Been there, done that.
I know relying on a given setup to get work done you run a high risk of
breaking something should you upgrade. I myself just upgraded from
Mojave to Catalina (latest natively supported), for basically the same
reason as yours, and it didn't went smoothly. Had to reformat everything
and start over from scratch before restoring the latest Time Machine
backup. In the process, Time Machine broke the sparsebundle I used as a
source. Didn't lose any data, but lost access to the former snapshots.
Not sure if because of sparsbundle inherent fragility or one of my
workarounds I used over the years and can't remember.
/Depending on your workflow/, if your internal SSD storage is large
enough you could simply make a *dual-boot* with a more recent OS and
fall back to Mojave should something break in an unacceptable way.
Notably, any 32-bit app you rely on and don't have an alternative for
(iWeb). Check which ones are still 32-bit. The downside is, you'll have
to find a way to have the relevant documents on both installs. Use an
independent Time Machine target for both installs, don't try to save
some cash cramming everything into the same drive. Of course even if
your storage is soldered in, you should still be able to make a working
clone as, AFAIK, Macs can still boot off an external HDD. Just don't
choose any cheap spinning rust; APFS performance is rather bad on
anything else than SSD.
Or you could always try to make a *virtual machine* out of Mojave and
reinstall those apps you can't do without. Beware though, some post-High
Sierra Mac OS X versions don't behave that well when virtualized and may
run unacceptably slow.
Currently I have both for my 2012-era MBP (pre-Retina, maxed-out specs):
A virtualized Mac OS X for 32-bit-only apps, and a second bootable
internal partition using OCLP to boot Monterey. Going empirical, since
Monterey runs pretty well on the latest, strongest 2015 MBA which only
features an Intel HD 6000 graphics, I assumed the same OS would be OK on
an Intel HD 4000 graphics since there isn't too wide a gap between them.
Some Apple-imposed limitations are just here for profitability reasons.
Even if OCLP claims to fully support Sequoia on this hardware, I won't
try to be too ambitious as some functions inevitably break (anything
that relies on Metal, basically) and the general experience will be
sluggish.
On the other hand, if those specialized software of yours don't run that
reliably on Ubuntu, I'd start checking there what the issue may be, and
what is the recommended setup.
On 29/09/2024 13:12, Masha Vecherkovskaya wrote:
Thank you very much for your thoughts. The computer is a 15 inch 2019
MacBook Pro, and it’s intel based wich makes me want to hold to it for
as long as I can. I’m dreading the day I have to upgrade. Not
upgraiding is now impacting daily tasks. It has so much stuff
installed and working, so many workarounds around other workarounds.
It will take ages to rebuild all of that. Some of the newer versions
of the bioinformatics tools I use seem to be less reliable, at least
on my workstation which runs Ubuntu. I still use iWeb to run website
for students, and I know it can be done in another way, but at the
moment it takes me just a couple of minuets to update the info for
them. I used to uprade one OS behind current, waiting for stuff to
settle. It wold have been easier to clone hard drive and keep it as a
working copy in case everything falls apart, but it’s soldered in, so
I’ll have to rely on time machine and hope everything goes well.
Thank you.
On 29 September 2024 at 12:27:42, Fabien Auréjac
([email protected]) wrote:
Added to what said Richard,
you can also with OpenCore Legacy Patcher
<https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/> upgrade to some
OS that is not officially supported by your computer, in the case
it's an old mac.
Provided the computer is strong enough to handle the new OS, it may
give a better lifetime...
Le 29/09/2024 à 03:34, Richard L. Hamilton a écrit :
The newest your hardware can handle, unless you have apps that
require 32-bit support (for which Mojave is the last OS version that
has it) or that for some other reason will break in a newer OS.
Don't be more than two or three behind (I think it's really years,
somewhere in the 3 to 5 range) if you want at least security
updates. (don't expect much other updates for OS versions near the
old end of what still gets security updates)
Exception: if you want less problems with MacPorts and don't want to
be part of solving problems much, wait a few months on Sequoia;
don't go later than Sonoma yet. The first few months of any new OS
major version can have more pain for apps and software from
anywhere, esp. open source software with lots of dependencies and
mostly or totally unpaid volunteer support.
For software that is neither MacPorts nor Mac App Store,
https://roaringapps.com/apps may provide some indication (if someone
has reported! there are plenty of unknowns) whether listed apps will
work on a given OS version. There may be other such sites, but
that's the one I know about.
On Sep 28, 2024, at 21:13, Masha Vecherkovskaya
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all.
I’ve been putting off upgading from Mojave for as long as I could.
But it seems inevitable at some near point. Which OS would you
reccomend?
Thank you.
