Submitted by MacInTouch reviews the EFI-X kit, a pre-assembled computer equipped with the EFI-X module which allows you to boot Mac OS X on a non-Apple machine without having to resort to hacks. They conclude: “The EFI-X kit offers the ability to run Mac OS X Leopard without hacks, to run Windows without special Boot Camp drivers, and to run nearly any other personal computer operating system from Linux to Solaris to OpenVMS! It’s not quite the seamless experience of Apple’s Mac computers, but it comes darn close. Its quad-core 3.82-GHz Core 2 Quad, combined with a fast Nvidia 8800 GT video card and 10,000-RPM Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive, leaves even today’s quad-core Mac Pro in the dust. For anyone but scientific and engineering users, the EFI-X kit offers even more real-world performance than Apple’s high-end, eight-core Mac Pro costing over twice as much.”
Its an excellent review, detailed and specific and balanced. The account of the legal issues is also very good. And finally, the comments are unusually intelligent and thought provoking and balanced. The whole thing is worth a careful read.
The thing you’re left wondering is whether the device itself is really necessary. It seems just to do an initial boot using EFI, and then allow the user to pick a boot device.
So, would the BOOT-KABYL-BUMBY.iso do this equally well? I don’t feel interested enough to assemble the required hardware and a retail copy of OSX to try, be interesting to hear from anyone who has. That said, if you were going to buy a new machine anyway, the spec required is pretty reasonable, so it would not be a bad choice.
Their pricing comparison basically shows you get a more fit for purpose machine than the Pro, with better quality components, for around half the price. Its the kind of tradeoff any Mac buyer in an open market would make – 95% would benefit from lowering the processor spec and investing more in graphics and hard drives, and still saving money. They used the Antec 180 in the tested machine – so even the case is way better than Apple’s.
I find this review somewhat lacking details. Except for short sentence claiming EFI-X run Linux, there is no further comments about which Linux they tested in EFI mode. Or how booting from GPT partitions with Linux works.
The main point of this device is arguably the ability to install Mac OS X without using sharpened knitting needles and some kind of Voodoo doppleganger of your computer. To that end most reviews won’t feature obscure features like Linux EFI compatibility. (Less than 10% of PC users install OS X, few of those will use EFI-X, and even fewer of those will install Linux using EFI-X)
That said it would be nice to know how well it works with Linux, what distros or more specifically what kernel configurations are required.
Seems to be an updated USB EHCI plugins in IOUSB extension which causes the problem. Using one from 10.5.5 could resolved it….
I’ve got one Efix device for a week. The thing allows you to install OSX and update it without hacks, but only if you stick with the narrow supported hardware list. There is a similar method that uses a USB stick called BOOT-132 but you need to install the correct kernel extensions for your hardware, which could be tricky (or impossible) to find. The only difficult thing that efix makes you to do is to configure the motherboard BIOS properly.
I wonder HOW is possible to boot OpenVMS on their system…