60 replies to this topic

[MacUser2525]

alyosa2001, on Dec 31 2008, 10:54 AM, said:

I'm sorry to say Hagar and all others, but what are you trying to say? did you unfold the mysteries of the computing science? did you invent the transistors, did you write the software, did you build the hardwares, did you draw the interfaces all by yourself ?
I suppose you must have done it, and so have all the people agreeing with you, in which case case i say "WOOOOOOWW", you DO HAVE the rights too keep all the INFO to yourselves, do not answer questions, but then again, NEITHER ASK!

I believe the point most of us are trying to make is to people asking the questions are list the hardware in your machine, post the steps you have taken that has got you to this point, don't ignore good advice when given, in general show you have made some effort to solve the problem yourself and don't post a "my computer won't boot" type of question with absolutely no other information given...

[ephydrid]

"How to ask questions the smart way" is available at http://www.catb.org/...-questions.html and really should be required reading for anybody who wants to post a question in a technical forum.  Probably most of us already know the info provided just based on our common sense, but it is nice to see it presented formally.

I am a complete n00b when it comes to osx86, but my reason for getting into it is because I want to get my hands dirty and learn more about how everything works.  I have a nice fast apple-branded mac that I can use for running vanilla osx, but I want to learn more about the ins and outs of how it all works, and I definitely enjoy challenging myself with learning new things, so it seems osx86 will be a great hobby for me.

[SA22C]

I've been tinkering with this stuff for a couple of years now and I remember complaints like this when the first JaS images starting emerging.  That's not to say that they aren't without some merit, but the dumbing-down comment has been made about almost every trend that starts out exclusive and slowly becomes accessible to the mainstream.  There is a level of enthusiasm and development here today that would never ever be possible without that kind of engagement.

OSx86 is better off today because of the greater interest by the public at large, not worse.

[m82a1]

to Hager: hell yeah, well said, <other positive comments you can think of>
i can not even find where to start to talk about of such events amongst friends where their ways of fixing stuff was just to re download whatever it was they needed, or "oop a small error, no worries, i'll get my reinstall cd / dvd" where i was always the one who took the time to research (www.google.com IS your friend) whatever problems i've had, be it in Linux, Windows, Mac, pc hardware, whatever.

[Konami®]

I completely agree Hagar, I am also tired to see noobs who don't know anything but the first thing that they want to know is how to install OSX86? I am like many people in this forum not to answer any stupid question. READ THE DAMN TUTORIAL AND WIKI SECTIONS and stop posting useless and already answered questions.  

[ZoroLives]

Wow, some hostility there.   I have been working hard at understanding all the terms. I have been researching and researching (and researching some more), I am almost complete with my buying list. Here is what I would like to contribute to this thread,

Not everyone understands all the terms used here. For me the first time I started using bash commands in the terminal I was a bit intimidated. But I came to see that, as long as I was shown an EXACT correct spelling, it really was easy to do. What I would love to see is a simple guide - not simple in programmers thinking, simple to help the beginners and save the programmers from frustrating questions again, and again. Naturally some will never learn but, I do wish there was a simple dictionary started, or perhaps one already exists, to explain carefully each term used for hacking purposes.

It would also be useful, IMHO, if no explanation referenced another obscure term without an explanation as to what that other term was and especially how they work in context.

I still know little about what comes next so I Cant really give a useful example but the general idea might be. kexts. These are strings of data, lines of code, whatever. They look like this (example) They are usually found in these locations (List some or all) They are normally used by Apple in such and such rearguard (what is their purpose), The reason they are important in adapting the OSX system to other hardware is that in the process of booting, the kexts need to be read usually after the bios check, or at the every start or ...

To sum what I am saying, it would be helpful to me to understand more about the terms used and the context of how the whole process works.

I have no doubt that once I order my system I will be able to download enough things to get it working. Thanks to this forum community for that confidence. Right now I wish I Had a better grasp on the terms and the process of changing the bios, overclocking, etc.

I hope in posting this I have contributed to a useful discussion and not opened myself to flaming. Doing my best and trying to help.

[iHack13]

right...

then here is "what I'd like to contribute"
I'm acutally not professional in any way and I'm not trying to be either. I'm just really trying hard not to be a noob and distance myself as far as I can from that attitude.

I'm not trying to speak in the name of others, but from what I can say, I barely learned stuff from Definitions.
It always needs some time and effort. If you get into it, you get to know it. Thats my attitude on this. Not more and not less.

