First and foremost, you’re going to want to determine how feasible it is to install OSX on your computer in the first place.  Is it going to work? Are there going to be some things that do work and some that don’t? You’ll have to excuse me for the rhetorical questions, but there is a very good possibility that OSX will either not work at all or only partially work on your system.  In a lot of cases there are ways to fix these problems like patching Kext files or other workarounds, but I’m assuming a relatively compatible system that will boot OSx86. Luckily, I’m going to show you how to figure out how compatible your system is.

Firstly, make a list of all hardware you have.  This list must include every device, including those built into the motherboard itself.  If you built your computer yourself like I did you’re likely to be able to figure this out fairly easily. Otherwise you can find out by booting up a live CD like the standard Ubuntu install CD and running a command.  First download the CD image (choose the 32-bit version if you don’t know) at http://www.ubuntu.com/.  Once the download is complete burn it to a CD or DVD, I use CD Burner XP for this: http://cdburnerxp.se/.  After it completes the tray will open up, just push it back in, close all your programs and reboot your computer.  You may have to go into your BIOS setup program and enable your CD/DVD drive to boot or move it up in priority. Usually you press DEL or F10 to get into the program right when you turn your computer on.  Dell computer users can just press F12 to enter a boot menu and choose the CDROM.

Choose your language and then “Try Ubuntu without making any changes to my computer.” It’ll take a while to load depending on your system specs. Once you’re in, open up a terminal by going to the applications menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen and then into accessories > Terminal.  Type in “sudo lshw -html > /home/ubuntu/Desktop/hardware-list.html” without quotes of course. This will create a file on the desktop in an easy to read format that has all of your hardware listed in it. You can email it to yourself if you want by opening up Firefox. You may have to do some Googling if you can’t figure out what some of the components are, but once you figure everything out go to http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page and look up each component.  You’ll have to take note of which drivers people used, how compatible things are etc.

Most people with newer Intel systems will be able to boot the “Vanilla” or regular Mach kernel that Mac’s use.  AMD users and people with older or less compatible hardware may have to use an alternate Kernel. If you do, make sure you don’t update your system without doing a lot of research and backup beforehand! This is about all I can say as far as getting OSX installed.  I’m not going to tell you where to get the various distributions, how to patch install DVD’s or anything else illegal. I’ll give you a hint though: pirates, demons, and hunting for iso’s. I’m also not going to tell you specifically how to install it on your system. Basically, just back everything up, and start trying. You may fail multiple times before you get a configuration that works for you. This involves wiping your hard drive etc, so you really need to back everything up.

Here’s your step by step guide, just as I did it.  If you follow it things will be much easier for you than they were for me:

1. Back up all of your data, and wipe your system. Delete all partitions.
2. Start screwing around with OSx86 and doing research.  Find a way to install it on your system.  At this point I’m also going to assume you know how to get an installation of whatever version of windows and/or linux you’re going to use working properly on your system. Windows XP will undoubtedly require a lot of drivers, so make sure you have those.  Vista, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 should install fairly easily on most systems.
3. Once you have a working version of OSX on your PC take note of everything you did to install it, and then wipe it again.
4. Boot up your Ubuntu Live CD and fire up a terminal. Run the command “sudo gparted”.  This will start GNU Parted (the best graphical partitioner IMO).
5. Create a primary NTFS partition for Windows and OSX. It’s not a typo, I really do want you to create an NTFS partition for OSX.  We’ll get back to it later. The Linux partition will have to be EXT2, not EXT3.  There are ways to do this with EXT3, but our method won’t work with it.  You can do without journaling, just make sure to use FSCK once in awhile. The partitions should obviously be large enough for their respective OS’s.  If you think this may be an issue, look online for disk space requirements for the OS’s you wish to install. The partitions have to be primary, and should probably be on the first hard drive. Rearrange SATA or IDE plugs as necessary. Take note of which partition Ubuntu is going to be installed on e.g. /dev/sda2, /dev/sda1, etc. You’ll need to know this in a minute.
6. When you’re creating the partitions, leave one megabyte of free space at both the beginning and the end of the drive(s). Really, the beginning is the important one because it’s where Windows is going to write the MBR.  I’m just mimicking what Windows does when it creates partitions.
7. If you’re installing Linux don’t forget to create a swap partition. This can be on whatever drive you want and it should be around 1.5 times larger than your installed RAM.
8. Install Linux, but instead of installing the bootloader at the beginning of the drive where it normally goes, install it on the linux partition you created.  This is very important. If you’re installing Ubuntu, screen 7 of 7 entitled “Ready to install” will have a button titled “advanced options.” Click it, and choose to install the bootloader on the partition you created.
9. After the install is done, the system may or may not boot into Linux. Don’t worry about it if it doesn’t.
10. Boot your OSx86 CD as you did earlier when you were experimenting. Open up disk utility, and erase the partition you created for OSX. Format it with the HFS+ non case sensitive filesystem.  I recommend not using journaling either.  If you do, things will work fine but you won’t be able to write to it in Linux which sucks.  We’ve already opted out of using journaling  with Linux so we may as well stick with the trend.
11. Install OSX just like you did before.  Afterwords, it will probably boot but either way don’t worry about it if it does not.
12. Now comes the fun part. Pop in your Vista or Windows 7 CD and install it on the partition you created for it. When you’re done, you won’t be able to boot into Linux or OSX at all.  That’s why Windows is so l337 – it assumes no one will use any other OS with it.  Well, I guess that’s an over-generalization and I’m not going to lie, Windows 7 is pretty damn good.
13. After the install you’ll be in Windows wondering what to do and then you’ll probably visit the website  http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 scroll to the bottom and download EasyBCD. Then you’ll open it and Windows will ask you if you’re sure you want to.  You’re sure, so you’ll click OK.
14. This program will modify your bootloader, so be careful. Adding an entry for OSX is fairly simple – you just click “Add / Remove Entries” then click the Mac tab, choose Generic x86 PC from the drop down, edit the name (It’ll show up this way at boot time) and click “Add Entry”.  You now can boot OSx86 and Windows Vista / Windows 7.
15. To add Ubuntu to the boot menu, click the Linux tab and make sure Grub is selected in the type dropdown, and select which drive it’s on. Windows doesn’t have devices listed in the filesystem like Linux does so you may want to click the start menu and type “compmgmt.msc” in the search box.  This will open the computer management window.  Click on Disk Management in the left hand pane and find your Linux drive – make sure its not the swap partition you created! This will be what you want to choose in EasyBCD.
16. At this point, you’re done. When you reboot you should have options to boot Windows, OSX and Linux. Make sure to leave me comments with your results, especially if you tried using ext3 with EasyBCD.

