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Comment by nordsieck | Hacker News Reader

> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it?

If you're a developer, OS X is great.

Windows is a second class citizen if you aren't using Visual Studio.

Linux is great - it's basically your deployment environment - but you often have to mess around with it a bit.

OS X is 90-95% of the benefit of Linux, but it just works™. If you want to get work done, that's a pretty good feature.

The trouble is that, if you want to run a desktop, there are basically no good options. Mac Mini is very limited, same with the iMac. The Mac Pro is not limited, but it supports such enormous expansion that the base config is extremely expensive, while not being very performant.

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> Linux is great - it's basically your deployment environment - but you often have to mess around with it a bit.

This doesn't make sense. One definitely, in general terms, has to mess around more with Hackintosh than with a Linux installation, as the hardware compatibility is much higher with the latter than the former.

I did use a Hackintosh, for some time. I still need Mac occasionally, but nowadays I just run it in a VM.

Building a _new_ hackintosh is easy, and requires very little messing around if you follow sensible guidelines. It generally gets messy after a few years and several OS updates. There are generally less users on forums with the same hardward specs, asking less questions. Apple drop support for things, and recommended methods to install/update change enough to become painful.

I just upgraded my hackintosh from El Capitan to Catalina. It wasn't all fun, but wasn't too bad either. I'll probably get another couple of years trouble free with this OS, so it was worth it. After that I'll switch to Linux or Windows for my main system, though.

Building a new Linux box is easy, too. If you can pick and choose amongst compatible hardware, there's no messing around at all to get a performant and updateable system.

I can see how someone in a particular field, such as video editing, might prefer certain macOS apps. For general software development, though, a Linux machine feels like a much safer bet.

Windows with WSL is pretty nice. I still prefer MacOS but mostly for convenience with interfacing with my other personal devices.

>has to mess around more with Hackintosh than with a Linux installation

As someone who lived with an Ubuntu installation for 5 years up until 10.10 and then with Arch for arount 4 years - you statement about linux being an easy thing to handle is correct as long as you are fine with a distro like ubuntu and don't want to change much.

As soon as you embrace something more hacky or at least more bleeding edge - you are in the world full of unexpected surprises. Any major update can cause you hours of problems because distro devs decided to switch from somethingX to somethingY and you had to prepare your installation before updating but alas, you rarely read the fron page of https://www.archlinux.org and now you have to rollback and do everything right.

Not a too common scenario but not an uncommon one too.

Not to metion that for the most part linux remains a second-class citizen to software devs, so you won't see much of a general purpose software of the same quality macOS has to offer. Which is a problem if you are going to use the machine for something other then software development.

My experience with Linux is that if your hardware setup deviates even slightly from the majority you’re going to have trouble getting things working right. This is especially true when it comes to GPUs (dual screens on dual GPUs for instance causes trouble with both Nvidia and AMD). There’s also distro specific weirdness like how the Ubuntu will screw with your boot partitions on every disk in your machine (fixable but annoying).

With a hackintosh, as long as you’re using supported chipsets, cards, etc the larger overall configuration of your machine doesn’t really matter much — it’ll just work. Point in case, macOS handles the aforementioned dual monitor dual GPU setup without so much as a hiccup both on AMD (and if you drop back to High Sierra) Nvidia. It’s paradoxical, but hackintoshed macOS is often better at smoothing over differences between machines than Linux is.

A Hackintosh does not just work. It requires far more upkeep than a Linux system.

I certainly wouldn't do it again!

As long as you choose your hardware wisely all you need is UniBeast and post-install MulitBeast. All I've ever had to do in over 10 years of Hackintosh use is re-install my MultiBeast config after an OS update.

You have to think of a hackintosh like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life. You will certainly not be able to update immediately. For some people that's fine, for others who are dependant on Xcode which needs constant OS updates, it's not fine. Really depends on your use case.

Not true. I’ve had my 2014 hackintosh updated regularly without issues.

> ...like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life.

Not all Android phones are like that -- what are you buying which doesn't get any OS updates?

Obviously android phones get OS updates. Hackintoshes also get OS updates. But in either case there's never a guarantee unless you buy a current gen flagship. If you buy an iPhone you will consistently get updates for up to 5 years. Android is more of a "best effort" kind of deal. Maybe they will update your phone this year. Maybe not. Who knows?

Agree 1000%.

For native macs that’s probably the case, but I spent so much time just getting basic features of my hackintosh to work. If I wanted to change audio source from headphones to HDMI I needed to add/remove kexts and restart!

That just means your config wasn’t properly made to support your hardware. Mine was rock solid for 6 years.

Can you elabarote more on 'config' ? Especially if someone plans to follow your build and this will be first hackintosh. Any more links to hackintosh resources/community? (technical ones :)

Also: could you write which models of components you bought:

a. 580 gfx card ? /nitro? pulse? others :)/

b. in terms of 5700 youre planning to buy do you have exact model?

c. which exact memory (size of one) and 3600 was base or overclocked

I've been using Windows 10 Pro for about a year now. I've got it running VSCode and docker with Ubuntu on WSL2 running VSCode server and the docker client. There are some minor annoyances with file permissions, but overall it is a great environment. I just couldn't justify paying 3x for half the hardware again.

I am a developer and have no problems developing Linux software on Windows desktop (namely C++ rest servers). It just works™ for me

With JetBrains/VS Code and WSL, modern Windows is actually a pleasure to develop on (IMHO, of course).

The only reason I bust out OSX is for iOS development.

It’s definitely better than it’s reputation, and I find it manageable at work.

Also while powershell is great, I find it just too wordy. Many commands that are 4 characters in unix systems are multiple words, with hyphens etc.

Yes, but then you get Candy Crush install by itself, and every day new KB updates, system updates that you cannot prevent like it's not your own system to chose, optimisation processes which start consuming CPU without you asking for it, clunky UI. I prefer to use a Mac just for the peace of mind.

Because it's better to run an unpatched OS (considering installing updates on a hackintosh tends to break it) than to run an OS with some pre-installed software that you won't even notice?

I meant that I run on a Macbook. I was comparing Windows with MacOS. Btw, software that I won't even notice? I paid 2.5k on a laptop that I keep docked most of the time, so I guess I do notice it, along with all the other things I've mentioned.

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