OCLP or dosdude, and openzfs

[Arne]

I have a Mac Mini 2009 (early) that highest native OS is ElCapitan 10.11.
More and more Apps are refusing to work, like WhatsApp or Discord, and others like Obsidian or browsers like FireFox are only working in a very old version, e.g. more and more sites are not functioning anymore.
I switched to Chrome cause it holds on to more functionality of sites but it got sluggish, and more and more sites ...

So I play with the thought of "upgrading" my Mac.
And I would like to stay on MacOS.

What experience do you have regarding OpenCoreLegacyBuilder and dosdudes patcher?
What is the best solution for me?
Dosdude's patcher lets me stay on hfs+ but more and more apps ...
Installing 10.15 is like travaling into a great world, cause it uses apfs and metal grafics but seems kind of "old world". BigSur instead seems more the start of modern world. Kind of.

I don't want playing games or other stuff that needs fast cpus.
Just browsing the web, writing stuff, audio and video editing (in the future when I get to start making YT Videos).
Using new versions of backup tools like duplicacy, borgbackup, restic and other tools. It is annoying that homebrew is complaining so much (more than 1/3 of the outdated formulae are not updated anymore).
And of course using OpenZFS.

What's your take on it?
Voyaging to the new world of BigSur or beyond?
Staying in the middle world of 10.14 or 10.15?

Or running away from and abandoning MacOs and using FreeBSD or Linux?

[nodarkthings]

Hi!
Even if you might get something out of OCLP, I think your biggest issue is the Tesla graphics card in your model. MacOS stopped supporting them a long time ago.
I'm currently using one in a hackintosh (Ivy Bridge CPU) with Mojave and a patch (by chris1111).
I doubt you can install anything past Mojave on your machine, be it with any method available; there's also the mandatory APFS format from 10.15 on, more memory needed, etc. and your CPU would probably be very sluggish anyway...
For the time being, Mojave is perfectly usable, Firefox ESR supports it until next September and there's a promising browser called Orion that is an interesting alternative (still in beta, though) and will probably be perfectly usable (I'm currently trying it).

As for the other options you mention (FreeBSD or Linux), I can't tell, but if you're used to MacOS, there's some tinkering for getting a similar interface, I guess.
(My Linux trials did not convince me ).
FreeBSD might be interesting if you're relying much on ZFS as OpenZFS is integrated, but I have no experience of it.

Needless to say that it's wiser to make your trials on an external drive if possible...

[nodarkthings]

Note that chris1111 has also a Catalina patch that should work for the Tesla GC, but you're probably aware that no 32 bits software will run in Catalina — that can be bothersome, depending on what you're using.
This utility gives you the list of all 32-bit executable code on your Mac:
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/06/18/32-bitcheck-1-8-changes-text-size-auto-updates-and-more/

[Sharko]

My two cents: the era of Open Core Legacy Patcher has pretty much passed. There was a golden period of a few years ago where OCLP wasn't too much of a stretch: the older graphics cards were not that far removed from those currently in support, the processors could still keep up (sorta), AVX instructions had not yet permeated the software stack, etc. At this point I regard it as a losing proposition (and I say that as someone who has two Mac Pro 5,1's running Monterey under OpenCore).

I have a 2010 MacBook Pro laptop. I have Xubuntu 24.04 installed on it. It is quite usable. It is secure, and well-supported with software. I would say that it is slightly inferior to MacOS in terms of polish, but not horribly so. In some ways I would liken it to running Snow Leopard: it doesn't have all the bells and whistles and integration features of even Monterey or Mojave, but it runs basic web browsers and LibreOffice competently. It's a just a bit different in terms of figuring out where to find various settings, and how to update software, etc.

The only thing that gives me pause in your posting is your future workflows in audio and video. Linux is known to be quirky in that regard. Other than that caveat, I would say jump to Xubuntu.

[tangles]

yep

embrace linux my friend on such old hardware

encoding h265 for YT will exceed yr intended post cycle to be honest. AV1 (just around the corner) encoding will force a monthly post cycle!

yr probably better off leaving encoding to a more modern iPhone.

Homebridge and/or AdGuard is about all that hardware (via Linux) can tackle now.
ether that or hide it inside an SE30 case with an ipad for a screen to play retro games ← fun project!

it's going to be a sad day when I have to let go on a couple of TrashCan Macs soon when devs start to leave them behind.
Can't even retro them to a 1RU rack mount chassis like u can with the iMac Pros either.