Downside of installing Catalina on non-supporting MBP?

[benyben123]

Hi.
I am new to Mac. Total noob.
I see that I can install/patch Catalina to my old MBP 2011.
Question is:
1. Why should I?
2. Is it safe? I tend to preffer not to install weird things on my system

Thanks so much!

 

[haralds]

I would suggest you post this to the group macOS Catalina on unsupported Macs.

macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

Are you trying to install onto the original factory hard drive? I believe some people have reported that installing onto third-party storage devices may block the firmware updates. 1576467120 That's the problem in a nutshell. It is a niche display interface even for the MacPro's and, on the...

forums.macrumors.com

My suggestions is to always have a minimal partition with the last supported OS for recovery.

 

[Furka]

IMHO use the last OS that matches your machine. It's safer and plug&play. I think High Sierra is the Best option for you, if you do not want some problems / malfunctions.

 

[Fishrrman]

The downside of installing something "unsupported" is that if something goes wrong... there's no support.

My advice:
FORGET about Catalina.
Use "the last supported" version of the OS that will run on it, and forget about trying to "take it further than it will go"...

 

[olad]

Well, it depends on what you want to do with your MBP 2011. As @haralds wrote above, the Catalina on Unsupported Macs Thread is full of persons with the same model as yours, happily running Catalina (that thread is magnificent, if you ask me). Check the thread out.