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LQ Guru
Registered: Aug 2003
Distribution: CentOS, OS X
Posts: 5,131
Rep: 
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I haven't used personally, but from what it says in the documentation (available to download as a pdf document at the project site at SourceForge), the "Mac4Lin" is mostly just themes (window decorations, button styles, wallpapers, icons, ...) and those won't make your system any less stable than it is - as far as I know. But there's also Compiz Fusion, which on the other hand is not (according to the documentation) actually required to "make your desktop look like OS X", but which you'll probably want to have if you are after the good looks (if you're not, why would you bother doing this anyway?).
Compiz Fusion is software that enables 3d desktop effects, such as wobby windows, transparency and a whole range of (some people say) "cool stuff". It's ok as such; won't necessarily increase your productivity, but if you're not using all the bells and whistles, might not decrease it much either (it depends). But as it requires 3d hardware accelaration to run smoothly, it means you'll need to have a graphics card capable of doing some 3d magic, and not only that, but also one that works fully under Linux - in other words, there are drivers for it so that Linux can take advantage of the hardware. Most new nVidia and ATI cards do, and some other brands as well, and of the "big two" (nVidia and ATI) people seem to bark less at nVidia. I've had bad experiences with both, but less with nVidia cards - ATI cards (or rather the driver-hardware-OS-cooperation) tend to have some problems once in a while, depending on the card model, driver version and personal luck.
For your ATI card you'll need the fglrx driver from ATI. You can get it from their site and install manually, but I recommend using Ubuntu's Restricted Drivers Manager for that - it's easier to install, remove and upgrade that way. After that's done, your operating system (Ubuntu, right?) needs to have Compiz Fusion and Emerald decorator, which the latest versions of Ubuntu do have, and which can be enabled after you have installed the 3d gfx card drivers successfully (see Synaptic package manager for some extra compiz-fusion packages if you like).
Compiz Fusion works fine most of the time, but some people have trouble with it, some more, some less and some almost none. Things like X crashing while doing something, or window decorations vanishing and so on. If you're lucky, it works fine most of the time - and you should test that before actually going into the Mac-themeing. Install the fglrx drivers first, and if you get them working, try the Desktop Effects (see your settings dialogs at the menu) and if they work all right, go ahead.
Another thing that is (in the documentation) said to be somewhat unstable is the OSX-like application launcher (AWN). It requires Compiz Fusion, but there's anotherone if you don't use Compiz-Fusion; not sure if either one is unproblematic.
Put short: I see that other parts than Compiz Fusion and the launcher ought to cause no trouble in terms of system stability or usability, and of those your main concern is the fglrx graphics card driver. If that works without problems, probably the rest will as well.
Read the Mac4Lin documentation (pdf file) trough before beginning to get an overview of what you're doing. Like I said, most of it is installing themes, and those you can "revert" by changing to your original themes, so you don't lose anything there. Compiz Fusion can be turned off (turn Desktop Effects off), and the launcher can be left unstarted, so even if it doesn't work out, you can "back off" from it - I guess with not much trouble, if you follow the documentation well and understand what you do.
So..go ahead. Try fglrx, then try Compiz Fusion, then try Mac4Lin. If you get the graphics side working, I don't think it'll do bad for you. And with your machine specs there should be no trouble running Compiz Fusion, which will be the biggest (well, practically the only one in this thing) resource-hogger you'll use; I've ran it quite smoothly on a lot more skinny hardware.
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