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Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

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Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#91

Post by lloeki »

clinton_sf wrote: post #74
kvmosx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was aware of this when posting. I am very thankful for that information and everyone who contributed to KVM, KVM-KMOD and QEMU repositories. I have moved the credit to the top of article. This was more as a reference and a quick guide (also because I couldn't achieve Mavericks via his research and therefore I have added it here). Thanks anyway.

What graphics card does Mac OS X think it's using when running in QEMU/KVM as you describe? Are you able to get different (more than 1200x800) resolutions? One of the major shortcomings of most of the "Mac OS X in a guest" efforts is that 3D hardware acceleration is disabled (unimplemented) in the guest video driver, which the Quartz compositing engine assumes will always be there. This results in weird video behavio…

When OSX can't pick a GFX driver (or you forced safe mode) it usually falls back to a generic VESA driver, along with a software OpenGL implementation (hence why GUI effects still work but some apps such as Pixelmator crash), which I suppose is not entirely unlike LLVMpipe. With a non-crap CPU it's even quite usable.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#92

Post by lloeki »

yebyen wrote: post #64
IBM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? The extra battery life alone is worth it.

In a virtual machine?

Timer coalescing may help reduce host/VM context switches, which may ease virtualisation. Also, even desktops and servers consume watts, which ultimately get converted into heat and bills.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#93

Post by serf »

Angostura wrote: post #89
pavlov wrote: 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…

> I wish there was a reasonable way to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. The reason that Mac OS X updates are currently free is because the software development (and that of iLife and iWork and iCloud etc) is subsidised by the hardware. You can think of the Mac as a very elegant functional dongle, if you like. But the fact is, that's the way Apple structures its business.

what motivates Microsoft updates? Fear of market share loss?

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#94

Post by mtford »

theseanstewart wrote: post #66
rbanffy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you pay the ridiculous price for a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro If you consider the time you'll spend tweaking your hackintosh into a useful state and the risk of bricking it on every update, it's actually a bargain. I wouldn't buy a Mac to run Linux, but I wouldn't buy anything else to run OSX.

I built a Hackintosh 2.5 years ago and haven't had any issues. I highly recommend it to anyone with minimum Google skills.

Yep, just upgraded mine to Mavericks and had absolutely no issues. You just need to make sure you buy components that are tried and tested by the hackintosh community.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#96

Post by st3fan »

voltagex_ wrote: post #81
vacri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking up qemu-kvm in Ubuntu 14.04 now, it's version "2.0.0~rc1+dfsg-0ubuntu3.1", which is similar to the version in my Debian Jessie/Testing machine (2.0.0+dfsg-6). Time to try this out, methinks. Edit: try this out another time - you need access to an OSX machine to do various steps of the process.

Run the file utility over the DMG that you have. If it comes up as having a boot sector in it (aside from a hfsplus filesystem), you should be able to use qemu-img to convert it to something qemu or VirtualBox can use.

Are you speaking from experience? Because that doesn't work since 10.8 I think. You need to use the script to turn the dog into an iso. It is not just a format change, it actually changes the structure of the contents.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#97

Post by kilon »

pavlov wrote: 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…

" Everything comes with underpowered Intel graphics" exaggeration , exaggeration and exaggeration. My iMac comes with NVIDIA 755m (actually all but one , of the iMac models come with NVIDIA). Macbook pro offers also NVIDIA . MacPro of course is the top option in terms of GPU power coming with AMD.

Macs are not cheap, you get what you pay for. MACOS is streamlined for macs , it makes little sense for me to run such an OS on a PC and deal with crashes and other problems.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#98

Post by Alupis »

josteink wrote: post #80
BillinghamJ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at least 100x more difficult than opening a laptop screen and it already being done.

How do you do that in VMWare ESX?

Not sure your point here... it's actually easier than this mac install on ESX (of course, because it's supported natively with no hackery required). Just point ESX at the ISO and it installs.

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#99

Post by annnnd »

pavlov wrote: 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…

Not to mention the... well, weird keyboards!

Re: Running OS X Mavericks under QEMU with KVM

#100

Post by jbverschoor »

0x0 wrote: post #82
josteink wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VMWare, for one, have been able to do this for quite a while with the effort of ~1 mouseclick. Unless things have recently changed, this is factually incorrect. It might work on OSX, but that's not really the point, is it. For whatever reason, you may want to be able to run a general purpose X86 OS on your general purpose X86 hardware, or general purpose X86 cloud/cluster. For instance, getting OSX to run in a regula…

VMWare Fusion on OSX does it that easy. Nobody's selling OSX as a "general purpose X86 os" for "general purpose X86 hardware" though. It's an OS for Apple hardware. It just so happens that the current versions run on x86_64 CPUs. (Plus I don't think there exists a license allowing OSX to run on a regular ESX cluster. So if it breaks, obviously you get to keep both halves)

VMWare Fusion is isn't all that stable. It works, but I wouldn't count on it.. I have to up until this point.
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