If you're into senseless cursed technology like I am, you can install OpenCore's OpenDuetPkg onto a flash drive and use it as an emulated EFI environment with drivers, to load rEFInd to boot off a NVMe drive installed into a mPCIe slot, on computers predating EFI, let alone NVMe. The general approach is to follow https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/installer-... on a Mac (the Windows instructions produce a "BOOT MISMATCH!" warning and a 3-second delay, and there are no Linux instructions, and I don't know how to properly format the disks on Linux, though BootInstall_ARCH.tool should be easily portable to Linux), but after following https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/installer-..., extract a rEFInd archive (not ISO) into EFI/OC/, and rename the correct architecture's .efi file to EFI/OC/OpenCore.efi.
I haven't had much luck configuring OpenCore itself as an EFI bootloader, and having it find any of the USB/SATA/NVMe drives I have plugged in. I'm told you have to tailor the configuration carefully to the exact hardware you have since OpenCore is emulating a Mac-like EFI rather than generic PC, and that no generic configuration will work properly on all computers. I haven't tried using OpenCore for actual Hackintoshing.
> I haven't had much luck configuring OpenCore itself as an EFI bootloader
They mention in their "Terminology" section that OpenCore is not a Bootloader but a Boot Manager:
> Bootloader: Piece of software that loads an OS, usually made by the OS creators. OpenCore is technically not a bootloader per se (see boot manager explanation down below). Apple's Boot.efi would be the actual boot loader in a Mac.
> Boot Manager: Piece of software that manages bootloaders – we have many of these: Clover, systemd-boot, OpenCore, rEFInd, rEFIt... These are generally seen as prepping the system for the actual boot loader.
- After applying the post-install root patches, SIP will be (at least partially) disabled? Correct?
- Updates from Apple will work as usual or do you need to re-install the root patches after some of them?
I have a 2012 Mac Mini with Catalina and I'm wondering if it's worth to upgrade to Big Sur (without dealing with post-install root patches) or Monterey (root patches required for GPU drivers/SIP disabled).
I've got a MBP 2012 on Monterey. I'm not sure if SIP is disabled, I'll have to check. It's totally worthwhile, Monterey has run the smoothest of any OS so far.
You only need the root patches if you want Nvidia Kepler acceleration, you don't need it for intel graphics.
Actually, I'm running Monterey on mac mini late-2012 with i7 and 16G of RAM and if I don't apply the root patches, I don't have transparency or acceleration in the UI. After root patching for the first time and then installing apple patch later down the road, OCLP reminded me it needs to re-apply those patches.
Have another macbook air 11" (early 2014) that's stuck on Big Sur. Mentally valuing the options - last monterey patch fixed two 0-days, there's no patch for big sure. So is it better to go with Monterey and sacrifice a bit of SIP?
csrutil looks like this, FWIW:
$ csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: unknown (Custom Configuration).
FWIW, I've installed Monterey on the 11" Air Early 2014 and indeed, no root patching is necessary. OCLP only needs to be installed in the EFI partition to boot.
I like Monterey a lot, seems to run perfectly on my old MBP and my Hackintoshes.
The OCLP project came a long way, at first it wasn't very stable, but with later versions it got better. Make sure you have the latest version and all works well.
OpenCore allows you to run newer macOS on older Mac that Apple no longer supports. It supports many native Mac features such as SIP, FileVault, Secure Boot, etc. Here is a list of the Macs that it has been tested on - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...
Tangent: Did the switch to ARM put up more legal barriers than technical barriers for future ARM-based Hackintoshing?
Sure, lots of special features in Apple silicon, and probably not enough time or manpower to replicate them; but wouldn't it be easier to suppress such projects, via "trade secrets" or copyright or somesuch, that they are quickly taken down on the open web? With Intel there was still some limit on how much they could keep completely secret.
Apple has a pretty clear track record as far as this goes: they largely ignore it unless it’s attached to a business model effectively reselling their (free as in beer) software. They’ve made several gestures of support of being open to reasonable software flexibility around macOS and Mac hardware in principle, and sometimes materially contribute. Most recently they indirectly aided development of Linux on M* devices, released updates to Boot Camp, and have continued to produce freely downloadable OS images for so long I won’t bother characterizing the time span.
Apple has a lot of marks against them in terms of overall attitude towards software freedom, and hardware moreso, but they evidently don’t give a damn about a Hackintosh unless you’re selling them.
There's even been a lot of iOS/Mac apps developed and submitted on hackintoshes. Apple can probably pick out hackintosh users pretty easily (a few years back, one of their engineers griped about logs coming from hackintoshes being junked up and effectively useless), but up until now have not chosen to act on that, probably because they only stand to lose by kicking these users out of their ecosystem.
From what I understand, the reason why we are still able to run newer macOS through OpenCore on older, unsupported Intel Macs is because these newer macOS are still supported on older Intel Mac Pros. Once Apple starts releasing ARM only macOS, we will no longer be able to run it on any Intel machines (except through virtualisation).
OpenCore is nice, but funnily enough it's still subject to the same "supported hardware" crap - I was tooold that macOS 10.14 won't run on my 10th gen Intel CPU, because the CPU is "too new". I haven't been able to get it to boot using OpenCore yet, so there's a pretty good chance that's accurate, but it's pretty depressing, considering how x86 is supposed to be backwards compatible and all.
But x86 is backwards compatible, it is Mac OS that is neither backwards nor forwards compatible.
Windows NT4 up to v10 will run on anything from original pentium to latest 12 gen intel and most AMD CPUs.
Windows 11 will also run on all 64bit x86 CPUs but it won't install without some fiddling.
