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Hackintosh is almost dead

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Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#501

Post by josteink »

mattl wrote: post #500
josteink wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows installer images have some files too large … I believe the USB stick needs to be exFAT formatted That’s true. I forgot! While it’s not part of the UEFI spec many (most?) consumer BIOSes will be able to UEFI boot from NTFS as well, so formatting as that might also be an option. Both that and exfat should be easy to do on Linux. No idea about MacOS. Which brings me to > too large for most tools to understand…

I don’t know if you can just copy the files over. It seems you also need to make the USB stick bootable? There’s dozens of guides on doing this on a Mac, they all seem outdated. I found a tool called WinDiskWriter on GitHub and it was the only GUI tool that worked. Suspect there’s more to it than just cp. There’s wimlib too for handling the larger files on the install ISO.

> It seems you also need to make the USB stick bootable?

That’s for legacy MBR boot. It has no function with UEFI boot.

Same for Windows as it is for Linux.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#502

Post by pradn »

rpdillon wrote: post #169
bruce511 wrote: post #13

Back in my youth, when I was time rich and cash poor, this kind of tinkering was fun and a good way to improve the machine I was using. Now that I have more disposable cash, but waaay less time, I couldn't imagine "wasting my time" doing this sort of thing. These days I want to -use- the computer, not spend time trying to convince it to work. Incidentally it's the exact same journey with my cars. 35 years ago I was f…

People have been making this argument to me about Linux for more than 25 years. The most cutting version that I ran across was: > Linux is only free if your time is worthless! Something never quite sat right with me about this argument, and your comment finally made me understand what it is: the understanding you gain from tinkering is priceless, and it's exactly the experience that you use to help everyone around yo…

There's levels to tinkering though. When I was running Ubuntu, a lot of the tinkering came down to searching for what config files to update. Sure, that freedom is nice if you care to use it, but it's mostly just searching, configuring, experimenting. This is hardly fun or instructive.

A deeper form of tinkering is actually working on the code. I think an instructive example is writing your own X windowing system with xmonad. You get to see exactly how a whole windowing system works.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#503

Post by mattl »

josteink wrote: post #501
mattl wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if you can just copy the files over. It seems you also need to make the USB stick bootable? There’s dozens of guides on doing this on a Mac, they all seem outdated. I found a tool called WinDiskWriter on GitHub and it was the only GUI tool that worked. Suspect there’s more to it than just cp. There’s wimlib too for handling the larger files on the install ISO.

> It seems you also need to make the USB stick bootable? That’s for legacy MBR boot. It has no function with UEFI boot. Same for Windows as it is for Linux.

Interesting. This is the first traditional UEFI machine I’ve had. Anything prior to this has been Seabios/Coreboot in recent times.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#504

Post by int_19h »

bmitc wrote: post #495
int_19h wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows uninstallers generally don't remove configurations and cached data, either.

Not in my experience, the majority of the time. Those that don't are usually Linux ported apps that don't utilize the install functionality properly. The point is that the OS provides the tools to do so.

Not removing settings is in fact the standard and expected behavior for MSI-based installers (i.e. those using OS-provided tools). The framework is very paranoid about tracking the origin of every artifact (files, registry keys etc), and removing something in the uninstaller that installer did not add is considered a huge no-no. It is also what users generally expect - if they uninstall and later reinstall, they want their settings to be there.

Providing the ability to remove settings is something that has to be explicitly implemented (because the installer infrastructure cannot track files created outside of the installer), so relatively few apps actually do that. Those that do pretty much always do it as an opt-in. In my 30 years of Windows use, I don't recall a single example to the contrary.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#505

Post by yencabulator »

xattt wrote: post #232
Gracana wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out. With open source software, simple electronics, old cars, fabrication and woodworking, the time I spend learning feels worthwhile.

Proprietary or not, tinkering help you develop an intuition of what might be wrong.

Meanwhile, the article is clear about how proprietary code absolutely prevented the author from understanding why the Wifi and Bluetooth failed with specific apps.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#506

Post by josteink »

mattl wrote: post #503
josteink wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems you also need to make the USB stick bootable? That’s for legacy MBR boot. It has no function with UEFI boot. Same for Windows as it is for Linux.

Interesting. This is the first traditional UEFI machine I’ve had. Anything prior to this has been Seabios/Coreboot in recent times.

TLDR: UEFI just checks in NVRAM for pre-existing boot-configs (stored paths to EFI-executables for installed operating systems) and if doing "dynamic" booting from some random media, it checks if the the volume has a EFI-executable for the given architecture (for instance in \BOOT\bootx64.efi for Intel x64), and if it does, it loads that file.

UEFI usually boots straight into native long mode without any weird 8086 compatibility modes being employed (which the OS then has to unroll), so for the OS its simpler to deal with.

It can also serve as a multi-boot menu on machines which has several OSes installed.

It often comes with a MS-DOS like "UEFI Shell" you can boot into... To manage UEFI itself. So if something doesn't boot, you can just boot into the shell instead and try to fix things from there.

It may sound complex, but once you get into it, its really much easier to work with that legacy MBR boot, and all the "magic" things you have to do their to get things booting.

I definitely recommend reading up on it.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#507

Post by tracker1 »

I think the switch to their own arm based chips should have been the writing in the wall for the end of the hackintosh.

I think we're at a point where we are going to wind up needing Linux more and more. My kid is running IIRC 2014 rMBP that I passed on to her a few years ago. While it still runs, it's long passed it's last supported update and now even forced unsupported updates are going to stop working. I'm not sure where the gesture support is in Linux at this point. Google maps in Chrome is probably the best demo experience.

I'm looking forward to Cosmic in Pop!OS from System76. I've preferred their take on UX for a while.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#508

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

Teever wrote: post #381
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, I'll just stick the last usable version, just like I'm stubbornly sticking to 10.14.6. I'll fight moving up each and every version by narrowing the software I use. Already happening and it's fine.

How long do you think you'll go? You'll inevitably have to switch because available hardware will become scarce, what platform will you go to then?

The hardware just keeps on working (7 years and counting). If you don't abuse it PC hardware just keeps on going.

But just to be sure, I've stocked up on compatible motherboards and processors.

I'll be here till the bitter end. I'll probably be buried with my Hackintosh.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#509

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

vel0city wrote: post #371
mandeepj wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just not an OS engineer. Or not just an engineer

I know plenty of people with stamps who don't care to fiddle with their OS or change their own oil. People who work on putting things in orbit and beyond, people who build bridges, people who design undersea robots and airplanes. They're most definitely engineers.

Yeah fair.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#510

Post by wutwutwat »

I think this article reaches a valid conclusion based on the wrong evidence. It claims hackintosh is dead because they are dropping Wifi drivers. Hackintosh is dead because the number of major versions that will support x86 are 2-3 at best and after that, the OS will only run on apple silicon. Maybe if we’re lucky an arm chip similar enough will come along but I don’t see many motherboards socketed for arm chips. It is dead, but not because of WiFi driver support.
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