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by alyandon 3879 days ago
He is on a non-admin account and can only visit a few white listed sites that I've pre-screened. The chances of him getting hacked are basically zero and I don't have the money to replace a perfectly functional computer with a newer one just so it can run a more recent version of OS X.

He also loves the built-in applications like Photo Booth that lets him record own videos and apply silly special effects to send to the grandparents. So, moving to Linux or Windows is really a non-starter.

2 comments

My white MacBook was in the same boat. I still use it as a media computer, so I formatted and installed Ubuntu Mate 15.04. If your son is just using the web browser, I doubt he'll notice the difference in OSes. I don't know how old he is, but it could be a fun weekend project for you guys.
If it were just the web browser I would have probably moved him to some incarnation of Ubuntu. Unfortunately, when it comes to applications like Photo Booth that are easily approachable by a 6 year old the situation becomes more complicated.
> chances of him getting hacked are basically zero

How do you know that? Your machine is probably still susceptible to POODLE.

He is on non-admin account doesn't mean the OS doesn't contain bugs that allow privilege escalation. And Apple is definitely not going to fix those bugs.