MacMini5,2 High Sierra performance feedback

[elvineet]

I have a mid-2011 Mac mini which I've fitted with an SSD and 16GB RAM. It is in perfectly good condition hardware-wise, but obviously Apple doesn't consider it good enough to run macOS Mojave.

I'd like to continue using this machine till the hardware fails, especially as this will be the last Mac I own. It performs excellent on El Capitan currently, and I'm curious if any fellow owners have something to say about how well High Sierra runs on it. I primarily use this machine for RAW photo editing with darktable and/or Adobe Lightroom.

I am not keen on the dosdude1 method of running Mojave on this machine as the discrete AMD HD Radeon 6630M GPU is unusable with this method. I have tried multiple distros of Linux and every single one causes the CPU temp to soar to 75C-80C with extremely light usage.

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[jasnw]

Unless you have some really good reason to move to High Sierra stay on El Capitan. I moved a 2011 iMac from El Cap to High Sierra before I knew that Mohave would not install on my machine. As soon as I learned that I immediately fell back to El Cap. Too many niggly little things that I didn't like on HS or that didn't work on HS. I'm still running my 2011 Mini on Mavericks and plan to keep it there until it throws a rod.

 

[elvineet]

Unless you have some really good reason to move to High Sierra stay on El Capitan. I moved a 2011 iMac from El Cap to High Sierra before I knew that Mohave would not install on my machine. As soon as I learned that I immediately fell back to El Cap. Too many niggly little things that I didn't like on HS or that didn't work on HS. I'm still running my 2011 Mini on Mavericks and plan to keep it there until it throws a rod.

The main reason I'm looking into this is for OS security updates. I'm assuming now that El Capitan is 3 verisons behind it won't be receiving security updates from Apple.

While I do use it mainly for photo editing, it's still very much connected to the web.

 

[kohlson]

I think you're probably OK to update to Sierra. Some apps may not work starting with HS. But the best thing to do is either create a separate boot disk for a trial run, or make a complete backup, try a newer OS, and then restore if things don't work out.

 

[DomKud]

I updated my 2014 mac mini to Mojave and it runs like a turtle. So annoyed. Before the update, my computer was quick and responsive.

 

[elvineet]

I think you're probably OK to update to Sierra. Some apps may not work starting with HS. But the best thing to do is either create a separate boot disk for a trial run, or make a complete backup, try a newer OS, and then restore if things don't work out.

I added a partition and installed High Sierra alongside El Capitan. My initial reaction after first boot is that it seems to be just as responsive as El Capitan. However, I'll have to use it as a daily driver for a while to really know. If it holds up well, I guess I'm okay til 2020 or so when High Sierra will probably stop receiving security updates.

FYI if anyone is interested, my current set up is as follows using refind to manage boot up:

1. Partition 1 = El Capitan
   
2. Partition 2 = MX Linux 17.1
   
3. Partition 3 = High Sierra

 

[jasnw]

Two questions: (1) is HS installed on the SSD, if so did you go with APFS for the install, and (2) how do you like refind?

 

[elvineet]

Two questions: (1) is HS installed on the SSD, if so did you go with APFS for the install, and (2) how do you like refind?

Yes, all 3 operating systems are installed on the same SSD. Only the High Sierra partition is APFS. I can access the El Capitan partition from High Sierra, but not the other way around.

refind is excellent, once you get some experience with it. Took me some time to understand how to let refind take control after installing multiple distros of Linux. For example, Ubuntu always takes over and cause the machine to boot up straight into it. I had to hold Option down, boot into Macintosh HD and re-run

./refind-install

to make refind "see" Ubuntu, and then it would take over and work as expected.

 

[ElectronGuru]

I updated my 2014 mac mini to Mojave and it runs like a turtle. So annoyed. Before the update, my computer was quick and responsive.

I updated my 2010 to mojave from el cap. Clean install + quite a few small apps and extensions. Some 1080p jutter but the same as under el cap. 8gb + internal SSD + apfs

Did you clean install? Any chance you installed onto an hdd?