I have more than a small problem with diarrhea of the word processor, as Stephen King would say. Nevertheless, if what I am saying sounds stupid or impossible then, by all means, tell me. I would hate to go through thousands of pages --I am only in the first few hundreds-- only to discover a fatal flaw in my plan.
My plan is to learn and learn and, hopefully, by the time I fall off Apple's table, I will know enough to do what I plan; something that I hope lots of people around here will tell me that is possible and worth the effort. I was hoping for "inspired" in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way but I'll settle for not stupid and worth pursuing.
I do not think there is such a thing as enough ram (or a fast enough ssd LOL!!) and 256gb with or without OpenCore sounds positively delicious. The jump is permanent as the 32gb sticks are registered ram and the machine will not boot into OSX without OpenCore. (AFAIK) it will boot into any OS without the limitation Apple built into OSX. This is not an FU, it is understandable, 32gb was supposed to be sufficient for anyone once. However, I am tired of cringing about security every time Apple dumps something I own from their update schedule. We can all be grateful that some people here have worked tirelessly and given their time generously to help so many others and asked for nothing more than a thank you note --some of you can do something more for these men and women, please do so-- and that is a testament to their character and charity; what happens when they get tired of fighting "the good fight" or their partner says "it is me or MacRumors"?
A Mac, much like a Honda, is built to last and to keep you a customer when you decide you cannot live without some feature or another without further intervention. Also, like Honda, the character of the company and its products has changed with the demise of their primary founder --like Apple, Honda has its own "WOZ"-- and will continue to change towards the style and status conscious and away from "a bicycle for the mind". Had "Maps" not had the teething problems it had coupled with the insane expectation of perfection from Apple while allowing egregious security and code blunders from everyone else, Tim Cook would not be running Apple and Johnny Ives would not have been forced out. Since "Woz" is not coming to the rescue, I feel confident that there are efforts afoot to erase Steve Jobs' footprint from Apple. Denis Richie did die the same day but no one is out trying to erase his footprint from Bell Labs! It isn't so much that I am getting off the bus but that I am "getting my own car" and "customizing it" and getting Apple Music and iCloud access through other means.
Given the microcode problems present in all Intel processors prior to sky lake, I am counting on OpenBSD to improve on Apple's hitherto vaunted security and mitigate or eliminate the risk (there might be some misunderstanding here but I hope not). Then, using a "disposable" virtual machine (use an instance and discard but keep the original safe) --supposedly VMWare runs on BSD-- I can enjoy the big cats again in safety --Mountain Lion was/is POSIX compliant. Currently, it is my intent to use just X.org to handle opening, closing, and window management and run everything from a CLI just like we all used to before "1984". The idea is to maximize the resources available (even though (AFAIK) Mountain Lion cannot even see 90gb of ram) for multiple and very large PDFs and/or something like Photoshop in the virtual machine or Blender outside.
(AFAIK), any supported OSX should install without a problem since, when it checks to see, it is genuine Apple hardware. If a desktop is needed then I would prefer OpenStep or something similar, otherwise, less is more. I would consider HardenedBSD but I believe OPENBSD to be considerably more secure. I would consider DragonflyBSD for the supposed SMP performance but (AFAIK), it is as "not as secure" as OpenBSD. I do not "need" Apple's toys to work on this machine but Mojave would install and update without a hitch --for another couple of years at least-- in a virtual machine and that would allow me to backup my work to iCloud even if I could not do so from Mountain Lion; right?
I have considered just air gapping the cMP and living happily ever after with a big cat but it really isn't feasible because the machine does so much more for me (like keeping me in contact with the world and reality) than just facilitate creativity and learning.
I cannot believe that no one else has thought of doing this even a little and even if now, OpenCore makes the jump seem unnecessary. To me, now that I have the need, the deep immersion into Unix is all about the learning and I have already learned quite a bit --all of it applies to OSX as well-- about Unix in general. However, I recently asked some questions in a Unix forum about a topic that I thought was arcane and PDP-7 old that turned out to be far less arcane, far more useful than I ever thought, and, as it turns out, far closer than I would have ever thought; has anyone heard of Troff? I hadn't. The ANSI C text has some stuff about this in before the preface and there are COBOL books that were also created this way!
