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High Sierra / Mojave on 2GB?
- Thread starter Hughmac
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If you wish
The challenge is accepted!
I didn't need to run the Catalina installer on a surrogate Mac and then transplant the cloned partition over to the MBA as it ran without any quibbling directly on the target machine. Strangely, it wouldn't perform an upgrade of the Mojave partition and instead gave me the option of upgrading the El Capitan one instead. After a few minutes it rebooted to the iconic macOS grey install screen.
"23 minutes" transformed into several hours and the installer hung once the progress bar reached maximum. Eventually I initiated a hard reboot and the computer restarted.
It appears to have installed, but will it actually work? Let's log in and find out.
Ok, its successfully taken me through the configuration pages but what about the desktop itself?
Mission accomplished: contrary to Apple's claims and my own expectations, Catalina not only works on a 2GB machine - it appears to work damn well too, considering the lean hardware its running on!
Once again Apple's shady behaviour is laid bare because this machine is up to the task of running an OS that they've officially barred from its upgrade path on what are clearly dishonest grounds: as with Tiger on my iMac G3/350 and my 2006 Mac Pro beyond Lion.
I'd have to replace many of my programs that are 32 bit in order to carry out a proper shakedown but so far I haven't seen the machine struggling and the fan hasn't activated during heavy activity such as watching HD content.
New Finder windows open quickly, the dock is fast and responsive and what programs I can open at the moment, spring into action fairly swiftly, all things considered. The question for me is whether I'll keep Catalina as a permanent addition. With only 256GB of drive space on my SSD, I'll have to reflect on the OS choices: Snow Leopard's presence is non-negotiable, Mojave works just as well as El Capitan and High Sierra - plus as we've already noted in this thread, it's the last macOS release with 32 bit compatibility so I could dispense with El Capitan and let Catalina use the partition space instead. What say you, my fellow MR members?
If you have any queries about Catalina running on my MBA or would like me to test anything out, go ahead and ask.
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that is impressive, and on 2GB?
is Catalina better than Mojave?
Mojave seems very smooth and responsive on the 4gb macbook air, but getting boggled this past month.
Catalina will probably slow that down more tho.
enjoy your improved macbook air, TheShortTimer
is Catalina better than Mojave?
Mojave seems very smooth and responsive on the 4gb macbook air, but getting boggled this past month.
Catalina will probably slow that down more tho.
enjoy your improved macbook air, TheShortTimer
Yes, 2GB: half of the minimum RAM requirements that Apple claims it needs in order to run.
It's too early for me to offer a personal verdict. I've definitely noticed a few minor downsides which I was forewarned about: the loss of 32 bit compatibility and it forces you to use APFS which means Snow Leopard cannot see the Catalina partition. It wasn't difficult to replace the affected programs with their 64 bit counterparts and I can still transfer data from Catalina to Snow Leopard.
Have you tried the tweaks and optimisations which have been recommended in this forum, such as turning off animations, reducing transparency and motion etc? They make a big difference on lower specced machines.
As I mentioned earlier, I haven't experienced a noticeable performance drop with Catalina and your MBA has double the RAM of mine so I think you'd be ok, especially after carrying out a few tweaks here and there.
Thanks.
#125
" And this is, what I've found out about switching on/off face-recognition "photoanalysisd" in Catalina #10:
Terminal command, to switch-off face recognition:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.photoanalysisd.plist
Terminal command, to switch-on face recognition:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.photoanalysisd.plist "
photoanalysisd works like spotlight - just for fotos - and takes a lot of processing power on the first run.
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Will you still see performance gains by entering these commands if you're past the first-run phase?
I can't tell, since I left my CatalinaPatch experience shortly after I discovered, that 32bit was abandoned (and of sure after I recovered the DesktopPictures ...)Will you still see performance gains by entering these commands if you're past the first-run phase?
I had installed CatalinaPatch from the scratch whithout any Fotos in the FotoLibrary (maybe only the Fotos from the connected iCloud-account available?), but despite of that the background face-recognition activity plus head&fan-activity got berserk! So I cannot believe the whole thing might calm down after the first round.
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Thanks! I've run the command and I'm going to keep Catalina on the MBA for at least a few months so I'll share my long term experiences, be they positive or negative. So far, the fan has been inactive - which I'll take as a good sign.
Perhaps we should create a Catalina thread (and a Mojave one for that matter) given the discovery of how surprisingly well it performs on such modest hardware.