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OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

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Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#21

Post by jamesholden »

austinheap wrote: post #18
lukevp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a difficult question to answer because MacOS is built for specific hardware configurations, and Hackintosh has to build unofficial support for all sorts of non-standard configurations. Your experience with a hackintosh really depends what hardware you're trying to install it on.

There are people who publish hardware ‘QVL’ lists for Hackintosh builds — stick to the list and it’s smooth sailing. Venture off the list and you end up on page 16 of some forum convinced you need to dump your DSDT tables to edit some voodoo magic. I’ve been on developing on Hackintoshs for work full-time (both desktop and laptops) for many many years now with minimal hiccups. 4K HDR touchscreen laptop in 2018, yes p…

Where can I find something like this? I have been trying to get my new system working and it's a bit frustrating.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#22

Post by Wowfunhappy »

t0mislav wrote: post #9

What is current state of Hackintosh this days? Is it stable?

I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School.

It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point--partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know what he was doing.

But once I was done, it was absolutely stable. Everything worked[1]. I installed every point release update[2] through the normal software updater without problems. This was actually my first experience with OS X, and I completely fell in love with the platform.

Many people who haven't used Hackintosh seem to assume it's an unstable mess, and it certainly can be a mess if you don't set it up correctly, or attempt to use not-quite-compatible hardware. But my experience has been that if and when you set it up properly, Hackintosh can be every bit as stable as a real Mac.

---

[1] Except for sleep. Getting sleep working on Hackintosh is very doable but usually annoying, and it's not needed on desktops.

[2] Ie 10.6.5 ==> 10.6.8. Upgrading Snow Leopard ==> Lion almost certainly would have failed had I tried it, although such upgrades are sometimes possible nowadays with Clover, and I assume OpenCore.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#23

Post by mmm_grayons »

Moto7451 wrote: post #11
_vbdg wrote: post #6

I just built a new hackintosh with opencore, and compared to clover, it was so much nicer. The documentation [0] is excellent; I'm able to grok what each option does rather than just guessing. It also feels so much less janky than clover did. Better filevault support, faster, leave SIP on, etc. It's also better in that one can avoid polluting /L/E /S/L/E, which will also allow users to keep running kexts even after A…

Ditto. I built one last week. Everything was straightforward and the documentation great. My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there. Figuring out my Audio took longer than it should as finding the layout-id for my ALC892 was buried in threads where everyone kept parroting “use ID 1, 2, and 3 or just keep trying numbers until it works.” My board needed layout-…

> My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there.

Absolutely right. I think the issue behind this is that many people are repeating advice without understanding why it matters because it worked for them. So, you end up with people cargo-culting SSDT overlays, boot arguments, and other miscellaneous settings. This is somewhat inevitable with something technical, but it's exacerbated by a couple things:

1. many people in the Hackintosh community are very gatekeep-y. While others are very nice, I remember a few years ago being told to "go read the entire ACPI standard and the come back!" Reading about stuff is important, but it's pretty hard to figure out what the correct stuff is to read.

2. A lack of a centralized documentation repository (this is being fixed by OpenCore and others) to explain when different pieces of advice apply or don't. This is especially important on laptops where there may be some obscure quirk of one's particular hardware revision that is much easier found if everyone puts documentation in the same place.

I mostly gave up on hackintosh a few years ago because of all this, but have found it so much better and nicer as of late. Big thanks to the acidanthera guys who seem to be driving a lot of this change.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#24

Post by kposehn »

I’ve been using a Hack Pro for several months with OpenCore. It took a bit to learn my way through the docs as they were not terribly clear when I started but once I was up and running it was nice.

I was largely happy with it, as the machine was extremely fast and very, very quiet. I also had FileVault running too along with SIP. However, the main issues I had were stability - these machines are generally nowhere near as stable as a regular Mac as there are many small issues which over time can become big (restarting on wake from sleep, unreliable internet, disconnecting from iCloud, etc).