I haven't looked into it, but I'm guessing that sibling comments reporting newer Intel CPUs working will require spoofing to make them look like 9th gen CPUs (similar to how AMD machines are hackintoshed).
This is assuming that the machine in question is a desktop with a supported (basically just recent AMD) GPU, though — macOS isn't capable of GPU accelerated UI using the iGPU on 10th (or maybe 11th, not sure) gen and up because the drivers aren't present in the OS.
In that thread, you get to learn how you can run latest chromium on Maverics. Firefox is a toast now. General rule of thumb being don't run old OS and old browser on internet-facing machine.
you could still get mac minis that would run 10.9 officially without the headaches. (2012 vintage ...)
EDIT: There are drivers missing for newer hardware in 10.6-10.9. Haven't tried if OCLP could help with this.
Why would it be? AFAIK the latest x86 CPUs, despite using EFI BIOS, still start off in 16-bit realmode at the reset vector, and most if not all of the BIOS code is going to be 32-bit protected mode code.
I’ve just bought a ‘new’ GFX card (sapphire pulse rx570 8gb) for my ‘old’ 2010 Mac Pro (12 core, 3.66ghz, 128gb ram, many many disk and ssd drives). I am getting ready to install open core or rEFInd on it in the new few weeks.
Stunning work by these people keeping these machines up to date. I can’t thank the community enough for the effort!
Used Debian and Ubuntu on Macbook Air 2015 before. In ubuntu everything works out of the box, but camera - you need to compile your own driver from github. You pay a bit in battery life and heat for having an FOSS operating system - ballpark being 5h vs 7h. Fan gets audible too compared to macos.
At some point, this macbook started to freeze with lots of % in sys in linux while doing not so much. Reinstalled macOS back, but had a problem with exactly 10s freeze the world on every wifi reconnect, totally reproducible. Took me 2-3 months to realize that there's something called SMC that could be re-set. This fixed it back, but I stayed on macos/Monterey for now.
Anything pre-T1/T2 is pretty straightforward in my experience since those models are more or less just typical x86 PCs with EFI. It used to be more hairy on T1/T2 models but from what I've heard the process on those has improved.
OpenCore is great, I used it to make Hackintoshes before I bought a MacBook. The Apple Silicon benefits were too great. I wonder how Hackintoshes will be once Apple fully transitions to ARM.
I have an ancient MacBook Pro 5,2 from 2010 which I installed the latest Monterey onto with OCLP. It works great except for GPU acceleration, which means maps doesn't work.
I have expensive hardware preferences, and even sometimes upgrade before I need to. I like a computer to last 3-5 years, sometimes it falls on the lower end of that range. Every time the machine I replace is still usable or can be repaired, it’s a hand me down to family or friends or community who don’t have the luxury to afford any computer much less one which is still more powerful than what they could potentially buy if they saved money they don’t have.
To the extent the hardware has aged but will still serve the people receiving it, and to the extent they’re more comfortable jumping through the smaller hoops to run familiar software than the larger hoops of vast complexity of a new OS, projects like this are wonderful. That’s why.
I have a 2007 Core 2 Duo laptop. I think it wants to keep going and be useful (outside of the worthless IIRC GMA 965 GPU), but Dell only released XP and Vista 32-bit drivers (both are dead OSes for modern apps), and finding and installing drivers for Vista 64 or 7 was difficult (I didn't try 10), and I kept getting random touchpad hangs on sleep-wake (broken on either the lock screen or the logged-in screen), audio hangs, etc. It's a better experience on Linux, though you have to use EasyEffects or similar to add audio EQ to compensate for the poor-quality speaker response curve. Xfce and MATE run fairly well (I haven't tested if KDE can hardware-render on a GMA 965), but 4 GB of RAM requires micromanaging, video playback is arduous, and running web apps (Discord, I'm trying to migrate off Google Docs one way or another) is a lag-fest.
One notable aspect of laptops that's improved in the past decade-plus is multitouch trackpads. I have a 2013 Ivy Bridge laptop with "two-touch" tracking (the Linux kernel calls it Elan V3), but the multi-finger detection is deeply broken (a second finger will register at the wrong point if you tap lightly or near the edge, the two points tend to be displaced towards the same X or Y position if they're close but not identical along either axis, and both reported finger points tend to be displaced away from the actual touch point towards periodic quantized Y and probably X positions). I use it with edge scrolling, but that struggles too because the touchpad is bad at sensing touches right up against the edge, it's hard to even feel the edge with my finger, and the Linux kernel has a bug that halves the size it thinks the touchpad is (which I had to patch locally and rebuild the psmouse kernel module on every kernel update). I think MacBooks were ahead of PC laptops because they reused multitouch tech from iPhones, which Apple initially purchased from FingerWorks.
One notable regression is a decrease in modularity, ease of disassembly, and repairability, caused by the rise of integrated keyboards into palmrests, nonremovable batteries (at least modern CPUs are more efficient), soldered RAM, now even soldered storage, in the pursuit of slimness and planned obsolescence.
You're missing the point. People want to do their own thing, for whatever reason they have. Apple arbitrary limits that and this software works around it.
A 10 (or even 15) years old machine is still perfectly capable, and we only have one planet so it's better to extend their lifetime when they still work.
I haven't had much luck configuring OpenCore itself as an EFI bootloader, and having it find any of the USB/SATA/NVMe drives I have plugged in. I'm told you have to tailor the configuration carefully to the exact hardware you have since OpenCore is emulating a Mac-like EFI rather than generic PC, and that no generic configuration will work properly on all computers. I haven't tried using OpenCore for actual Hackintoshing.