Clover Bootloader vs OpenCore

Clover Bootloader starts macOS, Windows and Linux systems on Macs and PCs with UEFI or BIOS firmware. It can launch through UEFI directly or use CloverEFI to emulate UEFI, and supports UEFI and legacy boot modes. Its graphical interface can be customized with themes, icons, fonts, backgrounds, animations and mouse pointers. Users can create boot entries for other operating systems, while the interface can save preboot logs, screenshots and OEM ACPI tables for diagnostics. Settings are held in an XML config.plist file in EFI/CLOVER. When firmware Secure Boot is enabled, Clover’s Secure setting limits booting to signed binaries. The repository links to a separate theme manager and theme collection, and its README points users to AppleLife, InsanelyMac and macos86.it forums. Build procedures are provided for macOS and Ubuntu 19.10. Clover incorporates OpenCorePkg libraries for kext injection and patching. It is free under the BSD 2-Clause License, which permits source and binary redistribution. The releases page lists version 5175 as latest, with six assets.

OpenCore is a bootloader distributed with a development SDK. Its repository includes UEFI support libraries for Apple-specific UEFI drivers, with support for loading Apple disk images and manipulating PNG images. The libraries also cover Apple PE image signature verification, supplemental Apple UEFI secure boot code, XNU kernel driver injection, and a patch engine. For configuration, they parse plist files; OcGuardLib provides safe integral arithmetic, type-alignment checks, and a UBSan runtime. The project lists UEFI and BIOS support, multiboot, boot-entry editing, and boot-menu customization. It is described as multiplatform, with Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted among the listed platforms. OpenCore is free and open source under the BSD-3-Clause license. Release source archives are available as zip and tar.gz files, including version 1.0.7. The README points users to discussion forums in several languages, including KVM configuration discussion. Documentation also lists third-party kernel extensions and says that list is informational and provided without warranty.