So... What about Mac OS X Leopard?

It sucks. Go back to tiger.

 

Which G4 do you have?
My 17" 1GHz iMac G4 is supposed to be here this week or 1st part of next week and it's preloaded with Tiger with 768MB RAM.

After reading a few posts on here that got my thinking, I may toy with the notion of putting a small SSD into it.

 

I've got quite a few G4s. I say if you've a G4, put Leopard on it. Much more usable. Make sure you have at least 512MB of RAM though, but you'll get slowdowns as you run out of memory, so make sure you put in at least 1GB.

It's much slower than Tiger on a 466MHz G4 with 1.5GB of memory, but I found it worthwhile.

It's fine on a 1GHz G4 with 512MB of memory, but with 1GB it's even better.

 

OP, if you have copy of Leo, the best is to try it out. No one can tell you better how it "feels" than yourself. How many peeps, that many opinions in this matter.
For some on 500 MHz G4 Leo is acceptable, for other not.

 

My old QS ran 10.5 just fine, albeit with a 1.6ghz upgrade, 1.5GB of ram, 9800 Pro video card, and a 10k SATA Raptor as a boot drive.......

 

I used to have the same iBook as you, but with 1.25 GB of RAM. For me, it just didn't cut it on Leopard even with that. It worked fine, but it just wasn't as fast as Tiger was, nor were the new features of any use to me. It wasn't painfully slow, but it wasn't close to quick either. It really started to lag if you had more than 3 or 4 apps open at a time, routine for most people I would think. I went back to Tiger and never looked back. Most G4's will run Leopard just fine, but if you want the epitome of fast on these old birds, Tiger is the way to go IMO.

 

This is the important thing, Tiger was much faster than Leopard on my 466MHz G4, but I used/liked/needed the extra features as it was my main computer for a while while made it worth it/tolerable.

 

I had a Powermac G4 dual 1.42ghz 2GB RAM and G4 single 867mhz 1.5GB RAM and Leopard sucked on both- finder very laggy.

I found Leopard was fine on a Powerbook G4 1.67Ghz 1.5GB RAM and a G5 2.1Ghz 1.5GB RAM iMac.

I'd stick with Tiger for your iBook.

 

Drew: i just sold same machine a month or so ago (but had max 1.5 gig ram)...

-believe it or not but geekbench scored better with leopard then tiger...and unlike quasinormal i thought leopard ran faster then tiger in eveyday real terms....
-and being able to run latest itunes,modern safari (which ran faster then even tenfour and camino browsers) was enough for me
-1 gig stick of ddr sodimm ram can be found for not bad pricing and worth the upgrade...and easy install
http://www.ifixit.com/Browse/iBook_G4

now don't expect it to be modern fast (even a atom netbook will blow away a ibook G4) but it still can be very useful and everyday computer if you don't over expect things...

-a few tips...try turning off dashboard and spotlight...and use lite programs (mactubes,seashore)
-for me after installing leopard and updating itunes you need to go search/install QuickTime770 in order for itunes to work (auto update won't work to find qt 770)
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL761

 

Just partition the thing and put them both on there. Tiger will be faster but Leopard opens up more current app and browsing possibilities.

 

Exactly, it just depends on whether or not the new features and ability to run newer programs are worth the sacrifice in speed. Like I said, Leopard is way more than usable on a G4, but there will be those moments where you find yourself waiting for the OS to catch up to you. I got used to the instant response speed of Tiger and Leopard just seemed slow in comparison, and spaces and all that stuff just isn't useful to me. I love Tiger, the UI, the design, the speed and the simplicity and that's why I stick with it to this day. But, I know I'm a minority and all the new features of more current OS X iterations are loved by many, and it's worth getting new hardware and upgrading. To each their own.

 

I don't think you can if your graphics card doesn't support those things. Otherwise you could turn on the fancy menu bar in the Appearance preferences.