What is left to do before releasing [...]]]> Meklort and I worked on the project again last night and things are shaping up quite well.  The NetbookBootMaker is now reverting back to the DellEFI method of caching kext for the installation.  We ran into too many issues with the new method… like Kernel Panic and missing Quartz Extreme.

What is left to do before releasing an alpha version of the solution is to iron out some bugs from the GUI and to integrate it in the DVD menu items for easy recovery of broken Netbook OSX install.

This should make this so much easier for people.  But you will need access to a Mac and an 8GB+ USB key… small price to pay to get piece of mind installation.

Netbook owners using Apple MAc hardware will be able to “Netbookify” a restored copy of OSX DVD on a USB stick. What this mean is that you will simply restore the legal OSX [...]]]> Just to give you folks interested to OSX on Netbook update as to where Meklort and I are at with the next gen installer.

Netbook owners using Apple MAc hardware will be able to “Netbookify” a restored copy of OSX DVD on a USB stick. What this mean is that you will simply restore the legal OSX DVD installation to an 8GB+ USB Key then run a Mac application (windows should be available one day) called NetbookBootMaker.

Once the application has done a few things to the USB Key (like installing a boot loader (Chameleon), creating a custom extension cache including custom kext, etc you will be able to boot the netbook with it to perform the OSX install.

Once you boot from the netbookified USB key the installation will proceed just like on a real Mac… except that at the end the all to familiar Fail error message will show up… but the magic already happened behind the scene. At this point you simply click restart, take the USB key out of the netbook and boot straight to OSX.

At that point you may elect to apply a Combo patch or upgrade to 10.5.7. Obviously going from a 10.5.0 install to 10.5.7 need a special -x flag at boot to make thing display right until you can run “NetbookInstaller” which will replace the trusty DellEFI application that I used to write.

NetbookInstaller will do similar things to your netbook as DellEFI and will allow you to boot to a fully functional 10.5.7 system.  The big difference is that it will detect your netbook hardware and will install appropriate custom kext to make things right.

Currently supported devices by the installer are:

• Dell Mini 9
• Dell Mini 10v
• Dell Vostro A90
• Lenovo S10

We are probably a week away (or less) from releasing an alpha version to the community.  We just need to figure out some bugs with the new GUI Installer that replaces DellEFI.