A few notes about the main points I learnt installing triple boot into my new PC:
- When picking the hardware components, search for success stories related to such components so that you make sure they’re compatible and someone has already prepared configuration you can work on instead of building the setup from zero. E.g Non APU Ryzen (without G) + Gigabyte X570 + Radeon RX580
- Be aware that if you want to use Hackintosh as your only OS, intel will be easier and better supported, e.g docker with hypervisor, Adobe suite… My idea is using Linux, leaving OSX option for Xcode and Windows10 for gaming and win-only software.
- OpenCore is currently the only option for AMD, do not lose time reading about clover. See this video as an intro, not enough to get into action but you’ll get a general idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_QPLl81GrY
- You can lose data quite easily, e.g touching partitions, so make sure you backup if needed.
- Make sure you read this guide carefully, it’s more precise and updated than the video: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/
- This guide is also quite interesting: https://github.com/alkalim/ryzen-catalina
- Once you’ve seen the video and read the guide you’ll be ready if you understand these topics: Boot USB, STDT, ACPI, KEXT, UEFI, config.plist, SMBIOS
- If you find someone who already succeeded with your same CPU + Motherboard (e.g lucky me!) it will be way more easier to setup, as you might avoid the pain of testing different kexts and configs) but you still need to make sure you understand what you’re doing (previous points). Otherwise your Mac install menu will appear in Russian and you’ll have to figure out why that happens and how to reset NVRAM.
- You need to installs OSs in this order: Windows, Linux, Mac (3 pendrives). Both Windows and Linux need to be running in UEFI mode, and once both are running like that, you’ll need to resize the UEFI partition to at least 200MB as it’s a Mac requirement. (EFI created by default by Windows is 100MB…)
- You also need a Gparted USB so that you can create the Mac partition with the free space that you left after installing Windows and Linux, you’ll use HPFS+ but in Mac install partitions tool you’ll need to enable journaling for it (File > Enable Journaling) and convert it to APFS. Otherwise it will complain about lack of “firmware partition” (UEFI) even though you had already prepared it.
- In the middle of the installation it will reboot without warning and restart going on the installation from the disk.
- If the latest Realtek kext does not work for you, e.g unable to configure NIC on installation, try with v2.2.2, it did the trick for me.
- Once successfully installed you typically need to do a few postinstall things:
- Just in case Windows update messes up with opencore boot loader make sure you install BootStrap.efi in BIOS. That way you’ll always have the “OpenCore” option in BIOS.
- You need to update the hard disk UEFI partition. If you prepare the USB BOOT MAC drive with gibmacos you might not have an EFI partition there, you just need to mount the EFI hard disk partition manually, delete its EFI folder and drop the one you have in the USB BOOT.
- If OpenCore is unable to detect Linux, make sure you installed it in UEFI mode, e.g in Linux mint picking the UEFI partition as boot partition.
Enjoy!
Other links:
https://github.com/ivmos/config/tree/master/ryzentosh
https://github.com/sergeycherepanov/homebrew-docker-virtualbox
ivanmosquera.net 