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G5's Lack Of Support ?

highvoltageuk

highvoltageuk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
29
0
Scotland, UK
Hi All....Just asking a question after owning a G5 for a week or so & im finding out most softwear isnt supporting powermac G5's.
Is there any reason for this?
Ive tried a few online games & firefox web browser only to find there NOT supported as a mac power pc.
Tried installing World of Warcraft = Failed
Second Life = Failed
Firefox Browser = Failed
From the name powermac its getting weaker due to not much support.
Can anyone glow abit of light as to WHY?

Thank you for looking
 
The G5 has a PowerPC processor. The world has moved to Intel. Very few companies still develop for PowerPC nowadays...at least in the realm of macintosh.
 
Download TenFourFox. It's the same as Firefox but for PowerPC's. For other software, take a look at the sticky at the top of the forum.
 
highvoltageuk said:
Hi thanks for the reply...is it a case of apple OS/X or could i use linux OS instead
Would that work?
Click to expand...

you'd still have the same issue, it has different processor architecture. Something written for x86 or x86_64 isn't going to run no matter the OS. If you want to run Linux you need to find PowerPC linux..

Look in the the sticky
 
Ok Thanks for the info...Understand now:)
I got Secondlife running from an old viewer on my G4 quicksilver;)

Will read the sticky at the top when ive got alot of time.

Thanks you for looking
 
The PowerMac is, at best, a six year old computer. Lot's of new software won't run on six year old computers.

World of Warcraft did used to run on that Power Mac. Six years ago.
 
There is still a decent sized open source community dedicated to PowerPC hardware. OpenBSD/FreeBSD and several Linux distros along with all their apps are all still developed.

It's only those users who limit themselves to Apple OS who are limited in software support.
 
highvoltageuk said:
Ok Thanks for the info...Understand now:)
I got Secondlife running from an old viewer on my G4 quicksilver;)

Will read the sticky at the top when ive got alot of time.

Thanks you for looking
Click to expand...

If you use Debian or Ubuntu or something, it might be easier to find software as you would use apt-get/aptitude/others, which wouldn't involve searching the internet to find PowerPC versions of software, and anything you would find through those package managers already works on PowerPC.
 
I made a partition on my Powerbook of that version of linux I just kinda felt convicted using a opensource operating system when Steve jobs designed apple to be strictly closed-source and imediatelly booted back up into os x and erased the partition
 
Ok thank you all for your feedback and all will be greatly taken in.

Im new to powermacs and have wanted to get hold of one for sometime but are way.way.way more expensive than windows pc's.
Yes it is an old computer but the way softwear & hardwear accelarate quicker that you can blink i was just supprised the lack of support the powermac pc from most of the big softwear companies.
I have a G4 quicksilver running on Tiger but that is slow.

Ive use Ubuntu before in order to get away from Mr Gates empire but have found more hurdles to jump also.
I will try Mint on another drive in the near future:D

Thank you all for your feedback
 
zen.state said:
There is still a decent sized open source community dedicated to PowerPC hardware. OpenBSD/FreeBSD and several Linux distros along with all their apps are all still developed.

It's only those users who limit themselves to Apple OS who are limited in software support.
Click to expand...

This.

You won't get support from Apple, they suck at supporting old hardware...and their new hardware well...just sucks. Zen is correct, there is a decent open source community out there for powerpc.

----------
highvoltageuk said:
Can anyone glow abit of light as to WHY?

Thank you for looking
Click to expand...

Easy, Apple doesn't support its hardware for more than a few years, because it forces most users to upgrade more quickly, hence. Spend more money.

Windows 8 will work on 10-12 year old machines, and 10.6 Snow Leopard will have its support dropped very quickly, and its not even half that old.
 
Try Ubuntu 12.04 LINK , you may have to do some work to get everything working but you get the latest firefox and other latest versions of software and at this point it has much more choices than leopard or tiger . Also you can dual-boot easily so you can have the best of both worlds . Also if you want you can download other ubuntu distros as well if you do not like ubuntu LINK . I like ubuntu a lot and it runs faster than leopard or tiger . I prefer ubuntu over other distros out there for power pc such as mintppc , yellowdog , ect .

The easiest linux distro to get working is yellowdoglinux but it is not supported anymore but it still works . I would reccomend ubuntu or kubuntu to you . Mintppc is also very good but it is a lot harder for new users to install .

