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bakerster

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 14, 2008
111
0
Just got ahold of a iMac g3, 450mhz, 20gb hd, and 192mb of ram, (+airport +combo drive) what would be the best operating system I could put on here that would run normally?

Thanks!
 
OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger). But it would need more RAM, at least 256mb, preferably a Gig... and would take up between 3 & 4Gb of disk space.

With the RAM you've got, best thing would be 10.3.x (Panther).
 
Well what would be good for the amount of ram I have now? Not trying to put any money in this
 
Well what would be good for the amount of ram I have now?

I edited my post to provide that info. It's going back a while, but I remember Panther being far more stable and nicer to use than Jaguar (10.2) but never ran it on such a small amount of RAM. Question is: what do you want to use the machine for?
 
I had a G3 iMac, I think 10.3 is the best ballance of being usable and fairly modern. 10.4 will run, but it will be slow.
 
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Thanks for the replies guys;

The machine will likely be used strictly for iTunes + Internet surfing.
 
you won't be able to run the latest version of iTunes on it, if you go with 10.3 I think you will be stuck with iTunes 7.7.1, or 8.2.1 if you go with tiger. but as long as you're ok with running one of those versions, you should be fine. I also would recommend camino as a browser since it seems to work fairly well on old macs.
 
Yeah, without a G4, only go up to 10.3. Camino is a fairly recent browser for OS 9, so if you have that, go for it. OS9 will feel nice and snappy while any version of 10 will feel slugish.
 
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Thanks everyone for the replies! I installed 10.3 on it, works ok, is super sluggish, although I realize that's because of the ram. This computer is for my roomate, first time mac. 10.3 is runnin perfect for the guy who strictly uses facebook and pandora to list to music.
 
Ouch, Facebook on a G3. But anyway, I have a G3 Mac that I use as a hobby for older Mac OS versions. IMO 10.3>10.4>10.2 on it. Currently, I have it set up with Classic and some near old classic software and for that, it works well.
 
I have a 366 clamshell and I wish it was running 10.3 10.4 bogs it down and it has over two times the amount of ram yours does. 10.3 is adequate for modern surfing, and itunes is fine as long as you are fine with running an older version:apple:
 
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