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Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

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11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#11
I've done this three times, albeit not very recently. First you need a regular computer, on which you're both going to Google a ton and prepare a lot of software. It's only for fun or maaaybe a niche work use case.

I also had a MacPro5,1 I used extra long, thanks to some of the tooling mentioned here. Great machine. But seeing how it used 200W and I had to buy a new RX580 for it to be usable, idk if that really helped the environment, nor was that the reason I had it.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who care about their life and getting things done just install WSL. You still get to run Windows as normal and have Linux running without messing around or playing with display servers, drivers and the like.

I tried WSL, but when WSL 1 was abandoned in favor of Hyper-V I was devastated because the new Hyper-V WSL is kind of shit in comparison. No longer are processes and files shared with the host system, you just get an opaque block of CPU and an opaque block of disk space being used. BTW, if at any time in the future you have to clear out part of that opaque block of disk space to make room - good luck shrinking it. I…

you can shrink it now! You're going to have to change the vhd format to sparse (this is why docker for windows doesn't run on exFAT-formatted SSDs, as I found out a couple weeks ago) and then run compaction on it once. After running compaction once, it should grow and shrink dynamically as you'd expect.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#13
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a flavor of virtue signaling about saving the environment using really old hardware.

Yes, but associating that with Hackintoshing is the weirdest part.

Indeed, it makes no sense because some old hardware that might be ok with Linux or even Windows is probably not ok with macOS. This article even tells you to go buy an RX580, and that's not the half of it.

And since you mentioned wasteful web, medium.com is a prime example of that.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried WSL, but when WSL 1 was abandoned in favor of Hyper-V I was devastated because the new Hyper-V WSL is kind of shit in comparison. No longer are processes and files shared with the host system, you just get an opaque block of CPU and an opaque block of disk space being used. BTW, if at any time in the future you have to clear out part of that opaque block of disk space to make room - good luck shrinking it. I…

you can shrink it now! You're going to have to change the vhd format to sparse (this is why docker for windows doesn't run on exFAT-formatted SSDs, as I found out a couple weeks ago) and then run compaction on it once. After running compaction once, it should grow and shrink dynamically as you'd expect.

thank you!! I will keep your advice in mind if I ever try WSL again

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#15

The only reaction I can think of to this massive non-sequitur of an article is "WTF?" If you really care about forced obsolescence, refuse to upgrade and push back strongly whenever you can against the wildly wasteful web and its effective browser monopoly. Write and prefer native code. Add drivers for hardware that's "no longer supported". What does this have to do with Hackintoshing? No idea.

[deleted]

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#16
post #8

Just install linux and move on with life

For those who care about their life and getting things done just install WSL. You still get to run Windows as normal and have Linux running without messing around or playing with display servers, drivers and the like.

What display servers, drivers do you need to mess with? I have a modern Dell laptop and everything worked immediately. Display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, storage, sleep mode, good battery life, every port worked, the webcam worked. This was on Fedora. The case is the same for Debian on a different Lenovo laptop.

I know Linux has this reputation for being difficult to use, no hardware support, etc and if this were 2009 I might agree with that. However, Linux couldn’t be easier to use right now.

Wayland works fine. Pipewire? My speakers on the laptop work good and plugged into a dock with conventional speakers works fine.

I’ve seen this repeated over and over and I don’t believe people are lying, I’m sure some have had the experience recently but I’d like to know what hardware they’re using.

The only reason I can see to use Windows is software support for something proprietary.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who care about their life and getting things done just install WSL. You still get to run Windows as normal and have Linux running without messing around or playing with display servers, drivers and the like.

What display servers, drivers do you need to mess with? I have a modern Dell laptop and everything worked immediately. Display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, storage, sleep mode, good battery life, every port worked, the webcam worked. This was on Fedora. The case is the same for Debian on a different Lenovo laptop. I know Linux has this reputation for being difficult to use, no hardware support, etc and if this were 20…

We have Lenovo Thinkpads at work, which are actually certified for Linux but have known compatibility issues with Bluetooth audio there. I don't remember the exact details, but basically the end result is the Linux users here only have wired headphones.

And if you care about dedicated graphics, especially Nvidia, those drivers have a very different level of support for Windows.

If you care about obscure cases, I have some really cheap Asus laptop (almost a netbook) where Linux mostly works, but the fans stop spinning any time it wakes from sleep, until the next reboot. Somehow not an issue in Windows.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#19
post #10

For calibrating your understanding of greenhouse gas emissions producing, packaging, shipping, using, and recovering materials from a 14-inch MacBook Pro in 2023 emits about 243 kg of carbon [1], which is equivalent to using 27 gallons of gasoline. [2] For some people, this may math out. But it's probably easier to worry less about buying a new laptop every once in a while, and more about driving a bit less or gettin…

We really need rules of thumb like this physically posted in more places. I grew up seeing "be green" signs in school that didn't really tell you how.

Re: Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

#20
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who care about their life and getting things done just install WSL. You still get to run Windows as normal and have Linux running without messing around or playing with display servers, drivers and the like.

What display servers, drivers do you need to mess with? I have a modern Dell laptop and everything worked immediately. Display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, storage, sleep mode, good battery life, every port worked, the webcam worked. This was on Fedora. The case is the same for Debian on a different Lenovo laptop. I know Linux has this reputation for being difficult to use, no hardware support, etc and if this were 20…

Bluetooth support is still a shit show if you don't buy a laptop that has been in some way developed for linux (if not for your current model, then for a model using similar components). Alternatively, buying a custom bluetooth usb adapter may work but only on a supported distro and only ever with an older bluetooth protocol.

Same goes for WiFi. Good luck trying to get WiFi6 to work properly, ignoring the fact that you have to go out of your way to find an adapter that will even work in linux.

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