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Leopard on my TiBook (500MHz).
- Thread starter 128keaton
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Yes, but by the time one ended up at our house it was treated as little more than a toy. Compared to the TRS-80 we had which had a full size keyboard it just couldn't do anything.
Could you list every optimization you did to your Leopard install? Thank you!
He was using a slipstreamed modified Leopard image. Intell, eyoungren, and I wrote a guide for speeding up Leopard in this forum that you can review for tips.
I put Panther on my Ti Book 667 (had Leopard previously) and it FLIES now, the user interface is instantly responsive no matter what you're doing, Safari loads the web pages it can instantly, applications open quickly. It really is an eye opening difference.
The only advantage I see to Leopard on such an old machine is Safari being more modern, but Leopard Safari on my TiBook was very slow, beach balled alot, ate tons of RAM and still couldn't properly load most modern websites.
I found Leopard made my machine almost unusable, now with Panther it's a joy to use for basic tasks (i.e. MS Word, Photoshop, and basic web browsing like MR and Reddit). The OS feels considerably lighter.
The only advantage I see to Leopard on such an old machine is Safari being more modern, but Leopard Safari on my TiBook was very slow, beach balled alot, ate tons of RAM and still couldn't properly load most modern websites.
I found Leopard made my machine almost unusable, now with Panther it's a joy to use for basic tasks (i.e. MS Word, Photoshop, and basic web browsing like MR and Reddit). The OS feels considerably lighter.
The advantage of Tiger and Leopard for old machines is that they have a modern, secure, still maintained web browser available for each OS. Tenfourfox will work great in either Tiger or Leopard, while you also have Leopard Webkit for Leopard.
For daily use, I will not use a version of OS X earlier than 10.4, and use 10.5 wherever possible. And, yes, my 400mhz TiBook and 450mhz Sawtooth both have Leopard on them(although both actually use OS 9 as their main OS).
Funny enough, OS 9 is actually still better supported in terms of software than earlier versions of OS X. I've been playing with a single 1.25 MDD, and it's blazing fast in OS 9. Classilla even does an okay job of rendering the new website!
The benefit of software support in general with Tiger over Panther is enough of a reason to upgrade. With such similar if not better performance in Tiger, there is little reason to run Panther. I do agree thought that Leopard even with optimizations fails to feel as fluid or as fast as Tiger or Panther.
Most people don't optimize Leopard and then get hit by it's "slowness". Add to that, in my personal opinion Safari is crap on any system and you have the kind of thing that pushed you to install Panther.
All of my Leopard systems are optimized, including on systems running it at less than 500mhz. I use TenFourfox for my browser, also optimized, and I don't have any slowness issue.
Panther is fast because it's not as advanced as Tiger or Leopard and the tasks you are using Panther for are well within the capabilities of the OS.
Most of the tasks I use my Macs for require Leopard. You can't run Adobe CS4 on Panther. It just won't work. Also, using Panther to share Appletalk printers I don't even want to think about. Doing that on Tiger was bad enough, I had to switch the sharing to the Leopard Mac.
I love Panther, because it was one of the most stable versions of OS X (until Leopard) but for my typical use case it just won't work.
Care to share how you optimize Leopard? I turned off all transparency effects, forced the dock into 2D mode via terminal, turned off Top Sites in Safari, and turned off smooth scrolling. If you have additional optimization tips please share.
Tiger added Core Image and Core Video, which may impact its performance on older machines. Granted I haven't tried Tiger on my PPC macs yet, mainly because I don't have a disc, but on the 667 Tibook at least Panther seems adequate for what the machine is really capable of today.
Yes. We made a whole guide of speed improvements between Intell, eyoungren, and I. You can check it out here. A quick note is that you should read the whole guide before attempting any of the tweaks as some of which have specific system requirements.
You would be surprised how much more capable Tiger is than Panther since it has a much more vast software library. Gavin Stubbs and I are working on building a Tiger section in the PowerPC Archive, however most software you find on there would lack any Panther support.
Follow Altemose's link. But to summarize, turn off BeamSync, turn off Spotlight, use ShadowKiller, utilize the Secrets prefpane to kill animations and if you are adventurous, turn off virtual memory.
If you are intent on using Webkit browsers there are better alternatives. Roccat, Sunrise and Stainless to name three.
