os upgrade

[g]

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 
> (fabien.aurejac at gmail.com) 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 
>>>> <mashavecher at gmail.com> 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.
>>>
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