I wonder if the VT-d disablement is required for the rootkit to work. Ideally you'd have VT-d in macOS for virtual machines, but then again you also don't have Thunderbolt so maybe it's simply not complete enough to enable 'everything'. (and if you really need everything you should probably just buy a Mac anyway)
I think the story is something like macos fails to parse the DMAR table properly, or something along those lines. If you drop the DMAR ACPI table you don't need to disable VT-d. If you disable Intel Virtualization support from the kernel via the dart=0 kernel flag, you don't need to disable VT-d.
> If you disable Intel Virtualization support from the kernel via the dart=0 kernel flag
So that is what dart=0 does!
I have Googled this, many times, as with several other weird kernel flags. Not even because I want to fix something, but because I'm curious about what's happening!
Every time, without fail, all I ever find are random forum threads of people saying "this flag fixed my computer", or maybe "You need to enable this flag because it makes your PC act more like a Mac" or some such. It's so frustrating!
You actually can have thunderbolt, as long as it’s on the board. There are plenty of intel boards with it and even a couple amd boards now. I expect with the next generation being royalty free it will be much more prevalent.
After putting together various hackintoshes through the years I have to agree. The Mac mini is actually a really versatile machine and most compatable option for triple booting macOS, Windows, and Linux with zero hacks and native performance. I use the refind bootloader and it works great with zero compromises like disabling virtualization or janky drivers.
