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Operating Systems for PowerPC Macs

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Which OS is Your Main/Favorite One?

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I've had 12.04 running great on a G4 500MHz, and that was back when it was current in 2012. The remix runs even better from everything I've heard. I'll be installing it on a G4 mini soon.
 
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Hi there,
Just wondering what the most suitable OS for a Quad G5 would be.
It is a hobby just to own these G5 machines and love them for just having existed at the time...call me emotionally disturbed.

I do not want to use the quad on a daily basis. The goal is to run a system on it to proof that it is capable of playing 1080p, to surf the net and to write letters. And that there is not so much noise as expected.
Paired with an ssd and lots of RAM.

now to you pros: which os is at the end of the day (!) the most suitable one to achieve a decent experience on those machines?

thanks a lot!
 
marqus said:
Hi there,
Just wondering what the most suitable OS for a Quad G5 would be.
It is a hobby just to own these G5 machines and love them for just having existed at the time...call me emotionally disturbed.

I do not want to use the quad on a daily basis. The goal is to run a system on it to proof that it is capable of playing 1080p, to surf the net and to write letters. And that there is not so much noise as expected.
Paired with an ssd and lots of RAM.

now to you pros: which os is at the end of the day (!) the most suitable one to achieve a decent experience on those machines?

thanks a lot!
Click to expand...
Based on what you want out of the G5, it only makes sense to put Tiger or Leopard on it. Tiger if you also want access to older classic software, and Leopard if you're fine with OS X alone.
 
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Thanks but I also would consider putting some Linux on it. As long as it runs smoothly like a charm.
 
marqus said:
Thanks but I also would consider putting some Linux on it. As long as it runs smoothly like a charm.
Click to expand...
I just run Leopard on anything that will boot it. Pretty much all the info you could ever need is on this forum. There are a couple custom Linux distros on here that are supposedly really great. Debian, and Ubuntu 16.04, and there's a Mint that is in development as well. If you want Linux I'd start there. Getting any of the main distro's from their official repo's will be a pain to set up.
 
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marqus said:
Thanks but I also would consider putting some Linux on it. As long as it runs smoothly like a charm.
Click to expand...
Linux will only run like that on PowerPC if you already know what you're doing. But virtually every distro for PowerPC will run slower than OS X. This thinking that Linux is always lighter and faster is rarely true anymore.

A PowerPC Mac is not the kind of hardware you buy to run Linux. You run Linux on it if you need it, and you're stuck with that hardware. Since it will not be a daily system, then that's not an issue.

Tiger or Leopard + TenFourFox for modern web support/security.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
This is an area where Linux trounces Tiger or Leopard though, right? More modern and secure browsers.
Click to expand...
For sure, but most PowerPC hardware now, especially G4 and older, isn't going to be a very good experience on most hardware. The glory days of PowerPC Linux were the late 90's to about 2013. Especially with Debian. But someone that just wants to appreciate an old Mac from time to time isn't really going to get that experience with Linux, unless they have a deep bag of tricks. People without those skills will have a never ending string of roadblocks.

But Tiger can run well on even a G3.

BSD is what someone who wants an open source OS on Mac PowerPC should be using in 2020 IMO, but that has an even higher learning curve than Linux.
 
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timidpimpin said:
For sure, but most PowerPC hardware now, especially G4 and older, isn't going to be a very good experience on most hardware. The glory days of PowerPC Linux were the late 90's to about 2013. Especially with Debian. But someone that just wants to appreciate an old Mac from time to time isn't really going to get that experience with Linux, unless they have a deep bag of tricks. People without those skills will have a never ending string of roadblocks.

But Tiger can run well on even a G3.

BSD is what someone who wants an open source OS on Mac PowerPC should be using in 2020 IMO, but that has an even higher learning curve than Linux.
Click to expand...
This is why I don't run Linux on my Macs. I love Linux, but I have a collection of PPC Macs because I like them. I can run Linux on literally anything. In fact, openSUSE is installed on my ThinkPad right now and I use that if I'm not on my 15" PBG4.
Not to say I wouldn't be insterested in trying PPC Linux; I've used it before (if anyone is wondering, Ubuntu 16.04 does not run very well on a 400Mhz G3). I like older Mac OS X, and I like the PowerPC platform. So Tiger or Leopard is just a natural choice for me. In contrast, I despise most versions of Windows, especially 10. So PC's get Linux installed.

I have also been slowly getting into BSD, but not on PPC (well, sorta being as Mac OS X is BSD). I have a pfSense box and a FreeNAS box set up. Though obviously not desktop operating systems, they're still FreeBSD; and doing anything outside the book requires some learning curve.
timidpimpin said:
This thinking that Linux is always lighter and faster is rarely true anymore.
Click to expand...
In my opinion it's never been true. It can be, but rarely out of the box. Maybe if you used a distro like DSL.
Linux has always been pretty slow out of the box for me on most systems, and using a DE that has a lot of modern enhancements and eye-candy like KDE will eat up as much ram if not more than just running Windows.
Back in the day I had a Dell Optiplex with a later Penitum II of some vintage. Ubuntu (I wanna say version 6 or 7?) was not any faster than running Windows XP on it. Both were equally as mind numbing.
 
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Thanks for all the information. Actually I did not know that putting a Linux on ppc could be that unnecessary.
so I tried tiger. No matter what image I tried, even an original disk from G4 will end up in the same kernel error and tons of lines printed over the “please restart your computer” screen.
Two years ago I was able to install tiger on G4 but actually never tried on the quad.
Tried changing and leaving out mem sticks, too.

Any help?
 
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Thanks alot. I begin to love that Quad. Now of course as an oldschool "owner" of retro hardware, I would like to bring up the maximum of this machine. Meaning optional hardware and software that fits well. Just for fun!
Thinking about the 23 inch aluminium cinema display. More important: I dont have WLAN nor BT support. What were the original parts for those two?

Is there a way to configure fan speed? Cann I read the CPU temps in Tiger?

thx
 
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marqus said:
Thanks alot. I begin to love that Quad. Now of course as an oldschool "owner" of retro hardware, I would like to bring up the maximum of this machine. Meaning optional hardware and software that fits well. Just for fun!
Thinking about the 23 inch aluminium cinema display. More important: I dont have WLAN nor BT support. What were the original parts for those two?

Is there a way to configure fan speed? Cann I read the CPU temps in Tiger?

thx
Click to expand...
Im away from my tiger iMac but I use the temp monitor found here:

Software for Vintage and Obsolete Computers

Information on software for outdated Macintosh computers
www.bresink.com
..as listed here:
forums.macrumors.com

[For New Users]The Starter Thread

Welcome, In my experience with wiping my PPC's and starting fresh, I've usually found myself struggling to get it optimized due to the lagginess of software. I wanted to create this thread as a go-to for getting your PPC off the ground then optimizing. Hopefully this could get pinned at the top...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
I’m curious. I saw a G4 Mac Mini being sold somewhere. I was tempted, but don’t want to buy something if I am not going to give it a good use. So, as of now, in 2021, which OS (or OSes) would be useful with this hardware? Does it really run Debian 10, or some other Linux flavor? I want to try them out in a qemu ppc emulator (just for fun) and also any of the older macos 10.x versions. Leopard is too slow for this emulator and I’ve found that Tiger has some reasonable speed. One of the key points for me in these tests is web browsing. Ideas?
 
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