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xraydoc

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Oct 9, 2005
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Will be installing Catalina on a Mac mini 7,1 with a dual-core i7 and 16GB RAM. Since at the moment I can't make a bootable USB flash drive, my plan is to install it over Sierra, then boot to recovery, format the SSD and reinstall Catalina.

Any issues that I should anticipate? I don't require any legacy 32-bit software on this machine.

Thanks
 
Are you on APFS by chance? If so, you could try creating a partition for Catalina and install to that.

APFS supports thin provisioning, so you could create a partition without having to shrink the current one. Try Catalina out in a fresh environment, copy over what you need, and then delete the old partition. The Catalina partition will be able to automatically use the space freed up by deleting the old one. No more weird juggling required.

I did this migrating to Catalina from Mojave with my 2018, and it worked a lot better than in the HFS+ days. But it requires that you are already on APFS for it to work.
 
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The last I've read still says Avoid loading Catalina on mini-Macs. It's filled to the brim with bugs. Maybe it's improved. Check carefully before you leap. a2
 
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Are you on APFS by chance? If so, you could try creating a partition for Catalina and install to that.

APFS supports thin provisioning, so you could create a partition without having to shrink the current one. Try Catalina out in a fresh environment, copy over what you need, and then delete the old partition. The Catalina partition will be able to automatically use the space freed up by deleting the old one. No more weird juggling required.

I did this migrating to Catalina from Mojave with my 2018, and it worked a lot better than in the HFS+ days. But it requires that you are already on APFS for it to work.
Good idea, though unfortunately it's on the old HFS+ as far I know. It's been unused on a shelf for almost 18 months.
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The last I've read still says Avoid loading Catalina on mini-Macs. It's filled to the brim with bugs. Maybe it's improved. Check carefully before you leap. a2
Thanks. If it's awful, I'll reformat and start again. There's nothing on the machine that needs to be saved.
 
Yeah, it's hard to say if you'll have issues on Catalina or not. I kinda agree it's been buggier than most releases, but I've managed to dodge the issues others are seeing because of my setup for whatever reason. And in my case, Catalina has fewer issues with my eGPU than Mojave, making it more stable overall for me. Being a developer, I don't have much choice to sit on older releases either, since I need to test and be on the latest Xcode as much as possible to avoid falling behind Apple's carrot/stick.

With 10.15.2 also just released, we should also be seeing bugs getting quashed, so it's not quite the same as at release in Oct. Can't really say what will happen until you try it, unfortunately.
 
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Yeah, it's hard to say if you'll have issues on Catalina or not. I kinda agree it's been buggier than most releases, but I've managed to dodge the issues others are seeing because of my setup for whatever reason. And in my case, Catalina has fewer issues with my eGPU than Mojave, making it more stable overall for me. Being a developer, I don't have much choice to sit on older releases either, since I need to test and be on the latest Xcode as much as possible to avoid falling behind Apple's carrot/stick.

With 10.15.2 also just released, we should also be seeing bugs getting quashed, so it's not quite the same as at release in Oct. Can't really say what will happen until you try it, unfortunately.
Thanks. I'll get it going this weekend and report back if I have any real issues. Hopefully on this machine there won't be the same HDMI issues that others have reported on the 2018 Mac minis (8,1).

Update: Installed Catalina over Sierra, booted to recovery, formatted the SSD to APFS and installed a clean copy of Catalina (I wanted a clean install but didn't feel like making an installation USB stick). Went perfectly smoothly, though slower than expected, and everything seems to be working quite well. The poor little dual core i7 processor got a quite workout as everything was configuring itself after logging in for the first time (as iCloud drive, Photos, Dropbox and Mail all synced up their sizable databases), but seems to be working quite smoothly now. The old mini doesn't seem support a 4K display at anything above 30Hz, even via DisplayPort, but that's an expected limitation of this old machine. Kind of amazed it'll run at 4K at all, to be honest.

I was going to buy a new Mac mini or a 16" MBP (since I eventually want to run it on my two 4K displays), but I may just hold off for a few more months and cross my fingers that the 2018 mini gets updated.
 
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I'm not going to update so quickly moving forward after experiencing Catalina's bugginess. There's just not any significant benefit to do so. If it was just a Mac with no peripherals maybe it would be okay, but not so with three monitors and an egpu.
 
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I'm not going to update so quickly moving forward after experiencing Catalina's bugginess. There's just not any significant benefit to do so. If it was just a Mac with no peripherals maybe it would be okay, but not so with three monitors and an egpu.
The only things connected to mine are two 27” WQHD monitors. Some networked storage but nothing else directly attached. BT mouse & keyboard. I have two 4K displays on my PC that I want to also use on my Mac, but until I decide what I’m going to buy (a 2018 Mini or a 16” MBP), I’ll have to stick to these conventional WQHD displays... which, BTW, are really actually quite nice (two Dell S2719DM).
 
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The only things connected to mine are two 27” WQHD monitors. Some networked storage but nothing else directly attached. BT mouse & keyboard. I have two 4K displays on my PC that I want to also use on my Mac, but until I decide what I’m going to buy (a 2018 Mini or a 16” MBP), I’ll have to stick to these conventional WQHD displays... which, BTW, are really actually quite nice (two Dell S2719DM).

Understood. It's Catalina with some release bugginess. I was in the Apple Beta Software Program and Catalina ran with no issues right up to its formal release, then it went buggy and I could only run two monitors. Then when the updates started coming the third monitor was working again. That was before I started using the egpu, which on a reboot there is an occasion where I have to replug in the Thunderbolt cable to get the monitors working. The wife's macmini 2014 has an issue waking from sleep with one monitor connected by HDMI that requires a reboot. Those Dell's mentioned are very nice.
 
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