Anyone install Yosemite on October 2009 Mini?

[Compman55]

Still trying to squeeze some life out of the old mini. Got a 500GB 7200RPM in there, an 8GB of RAM. Anyone try yosemite on one. Someone made a recommendation that mavericks runs very smooth on it. I would assume that yosemite would too. Ideas?

Also how would you install yosemite fresh with a blank HDD?

 

[redheeler]

Yosemite runs fine on my 2010 Mac mini 2.66, although Mavericks/Yosemite generally aren't as quick as Snow Leopard, especially on mechanical drives.

You'd have to make a bootable USB installer for Yosemite, or if you still have the Snow Leopard disk you could install it and update to Yosemite.

 

[Compman55]

So wich would be better on this oldie, mavericks or yosemite?

 

[chubbyfatazn]

I have a spare mid-2009 MBP - 2.66GHz P8800, 4GB, 250GB 5400RPM spinny drive - running Yosemite just fine. Bootup is fairly slow, but I used to have an SSD in it and it was pretty zippy then. It's not a Mini, but the hardware is similar, and you've got a leg up on me with 8GB of memory.

I'd go with Yosemite just due to the security issue I made a post about here a few days ago (basically another "attacker gains root control" thing). Other than that, just go with what you like regarding UI/look-and-feel - I recall Yosemite being quite a departure from previous OSX versions. There was an AT article detailing the changes from Mavericks to Yosemite, might wanna have a look at that.

 

[Tegeril]

I have a Late 2009 Mac Mini running Yosemite right now.

I upgraded its RAM to 8GB and put a 240GB Crucial M500 in. I also removed the optical drive and put in a second drive in (1TB).

It runs great.

The only thing where performance lags is UI smoothness. This was the case for Mavericks and Yosemite on this machine. The 9400m just isn't quite up to the task. It is acceptable but not smooth. Since I mostly remote into the machine anyway, it's imperceptible.

If you want to get the best performance out of it, go for an SSD. You can use an OWC data doubler or something to keep your existing drive and sacrifice the optical drive. Word of warning, not all SSDs will negotiate to 3Gbps on the Nvidia SATA controller. Notably Sandforce SSDs will set themselves up at 1.5Gbps which is a bummer. I ended up taking my 120GB Intel 530 that I originally bought for the Mini and making it super fast external USB 3 storage. The M500 works great.

Also, trim is not supported in Yosemite.

 

[Compman55]

I was under the impression yosemite was like windows 8, they stripped the aero glass out of it, or whatever apple called it. All the OS X since leopard looked very nice and transparent, yosemite looks flat like windows.