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Only PPC Macs left

macgeek18

macgeek18

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 8, 2009
1,847
732
Northern California
I sold my last Intel Mac yesterday. My 08 MacBook and 2011 Mac Mini are gone. I bought a new PC desktop and replaced the Mac Mini with the desktop and sold the Macbook due to lack of use. I only have my PM G4, iMac G4, and PB G4 12" left for macs. I still have my iPad Pro that is my mobile device. I'm free from the Intel Macs and now can enjoy my PPC Macs more.
 
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macgeek18 said:
I sold my last Intel Mac yesterday. My 08 MacBook and 2011 Mac Mini are gone. I bought a new PC desktop and replaced the Mac Mini with the desktop and sold the Macbook due to lack of use. I only have my PM G4, iMac G4, and PB G4 12" left for macs. I still have my iPad Pro that is my mobile device. I'm free from the Intel Macs and now can enjoy my PPC Macs more.
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I have one Intel 17" MBP that I got in April 2015.

It is not my daily driver (I use it on the couch mostly) and it's not the Mac that goes to the coffee shop with me (that's my 17" PowerBook).

Everything else that has come and gone or stayed has been PowerPC since Christmas 2001.

I have yet to have a need for anything that requires a Mac (or PC) I don't have.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Depends on your needs and how you work it - I use 4 browsers on PPC for different needs.
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That's what I said. If you don't need to ask that much of it, it works fine. But if you're on websites that require new things aside from the browser, it won't be enough.
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pet84rik said:
It depends. I do not have other "small" laptop besides PB12", so I often took it to bed to chat on IRC a listen to music. Is it "using it for fun"?
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Yes, that is fun. And there is no shame in fun.
 
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Well I realized I have one Intel Mac left. Kind of forgot about it. I have a 2006 iMac Core Duo that is a movie machine in the bedroom. But It is only used for DVDs and movies on the hard drive. It is not used for internet or anything. Then my wife has my old 2012 MBP. But that's not mine anymore.
 
Dronecatcher said:
In my experience of Linux on PPC, there's no browser available that gives you anything that Webkit and TTF don't - but I'm happy for someone to tell me different :)
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Well for my (future) needs at least, TenFourFox is not enough.

But everyone's different. :)
 
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z970mp said:
2. If you have two hard drives, you should put Linux on the first, with OS X on the second, so yaboot is always the first bootloader.

3. Run Linux within a virtualization, and give it as much RAM as possible. Usually done with Microsoft Virtual PC or Q. (Preferably about half of your real RAM, and Q's always broken in my experience.)

I hope the community never stops making ports of Linux for PPC, especially Ubuntu. That's the real life blood, because a single browser will only get you so far in an otherwise 10+ year old OS. I've only seen a Live DVD so far, but it's enough for me to know the potential and usability of the entire thing.
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Did you get it to work your Linux install ?

On OS X you can try with an older version of Macports to install/qemu but there is a RAM limit of 2047 MB that you can dedicate to your VM.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but Debian is calling it quits for PPC so Ubuntu also , after 17.04 or 17.10 there will be no more PPC versions.
 
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I have a hackintosh partition on my gaming rig for moving songs to my iPod nano. But, I plan on getting an older iPod to remedy this. Other than that, I have my iBook, my PowerBook and a surface pro in case there’s something modern I absolutely need to use. I also use my iPhone SE for filming and my iPad mini to edit
 
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z970mp said:
Ironic thing is, it runs much better than Apple's own OS for their own machine, too.
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No way! Linux has some contemporary advantages over OSX but to say it runs better is a stretch. Do some tests side by side, I think you'll find the dated OS fits better. I'm not anti Linux by the way, I love it but it's not optimized for PowerPC Macs.
 
Dronecatcher said:
No way! Linux has some contemporary advantages over OSX but to say it runs better is a stretch. Do some tests side by side, I think you'll find the dated OS fits better. I'm not anti Linux by the way, I love it but it's not optimized for PowerPC Macs.
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Well, Lubuntu was faster for me anyway.

I'll do that when I can, but I'm pretty sure it was noticeably snappier when I opened and used things. And that was only off of the optical drive! Imagine what it would be like on the hard drive! And they actually fixed the blazing fans issue in 16.04, so from my experiences, the newer the build is, the more compatible it is.

What builds of Linux have you used?
 
z970mp said:
What builds of Linux have you used?
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Debian 6 and 7 - each one was a minimal install ie no apps or features, everything I needed had to be added. I've tested Lubuntu 16.04 from DVD but I wasn't happy with how much processor it was using even on simple tasks.
Over the years I've tried various builds of Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu - not surprisingly, the fastest are the older builds.
Maybe I ride the CPU indicator too much but I always fret if a lot of resource is being used over nothing.
You can get good results with Linux in certain areas but I always find after installing it I soon go back to OSX.
 
Dronecatcher said:
Debian 6 and 7 - each one was a minimal install ie no apps or features, everything I needed had to be added. I've tested Lubuntu 16.04 from DVD but I wasn't happy with how much processor it was using even on simple tasks.
Over the years I've tried various builds of Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu - not surprisingly, the fastest are the older builds.
Maybe I ride the CPU indicator too much but I always fret if a lot of resource is being used over nothing.
You can get good results with Linux in certain areas but I always find after installing it I soon go back to OSX.
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Have you tried it on your DP G5?

Maybe that's just me, then.
 
z970mp said:
Have you tried it on your DP G5?

Maybe that's just me, then.
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You might have a very good point, G5/64bit optimisations might be at play.

I did try Lubuntu 16.04 on my G5 Dual 2.3 - I can't remember why but I went back to OSX within a few hours.
Otherwise it's always been on Powerbook/iBook.

I think sometimes you can hit a sweet spot with a particular hardware combo - @pochopsp has an enviable system running here:

 
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Dronecatcher said:
You might have a very good point, G5/64bit optimisations might be at play.

I did try Lubuntu 16.04 on my G5 Dual 2.3 - I can't remember why but I went back to OSX within a few hours.
Otherwise it's always been on Powerbook/iBook.

I think sometimes you can hit a sweet spot with a particular hardware combo - @pochopsp has an enviable system running here:

Click to expand...

Have you tried running the Live CD in 64-bit mode on your DP G5?

You do that by entering yaboot, then typing the command "live-powerpc64". It's the only boot method I've inputted, and it's fast for me every time.

Why don't you try that? See how it feels then. It was speedy for me.

Make sure you have plenty of RAM, too. I have 4GB.
 
Dronecatcher said:
I'll give it a whirl later, there's 4.5Gb RAM to play with - maybe that's why a live CD/DVD can seem faster, as the OS is operating from a RAM disk?
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I highly doubt a Live DVD would actually be real-world faster than implanted into the hard disk. I'm thinking that there are many factors at play here.

Make sure you use Lubuntu, it's lightweight.
 
z970mp said:
Make sure you use Lubuntu, it's lightweight.
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Yep, agreed, it performs well - given that it's flying from the DVD and isn't properly optimised. I monitored CPU use across 720P playback and web browsing (no video playback on Youtube - probable GPU issue) and it's pretty close to OSX - although out of the box, there's no audio - that adds plenty of cycles once it's set up.
However, Lubuntu/LXDE is very basic compared with the luxury of OSX - so performance might dip once LXDE has a dock and enhancements etc.
But yes, if you can survive without the Mac core apps and visual/audio creative apps then Lubuntu sits well on a Dual G5.
 
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