hackintosh My Triple-Boot Hackintosh Masterpiece is Complete

[samiscool51]

windows, linux and OSX

you SIR, have a unusual computer (in a British accent)

and it must be keep away from people who will use it's power for evil.....

 

[DnFx91]

47 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

windows, linux and OSX

you SIR, have a unusual computer (in a British accent)

and it must be keep away from people who will use it's power for evil.....

 

i promise i will use it for good, to be honest it spends 90% of it's time booted into mint, gparted is a nice thing to have sitting there at all times

[samiscool51]

12 hours ago, DnFx91 said:

i promise i will use it for good, to be honest it spends 90% of it's time booted into mint, gparted is a nice thing to have sitting there at all times

wait... mint?

mint is unsafe, have you not heard that it has huge security problems.

it's really unsafe to use it...

use something like ubuntu or debian, they are much safer...

[vanished]

6 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

wait... mint?

mint is unsafe, have you not heard that it has huge security problems.

it's really unsafe to use it...

use something like ubuntu or debian, they are much safer...

I heard that once the images on the site got swapped out for infected ones (at least I think that was mint) but I haven't heard anything about it being unsafe across the board...

[samiscool51]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I heard that once the images on the site got swapped out for infected ones (at least I think that was mint) but I haven't heard anything about it being unsafe across the board...

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-mint-18-improves-security-mostly/

so long as you aren't running an infected version you should be safe but because of this event it's not safe to continue using it as their servers can be hacked again or something like that

[vanished]

3 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-mint-18-improves-security-mostly/

so long as you aren't running an infected version you should be safe but because of this event it's not safe to continue using it as their servers can be hacked again or something like that

Ah, that's the logic behind it.  I suppose that's sound... but it's possible they've improved their security, and it's also possible other flavours are hackable but haven't been discovered yet.

[samiscool51]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Ah, that's the logic behind it.  I suppose that's sound... but it's possible they've improved their security, and it's also possible other flavours are hackable but haven't been discovered yet.

thats the huge downside of linux, if the kernel itself is unsafe, you are F**ked

they have improved it's security greatly since it's release but whenever i have to use linux i just use ubuntu as i have had better luck getting that one to work and it uses a different method of keeping itself safe (i think)

[vanished]

1 minute ago, samiscool51 said:

thats the huge downside of linux, if the kernel itself is unsafe, you are F**ked

Well that's true of any OS, and afaik most people regard Linux and the whole Unix family as having been very secure from early on and remain so to today.  A website breach (though ironic) doesn't necessarily indicate anything about that OS once on your local machine.

[DnFx91]

15 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Well that's true of any OS, and afaik most people regard Linux and the whole Unix family as having been very secure from early on and remain so to today.  A website breach (though ironic) doesn't necessarily indicate anything about that OS once on your local machine.

i imagine that security isnt an issue given that the mint installation is basically empty, with no personal data on it, and its connected to a heavily firewalled company domain. Also i checksum ISO's religiously and have had the same mint 18 cinnamon ISO for a while now.

[suedehead]

Hey DnFx91, found this thread from a Google search and wondered if you could update us on how the triple-boot is running now 18 months later.

 

I built a Yosemite/Windows 10/Mint system in 2016 using tonymacx86 as a guide and it was persistently running but with persistent headaches . I just recently seem to have broken booting into a non-Windows OS so I am going to use it as an excuse to "upgrade" my hard drives and start new installs using High Sierra/Windows 10/and maybe Debian.

[DnFx91]

1 minute ago, suedehead said:

Hey DnFx91, found this thread from a Google search and wondered if you could update us on how the triple-boot is running now 18 months later.

 

I built a Yosemite/Windows 10/Mint system in 2016 using tonymacx86 as a guide and it was persistently running but with persistent headaches . I just recently seem to have broken booting into a non-Windows OS so I am going to use it as an excuse to "upgrade" my hard drives and start new installs using High Sierra/Windows 10/and maybe Debian.

hey man, sorry i actually dismantled this machine about a week after this post, i cobbled it together from spare parts. Can't remember too much about how it worked to be honest  I sometimes refer back to this article if i need to remind myself how i did it haha.

[suedehead]

23 minutes ago, DnFx91 said:

hey man, sorry i actually dismantled this machine about a week after this post, i cobbled it together from spare parts. Can't remember too much about how it worked to be honest  I sometimes refer back to this article if i need to remind myself how i did it haha.

Haha OK thanks for the reply.

[Compassionate Homicide]

On 1/24/2017 at 8:16 AM, DnFx91 said:

This has been the most painfully irritating build i have ever attempted, but i finally have a desktop machine that can boot Linux Mint 18, OSX Sierra and Windows 10, but it has many quirks. I noticed that triple/quad booting has been asked about on the web for years but nobody has ever really done a good case study of how on earth you do it, least of all with pictures and guides.

