Upgrade (?) from El Capitan to Sierra

[rickself]

I think I'd like to try the upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra. I can't go all the way to High Sierra without Sierra first, correct?
I want to install on one hard drive and be able to pull the drive out if I want to keep El Capitan.
Cheryl - you gave me a download link before to get a clean ISO install of El Capitan. Is there one also for Sierra that I don't have to go through App store?
I may not even want to keep it, just want to see if it's all compatible with Adobe Creative Suite/Cloud.
Thanks, all -

MacPro Early 2008
2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB 800 MHz

 

[DeltaMac]

Here's a link for the Sierra installer download - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-sierra/id1127487414?mt=12
If you ultimately want to have High Sierra, then download that instead - absolutely no need to go through all intermediate system upgrades, just boot to the High Sierra installer and go there.
Here's a link for High Sierra - https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741?mt=12
Or, if that does not work, you can use the python script to get the High Sierra installer - https://github.com/munki/macadmin-scripts
(click the green "clone or download" button, then click the Download Zip button). Run the installinstallmacos script in your terminal. You can currently download latest High Sierra, and two versions of Mojave, depending on what generation of Mac you have. The 4-digit build number Mojave is for latest T2-type Macs.

 

[rickself]

Here's a link for the Sierra installer download - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-sierra/id1127487414?mt=12
If you ultimately want to have High Sierra, then download that instead - absolutely no need to go through all intermediate system upgrades, just boot to the High Sierra installer and go there.
Here's a link for High Sierra - https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741?mt=12
Or, if that does not work, you can use the python script to get the High Sierra installer - https://github.com/munki/macadmin-scripts
(click the green "clone or download" button, then click the Download Zip button). Run the installinstallmacos script in your terminal. You can currently download latest High Sierra, and two versions of Mojave, depending on what generation of Mac you have. The 4-digit build number Mojave is for latest T2-type Macs.

Thanks DeltaMac. Come to find out it won’t install on my 2008 but is downloading to my 2013.

 

[rickself]

I probably know the answer to this already but is there a way to use the quick user switch from a user on El Capitan and quick switch to a user on SIerra. My money is on no but that'd be pretty neat if it worked.

 

[DeltaMac]

Not sure what you are asking...
The quick user switch works the same on both El Capitan and Sierra, allowing you to switch to a different logged-in user (on the same system, of course)
But, it sounds like you are asking if you can, somehow, quick switch from a Sierra boot, to El Capitan (on the same Mac ?? )
That might be possible using virtual machines, so both systems would be running in separate VMs.
You would have to discover how to do that, and it would likely need a lot of RAM for that to happen

 

[rickself]

Not sure what you are asking...
The quick user switch works the same on both El Capitan and Sierra, allowing you to switch to a different logged-in user (on the same system, of course)
But, it sounds like you are asking if you can, somehow, quick switch from a Sierra boot, to El Capitan (on the same Mac ?? )
That might be possible using virtual machines, so both systems would be running in separate VMs.
You would have to discover how to do that, and it would likely need a lot of RAM for that to happen

Exactly.

 

[DeltaMac]

Best way to do this, is to have two boot drives (easy enough with a Mac Pro...), so you would use one boot system, then move to the other system by booting to THAT system -- requiring a restart.
Not the "quick user switch" that you were asking about, but you can't run two separate operating systems at the same time (other than the possibility of using VMs, which wouldn't be a simple process.

What exactly would you hope to achieve with a "Quick operating system switch"
Do you have a need to run software that will run on one system, but not the other?

 

[rickself]

It’s just something I was curious about. My iMessage isn’t working on El Capitan but does on Sierra. Syncing iCloud to all devices was a major PIA on El Cap but synced right up on Sierra.
It was more of a “why” than an “if”.

 

[rickself]

One more thing - I am now using 2 startup drives. One for El Cap, one for Sierra. Once I'm totally comfortable with Sierra, I'll stay as that as my main OS. I have 4 drives total, one in each bay. How can I save to any of the drives without having a permissions conflict? Should I just make Administrator the owner of all 4 drives?

 

[rickself]

Just found it myself - the checkbox at the bottom of the get info window - "Ignore ownership on this volume"
Easy peasy