Ask HN: Anyone here use a Hackintosh as one of their main machines?
I'm not sure if this is allowed here as it's technically "not legal", but while I love my MacBook, nothing beats having a comfy desktop computer at home with a ton of storage. I know I'm in the minority, but I miss it.
Unfortunately I am very much used to OS X and highly productive in it and Apple's desktop offerings are pretty poor right now (correct me if I'm wrong), so unless I decide to go for Linux, I'll try a Hackintosh.
What I'm looking for are experiences with them for someone who just wants a computer to code, torrent, and watch movies from and doesn't care about iMessage working. I probably won't update my OS X much either.
I keep hearing widely different things about Hackintoshes so I thought I'd try HN.
Thanks!
150 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadIm running these on a Core2 Duo E8400...
Even if it is a learning curve, it's probably one that will be at least somehow useful professionally.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/11/mini-review-test-drivin...
Unless you're on a tight budget and planning to use existing hardware, I strongly recommend going the way of a Mac Mini and spend the time you would have lost to building a Hackintosh on literally anything else.
These days, it feels like people enjoy digging around on their systems less and less, and they just want javascript to run in a browser.
In my case - I tried a lot, albeit back in 2008 and 2009, but wasn't able to get it to work reliably on different machines. I ended up in a quagmire of undocumented problems and errors, forum-hunting, loading kernel modules by hand - kext hell. Do you really want to?
So yes, it's totally stable and will work for you. Just be sure you get the right hardware.
FOR EXAMPLE :
"Building My $1,200 Hackintosh"
https://medium.com/swlh/building-my-1-200-hackintosh-49a1a18...
hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12024949
Several years ago I built a hackinstosh workstation for a family member that is still going strong. Now that Macs are on Intel's architecture setting one up is a fairly straightforward process if you pick out the right hardware. This website single handedly assisted me in the creation of that hackinstosh.
http://www.tonymacx86.com
Now, there are some questions as it relates to the DMCA, but generally unless you are misusing the software for something illegal (ex hacking) then you're ok.
IANAL.
https://tkware.info/2013/01/27/hypocrisy-thy-name-is-tonymac...
https://tkware.info/2013/01/29/honor-among-thieves-the-tonym...
(tl;dr: DRM in the installer, bogus legal threats when this was called out)
Keep in mind this was a few years ago, but I wouldn't recommend even trying wasting the time to try installing it.
Also you'll probably get lower performance, especially from your GPU, and also from your CPU if your ACPI tables aren't properly configured.
This meant putting off updates longer, which would lead to bigger updates, which only raised the chances of things going wrong. By the time OS X had gone up two major versions I just stopped using it and got a Mac mini and dumped more RAM in it instead.
Hunt around on the Hackintosh forums, find a hardware list that works, get the bootloaders or kexts you may need, and give it a go. I won't say it's not worth it, because I do know people who run Hackintoshes on a daily basis without issue. However, you will not be able to upgrade easily. Every major macOS upgrade will require a rebuild.
Going the Linux route would mean misssing out on a lot of nice software.
I personally think the IMacs have great value. Have a 2011 model, maxed out ram, running El capitan smooth as hell.
However, it was a gigantic pain in the ass to maintain and I wouldn't recommend it. Updating the OS is a nightmare, resulting in me staying with 10.7 while everyone was on 10.9. Things that you would expect to work out of the box with a normal Mac do anything but - there's effort required to make anything perform as expected. And there are some things that just never work as intended - like the sleep mode that I was never able to figure out.
Troubleshooting issues is a nightmare - there's no support, and you have to spend tons of time browsing through threads looking for someone with a similar problem. Then if you get to a situation when you have to ask a question, you sit and pray for someone to answer, because if they don't you're stuck.
Eventually, I bought an iMac, and couldn't be happier.
In general, if you're the kind of a person that enjoys tinkering and troubleshooting, and have plenty of free time, then go for it. But if you want to spend your time on other things, and want your computer to just work, I would definitely not recommend it.
But if you're only looking to do web development, for example, Mini should be fine.
Personally I'm going to hold out for the new rMBP with the touch bar function keys.
Sleep isn't a problem anymore if you buy the correct hardware, the question is also why you even would want to use sleep when it's booting within some seconds anyways...
In the beginning, like with the first setup, it probably takes some hours, you should probably even calculate a day to set it up like you want it. But in the end I probably saved 2k EUR going the Hackintosh route and don't regret it at all. I don't even notice it's a Hackintosh anymore...
To keep your open programs?
Applications are stateful. Sleeping keeps all that state.
Still, not having to open all the terminals I use for different things and resize and position them is a win. It's the small things. :)
- My nested screen sessions with a ton of shells doing things all over the place don't get restored on reboot - My emacs state doesn't get restored on reboot - Chrome reloads all the pages from the network instead of just serializing its entire state and restoring it on reboot
(All of the above are true on linux too.)
