How to downgrade to mac OS X Lion I'm pretty new to the Mac environment. Recently my Mac Mini was updated to OS X El Capitan from OS X Lion, due to some of my software being incompatible.

Hence, I'd like to downgrade to OS X Lion (10.7), but when trying to download OS X Lion from the Apple website I'm asked to pay for it.
Do I really need to pay for it as I had the same OS running previously?
The Internet Recovery (Option-Command-R at boot) installer will let you install the earliest supported Mac OS X version for your hardware (only as far back as Lion if your device supports an earlier version).