Live data from Hacker News

Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

blog.definedcode.com

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#31
post #22

I wish there was a reasonable way to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. Just today I was looking at the current Mac lineup, and there's not a single setup that works for me. Everything comes with underpowered Intel graphics, unless you pay the ridiculous price for a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. Oh, if only I could have a Surface Pro 3 running OS X... I could live with the Intel graphics if it had Surface-style portabili…

What kind of graphics capabilities do you require?

My current MacBook Pro can switch between an AMD Radeon 6770M and Intel HD Graphics 3000. I've found that the Intel is fast enough, and the Radeon is hot and uses a lot of energy.

I usually don't play games, I don't do graphics development, and I don't use Adobe products. So in practice, I rarely need the Radeon.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#32
post #22

I wish there was a reasonable way to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. Just today I was looking at the current Mac lineup, and there's not a single setup that works for me. Everything comes with underpowered Intel graphics, unless you pay the ridiculous price for a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. Oh, if only I could have a Surface Pro 3 running OS X... I could live with the Intel graphics if it had Surface-style portabili…

You could hackintosh. It's not that difficult, though that statement isn't true on some hardware configurations.

Also, how is Intel underpowered? Seems perfectly adequate for me.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#33
post #23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much so not true: http://fedoraproject.org/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ Download an ISO and install it. I think you will be surprised. Pop the disk in after burning to a CD/DVD. Click "install", reboot and you are done. Doesn't matter what your hardware is... it will install and work. Other than getting a computer with a pre-installed OS, it really can't get much simpler. Modern Linux Desktops do not require you to d…

It will install and "work". But the 3d graphics won't. And even though it's pretty easy nowadays, it's still not easier than OS X, especially if you want to transfer files and settings from another machine.

And then the sound will glitch and cut out, with the graphical FPS varying wildly in games and sometimes frames being delayed by hundreds of milliseconds or more. That's my personal experience, anyway; I really wish I could say Linux works well, but on a 2008 Dell PC with a common chipset the sound does not even work reliably with the latest version of Ubuntu, nor does a common AMD Radeon chipset with the official fglrx drivers.

It's not like it doesn't work, it worked fine 90% of the time. But 90% is not enough; when even Half-Life 2 is completely unplayable (on hardware which easily runs it in Windows), something's wrong.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will install and "work". But the 3d graphics won't. And even though it's pretty easy nowadays, it's still not easier than OS X, especially if you want to transfer files and settings from another machine.

And then the sound will glitch and cut out, with the graphical FPS varying wildly in games and sometimes frames being delayed by hundreds of milliseconds or more. That's my personal experience, anyway; I really wish I could say Linux works well, but on a 2008 Dell PC with a common chipset the sound does not even work reliably with the latest version of Ubuntu, nor does a common AMD Radeon chipset with the official fg…

Every issue you described are issues from 2-3 years ago. They have all been solved, especially in the major distros. A current version 14.x of Ubuntu, or version 20+ of Fedora will work "out of the box" with zero tweaking. Honestly. (I run full-time Linux desktops on everything from old repourposed warehouse workstations that were bought in the windows 2000 days, all the way through dual booting my modern gaming rig... it just works).

And to touch on your gaming comment -- actually, Valve has found the same games perform better on Linux using OpenGL than they do on Windows. So much so, that they were surprised at how well they performed. So much so, that many many other gaming companies are now re-releasing and/or planning future releases on Linux. The day of Linux gaming is here...

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#35
post #25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not completely unreasonable given that Apple is in the business of selling hardware. Of course they want you to buy macs. :)

In all my years, and colo'ed across 3 DC's... I have yet to see any OSX server hardware besides a mac mini...

There are a few companies that host Mac VPS instances, and the one I used back in 2011 was running on XServe's using what looked like a bare metal VMWare solution (Parallels had one too I believe). Rare even back then though, Mini's are definitely more common.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#36
I did this recently and was able to start directly with Mavericks with no trouble.

This is also a useful article that I read in addition to Gabriel's work to get this working: http://blog.ostanin.org/2014/02/11/playing-with-mac-os-x-on-...

It's great that we can finally virtualize OS X with no hacks to the guest.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#37
post #24

I find it humerus that getting osx to run in a controlled environment, useful for testing simulation etc takes more hacking and more work than any Linux distro ever did, even in the early days. Despite this Mac people insists getting Linux to work is "hard" when it mostly works out of the box on any hardware. Amazing.

"than any Linux distro ever did" - Remembering my stack of 32 floppies to install slackware and the level of understanding it took of drivers and hardware, I'm pretty sure that's not true.

yes, circa 1996 maybe...

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the sound will glitch and cut out, with the graphical FPS varying wildly in games and sometimes frames being delayed by hundreds of milliseconds or more. That's my personal experience, anyway; I really wish I could say Linux works well, but on a 2008 Dell PC with a common chipset the sound does not even work reliably with the latest version of Ubuntu, nor does a common AMD Radeon chipset with the official fg…

Every issue you described are issues from 2-3 years ago. They have all been solved, especially in the major distros. A current version 14.x of Ubuntu, or version 20+ of Fedora will work "out of the box" with zero tweaking. Honestly. (I run full-time Linux desktops on everything from old repourposed warehouse workstations that were bought in the windows 2000 days, all the way through dual booting my modern gaming rig.…

>Every issue you described are issues from 2-3 years ago.

Sorry, these issues were experienced by me this year. On hardware that is not defective as it works flawlessly on Windows.

>They have all been solved, especially in the major distros.

No they haven't. It has not been fixed. Neither my GPU issues nor my Audio issues have been fixed.

>A current version 14.x of Ubuntu, or version 20+ of Fedora will work "out of the box" with zero tweaking.

It was running out of the box. It just didn't work properly.

>And to touch on your gaming comment -- actually, Valve has found the same games perform better on Linux using OpenGL than they do on Windows.

Yes, I know. OpenGL works, and all that. However, the harsh reality I have found is that the graphics drivers didn't work properly and frames would be delayed (not elongated; delayed) making Half-Life 2 unplayable under both WINE and natively.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#39
post #31
post #22

I wish there was a reasonable way to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. Just today I was looking at the current Mac lineup, and there's not a single setup that works for me. Everything comes with underpowered Intel graphics, unless you pay the ridiculous price for a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. Oh, if only I could have a Surface Pro 3 running OS X... I could live with the Intel graphics if it had Surface-style portabili…

What kind of graphics capabilities do you require? My current MacBook Pro can switch between an AMD Radeon 6770M and Intel HD Graphics 3000. I've found that the Intel is fast enough, and the Radeon is hot and uses a lot of energy. I usually don't play games, I don't do graphics development, and I don't use Adobe products. So in practice, I rarely need the Radeon.

I'm guessing that the guy you're responding to games, and yet still prefers OS X (like myself).

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#40

I find it humerus that getting osx to run in a controlled environment, useful for testing simulation etc takes more hacking and more work than any Linux distro ever did, even in the early days. Despite this Mac people insists getting Linux to work is "hard" when it mostly works out of the box on any hardware. Amazing.

Getting Linux to work on random hardware is certainly harder than getting OSX to run on Mac hardware. That's not an unfair comparison, because those are their intended use cases.

You're looking at a Porsche and bitching that it sucks at offroading. Well, yeah. That's not what it's for. If you work offroad and need to carry cargo, a Porsche is not the vehicle for you, but that doesn't mean it's a bad car.

Post reply on HN