The main resources you’re going to need for this whole process are:

Websites:
NeoSmart Technologies EasyBCD Documentation:  http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/EasyBCD+Documentation+Home
They did an awesome job on their documentation.  There’s a walk-through for any OS you could possibly want to boot, so make sure to check it out.

OSx86 Project Wiki:  http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Use this mostly to check hardware support, but beware of the installation guides.  Most of them suck and are hard to follow.  Installing OSX on a PC can be complicated and time consuming depending on your hardware and what you want to do with it.  Your best bet is to do a lot of reading and research before you even attempt to install it.  Have a good plan and be well informed beforehand.

OSx86 Distributions:  http://pcwizcomputer.com/ipcosx86/ (iPC OSx86 Install Disc) Probably the best, and most comprehensive OSx86 distribution ever.  Some of the other ones to look into are Kalyway, iDeneb, Leo4All, iATOKOS, Zephyroth, BrazilMAC, and JaS.  Those aren’t listed in any logical order. I’ve also heard that a company called Apple has a Distribution of it, but it’s rumored to only work on their computers.

Wikipedia – OSx86:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osx86 If you haven’t already read this, you should. The article does a pretty good job at giving a history of OSx86, the boot methods, and more. Reading it gave me a good concept of what OSx86 was all about and how it worked. This in turn helped me to understand other things along the way.

Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/ I love Ubuntu.  I can’t even tell you how far Mr. Shuttleworth has taken Linux in the past years. If you haven’t had the chance to try it out, you should do it as soon as possible. You don’t even have to uninstall Windows.  You can dual boot it, install it in Windows, or just use the live CD if you like.

Other interesting news about OSX on PC hardware:

Pystar Corporation:  http://www.psystar.com/ Pystar sells computers with OSX pre-installed, so it’s not surprising that they’ve been engaged in a legal battle with Apple for quite some time. The fact that the lawsuit has gone on for so long makes me think that they may actually have a decent case.  Pystar had countersued Apple for monopolistic behavior among other things.  The legal battle has been very interesting, I encourage you to check it out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

EFi-X:  http://www.efi-x.com/ A USB device that creates an EFI multi-boot environment allowing retail OSX to be installed on a PC. It’s really nothing too special in my opinion, but I haven’t read too much about it.  If it makes more hardware supported by OSX then it is pretty cool.  I just don’t see the point of buying a device to create an EFI boot environment when it can be done for free.  Their website is awesome though! The device is pretty cool, even if I wouldn’t buy it. There’s also an article on Tom’s Hardware (including an interview with the creators) http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/efi-x-efix-leopard-usb,2021.html

PearC:  https://www.pearc.de/ If you’re not feeling PyStar, you could buy from the German company Pearc.  I think their name was inspired by the PearPC emulator, but that’s just an uneducated guess.