Though I recommend that if you use any WebKit browser that you use the Leopard WebKit frameworks.
I tried Leopard on my 667 PB last week, like you I found it unusable, despite every optimisation, the lag was unbearable and the whole UI was clunky. If you can get over that, the functionality is there but you're constantly reminded of an underperforming machine.
However, in the past, I have found it is possible to have a bad Leopard installation which appears fine and yet is slow and clunky - I've reinstalled and everything is speedy even before any optimisations.
One thing that has puzzled me with Leopard installations on older hardware - surely Apple wouldn't have included kexts to correctly drive the older hardware on sub 867 Mhz systems?
Apple supported the G4 in general under Leopard. It was mainly the CPU clock speed and the graphics card that were important to Leopard rather than models. I have run Leopard on a 400 MHz Sawtooth and it was an absolute dog as the GPU simply could not handle it. Swapping the GPU made a usable and quite speedy machine! Another thing I have noticed is that sometimes people use pirated disks to install. I have seen more performance problems from pirated installs than retail Leopard disk installs. It certainly makes you wonder if the images were modified...
I have yet to experience this and I've had Leopard on a 400mhz TiBook. And I'm running it on the oft-mentioned 450mhz G4 with less than 300mb of ram at work - with a Rage 128 card.
I find it odd that your experience has been so different and I wonder what the cause would be. I'll just mention, if it even matters, that I have never used Leopard Assist or any other method that alters the detection of CPU speed for installation. It's always either been a drive cloning or installation via TDM from a supported Mac.
Using a gfx card that supports core image makes all the difference in the world for Leopard, although it's a difficult option for many computers. In particular, the 2x slot on the Sawtooth, GigE, and Cube makes it even hard to find a supported GFX card.
Moving to the upper end of 4x cards, though, can make a big difference. I've used both the GEForce 4MX and Radeon 9000 pretty extensively under Leopard, and they do well.
My Sawtooth has a Radeon 8500, which is a fantastic card but somewhat rare(it was a retail card, not BTO). It does great under Leopard. My GigE has a GEForce 4Ti, which is a superb card and Leopard runs quite smoothly. My Cubes have either a Radeon 7500 or GEForce 2MX, both of which do better under Leopard than the stock Rage 128.
I forget what GPU the early TiBooks have. I think the later ones have a Radeon 9000, and the 1ghz model has 64mb of VRAM.
Of course, it goes without saying that you should max the RAM for the best performance. TiBooks can all take 1gb, while the Sawtooth and GigE can take 2gb.
Moving to the upper end of 4x cards, though, can make a big difference. I've used both the GEForce 4MX and Radeon 9000 pretty extensively under Leopard, and they do well.
My Sawtooth has a Radeon 8500, which is a fantastic card but somewhat rare(it was a retail card, not BTO). It does great under Leopard. My GigE has a GEForce 4Ti, which is a superb card and Leopard runs quite smoothly. My Cubes have either a Radeon 7500 or GEForce 2MX, both of which do better under Leopard than the stock Rage 128.
I forget what GPU the early TiBooks have. I think the later ones have a Radeon 9000, and the 1ghz model has 64mb of VRAM.
Of course, it goes without saying that you should max the RAM for the best performance. TiBooks can all take 1gb, while the Sawtooth and GigE can take 2gb.
Rev A - Rage Mobility 128 8MB
Rev B (Gigabit) - Mobility Radeon 16MB (later rechristened 7000)
Rev C (DVI) - Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB
Rev D - Mobility Radeon 9000 32/64MB
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Most likely my mistake. I've only seen a 1GHz of that variety, stands to reason it would have double the VRAM.
Wikipedia says 32 or 64mb-I have two 1ghz and both have 64mb. My 867(which my dad has taken over to play CivII
) has 32mb. I know I tried to extend the desktop with a 1650x1080 display, and the computer had real issues with driving it(it flickered and blacked out occasionally). The 1ghz models don't have this problem.
Well, as I indicated previously, the logic of a bad install has prevailed again. Just reinstalled Leopard on the 667 PB 2nd time...and this time much faster - absolutely no logic to it.
It is returning this glitch on dock labels though - any ideas? My only guess is the under-powered graphics can't handle the drop shadowed text atop the transparency label?