Bringing Freedom to the Oppressed Toasters of America

[oppressedtoaster]

Hello Elite community! My name is Case. I recently purchased my first Mac for a couple pennies, hoping to mod it into a usable machine. I am currently running 10.15.7 on 21.5-inch, Early 2013 iMac. I am hoping to upgrade my RAM to 16GB and either replace, or complement side-load, my HDD with a SSD. Funds are tight at the moment, so I am running 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD on Catalina. Without upgrading my hardware, I am first seeking to..
A) Triple boot MacOS/Windows 7/Linux
B) Install MacOS onto a HFS partition instead of using APFS (APFS sucks on nonSSD).
C) Upgrade via OpenCore MacOS to a more modern variant. Apple only supports 10.15 on my device (Early 2013 21.5" iMac)

I am curious if anyone knows how to install Windows 7, when Boot Camp Asst only supports Windows 10?
I am curious if it is possible to boot most modern OpenCore MacOS with HFS instead of APFS?

Thank you all for the welcoming community.

 

[EliteMacx86]

Hello Elite community! My name is Case. I recently purchased my first Mac for a couple pennies, hoping to mod it into a usable machine. I am currently running 10.15.7 on 21.5-inch, Early 2013 iMac. I am hoping to upgrade my RAM to 16GB and either replace, or complement side-load, my HDD with a SSD. Funds are tight at the moment, so I am running 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD on Catalina. Without upgrading my hardware, I am first seeking to..
A) Triple boot MacOS/Windows 7/Linux
B) Install MacOS onto a HFS partition instead of using APFS (APFS sucks on nonSSD).
C) Upgrade via OpenCore MacOS to a more modern variant. Apple only supports 10.15 on my device (Early 2013 21.5" iMac)

I am curious if anyone knows how to install Windows 7, when Boot Camp Asst only supports Windows 10?
I am curious if it is possible to boot most modern OpenCore MacOS with HFS instead of APFS?

Thank you all for the welcoming community.

Hello and Welcome to EliteMacx86!

Firstly, whether you need to use Mac or Dual/Triple boot, consider installing an SSD. Its must.

Regarding Windows 7, its already depreciated. So, you can either install Windows 10 or even Windows 11.

With the recent versions, the system will force HFS to APFS conversion for boot drives.