installation refused to complete, and I landed on the default test account (even though I created a user account). My guess is that this is because I attempted to install PearOS as a virtual machine.

Even stranger is that the user I created during installation was there. I could see the directory in /home. But if I were to log out and attempt to switch to the user, it simply would reboot the OS. I could even change to my user account… but logging into the desktop was not happening.

OK, I'll chalk this up to the new installer used by NiceCore.

As I said, the NiceCore version of the PearOS desktop may or may not be Liquid Gel, but it certainly has elements of it, and I'm here to tell you that it's a looker. From the panel to the Notch app (yeah, the developer has decided to recreate the MacOS notch), it all looks so Apple-y. At the same time, it's all so unstable-y. If the current state of PearOS were stable, you can bet it would be a front-runner to replace Pop!_OS. Sadly, that is not the case, but I knew going into this review that I would be dealing with a project that was still in the early stages. Even with it being a non-stable release, it impressed me.