If you want a good web browser for leopard I reccomend tenfourfox or webkit for leopard . If you want to use webkit you have to be using leopard , tenfourfox works with leopard and tiger .
 
Last edited:
G51989 said:
This.

You won't get support from Apple, they suck at supporting old hardware...and their new hardware well...just sucks. Zen is correct, there is a decent open source community out there for powerpc.

----------



Easy, Apple doesn't support its hardware for more than a few years, because it forces most users to upgrade more quickly, hence. Spend more money.

Windows 8 will work on 10-12 year old machines, and 10.6 Snow Leopard will have its support dropped very quickly, and its not even half that old.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I have always been astonished at how quickly apple drops support for their OS's. But they can get away with it, which is why they do it. MS, with 90-95% market share would never be able to pull something like that off. They just dropped support for Windows 2000 in 2010, XP won't lose support until 2014, Vista won't lose support until 2017 and Windows 7 is good until 2020. That's one of the good things about MS, they aren't secretive about when they are going to kill something. Supporting something for that long also has its downsides though, you lose your ability to move forward in a timely manner. And when you do move forward, you get lots of backlash. Just take a look at Vista and Windows 8. Both were necessary for the company to get where they are today, but there was/has been lots of outcry.
 
You bring up a very valid point. I sent an email to one of the developers who handles the PowerPC port of freebsd and he told me that the port is alive and well and applications are being developed for the platform. Really, FreeBSD is similar to Darwin and of course when one adds the x-windows subsystem on top of that there is so much out there that can be made to run.

I especially like FreeBSD as I used to run it as my primary OS back in 1999 before I climbed on board to the Mac family, and yes, my 1st computer was the Sawtooth 350mhz PowerPC G4. I absolutely fell in love with it as it felt like a computer and certainly Apple's message at the time was: "Think Different".

I quickly abandoned the PC platform all together and like you I am A+ certified in PC hardware, though not Mac and I used to build PC systems.

In my eyes, the PowerPC will always be a true work of art by the geniuses of Apple, Motorola(now Freescale), and IBM. I have a strong feeling the PowerPC might make a come back to mainstream computing, but not for a while yet.

Anyway, I did not mean to go off topic, just wanted to say that I spoke with a developer who is in charge of the PowerPC port on FreeBSD.


zen.state said:
There is still a decent sized open source community dedicated to PowerPC hardware. OpenBSD/FreeBSD and several Linux distros along with all their apps are all still developed.

It's only those users who limit themselves to Apple OS who are limited in software support.
Click to expand...


----------

What ever happened to "Think Different"? Its truly sad that Windows 7 and soon Windows 8 can be run on 6-8 year old Pentium/AMD based PC's and PowerPC was sent to the waste bin once Apple decided to drop support in Snow Leopard. We only got stuck with running PPC apps through Rosetta.

I wonder who the real supporter of older hardware is these days?

zen.state said:
There is still a decent sized open source community dedicated to PowerPC hardware. OpenBSD/FreeBSD and several Linux distros along with all their apps are all still developed.

It's only those users who limit themselves to Apple OS who are limited in software support.
Click to expand...

G51989 said:
This.

You won't get support from Apple, they suck at supporting old hardware...and their new hardware well...just sucks. Zen is correct, there is a decent open source community out there for powerpc.

----------



Easy, Apple doesn't support its hardware for more than a few years, because it forces most users to upgrade more quickly, hence. Spend more money.

Windows 8 will work on 10-12 year old machines, and 10.6 Snow Leopard will have its support dropped very quickly, and its not even half that old.
Click to expand...


----------

I thought they still supported the PowerPC platform? I know version 7 isn't yet available for PowerPC Macs, but it is available for the IBM series of chips which is kind of strange, Fixstars still supports the Apple PowerPC platform.


The easiest linux distro to get working is yellowdoglinux but it is not supported anymore but it still works . I would reccomend ubuntu or kubuntu to you . Mintppc is also very good but it is a lot harder for new users to install .
 
