Why and when to update Opencore?

[awediohead]

So I've built four Intel and one Ryzen hackintosh which are used daily by my family and which I maintain for them. Initially I kept them all fairly up to date, but never really noticed any difference, so after a year or so didn't bother.

However, I think they're due for a bit of an overhaul being mostly based around Opencore 0.5.x (some are on 0.6.0) and running Mojave. I've no interest in being "up to date" with MacOS, but I'm thinking about getting all the machines on to Catalina at least, and obviously updating OC and the appropriate kexts at the same time. Or I could ignore it for another 6 months if there's very little point? If it ain't broke . . .

What are these new versions generally doing? Yes I know I could read a very long list of incremental changes from one version to the next on Dortania, but I'm after an overview here please. So are the changes in OC being made mostly to solve problems with whatever MacOS version is in beta? Does the most current version have any relevance to someone running 10.15 as opposed to Big Sur or even Monterey? Are any problems being solved specific to Ryzen builds?

I'd really enjoy reading about anyone's experiences if you've stayed current with OC? For e.g. what have you noticed in terms of user experience from 0.6.0 to 0.7.0 ? Has anything improved? Anything broken?
Thanks

 

[antieatingactivist]

I think the general idea is that you don't need to mess with it if its not broken, or unless a new feature comes out that you want to implement, especially if its not you that is using the computer on a daily basis. I generally keep my stuff updated, but rarely notice a difference. If you are updating or upgrading macOS, it's usually a good idea to get up to date on OC and your kexts so you don't end up in a no-boot situation. The cool thing about the way things are done these days (Vanilla install w/ hackintosh specific stuff in the EFI partition) is that you can make yourself an EFI thumb drive to try out an updated configuration before you commit it to your main drive. If you have automatic macOS updates disabled, theoretically it should work indefinitely until you decide to update.

 

[dfritchie]

If you have Ryzen, there are big changes in OC for you!

 

[awediohead]

If you have Ryzen, there are big changes in OC for you!

Can you expand on that please? What have you noticed?

 

[awediohead]

I know I said I wouldn't but I got intrigued and so went to https://dortania.github.io/ and have read through quite a few of the monthly update reports from 2020 onwards. I don't pretend to understand most of what is being proudly announced, but at the same time, I massively respect and appreciate the enormous amount of work that's going on month after month.

Of course it's insanely complex as these guys (Acidanthera et al) juggle what they have time and resources to focus on, from supporting very old OSX versions, older hardware, newer hardware, reacting to Apple hardware changes, trying to help older Mac hardware stay functional, to say nothing of the problems they have to overcome when Apple updates MacOS versions.

I was very impressed by their focus on trying to ensure their user's productivity - which is ironically also why I personally don't update, though my way takes a lot less time and thankfully doesn't require me to be super smart!

My general sense is in line with what antieatingactivist said: I'll only consider updating OC when I update the OS, probably to Catalina (I'm not sure I like the read only/snapshot approach from Big Sur onwards, but I need to understand it's implications better) and there's no rush to do that on the Intel machines because they were already old hardware for the version of OC I used to install i.e. they've fixed related problems long since.

Ryzen based hacks are of course very different and what I'm chiefly concerned about as I deal with upgrading my family's hardware from Haswell era i5's and i7's going forward - thankfully no rush on this because these machines are mostly used for browsing and media consumption, and very occasional homework!

That said, I'm feeling more confident that I can bargain hunt the secondhand market for suitable ryzentosh hardware that'll combine being a very significant upgrade (for my family) with becoming gradually cheaper and more available.