Anyone remember when the mac versions raised the o.s requirement?

[invictius]

Have bought a couple of macbook airs lately and one is very capable cpu-wise and for vulkan, the other is just intel hd 3000 - opengl 3.2. I put mojave on the first one because big sur was a bit slow. The latter one only has 2gb ram but the oldest os x I could get booting off a usb stick was el capitan. There are only a handful of mac releases pre v4, does anyone know offhand when o.s support was dropped for some of them? I guess my other option is dual boot with windows. Not sure about windows 10 on the latter because the ram would necessitate installing 32 bit, then there's the fact that it's 2011 efi and windows 10 may not like that - it may not even like not having much space - apparently you need 50gb with boot camp. Guess my other option is to copy every version number, which is o but lz doom is going to take a bit to download all versions.

[_mental_]

Any macOS app bundle contains Contents/Info.plist file which defines LSMinimumSystemVersion key/value pair. That value is what you need.
For example, GZDoom 4.7.0 is the latest version that runs on 10.9 because the value of the given key is set to 10.12 in GZDoom 4.7.1.
Please note that I didn't try 4.7.0 on Mavericks myself, same for 4.7.1 on Sierra, but in theory they should work.

Regarding OpenGL, you need to check this page. Intel HD Graphics 3000 supports OpenGL 3.3.

So yes, the only reliable way to determine the minimum OS version is to check Info.plist first, and then, to run it on the given version of macOS.

[invictius]

Any macOS app bundle contains Contents/Info.plist file which defines LSMinimumSystemVersion key/value pair. That value is what you need.
For example, GZDoom 4.7.0 is the latest version that runs on 10.9 because the value of the given key is set to 10.12 in GZDoom 4.7.1.
Please note that I didn't try 4.7.0 on Mavericks myself, same for 4.7.1 on Sierra, but in theory they should work.

Regarding OpenGL, you need to check this page. Intel HD Graphics 3000 supports OpenGL 3.3.

So yes, the only reliable way to determine the minimum OS version is to check Info.plist first, and then, to run it on the given version of macOS.

Thanks, that was very useful, particularly as I was able to open the dmg's on windows. It's too bad the windows version is more trial and error than this.

Also, is it true that mountain lion and el capitan (for example) will have the same level of performance because they both require 2gb ram? I read that somewhere. On the macbook with 8gb ram, I had big sur and seemed a bit slow, put mojave on instead. For the one with 2gb, el capitan felt as fast as on a macbook with el capitan and 4gb ram.