I had heard that the OpenBSD community was tight lipped but I thought that meant on their own forum rather than here at MacRumors. I help whenever I can and I have always found help here so it seems reasonable to believe that tight lipped there does not mean tight lipped here --even when it is the same person.
My plan is to learn and learn and, hopefully, by the time I fall off Apple's table, I will know enough to do what I plan; something that I hope lots of people around here will tell me that is possible and worth the effort. I was hoping for "inspired" in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way but I'll settle for not stupid and worth pursuing.
I do not think there is such a thing as enough ram (or a fast enough ssd LOL!!) and 256gb with or without OpenCore sounds positively delicious. The jump is permanent as the 32gb sticks are registered ram and the machine will not boot into OSX without OpenCore. (AFAIK) it will boot into any OS without the limitation Apple built into OSX. This is not an FU, it is understandable, 32gb was supposed to be sufficient for anyone once. However, I am tired of cringing about security every time Apple dumps something I own from their update schedule. We can all be grateful that some people here have worked tirelessly and given their time generously to help so many others and asked for nothing more than a thank you note --some of you can do something more for these men and women, please do so-- and that is a testament to their character and charity; what happens when they get tired of fighting "the good fight" or their partner says "it is me or MacRumors"?
A Mac, much like a Honda, is built to last and to keep you a customer when you decide you cannot live without some feature or another without further intervention. Also, like Honda, the character of the company and its products has changed with the demise of their primary founder --like Apple, Honda has its own "WOZ"-- and will continue to change towards the style and status conscious and away from "a bicycle for the mind". Had "Maps" not had the teething problems it had coupled with the insane expectation of perfection from Apple while allowing egregious security and code blunders from everyone else, Tim Cook would not be running Apple and Johnny Ives would not have been forced out. Since "Woz" is not coming to the rescue, I feel confident that there are efforts afoot to erase Steve Jobs' footprint from Apple. Denis Richie did die the same day but no one is out trying to erase his footprint from Bell Labs! It isn't so much that I am getting off the bus but that I am "getting my own car" and "customizing it" and getting Apple Music and iCloud access through other means.
Given the microcode problems present in all Intel processors prior to sky lake, I am counting on OpenBSD to improve on Apple's hitherto vaunted security and mitigate or eliminate the risk (there might be some misunderstanding here but I hope not). Then, using a "disposable" virtual machine (use an instance and discard but keep the original safe) --supposedly VMWare runs on BSD-- I can enjoy the big cats again in safety --Mountain Lion was/is POSIX compliant. Currently, it is my intent to use just X.org to handle opening, closing, and window management and run everything from a CLI just like we all used to before "1984". The idea is to maximize the resources available (even though (AFAIK) Mountain Lion cannot even see 90gb of ram) for multiple and very large PDFs and/or something like Photoshop in the virtual machine or Blender outside.
(AFAIK), any supported OSX should install without a problem since, when it checks to see, it is genuine Apple hardware. If a desktop is needed then I would prefer OpenStep or something similar, otherwise, less is more. I would consider HardenedBSD but I believe OPENBSD to be considerably more secure. I would consider DragonflyBSD for the supposed SMP performance but (AFAIK), it is as "not as secure" as OpenBSD. I do not "need" Apple's toys to work on this machine but Mojave would install and update without a hitch --for another couple of years at least-- in a virtual machine and that would allow me to backup my work to iCloud even if I could not do so from Mountain Lion; right?
I have considered just air gapping the cMP and living happily ever after with a big cat but it really isn't feasible because the machine does so much more for me (like keeping me in contact with the world and reality) than just facilitate creativity and learning.
I cannot believe that no one else has thought of doing this even a little and even if now, OpenCore makes the jump seem unnecessary. To me, now that I have the need, the deep immersion into Unix is all about the learning and I have already learned quite a bit --all of it applies to OSX as well-- about Unix in general. However, I recently asked some questions in a Unix forum about a topic that I thought was arcane and PDP-7 old that turned out to be far less arcane, far more useful than I ever thought, and, as it turns out, far closer than I would have ever thought; has anyone heard of Troff? I hadn't. The ANSI C text has some stuff about this in before the preface and there are COBOL books that were also created this way!
I had heard that the OpenBSD community was tight lipped but I thought that meant on their own forum rather than here at MacRumors. I help whenever I can and I have always found help here so it seems reasonable to believe that tight lipped there does not mean tight lipped here --even when it is the same person.
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