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How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system conf

How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? How easy are OS upgrades? How is the performance, including graphics? Any issues?

SXX 8y ago
> How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? I have no idea about Hackintosh, but you can efficiently just grab ready-to-use VM image somewhere and use it with libvirt/virt-manager, e.g convert VMWare one. It's just works. > Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? I only had issues with sound since QEMU doesn't have compatible sound hardware and HDA driver for Hackintosh didn't work out-of-the-box. This can be solved by passing USB audio card. Addition: obviously your CPU must support whatever instruction set macOS require otherwise it's won't work. > How easy are OS upgrades? There were some breakages, but they usually fixed within QEMU upstream in few weeks. Though this mean you might need recent QEMU sometimes. > How is the performance, including graphics? Performance is great. Surprisingly without GPU you can even run some image editing software with lag since Apple software OpenGL implementation is more or less working. Or you can just buy compatible GPU and pass it to VM, then it's also just work without any issues. > Any issues? My VM image HWID got banned from using App Store fairly soon. Fortunately Xcode and all software I possibly need can be downloaded without it so I never did any research on how Hackintosh users solve it. PS: Edited. Added note about SSE.
- the_grue 8y ago
  > My VM image HWID got banned from using App Store fairly soon I never heard about HWID on Mac OS X before, and quick googling didn't produce any information about HWID on Hackintosh. Are you sure that is the real issue? Where can I read more about HWID?
  - SXX 8y ago
    Sorry. I probably shouldn't have called it HWID, but the fact is: App Store account that I've registered using said VM was after about a months limited so I unable to use it. So I came to conclusion they detected it's was used on VM and limited it. PS: And yeah I tried to use another new store account that also stuck in same state.
    - the_grue 8y ago
      I guess it's because you used the same image as many other people?.. Which brings me to the question: was it an install disk image, or a pre-installed, ready-to-go OS image? Can you install a fresh OS from an install disk?
      - SXX 8y ago
        I used pre-installed image, but I converted one for VMWare simply since it's easier and I don't care of security implications for this particular VM. > Can you install a fresh OS from an install disk? Yes of course you can. It's explained on GitHub.
rograndom 8y ago
Someone posted a few months ago a story where they were using something similar to this (couldn't find the actual comment, sorry) where they had a HD with a very bare linux install on it that had enough drivers on it to boot on most any modern machine, load up qemu and boot a OSX image. It was basically a "portable" hackintosh that could be moved between most any desktop machine. I thought it was a cool idea, and tried to get it working with this repo, but didn't have much luck even with a full load distro (Ubuntu) on a Dell i5 with a nVidia GPU I had sitting around.
- posixplz 8y ago
  Sounds like a good place to use QubesOS.
- kstenerud 8y ago
  Might have been my setup: https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/machine-builders/macos https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma... I haven't integrated GPU passthrough yet, though.
dperfect 8y ago
I've set up several Hackintosh machines in the past (bare metal / no hypervisor), but lately I've been using QEMU/KVM almost exclusively - specifically through Proxmox (I tried ESXi for a while, but I prefer the flexibility of QEMU/KVM). Most of the details from the linked guide can be adapted for Proxmox fairly easily. For me, the killer advantage of using a hypervisor is the ability to easily create and restore snapshots. This eliminates the worry of macOS updates making your system unbootable, and allows you to test Kexts and other configuration changes (with any Hackintosh system, you're likely to need some trial and error to get things working after major updates) without fully committing and possibly getting stuck with changes that are difficult to reverse. It only takes a few (dozen) times booting into single-user mode and trying to revert configuration changes to realize that snapshots are incredibly awesome :) Hardware compatibility is still important, though it mostly boils down to needing a CPU with VT-x or AMD-V enabled, along with a compatible GPU for pass-through. I've had good luck with NVIDIA GeForce GTX and some older AMD Radeon cards (AMD cards needed a DSDT tweak). Audio over HDMI can be a little tricky, but I've gotten it working with every GPU I've tried. Those challenges are mostly the same whether you use a hypervisor or not. Performance-wise, it's been pretty comparable to native performance, at least for general every-day use as a home computer for the family (streaming video services, casual gaming, some web/app development, etc).
- the_grue 8y ago
  Thank you for your perspective.

