[plug] Request for Comment - need suggestions and clue-bats

[Brad Campbell]

On 27/02/17 13:31, Onno Benschop wrote:

> Based on that track record, I'm reluctant to depreciate my use of VMware
> on a Mac, but my last 8 months have been less than optimal. I purchased
> a late 2015 27" Retina iMac and loaded it up with 64Gb of RAM. It's
> currently running El Capitain.
>
> It crashes an awful lot. OWC have swapped out the RAM and tell me that
> there is nothing wrong. Apple told me that they don't support 64Gb of
> RAM, OWC says othewise. VMware tells me that the microcode on the
> SkyLake processor is out of date, Intel agrees and Apple waves its hands
> in the air in the hope I won't notice that they're not actually doing
> anything.

My iMac is considerably older (it's a mid-2011) so small shovelfull of salt.

I had _massive_ issues with lockups and stability that were *all* ram 
related. I ended up buying ram from OWC in 2012 and it has been apples 
since.

I've always run Linux on the iMac, and I'm running it on an early 2015 
Macbook Pro Retina also. I get the odd hardware niggle (like the PCIe 
facetime camera does not work on the Macbook) but to be honest I knew 
what I was getting into when I bought them and all the bits I wanted to 
work do.

OSX is cute and all but I still get work done faster with Linux, 3 heads 
and xmonad.

Thunderbolt support got usable in kernel 3.18, so it has been around for 
a while. Of course, linux gives me early microcode support. Ooooh 
(lightbulb goes on)... there's a thought.

Try knocking up a boot usb with linux on it to load the latest 
microcode, and then warm boot into OSX. That will quickly demonstrate if 
that is the issue without touching your existing software stack.

I find the iMac makes a great Linux machine, but yours is a _lot_ newer 
than mine. On the other hand, my similarly aged Macbook Pro is awesome too.

Regards,
Brad