alt Hacker NewsCan you slim macOS down?
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> To the Unix purist, this might appear wasteful and unnecessary, but macOS isn’t, and never has been, Unix.
I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
I don't understand why Apple doesn't offer a headless MacOS or at least a path to a minimal install. Those mac minis make a great little server box but losing 8GB to hundreds of processes, before you've done anything, just feels wasteful and inelegant.
I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users (other than cases where you're required to use one e.g. for work). I can understand it for casual users who just want something simple that works for basic tasks, but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want? In Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS.
I badly need slimmed down macOS for CI VMs. Yeah, some little things can be cut out but most of the time not.
On the other hand, macOS is not that much memory-hungry as one might think. Like, a 4GB VM can start and build software.
It would be nice to be able remove some or all of the iOS bloatware apps but you have to disable system protection and they will just reappear on the next macOS update. They really need something similar to the "Windows Components" screen that lets you check or uncheck things that are bundled in the windows install.
Having trouble understanding how this discussion, and TFA don't mention:
which would be where I'd go if total control of the OS on Apple hardware was wanted.
Our machines all have CPUs that can execute on the order of 10^9 instructions every second. Why waste time worrying about a few hundred processes that use next to no CPU time?
For those wanting some semblance of control over macOS system processes, consider experimenting with App Tamer ( https://stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/ ). I was sceptical about it but "rogue" system processes, like Spotlight Indexer / Engine, that randomly demanded and hogged 100% of the CPU is now a thing of the past for me, after I used App Tamer to set it to not use more than 20% of CPU resources. It can supposedly stop (kill?) processes too, and I am experimenting with that too. But yeah, I think it's time to dump macOS (thankfully, I am still using an older version so my experience is less shitty).
I'm not sure who the author is, but the fact they choose to be stymied by SSV (which can be disabled) to avoid investigation down that path, which is similar to the path enthusiasts do with Windows to build tools like Tiny11, NTLite, and distributions like Atlas, feels intellectually lazy. Asserting that macOS is not UNIX (it is, quite literally, including the most recent release Tahoe) and then arguing with folks who corrected them in the comments, makes me think the author wasn't really interested in answering the question they put forth and instead were trying to mystify readers to shut down exploration and curiosity.
It is entirely possible to gain an understanding of those processes running on your computing system and to decide which process you don't want to run at startup, this is regardless of the desires and intents of the maker of the computing system, as long as you retain control of the hardware. Many of the Windows optimization tools at various points even involved community made binary patching. There's no basis to claim that it's not possible to understand or take actions, it's just that the Mac community has a different set of priorities and focus areas than other computing communities, so nobody in the community has yet invested the effort to do so.
You could summarize this blog post as answering "No" to the question in its title, without actually exploring the question to determine if that's a true answer. It's not a true answer, and won't be until we completely lose control over our own hardware.
Misleading title, should be “you can’t”
It's such a shame that we have come to this. MacOS is basically Windows now. :(
If you don't like the conclusion, and you have an M1 or M2, see also https://alx.sh
Asahi's not perfect, but there's no restrictions. You bought the computer, after all.
I have often considered making a set of scripts to do just exactly this (after disabling the SSV so that the system can be modified).
It would be no less secure than any modern or common linux OS, which do not use a read only signed root.
Instead of forcing iOS onto laptops, they locked down MacOS.
> Here’s our first problem, as those are located in the Signed System Volume (SSV), so we can’t change them in any way. The same applies to the other 417 LaunchDaemons and 460 LaunchAgents that account for most of the processes listed by Activity Monitor. In the days before the SSV it was possible to edit their property lists to prevent them from being launched, but that isn’t possible any more when running modern macOS.
SSV can be disabled. It would be ill-advised to do so, but Apple intentionally allows you to do that. In fact you can strip away every single security layer of macOS, including allowing unsigned kernel extensions to be loaded. This document is a bit outdated, but it should still be possible to do all of that. https://gist.github.com/macshome/15f995a4e849acd75caf14f2e50...
Feels like the article is just a cheap dunk on macOS. Has Apple perhaps baked in a bit too much into the SSV? Definitely. Even the Chess.app is in there.
Does it really matter? Almost certainly no.