Lions and tigers and bears....

[matilf]

Where on my computer does it tell me the "name" of the OS? I have 10.9.5, but everyone here seems to refer to these with names like Mountain Lion or Huge Tiger or whatever. Where on my computer does it give me that name of my OS? I realize this may seem a silly question but I just use the computer; the OS is not a pet that I give a name to. It's a macbook pro and I bought it planning to use Finale, and also because it was the only mac I could get that did not require wifi, which I don't have and don't want.

To go on....Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all developed what appeared to be insoluble problems (insoluble by me, anyway) so I've been using Opera for a while. I have been unable to find any disks that came with the computer that had the original OS on it. I'm quite happy with the OS I have, and am not crazy about changing things that work. Is there a way to re-install (for free) the OS I have so I can try again to use a different browser? Some sites don't seem to like Opera very much.

What would a backup consist of? every once in a while I put pictures and documents and a few other things on a thumb drive and put the date on it, but a "total backup" is not something I'm sure I would want.

 

[knollfinder]

Where on my computer does it tell me the "name" of the OS? I have 10.9.5, but everyone here seems to refer to these with names like Mountain Lion or Huge Tiger or whatever. Where on my computer does it give me that name of my OS? I realize this may seem a silly question but I just use the computer; the OS is not a pet that I give a name to. It's a macbook pro and I bought it planning to use Finale, and also because it was the only mac I could get that did not require wifi, which I don't have and don't want.

To go on....Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all developed what appeared to be insoluble problems (insoluble by me, anyway) so I've been using Opera for a while. I have been unable to find any disks that came with the computer that had the original OS on it. I'm quite happy with the OS I have, and am not crazy about changing things that work. Is there a way to re-install (for free) the OS I have so I can try again to use a different browser? Some sites don't seem to like Opera very much.

What would a backup consist of? every once in a while I put pictures and documents and a few other things on a thumb drive and put the date on it, but a "total backup" is not something I'm sure I would want.

 

[knollfinder]

If you go to the apple icon (top left), "About this Mac" should tell you. But if it doesn't, here is a list I got from Wikipedia:

• • 2.1Public Beta: "Kodiak"
  • 2.2Version 10.0: "Cheetah"
  • 2.3Version 10.1: "Puma"
  • 2.4Version 10.2: "Jaguar"
  • 2.5Version 10.3: "Panther"
  • 2.6Version 10.4: "Tiger"
  • 2.7Version 10.5: "Leopard"
  • 2.8Version 10.6: "Snow Leopard"
  • 2.9Version 10.7: "Lion"
  • 2.10Version 10.8: "Mountain Lion"
  • 2.11Version 10.9: "Mavericks"
  • 2.12Version 10.10: "Yosemite"
  • 2.13Version 10.11: "El Capitan"
  • 2.14Version 10.12: "Sierra"

 

[matilf]

Ok. So I apparently have Mavericks., thanks. What about the backup if I want to re-install, and where would I re-install "from" and would that fix my problems with the browsers that have gone south on me? Or would a full backup retain the browser problems (e.g., Firefox thinks it is still installed and wants to update, but it is not still installed and an update has not been successful. Similar problems with Safari and Chrome. Opera has lasted the longest so far.