Dunno how to explain it else. I just can't start off anything with Definitions... Only learning them by heart and playing them back like a casette recorder in order to impress people and raise one's attitude is just like cheating at school wihtout getting any profits from it (where did I read this )

Roll up your sleeves and get ready to make your hands dirty.

[ZoroLives]

That's OK. What I am trying to say can get very philosophical very quickly, and that doesn't usually endear me to others.  

Suffice it to say that not all of us think alike. Left brain vs right brain, Myers Briggs personality types, whatever ... I am OK with some not wanting definitions. But, I am suggesting that for some, perhaps even many of the incessant question askers (I ask questions too as I am a total beginner), it might make the terrain less terrifying - which automatically makes the brain have more horsepower for actually thinking and less shutting down out of fear (fight or flight takes real brain resources).

As for me, I am going for it anyway. It's just a little easier for me if I had a clue about the parts I was trying to put together. And please note, I have not yet downloaded the info to get ready for the install - still finishing a question on the video card. So all of this may be soooo frigging easy that this is really a dumb question. I hope not but apologies if so.

Again, just trying to widen the scope of understanding here.

[alexb17]

If people ask stupid questions, just ignore them. They'll either just quit or they'll figure out themselves just by searching on google or on the forums. That way, the ones that do stay are the ones that really want to put some time and effort into this  .

I don't think osx86 is dumbing down, on the contrary. A lot of talented people are creating really amazing stuff here! I've been using different versions of OS X for two years now, and the quality of the releases has improved a lot. I'm actually amazed at the work some people put in just to help others. I've never had a problem that I wasn't able to fix with just a bit of effort in searching the forums; that's because people put the effort in sharing their knowledge. And for that I am grateful!

[walterav]

Hi,

All of you are making a very good point in this thread, in the end a reductionist view of the osx86 thing is as simple as 1 2 3 and you're finished.
"Bootloader", Extensions "decrypter + drivers/injectors/disablers", some "post patches".
Or 1 'get it to install' 2 'get it the boot' 3 'fix other stuff'.
Or Hardware/BIOS/Software.
For a lot of pc users very important/understandable steps in the old day's. Especially when your old windows 95/98 performs better when re-installing ones a month. Xp maybe needed a re-install half a year or around the year, maybe never...

But here comes the problem you already mentioned. It is more like a paradigm. The whole MAC/OS easy vs PC/WIN difficult is interfering so much with each other that they are somehow unable to link for most of the wannabee users.
Although the organization of the OS is almost the same. Every OS has some kind of kernel with modules, drivers, inputs outputs layers/stacks/frameworks/libraries, that needs a routine of installing and maintaining. But the "mental process" of the person behind it is changing a lot, when just using the OS, and not thinking about all the background, back-end stuff that happens, not needing to re-install anymore, or less-often. This is not only a OSX related thing. But OSX is a easy example... Ubuntu is getting there also, if your lucky with the hardware

Mac users can in someway forget a lot more routine, understanding, where stuff needs to be put in the OS and why than other PC users. "I'm not saying that they can work better on their MAC's without this knowledge, they can learn alot to ;-)" Things are getting simplified year after year, a lot of us don't even know where or how to find a book in the library or local book store. The google phenomena is only making it stronger/worsen. Although very pc-like is adding extra hardware to a mac, also needs a extra driver, but in snow-leopard apple with add drivers just via software update, otherwise you'll end up with a lot of drivers on the machine without using it. So this is also getting easier.
There are people that only know how the find something in their MAC even on their network of MAC'S just by using "Spotlight" and "Recent Items". Finding 'apps', files, folders, utilities or even 'sytem preferences' this way.
I was totally shocked that my dad with a lot of real macs and almost 15 years of mac and pc experience got this far. He's not the only one.

I was even more shocked that using a OSX for more than a year, 'I' was moving in the same direction.
After years of organizing and building structures and routines to make, find, and repair stuff, in the end I just start searching my stuff in 'spotlight' to. Like a google nightmare. Almost not knowing anymore where it is on the machine, and just asking 'spotlight' with some crazy algorithm to magically find my stuff... than I might put a backup somewhere and next time start working with the file with the newest, date / recent item info that comes up in 'spotlight'. So in some way understanding to get osx86 needs a kind of organization, but when finished and using osx86 you might and up with total chaos "and it even works!!!". I cannot even come up with a valid argument anymore for structuring a lot of stuff...