Depending on your use case, these may not be an issue. However, Opencore was vastly better than Clover and if you want to try this I’d start there first.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#25

Post by austinheap »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #17
lukevp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that's always the biggest problem is how much time you have to spend researching what tweaks you have to make for a specific piece of hardware. It seems like there's not that much effort in making the process automatic and more in making the process flexible. I'd rather it either work without any configuration on my end, or fail in predictable ways so I could contribute fixes. For example, for each specific…

> There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. I've been a Hackintosh user for more than a decade, and it has always been this way. On the whole, it's much easier now than it used to be. I don't know why the bootloaders aren't better at detecting your system and automatically configuring themselves, but I assume it's a legitimately difficult problem, or someone would have done…

KextUpdater tracks/downloads releases for the kexts you have installed from their upstream repos. I was in the “never update a working hackintosh” camp for years but this tool changed that.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#26

Post by 1MachineElf »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #22
t0mislav wrote: post #9

What is current state of Hackintosh this days? Is it stable?

I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School. It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point--partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know what he was doing. But once I was…

Thank you for this comment. I was looking for anything here that might be relevant to me, and it looks like we both had hackintosh builds at the same time / version of OS X. In fact, it was the Snow Leopard->Lion upgrade which turned me off from the whole scene. Great to know things have evolved beyond that in a positive way.

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#28

Post by Wowfunhappy »

austinheap wrote: post #25
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. I've been a Hackintosh user for more than a decade, and it has always been this way. On the whole, it's much easier now than it used to be. I don't know why the bootloaders aren't better at detecting your system and automatically configuring themselves, but I assume it's a legitimately difficult problem, or someone would have done…

KextUpdater tracks/downloads releases for the kexts you have installed from their upstream repos. I was in the “never update a working hackintosh” camp for years but this tool changed that.

That's neat, but it doesn't get around the initial setup process, which is what I thought (?) the GP was talking about. You need to know which kexts to use, what weird bootloader options to set, etc etc.

I've actually never been in the "never update a working Hackintosh" camp. For better or worse, I've always installed point releases, and I can't recall a single time when they've broken something. (Whole version upgrades are a different matter, but I'm cautious about those on real Macs too!)

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#29

Post by austinheap »

jamesholden wrote: post #21
austinheap wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who publish hardware ‘QVL’ lists for Hackintosh builds — stick to the list and it’s smooth sailing. Venture off the list and you end up on page 16 of some forum convinced you need to dump your DSDT tables to edit some voodoo magic. I’ve been on developing on Hackintoshs for work full-time (both desktop and laptops) for many many years now with minimal hiccups. 4K HDR touchscreen laptop in 2018, yes p…

Where can I find something like this? I have been trying to get my new system working and it's a bit frustrating.

There are two routes I’d recommend:

1) Many of the reliable community sites post buying guides; without wading into which I find reliable just search for “hackintosh buyers guide 2020”, “hackintosh compatibility list”, etc.

2) My now-preferred route is following developers on Github who post their hardware and EFI folder. It’ll be obvious which repos are from engineers who depend on it for their day-to-day based on stars/forks.

My current laptop I found out about from a blog (#1) then stumbled into a flawless and well-maintained repo (#2) — best of both worlds!

Re: OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover

#30

Post by Wowfunhappy »

1MachineElf wrote: post #26
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School. It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point--partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know what he was doing. But once I was…

Thank you for this comment. I was looking for anything here that might be relevant to me, and it looks like we both had hackintosh builds at the same time / version of OS X. In fact, it was the Snow Leopard->Lion upgrade which turned me off from the whole scene. Great to know things have evolved beyond that in a positive way.

To be clear, whole version upgrades have still always been a crap-shoot for me (with Clover, haven't used OpenCore).

Total aside, I can't remember for sure if I ever upgraded my High School Hackintosh to Lion. I think what happened is I got it working, but decided I didn't like Lion as much, and restored an image of my SL install.

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