Waking the machine from sleep takes seconds; rebooting with stored state takes minutes.
Application state for all three GUI apps I use is pretty much restored on every platform. Thing is, there are only three of them.
Can be disabled while logging out (untick the checkbox) or holding shift while logging in.
There are still important state details that aren't preserved, like how far down the page I've scrolled in an article I'm reading, a form in progress, or the text that I have highlighted in a tab. How about my active terminal sessions in iTerm? It would be a joy if that state preserved across restarts.
For example, in tab #1, I cd and run a bash script to start a web server process. In tab #2, I split it into two panes, and in #1 run workon to start a virtual environment then start the Python REPL. In pane #2, I run top.
After quitting and restarting, tab #1 returns to the proper directory but with no output. Pane #1 shows previous output and returns the proper directory but without the virtual environment activated. Pane #2 does the same. History seems to be merged across the three which is a bit confusing as well.
I've only been able to see a purchase option involving the mac app store.
It's a nice feature that isn't worth giving up for me personally. Even on my few years old rMBP a cold boot to the desktop takes 2 minutes vs 2 seconds from sleep.
Since upgrading to 10.9 about a year ago, the built-in audio stopped working. Researching fixes takes me to multiple baffling threads that span dozens of pages.
I recently installed Windows 10 as a dual boot on the system, largely to try the Windows subsystem for Linux. That wasn't a trouble-free process either, but in the end it recognizes all the hardware, including a card reader that I thought was broken.
Although I use an iMac at work, and will continue to look first at Mac laptops, I'll probably transition to Windows once 10.9 gets too old.
Kernel panics are a bigger issue. They happened to me once every 3 months.
Buy parts recommended on Tony Mac OSX parts guide. Don't deviate and your maintenance should be less than 30 mins per OS update. Should you choose to update.
I'm building another soon. Apple have taken the piss with a lack of update to their Macbook Pro line.
I was really happy with the outcome. Before I was a linux user for about 4 years so the transition was easy for me.
At one point i needed to port a game to iPhone, which, for context, requires MacOS and their whole stack of locked-up tools.
At first i tried to run MacOS in a VM (VmWare), which kinda worked, but moving files in and out of it caused all sorts of crashes (more like the files got stuck and couldn't be read or deleted, the system itself almost never crashed).
Then, i tried to install MacOS on a laptop (high-ish end Lenovo), with similar sort of success - it would just crash at random and WiFi wasn't working.
Finally, i went and bought a second-hand MacBook. Worked beautifully ever since.
Going back to the first sentence, i found MacOS barely usable compared to both Windows and Linux, so if all you want is to code (not for mac/iphone), torrent and watch movies, then Linux does all that with none of the Mac's problems.
You could always hook up a real mouse too and a bigger monitor if that's what you want.
Now all of your problems go away (you have something you can code on, it's OSX which is what you like and you don't have to mess around with a Hackintosh).
This isn't the most budget-conscious setup, but it's the best of both worlds. I looked at building a Hackintosh as a single machine solution before I built my Windows machine, but decided that it wasn't worth the hassle. As best as I can tell, it's a constant uphill battle of keeping things configured correctly.
Maybe buying a whole PC of any kind is the wrong approach. Get a cooling tray, mouse, keyboard, monitor, and some USB3 storage.
I spent several days playing with various settings to get everything working--would have been easier if I had chosen a motherboard that's mainstream in the hackintosh community--didn't buy the machine with this in mind. Once up and running I thought I was home free, then 10.10.2 came out, thought I'd just apply the update, took me 4 hours to get my machine back. Since I've learned more about it I can now update my machine in about 10 minutes but it's taken much trial and error to get here. I've had to read a lot of forums with conflicting advice and try to debug with endless reboots.
Since then most updates have gone smoothly, though rarely an update will bork the video drivers or the Ethernet due to changes on apple's side. I spent 2 hours one time getting sound to work. I'm glad for the learning experience but at this stage I often debate if I've spent more time on maintenance than the cost of just paying Apple their ransom for a nice machine.
If you're game for the time investment I'd say go for it. Definitely research which motherboard to use, I think that's been a big part of my struggles is having one nobody else uses I'm having to invest a lot of time in debugging my particular setup. The drivers have been the big deal, I've at various times had trouble with video, sound, Ethernet, and usb 3.0. Today I have everything but sleep working and am on the latest El Capitan release. YMMV.
I'm glad with my Macbook. It's expensive, but it works. I've thought about moving to Ubuntu, which I use at work since five years, but still lacks in some points compared to the Mac. And finding a modern laptop that just works with Ubuntu, while being significantly cheaper than the Macbook is not easy.