Especially if you see yourself learning all this stuff, hours, day's, months of work. Putting a lot of time and effort in something, that might only overcome a lot of people only a couple of times in a lifetime. Installing/reinstalling from a crash... So all this learning chatting on the 'insanelymac forum', just for getting the first step of a Operating System right... get it to run, after that just use it. After that it may just rott away in your brain for the next time it happens, the next time will be a new routine new patches and new learning. The thing I just want to highlight, is that in someway you spent alot of effort in something/understanding, even though the goal of the project is to THINK LESS/THINK DIFFERENT. So you might end up with alot of knowledge that is not gonna be used for a long time. Or the info might even be useless for a very long time and it is useless unless you help others with it. Also lot of people just have their nerd friends to fix pc stuff, or make their pc's hackint0shed "most of them like it that way".

This is general trend in stuff, google is a good example, but just try think about organizers/PDA/GPS navigation/ TOMTOM-navigation, microwave-food, globalization , in the end a lot of us get SO dumb, that they can only {censored} on the toilet when it's listed in their organizer...
Or maybe wrong this is just Evolution, if the brain doesn't need to think anymore about some stuff, you are left with more mental processor power for other stuff to think about. Like what Screensaver will I use today on my MAC. Maybe computers a just getting more like the human brain, not that structured, but more scattered mapping of data... cloud computing?

To lower the failure rate of other osx86 newbies "Insanelymac newbies".
JUST STRIP the forum, to three or max five categories, but not like tons of forums with sub-forums. Even I get lost where I post my stuff in which forum/sub/sub/sub forum, I'll just google it back!!! WHAAAHAAA  

Only things that need organization or structuring are already self selecting entities, the rest will fail...  but its okay...

[flibblesan]

Too many people are signing up to the forum and have downloaded random distribution X and create a new topic basically begging somebody to do all the work for them.

I joined this forum in 2005 when all this was new and scary. I downloaded deadmoo. I trashed my system several times and learned as I went along. I'm no expert now. I still do things wrong and I'm still unsure about things. But I read threads and learn. I don't expect people to bend over backwards to give me a perfect 100% solution for my system. If something doesn't work then I either look for a solution that somebody else has found, or I work it out myself.

These days every tech website has written guides to installing OSX on a standard PC or laptop. This has unfortunately given the impression to many people that OSX is easy peasy and works on any PC just like Windows does. When it doesn't work, these people scream and moan on the forums here demanding to know why it doesn't work and why member X won't help them 3 seconds after they post a thread. People need to understand that they should look at OSX86 in the same way they look at Linux. That is, it may work perfectly but you may have to tinker with it to get it fully working. Unfortunately people don't.

I sound like a moaning git, lol

[Alessandro17]

This is still a great topic even after years. In fact it becomes more true everyday.

[Acro_Design]

looking back at my older posts i am ashamed, i have made more progress in 3 days from sitting down and reading basics then i have in months asking other people when all the answers are in front of me.

however thanks to the mass of n00b questions, when i have a simple problem, i never get a response. stuff like, i followed the correct procedure, but now i need to develop a work around because im foolish and choose to work with a laptop rather then save up for custom build.

Its very disheartening to answer other peoples questions over and over thats why we have the new users lounge, the problem is luck, some are lucky and can get quite far without a kp and feel like they are gods, only to crash and have no idea what to do to recover.

[nicksoph]

I have read most of the above posts and want to give another view from the perspective of someone who has no hackintosh experience and has only recently installed a mac VM to play with.

I can understand the feelings that those you have helped, have it easy and sometimes are ungrateful: On some of the other forums I read I am gobsmacked by some peps attitude to others helping them and sometimes astounded that despite questions being asked rudely, thanks not being given or carefully crafted replies being ignored that those who answer the questions continue to do so: So a general Thank you to all those who do help.
I would like to point out those who run the forum and answer the questions are in a very different place to many who join later. Those who lead the way are often much more involved in the subject, have different interests and uses for the forum and generally not the same as those of us who come later. It is a question for the forum moderators whether and how much the Forum changes to meet the needs of it's newer members but that they have different needs seems clear and whilst it is rare that those needs are incompatible it does seem to cause some friction.

I like the questionnaires on this site - they fulfil an important need in that they prevent the posting of questions where the answer is unlikely to be understood. I also like FAQ's not only do they give answers, they are there to be pointed to when a question is asked which has been answered and would like to see many more replies which simply say - 'read the faq' but to simply say 'google it' seems to miss the issue which is not that the information is not available - experience tells us that google has pretty much all the answers, no the issue is being able to sift and sort that information so that it becomes meaningful and this is sometimes not easy to do especially when you are ignorant of the subject. (I once found someone who couldn't get his machine to sleep, reading up on the processors microcode, despite the fact that he had no idea what microprogramming was.)

