Should you install OpenCore Legacy Patcher on an old Mac? - Testing Ventura on a 2012 MacBook Air

[@dmug]

Monterey tends to be more forgiving, I’d be curious if it’s much more usable.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Oh interesting, I will have to give it a go. Thought catalina was still a bit slow for my liking.

[@wolverine31sh]

I moved my 2012 MacBook Air 1.8 with 4gb ram and it pretty smooth no crashes

[@Locky2701]

Mine is 15" with 16 gigs of ram and 1 tb SSD runs smooth on Big Sur and Linux Mint I did try to install Monterey and it worked perfectly fine with OpenCore Legacy

[@QuinsTechCorner]

That’s interesting to know. :-) What year is your 15”?

[@starlte4life]

im using mine on big sur and its been running really well.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Really glad to hear it - I might give that a try.

[@driftingbunny]

Macbook pro 2013, late 2011, mac os ventura works super smooth (4gb ram, ssd)

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Wow!! I’m surprised , but glad it’s working for you. :-)

[@bryan_ferrer]

I am currently using Macbook Air 2011 on OCLP Ventura. Surprisingly, It works ok. There are some lag/delay when initially pressing specific buttons or navigating but is forgivable since it does not really happen often. Also, since this is a non-metal working on a metal-based demanding OS it is still impressive what the OCLP team has done. If there is one I wish they could or hopefully do is for devices like "non-metal bases" macs they would strip down the OS similar to Linux. Most of the apps mainly browsers require certificates for example and lightweight apps can only run as much. Omitting the modern features should be understandable. #OCLP

[@HuseyinTheBrain]

I am using a pretty powerful Mac Pro (Mid 2010) tower, desktop computer. I have upgraded my hard drive to an SSD, added RAM and upgraded my video card and also have a capture card for my SLR camera to stream/record video. I also record professional audio with a professional microphone & audio interface. I love this computer and my setup. Here are the specs: 2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (I think it is a 12-core processor) Memory: 40 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Graphics Card: Radeon RX 580 8192 MB I do a ton of video editing/video work and graphic design. I need a fairly powerful machine. I do not want to spend $5k or more on a new computer. I was considering a Mac Studio but that might not even be enough for me and all the inputs I need. A Mac Pro desktop might cost me $10k. I need to decide whether to get a new computer or try OCLP soon. I am ok with technical stuff but not great. What do you guys recommend???

[@Locky2701]

I have 2 Mac Pro mid 2012 both are running great Monterey and Linux Mint. One is 6 cores 3.46 with 64 gigs of ram,another one is a 12 cores 2X3.46 with 128 gigs of ram,both have RX 580 and NVME Samsung 1 TB in Raid,plenty of HD for storage 🤙🤙 I also have a 2019 Mac Pro runs Sonoma perfectly.

[@jericotimtim]

hi nice review, may i know if you do still use oclp right now, or you've switched to linux?

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Thanks for watching, glad you liked it! After this video, I ended up using Linux Mint for a while and it was really good. Fast and compatible with modern apps, but the battery life really suffered. We're talking 3 hours of battery, when macOS gets 7. I ultimately ended up downgrading back to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, and using Firefox ESR.

[@itspericote_a]

should it run well on a macbook pro mid 2012 ssd and 16gb ram? If not should i upgrade to monterrey or big sur?

[@QuinsTechCorner]

is this the HD4000 version you’re talking about? If so, it’ll likely run better than the macbook air given the beefier CPU and double the RAM, but honestly I’d go with Big Sur based on this experience.

[@sinord5288]

Im using a mid 2010 imac and installed monterey vie opencore patcher. Having all sorts of problems trying to install newer apps they Just wont have it.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Yeah that’s gonna chug on a 2010. Highest I’d take a machine like that is High Sierra.

[@yootae13]

I think it’s good on Monterey or Big Sur since it still get support for apps and stuff

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Yeah I’ll have to give it a try!

[@justanotherhuman-d6l]

For my 2012 Mac Mini i ended up just installing proxmox and using it as a low power node because of how crap the performance using OCLP was. In addition to everything you seen. While I was just having it plugged it (not doing anything) it used over 500GB of data from my network over 60 days.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Interesting, I’ll have to check out proxmox.

[@amcch3]

My experience with the OCLP has been mixed, with components that are good, bad, and ugly: The Good: Great initiative, creating the possibility to upcycle the premium apple hardware, extending the useful life and keeping it within the macOS ecosystem. The alternative was to extend the life through Linux distros. By the way, Fedora is excellent on legacy Macs. The Bad: Installation was not trivial in my case (also a MacBook Air 13'' mid 2012). Obviously, there are also performance challenges, that always should be expected when running more recent software on legacy hardware. The Ugly: IT Security of such a system is questionable. It was particularly uncomfortable to see that additional background processes are installed in the name of people in the OCLP team, literally. I have tried to provide this feedback to the team but without success. I sincerely hope that this issue will be corrected soon.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Thanks for sharing your experience! I’m concerned about those processes too, now that you mention it - very odd. I’m running Linux Mint on this machine now, so much faster and really enjoyable.

[@amcch3]

Thanks for your reply. Taking the opportunity to discuss another subject as well: I respect that using Linux Mint is a matter of taste. From my perspective, I have to prioritise the superior stability & hardware harmonisation that is obtained with Fedora and OpenSuse. With those two distros I can easily install reliable workstations for professional use on the (still excellent legacy) apple hardware. I used to be an Ubuntu enthusiast since its inception, but stability, security and continuity are no longer a strength for the ubuntu desktops, unfortunately, despite the LTS versions. Observe that the server versions are still very good due to the commercial demand.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

@@amcch3 Yeah, I’ve definitely been thinking about switching up what distro I use. Thanks for giving me a few things to think about!

[@farizalfirmansyah2853]

dont go to latest version bro, im using big sur on 4gb and its fine

[@LUKAS-bb4jc]

I guess it depends on the Mac model. My 2012 MacBook Pro runs Sonoma almost as good as Catalina. Yes it's def not as fast as my M3 Pro machine *obviously* but it's definitely useable. But at the same time it's a good MacBook Pro 15" mid-2012 non-Retina (so maybe easier to run than Retina), has i7, 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB of SSD.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Interesting! I’ll give a few different versions a try.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

Yeah, depends on a few things I think. The extra CPU power and RAM would help so much. What GPU does that machine have? HD4000 still?

[@LUKAS-bb4jc]

@@QuinsTechCorner mine has a dedicated GPU so that might help

[@siri-v18.x-intelligence-beta]

I think he forgot to install the root patches for hardware acceleration. The dock isn’t clear, so that’s how I know.

[@QuinsTechCorner]

I applied the root patches after install, and the GPU shows up as supporting metal 2 (HD4000), but still no luck 😭 Good idea though.