leopard

[eestlinc]

has anyone installed Leopard on their mac? How long does it take to install? Does it mess with your setup? I want to make sure I have time to do it right before I install, ad I am pretty busy these days.

[Yamaneko]

I actually tried to install Leopard on my notebook (PC obviously) a few days ago . I was able to get the Darwin bootloader working nicely and recognizing my Windows install, but once I got to the Apple loading screen my display would just blank out and my machine would hang. I'm guessing the kernel doesn't have support for my graphics card (it's a Quadro FX).

I can get the command line working, though. :D

The install isn't that long; about fifteen to twenty minutes for a full install, probably less for an upgrade. Since it's Apple the upgrade probably doesn't mess with your current setup much. Regardless, it never hurts to backup valuable data.

[eestlinc]

yea, i definitely will back up before I do it. the backup might take longer than the install.

Can you actually run OSX on a non-Apple computer? Does OSX need to run on a computer with Apple architecture?

[Yamaneko]

Yes. You can even run it on newer AMD processors. The only real requirement is that the processor be able to execute the SSE2 instruction set (ideally SSE3). The OSx86 community has been hard at work since Apple's switch to Intel to get drivers out for people with non-standard hardware. Of course it's all illegal, but still fun.

[eestlinc]

It's illegal to run OSX on non-apple hardware? Or just illegal to make homemade drivers?

I would think Apple would want to make their OS available for people with non-apple hardware, so they could sell more software. They could also make it easier to run windows on apple hardware, since apple makes nicer laptops than most if not all non-apple notebooks.

If I wanted to, could I reformat my MacBook's hard drive, give it a windows file system, and then install Vista as the only OS? (not that I would want to do this)

edit: just as an aside, i recently conducted a survey of students at my law school on what OS they use on the laptops they bring to class, and two out of the 200 or so respondents chose option (c) which was "my laptop runs on an OS other than a Windows or Mac OS." I should go find out who these two people were, and see if they were just lying or if they actual use linux (or whatever) laptops for school.

[Yamaneko]

It's illegal to run OSX on non-Apple hardware. Their financial success has always been in hardware and not in software. The software is just the incentive.

You might be able to get Vista running as the standalone operating system on your HDD since there's support in Vista for Extensible Firmware Interface (Apple's implementation of a BIOS). XP needs Boot Camp, though.

They could be running BSD or Solaris. :D

[eestlinc]

Do they make using apple hardware part of the OSX EULA? Seems like even with that requirement it would be hard to actually make it illegal.

I'm also wondering about the antitrust implications of apple hardware/software pairing. I wonder if anyone has ever brought a legal challenge to apple requiring the use of apple hardware to run OSX. I bet I know some people I could ask.

[Yamaneko]

I'm sure Apple's lawyers could prosecute and have a case against someone who was helping people install copies of the OS on non-Apple hardware.

The only method currently available of installing OSX on non-Apple hardware requires the user to either download a ripped image of the install disc or similarly ripping the install disc themselves and then post-patching the necessary files to get the thing to boot from non-Apple hardware. That violates the end-user agreement.

[eestlinc]

Well in that case, yes. If you could install OSX on non-Apple hardware just by using the install disc, I don't really see how Apple could legally restrict the manufacturer of the hardware you are installing OSX to. They can put such a restriction into the licensing agreement, but antitrust law might prevent it from being legally enforceable. Of course, I haven't actually studied antitrust law yet, so I might be wrong. I'm guessing nobody has actually challenged this yet, if it's not technically possible to do the install without ripping a disc image.

[o_O]

I also tried to install Leopard onto my machine running an AMD 5600+ and got as far as Yams. I tried a few different install methods - native and dding a vmware image. It was pretty much futile because I was trying to install onto a SATA drive on an nForce5 motherboard. I needed patched kexts for my SATA controller and I'm pretty sure nForce5 is still unsupported. :p

My vmware install booted nicely though. It just runs like crap. The install time was the same for native and vmware (kept hanging because of SATA in native) when native worked.

[rubah]

Eest, they want to make people install it on their hardware 1) so they'll buy their hardware and 2) so they don't have to troubleshoot a million different configurations of hardware.

[Yamaneko]

I also tried to install Leopard onto my machine running an AMD 5600+ and got as far as Yams. I tried a few different install methods - native and dding a vmware image. It was pretty much futile because I was trying to install onto a SATA drive on an nForce5 motherboard. I needed patched kexts for my SATA controller and I'm pretty sure nForce5 is still unsupported. :p

My vmware install booted nicely though. It just runs like crap. The install time was the same for native and vmware (kept hanging because of SATA in native) when native worked.
Were you able to dd the image to a partition of your choice? I went the native route and downloaded BrazilMac's Leopard image from demonoid. I then post-patched the kexts from the latest release from a few days ago. Everything went fine up to that point. I just wish I could get my video card recognized. It's a Quadro FX 570M which is the exact same card as the 8600GT GDDR3 found in the Macbook Pro. It might be a simple edit of the kext for all I know, but after spending all afternoon Thursday trying to get it to work I gave up.

Were you running in AHCI or compatibility mode?

[o_O]

I also tried to install Leopard onto my machine running an AMD 5600+ and got as far as Yams. I tried a few different install methods - native and dding a vmware image. It was pretty much futile because I was trying to install onto a SATA drive on an nForce5 motherboard. I needed patched kexts for my SATA controller and I'm pretty sure nForce5 is still unsupported. :p

My vmware install booted nicely though. It just runs like crap. The install time was the same for native and vmware (kept hanging because of SATA in native) when native worked.
Were you able to dd the image to a partition of your choice? I went the native route and downloaded BrazilMac's Leopard image from demonoid. I then post-patched the kexts from the latest release from a few days ago. Everything went fine up to that point. I just wish I could get my video card recognized. It's a Quadro FX 570M which is the exact same card as the 8600GT GDDR3 found in the Macbook Pro. It might be a simple edit of the kext for all I know, but after spending all afternoon Thursday trying to get it to work I gave up.

Were you running in AHCI or compatibility mode?

Reading my post, I wasn't that clear on what worked and what didn't. The vmware install that "booted nicely" only booted in vmware. That's where it ran like crap. I never really expected that to work, because the VM I installed onto wasn't anything like my actual machine.

I was able to dd it to any partition and grub was able to chain load it (so Darwin was working fine), but (I think) since my SATA controller isn't completely supported in the patchsets yet it would only boot into single-user mode. I wasn't able to mount any volumes read-write, so I wasn't able to patch the nForce4 kext with my old motherboard, and I wasn't able to find any way to get nForce5 working at all (I didn't search that hard yet though). I definitely had no trouble with my graphics cards though. I tried a 6600GT and a 7950GT.