I would like to remind those of you who do know your subjects that you are standing on the shoulders of giants; those who coded in binary laid the foundation for assembly language programmers and they in turn made it possible to work in higher level languages, who in turn... Now if we were to ask all those who write in a current language to go back and learn to code in binary there would be little progress: Instead they need to know something about how computers work and can ignore much of what went before. Now if those who wish to help others on this site simply put new users through the same training as they went thru then a great deal of time will be lost simply repeating the lessons, now some of these lessons may be valuable, others less so - eg. do I really need to learn how to edit DSDT's to build my hackintosh or will an understanding of DSDT's suffice? I cannot answer that question  but those of you who have been thru the process and know something of my needs might be better able to judge and likewise for a million other questions most of which I might not even know how to ask. The point being that whilst you know and I dont, it really has to be you that tells me what is important but to say I should do the same as you did is probably not right; for once a solution is found there is a question whether those who come later have to discover it again or can be told about it and why it works.

There is generally nothing wrong with wanting the easy path thru a particular problem and if you (as those who know) think us (those who dont know) ought to learn something for ourselves then we must accept your opinion all I ask is that you consider what it is we ought to know and how best for us to learn that lesson rather than simply thinking that we should do what you did to know all you know.

[Alessandro17]

How did we learn? Experience. Experimenting. Studying...
I believe this recipe can still work nowadays.
There is also an "easier" route which works just fine: study very carefully what hardware works best and then build your own hack.

[hiddenrepression]

Programming and computers is a side hobby of mine but I'm newb at best. Looks like there's fun to be had =)

[coelomate1]

its the truth

[Mr.D.]

I have never even tried to get OS X running on a PC... not yet.

I am nearly complete with my G5 mod. I am going to install some flavor of OS X on it in a Virtual Machine. The tools that I have available are:

10.5 full install CD
my brain
the forums here and elsewhere

I have been a 'techie' for many, many years. I enjoy the challenge as much as I do the end result. The first thing I'm gonna do is try it out. Play around, Tinker. When I run into problems - I'll try to work them out for myself first. The guts of my hackintosh may or may not be unique, so I'll see what I can do on my own first. Because of personal requirements, I have to use a VM. Which one will be best? Dunno - but I'll figure it out as I go. If I get to a place where I am banging my head against a wall then I'll start my search. I think I'll find what I need by using that second tool I have. If, by some small chance, I have a truly unique problem - then its time to start posting. Because the chances of my problem being unique are so slim, but rather someone has also ran into that problem and just didn't post it. That will spur some people to reply with a "Whoops! I ran into problem X and here is the solution!" And if I cant find the solution that way, then I get creative! Hopefully I can adapt some other fixes that others have posted, or come up with my own - may even have to *gasp* do some simple coding. And if I do come up with a truly unique problem, and I find a fix all by myself - then I'll be sure to post that fix right here on the forums.

This is a community after all. I would hope that all here are willing to share their experiences, and I would also hope that all here are willing to do a little leg work themselves and find where others have shared their experiences.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the {InsanelyMac forums}

Ronald Regan... sorta

[coelomate1]

Well, I think some of the points are valid. There are a lot of people who don't have a brain.
However, sometimes you have people who just don't have time to read and hours worth of material or more. I'm one. It isn't that I don't want to read it (actually I'd love to) but I can't, don't have the time. I need a simple solution that doesn't take a lot of time.

Sure, I could just buy a mac, but at the same time... there is nothing wrong with making the OSx86 tools concise and foolproof.
There are some people that are doing that very well, and then there are some people who want you to understand every little detail of what went on in creating the tool to the point where you could practically write it yourself.

[Acro_Design]

My hack is for example a mindless yet brilliant auto tool that will help you do a lot of things without thinking, but when it doesn't work, you could just try another tool. but you shouldn't, I studied the documentation then ditched the tool and now compile os X installers by hand, I previously couldn't imagine compiling an OS X installer myself, but what we must remember is that if they can make a tool that does it why can't i do it by hand.

Another great example would be tools that cost money yet they do what a command line does, go figure, if your like me and always make syntax errors then i goes you might want to consider it, but where do you learn from that?

Lets summarise with the greatest example of something that is dumbed down, OS X is the ultimate example, its so distant from its unix roots that i doubt many people know that it is related to linux or even what linux is in mainstream culture, This is simply because apple do the i will do this for you thing so well, its a blessing and a curse. i think I'm trying to say that if you want to know OS X you must learn Linux then expect to add weird commercial restrictions and a splash of mindlessness and beauty and there you have it.

Yes i am a fan of auto tools, OS X and other things that stop me thinking to hard. who knows maybe one day i will farther some vegetable children.