TacticalDesire said:
Yeah. I have always been astonished at how quickly apple drops support for their OS's. But they can get away with it, which is why they do it. MS, with 90-95% market share would never be able to pull something like that off. They just dropped support for Windows 2000 in 2010, XP won't lose support until 2014, Vista won't lose support until 2017 and Windows 7 is good until 2020. That's one of the good things about MS, they aren't secretive about when they are going to kill something. Supporting something for that long also has its downsides though, you lose your ability to move forward in a timely manner. And when you do move forward, you get lots of backlash. Just take a look at Vista and Windows 8. Both were necessary for the company to get where they are today, but there was/has been lots of outcry.
Click to expand...

Well, I agree with most of this. Microsoft is a software company, its in their best interest to support old hardware.

Yeah, they messed up vista. But honestly, in my eyes, Windows 7 is probably the best operating system money can buy for a consumer/a good number of pros/enterprise. I'm convinced with the iOSfacation of OS, OSX won't be a good choice for much longer.

Microsoft has totally overhualed Windows/Whats under the hood of windows a bunch of times in the past 12 years. OSX has well....gotten more pretty?

----------
PowerPCMacMan said:
In my eyes, the PowerPC will always be a true work of art by the geniuses of Apple, Motorola(now Freescale), and IBM. I have a strong feeling the PowerPC might make a come back to mainstream computing, but not for a while yet.
Click to expand...

PowerPC wasn't really worked on by Apple, it was a mostly IBM/Motorola thing.

Its still in use in well....something you probably have in your house, and very ironicly, its a Microsoft Product, and a Sony Product, and a Nintendo product :D

Yep, the 360, PS3, and Wii are all PowerPC based.

PowerPC really has no reason to come back as a consumer desktop/laptop processor. The Stuff AMD and Intel Make is well, pretty epic.

----------
PowerPCMacMan said:
Y
[/COLOR]I thought they still supported the PowerPC platform? I know version 7 isn't yet available for PowerPC Macs, but it is available for the IBM series of chips which is kind of strange, Fixstars still supports the Apple PowerPC platform. .
Click to expand...


Windows has not supported PowerPC snice NT4.0 over a decade ago, no one uses it. No reason to support it.
 
G51989 said:
Well, I agree with most of this. Microsoft is a software company, its in their best interest to support old hardware.

Yeah, they messed up vista. But honestly, in my eyes, Windows 7 is probably the best operating system money can buy for a consumer/a good number of pros/enterprise. I'm convinced with the iOSfacation of OS, OSX won't be a good choice for much longer.

Microsoft has totally overhualed Windows/Whats under the hood of windows a bunch of times in the past 12 years. OSX has well....gotten more pretty?
Click to expand...

I agree, I think Windows 7 is the best OS out there right now and maybe even of all time. But I was talking about Windows 8, which many many people dislike at this time for various reasons, but mainly it's new metro interface, which most people agree (and even MS has stated) is a touch centric UI. That being said, there are a lot of features that make it work well on a desktop as well if you really want to make it work for you. I like it, but so far, a lot of peoples knee jerk reaction is to hate it. However, I think a lot of the hate is unwarranted. Once you get used to it, it's fine, and I find you can be more productive with it once you learn the ins and outs. And there are lots of features worth having. Especially for what I do. That and I need to stay on top of each version of Windows. It's looking promising, although I still have yet to see a reason to deploy it in a managed/business environment. But that could change when it becomes commercially available in october.
 
WoW...Thank you for the feedback. I totaly agree with the last few comments but i do know Apple do have a habit to NOT supporting older softwear or hardwear.
Yes its a way of making money but in there defence they dont get to hasty and rush to get softwear out without testing to the max.... unlike Mr Gates asking everyone to try it on a beta :mad: To find the bugs themselves.

Thank you for your feedback
 
highvoltageuk said:
WoW...Thank you for the feedback. I totaly agree with the last few comments but i do know Apple do have a habit to NOT supporting older softwear or hardwear.
Yes its a way of making money but in there defence they dont get to hasty and rush to get softwear out without testing to the max.... unlike Mr Gates asking everyone to try it on a beta :mad: To find the bugs themselves.

Thank you for your feedback
Click to expand...

Having the public Beta test software is a great way to test things. They get the software out there and having people use it in their real world usage. You get much more thorough testing and you can find stuff that you probably wouldn't have found doing your own in house testing.

You can bet your ass MS does their own software testing as well. ;)

Gates is gone. It's Steve Balmer now.

I can bet you OSX Lion would have been a lot less buggy if they would have had a public beta.
 
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