 

Ill just give a quick run down of what we have here.

 The machine is a lenovo thinkcenter E73 tower, OEM machine with only upgrade being the 9800GT, it has a 128GB sata SSD and a 1TB HDD. 

 

First step was to install the hackintosh on the entire SSD using clover and the fantastic instructions on TonyMacx86. Spend weeks trying to figure out how kexts work and getting the nvidia web driver to run persistently, a basic tutorial on clover configurator comes in handy here. So once OSX was installed, i then introduced the 1TB HDD to the system and installed windows 10 on it in the usual manner, just boot off the USB stick and give windows the entire 1TB. From here on i believe you are at the mercy of your UEFI whether the windows bootloader makes it onto the SSD where it should go, or whether windows craps out and put it on the HDD. In my case windows put it's bootloader into the EFI partition of the SSD, therefore clover was able to see it and i was instantly given a windows option in clover. 2 down one to go.

 

Finally in order to cram linux mint onto the machine, i refrained from shrinking the NTFS partition from within windows as this screwed everything the first time i did it, partition table went completely out of whack. instead, at this point simply boot off the live Mint setup USB, and proceed to install, Mint will detect the windows bootloader (but not the OSX one) and prompt you to install alongside windows. At this point i used the linux setup to cut the 1TB in half and installed mint into the second half. 

 

When mint has finished installing, reboot into clover and you should now have a linux boot option. In my case, the installation of linux destroyed my ability to boot windows from clover, but i was still able to boot windows from grub, which appears after you select linux from clover, ugly i know. The fix i found for this was to boot back into Mint and run sudo update-grub, which then rejiggers all the bootloaders around into their right places, after this, i was able to boot all 3 OS's from clover, as well as the OSX recovery partition (doesn't quite count as a quad-boot right ?)

 

The main issue i found with this project was the trial and error nature of screwing up bootloaders and having to start again, clover is a bit fragile when it comes to making it boot more than just OSX. Essentially this machine went through about 5 iterations before it was finally stable.  

 

In summary, windows 10 and Mint run perfectly on the hardware as you would expect, but that's the easy bit, the challenge lies with making OSX happy with "peasant grade" non proprietary hardware, and this almost entirely revolves around onboard realtek audio. From what i can tell, clover has kexts for basically any realtek 3.5mm jack bay that has 5 ports, but seeing as i have this weird OEM machine, i only have a bay of 3 x 3.5mm jacks, and this is tragically not supported AFAIK. i solved this by cannibalising a USB DAC, velcro-ing it to the floor of the case, and running XLR's out of the rear I/O, looks janky as hell but works a charm, and the sound quality is far superior to the onboard anyway. One final thing i was unable to get working within OSX was hardware reporting like CPU temps and stuff, from what i can tell this is all low-level apple kernel stuff that goes over my head, but hopefully someone can make or port a kext for this functionality.

 

Thanks for reading anyway guys i just wanted to share what i learnt building this frankenstein PC, as i know many of you are interested in the concept of multiple OS's on a PC, but are maybe confused as to where you even start.

 

DnFx

Yes, I'm necro'ing this, because it's a very big mountain to conquer and DnF accomplished what few have.

 

Congrats to you DnFx91. I forgot that I did the same back in 2015. It was a TOTAL PITA. Took me about 2 weeks, every night, 3-4 hours each night, to pull this off using a single HDD and no bootcamp, Many hours of my life were wasted just to say I did it. I don't even remember what the system specs/hardware are. I put the Winuxtosh in my spare closet when I was done and haven't touched it since.

I had some sound driver issues iirc that I was never able to remedy.

Yes that's called a CRT kids. I also like working on my computers on the floor/carpet. I also have cats and don't use a grounding strap. 

I'm old, don't judge me.

[DnFx91]

On 11/16/2018 at 6:33 AM, Compassionate Homicide said:

Yes, I'm necro'ing this, because it's a very big mountain to conquer and DnF accomplished what few have.

 

Congrats to you DnFx91. I forgot that I did the same back in 2015. It was a TOTAL PITA. Took me about 2 weeks, every night, 3-4 hours each night, to pull this off using a single HDD and no bootcamp, Many hours of my life were wasted just to say I did it. I don't even remember what the system specs/hardware are. I put the Winuxtosh in my spare closet when I was done and haven't touched it since.

I had some sound driver issues iirc that I was never able to remedy.

Yes that's called a CRT kids. I also like working on my computers on the floor/carpet. I also have cats and don't use a grounding strap. 

I'm old, don't judge me.

i see your necro, and i 1up it.
2021 necro go brrrr