Mac OS X Tiger Or Linux?

[Goftrey]

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What will run better on an iBook g3 with a 700mhz processor and 384mb ram.

 

[AdrianK]

Depends whether you want X (window system)

Considered panther?

 

[Bloodstar]

That's a fairly speedy G3 - Tiger might be worth a shot.

However, I've heard mixed stories - sometimes Linux runs a lot better, sometimes it doesn't work completely. I don't have the machines straightened out, though.

Give both a shot and see which performs better for you.

 

[AdrianK]

That's a fairly speedy G3 - Tiger might be worth a shot.

I'm pretty sure the OP already has Tiger installed (mentioned in various other threads, though).

 

[MacHamster68]

it should fly with tiger once the ram is upgraded to 640mb , but 384mb ram are enough for tiger to run sufficiently

just remember to use tenfourfox browser instead of safari to speed things up

 

[bizzle]

Linux on an older Mac is pretty awful in terms of performance and support.

 

[adcx64]

IMHO, ubuntu linux sucks on ppc. There is no driver support.

 

[Bloodstar]

Ah, right, I'd somehow thought he was running Panther. Not sure why.

IMHO, ubuntu linux sucks on ppc. There is no driver support.

MintPPC works rather well though, from what I've heard... and it runs LXDE, too, so things are kept fairly trim.

ArchPPC is also a viable option, though I personally haven't toyed with it.

If all else fails, Yellow Dog is actually a PPC-exclusive distro. It ran nicely on my PS3, so imagine it running on a machine that isn't gimped! (Okay, maybe not as well on a G3, but a G5 and maybe even a G4 running it would likely whip the PS3.)

These may also be better tailored for desktops - I haven't toyed with Linux on Macs aside from a failed attempt at running Kubuntu 11.04, unfortunately, so I can just throw out names and not experiences. However, they're all bound to work better than Ubuntu.

Good luck, and I hope you get your iBook working how you'd like it!

 

[zen.state]

I would never run Panther over Tiger if those 2 were my choices. Even on Macs without firewire I would use xpostfacto to shoehorn Tiger on.

To the OP:

Personally I don't find any Linux build as usable as Tiger. I have tried Yellow Dog, Ubuntu, PPCLinux and none of them come close. People often automatically assume Linux will be much faster but at least on PowerPC hardware that is not the case. I don't find it any faster on Intel Macs either with current Ubuntu x86 64-bit builds I have tried vs. Snow Leopard or any OS X.

Trust me.. if you hope for a lot more speed and a good enough user experience I can almost guarantee you will be disappointed and just end up reverting back to Tiger.

Any current Linux out there just can't compete with OS X. Not even with 6 year old Tiger.

 

[SuperJudge]

Any current Linux out there just can't compete with OS X. Not even with 6 year old Tiger.

I'm not sure that's entirely the case, but in terms of user-friendliness, that's certainly true.

I've got Ubuntu 10.10 running on a 1.5 GHz PPC Mac mini. Using Xfce or Openbox, it's snappy and lively for most standard internet tasks. Shortcomings are numerous, though. It's not user friendly.

At all.

Linux on PPC is not for non-hackers. If you don't have a strong Linux background, a lack of good, easy-to-install drivers for the wireless cards in PPC makes it a non-starter for the vast majority of people. Gnash is a poor substitute for Flash. A lack of Adobe Air is frustrating for me since I love DestroyTwitter and TweetDeck. There's still not an actual Firefox 4 port for PPC Linux. Forget about things like good battery management, power stepping for your CPU, or being able to sleep or hibernate.

For me, though, since that mini is a box that's always on and is a CLI-only front for assorted things (it's only running Ubuntu because I love byobu so much and byobu doesn't hook into screen on Macs correctly for some reason), for me it's all a non-issue. If you're talking about a laptop, don't even think about Linux instead of Tiger. You'll probably hate it.

 

[zen.state]

I'm not sure that's entirely the case, but in terms of user-friendliness, that's certainly true.

I've got Ubuntu 10.10 running on a 1.5 GHz PPC Mac mini. Using Xfce or Openbox, it's snappy and lively for most standard internet tasks. Shortcomings are numerous, though. It's not user friendly.

At all.

Linux on PPC is not for non-hackers. If you don't have a strong Linux background, a lack of good, easy-to-install drivers for the wireless cards in PPC makes it a non-starter for the vast majority of people. Gnash is a poor substitute for Flash. A lack of Adobe Air is frustrating for me since I love DestroyTwitter and TweetDeck. There's still not an actual Firefox 4 port for PPC Linux. Forget about things like good battery management, power stepping for your CPU, or being able to sleep or hibernate.

For me, though, since that mini is a box that's always on and is a CLI-only front for assorted things (it's only running Ubuntu because I love byobu so much and byobu doesn't hook into screen on Macs correctly for some reason), for me it's all a non-issue. If you're talking about a laptop, don't even think about Linux instead of Tiger. You'll probably hate it.

If someone is deep enough into the *nix world to embrace and be comfortable in the unfriendly user experience of it all they are better off on true Unix like BSD. My point is that Linux is only really practical somewhere in between user friendly and hard core geek users. That includes servers as well of course as there are several specific use type Linux server builds out there. Thats a lot easier than manually configuring BSD to do so it suits people who are comfortable enough to use and install Linux but not do full on Unix text-based only stuff. Linux more and more is moving away from text interfaces.

The extreme ends of the spectrum are consumer OS at one end and UNIX at the other. Linux is somewhere in between.

 

[SuperJudge]

If someone is deep enough into the *nix world to embrace and be comfortable in the unfriendly user experience of it all they are better off on true Unix like BSD.

Almost certainly.

My point is that Linux is only really practical somewhere in between user friendly and hard core geek users. That includes servers as well of course as there are several specific use type Linux server builds out there. Thats a lot easier than manually configuring BSD to do so it suits people who are comfortable enough to use and install Linux but not do full on Unix text-based only stuff. Linux more and more is moving away from text interfaces.

With regard to PPC hardware? Not especially. It's definitely more toward the hardcore geek end of things. Linux in general? Yes, absolutely. I tend toward it on my X86 whiteboxen because it's less of a pain to get up and running and OpenBSD is not an especially good desktop OS.

(As an aside, I really don't know about Linux as a whole moving away from text interfaces, though. Maybe in the interest of market share and ease of use, but on the whole I seriously doubt text interfaces are going anywhere anytime soon. That's what makes Windows such an awful infrastructure OS. Powershell is a step in the right direction, but I digress.)

The extreme ends of the spectrum are consumer OS at one end and UNIX at the other. Linux is somewhere in between.

Wholly agreed.