SXX 8y ago

> How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? I have no idea about Hackintosh, but you can efficiently just grab ready-to-use VM image somewhere and use it with libvirt/virt-manager, e.g convert VMWare one. It's just works. > Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? I only had issues with sound since QEMU doesn't have compatible sound hardware and HDA driver for Hackintosh didn't work out-of-the-box. This can be solved by passing USB audio card. Addition: obviously your CPU must support whatever instruction set macOS require otherwise it's won't work. > How easy are OS upgrades? There were some breakages, but they usually fixed within QEMU upstream in few weeks. Though this mean you might need recent QEMU sometimes. > How is the performance, including graphics? Performance is great. Surprisingly without GPU you can even run some image editing software with lag since Apple software OpenGL implementation is more or less working. Or you can just buy compatible GPU and pass it to VM, then it's also just work without any issues. > Any issues? My VM image HWID got banned from using App Store fairly soon. Fortunately Xcode and all software I possibly need can be downloaded without it so I never did any research on how Hackintosh users solve it. PS: Edited. Added note about SSE.

the_grue 8y ago
> My VM image HWID got banned from using App Store fairly soon I never heard about HWID on Mac OS X before, and quick googling didn't produce any information about HWID on Hackintosh. Are you sure that is the real issue? Where can I read more about HWID?
- SXX 8y ago
  Sorry. I probably shouldn't have called it HWID, but the fact is: App Store account that I've registered using said VM was after about a months limited so I unable to use it. So I came to conclusion they detected it's was used on VM and limited it. PS: And yeah I tried to use another new store account that also stuck in same state.
  - the_grue 8y ago
    I guess it's because you used the same image as many other people?.. Which brings me to the question: was it an install disk image, or a pre-installed, ready-to-go OS image? Can you install a fresh OS from an install disk?
    - SXX 8y ago
      I used pre-installed image, but I converted one for VMWare simply since it's easier and I don't care of security implications for this particular VM. > Can you install a fresh OS from an install disk? Yes of course you can. It's explained on GitHub.

rograndom 8y ago

Someone posted a few months ago a story where they were using something similar to this (couldn't find the actual comment, sorry) where they had a HD with a very bare linux install on it that had enough drivers on it to boot on most any modern machine, load up qemu and boot a OSX image. It was basically a "portable" hackintosh that could be moved between most any desktop machine. I thought it was a cool idea, and tried to get it working with this repo, but didn't have much luck even with a full load distro (Ubuntu) on a Dell i5 with a nVidia GPU I had sitting around.

posixplz 8y ago
Sounds like a good place to use QubesOS.
kstenerud 8y ago
Might have been my setup: https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/machine-builders/macos https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma... I haven't integrated GPU passthrough yet, though.

dperfect 8y ago

I've set up several Hackintosh machines in the past (bare metal / no hypervisor), but lately I've been using QEMU/KVM almost exclusively - specifically through Proxmox (I tried ESXi for a while, but I prefer the flexibility of QEMU/KVM). Most of the details from the linked guide can be adapted for Proxmox fairly easily. For me, the killer advantage of using a hypervisor is the ability to easily create and restore snapshots. This eliminates the worry of macOS updates making your system unbootable, and allows you to test Kexts and other configuration changes (with any Hackintosh system, you're likely to need some trial and error to get things working after major updates) without fully committing and possibly getting stuck with changes that are difficult to reverse. It only takes a few (dozen) times booting into single-user mode and trying to revert configuration changes to realize that snapshots are incredibly awesome :) Hardware compatibility is still important, though it mostly boils down to needing a CPU with VT-x or AMD-V enabled, along with a compatible GPU for pass-through. I've had good luck with NVIDIA GeForce GTX and some older AMD Radeon cards (AMD cards needed a DSDT tweak). Audio over HDMI can be a little tricky, but I've gotten it working with every GPU I've tried. Those challenges are mostly the same whether you use a hypervisor or not. Performance-wise, it's been pretty comparable to native performance, at least for general every-day use as a home computer for the family (streaming video services, casual gaming, some web/app development, etc).

the_grue 8y ago
Thank you for your perspective.