1. Install El Capitan On Mac
2. Apple El Capitan Os

I have an iMac(Early 2009) running Leopard (10.5.8). Now I want to upgrade my OS to El Capitan (10.11).

The situation is this one:

✔ my iMac version is listed under the upgradable devices

• OS X El Capitan Installer. Official OS X El Capitan Installer from the Mac App Store. Un-archive the zip archive and you will get the app Installer. A bootable ISO or bootable USB can be made from this installer. Instructions on how to do that are on the Internet/Youtube.
• If you have a Mac of your own, you could download it onto a large capacity flash drive, and then copy it onto your friend’s Mac to install it. The installer itself doesn't need an Apple Id, but it may want you to sign into iCloud after installatio.
• But, we'll need install media (currently 10.10 is installed), and I figured I'll just go ahead and create a USB install media of El Capitan. However, the only place I see to get it is through the.
• If it doesn't, or you don't want to complete the installation at this time, you can come back later and double-click Install OS X El Capitan in your Applications folder. Within the installer, click Continue, agree to the license agreement, and then choose the disk where you want to install El Capitan.

✘ MacOSX 10.6.8 is required to be installed (due to Mac App Store introduction) on the iMac

Official solution (or what I undestood reading Apple website)

• buy the DVD of Snow Leopard (10.6) from online Apple Store and install it on 10.5.8;
• update the OS until 10.6.8;
• use the App Store to download and install El Capitan.

Edit: The fix that worked was getting El Capitan (The version that it was booting into recovery mode for) on a bootable USB from a Mac and installing it that way. It worked perfectly and gave me no problems in installation. I even linked my Apple ID after the install with no problems.

Said that, after some search, I found this macworld article showing alternative methods to upgrade from 10.5.8 MacOSX version to a more recent one. This reading brought me to another solution:

Alternative solution

• use a Mac of a friend of mine which runs El Capitan to download El Capitan from Mac App Store;
• create a bootable usb stick from it;
• use it to do a clean install on my iMac (erasing all disk content before choosing the HDD in which to install El Capitan)
• configure my iMac creating my Apple ID

Questions

1. Will solution 2 work?
2. Is solution 2 legal?

Install El Capitan On Mac

Note

Apple El Capitan Os

The linked article hit my questions' topics but I did not deeply understand nor the configuration of the Apple ID on the fresh installed El Capitan nor the legal aspects of the solution.