14 DAY TRIAL // Making your Ubuntu system look like Windows 8 doesn't seem to be a high priority for users, but someone made an easy-to-install script that will transform the entire system.
There are many users out there that want to make their system look like a Windows counterpart, and that can be easily achieved when you have a system that already uses the same kind of desktop design, like Linux Mint or Lubuntu (an Ubuntu that uses the LXDE desktop environment).
It's also quite easy to make other Linux distros looks like older versions of Windows (XP and 7 come to mind), but it's much harder to imitate Windows 8, which uses a tile system. Fortunately for you, if you have an Ubuntu 14.04 OS, you might be able to pull it off.
How to make Ubuntu 14.04 LTS look like Windows 8
It's important to say, right from the start, that making your system look like Windows 8 is probably a bad idea. Ubuntu is powered by Unity and the script doesn't make Unity go away, it just adds a number of packages and applications. The Dash and everything else will still be in place.
You can think of this project as something that can be done, if you really put your mind to it, but it's not something that you would actually do, if given a choice.
The project is called "METROlux for UBUNTU 14.4LTS FULL," but we’ll just call it METROlux. This is basically a .sh script that instructs the system to install a number of packages and makes some basic settings. It's quite large and comes with numerous packages.
The packages are the METROlux menu, Gnomenu, and CairoDock. Users will be able to set up the programs and there is a video file included in the archive that should provide more information. You will definitely need to watch that short video. The menus and the text shown in the video are not in English, but the instructions are simple enough to follow.
All you have to do is to extract the file, open a terminal in that folder, and enter the following command:
sh METROlux-FULL-install-UBU-14.4.sh
Everything should install pretty quickly, but the tweaks that need to be made afterwards will take the most time. It's a good idea to try this on a system you don't normally use as your daily machine. A number of things could go wrong and you can lose your system.