Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninjakeyboard | Hacker News Reader

I have run hackintoshes for years, produced music on them, run them as servers hosting applications, used them for software development. They have been perfectly stable with months of uptime, and flawless execution of music production (given licensed software is used, which it is! :) )

Seem good enough to be called a mac for me! :) except can't update osx. would recommend though if you're savvy w/ linux and on a budget apart from the fact that you have no way to license it really. but it's a free legit download anyway if you own a macbook or anything (which I do).

View on HN

I have a ThinkPad T420 specifically picked for its OS X compatibility. It started its life as a cheap machine for me to mess with iOS but ended up being my primary device... Oops.

Also I actually updated it to El Capitan before, the only thing that broke was my screen color profile getting reset.

Why'd you choose to build a Hackintosh rather than just going Linux and/or Windows?

I'm not running a Hackintosh, but here's why I'd do it if Apple doesn't come out with reasonable hardware soon:

* Lots of professional userland software that you don't get on Linux.

* Has a POSIX compatible terminal, package manager and fully integrated keychain built in (compared to Windows). Ever tried to get a reasonable setup for git, python, perl, ssh with PKE etc. going on Windows without pulling your hair out? With a Mac I'm productive within 1h (especially thanks to migration assistant), with Windows it takes at least a week and it's still not satisfying. In that time I'd rather setup a Hackintosh properly.

* hands down better configuration system than Windows (defaults system >>>> registry).

Here's why I wouldn't: who wrote the drivers that let you run that OSX on that PC? Were the drivers audited? How do you know you're not root kitted from the start? If I have money, I'll have a Mac. If I don't, there's Fedora.

FakeSMC, the only driver you truly need, is short and easy to build yourself after a look over.

If you're determined to avoid other third party drivers, you can be sure to use only natively supported networking and sound devices.

That only leaves the Clover bootloader, and it's certainly true that this hasn't had an audit/is large enough that performing one would be quite a project. However, it's fully open source and receives quite a bit of interest from across the hackintosh community.

Hackintosh users are also rather small in number and mostly technically knowledgeable; there are far larger and easier userbases to target rootkits at.

Therefore, although I understand your concerns, I am not worried at all about the security of my hackintosh.

>Fedora

Desktop Linux (any variety) is in no way comparable to the usability of OS X. I say this as someone who ran desktop Linux exclusively for years.

ya it's all out of the box. I literally install osx and that's it. nVidia drivers are from nVidia. All of the components I have use supported chipsets. I just can't put it to sleep w/o adding some other kexts. I usually just leave it stock.

It's not so much of a problem with LXSS on the horizon, but I really wanted to have both Adobe software and a Unix terminal.

Although now I'm just spoiled by small behaviors of OS X that I really like.

Windows still isn't fully posix compatible though is it? (re: lxss)

so I can write music w/ bitwig, ableton live etc. windows isn't/wasn't stable w/ many of the tools and linux doesn't have the software.

Most good audio software is for Mac. Maybe Windows, but then Windows.

Can you develop IOS apps on a hackintosh? Can you get into the developer program from one?

Yes

That is quite interesting. I built a hackintosh in 2011 after a lot of research (hoping to use it to produce music if possible) and the only thing that gave me significant trouble was the audio. Would you care to share your setup?

Even if you have trouble with audio, you can typically use firewire or USB audio interfaces with no issues. If you're doing semi-pro or professional audio production, chances are you want to use a USB audio interface anyway...

I just use an external soundcard(s). I have serato SL1 which I use for djing w/ timecoded vinyl and I have an old mAudio usb card I use for everything else. I recently got a Pioneer DDJ-SX2 which has replaced the turntables and soundcards - I just use it for everything now.

A lot of the realtek chipsets used in motherboards either aren't, or are poorly supported... there are many USB devices that are supported though. That's about my only experience there... same goes for wifi/bluetooth and ethernet adapters.

> except can't update osx

you mean you can't update from the app store or something? or just in general?

Well, you can, it's just a scary process sometimes depending on your hardware.

My Hackintosh updated to El Capitan just fine, but some others have had some pretty difficult times adjusting to OSX's updates.

Generally, the closer you stick to recommended hardware (Nvidia cards and Gigabyte motherboards), the less likely you'll run into trouble upgrading.

Absolutely. I install every maintenance point release(10.0.x) through the App Store and it works fine. The only ones that I download the full manual install for are full version(10.x.0) release. Not necessarily because I believe it will screw up because of the hardware, but because of software conflicts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com