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Transforming Leopard into Snow Leopard

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z970

z970

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This is just something I raised up at the LeopardRebirth thread, but let me get into this here because I think this could be a fully-fledged topic on its own...

What do you think it would take to optimize, tune, tweak, and potentially bug-fix Leopard for it to raise to Snow Leopard level speeds, stability, reliability, etc... Because, I've removed the Intel code from Universal Binaries system-wide via Monolingual (it didn't help), pre-binding has obviously become obsolete long ago, and repairing permissions, Onyx, etc. are all simply temporary solutions. We need to think of more avenues.

And don't question that, because I KNOW this community is capable of great things. It is certainly *possible* to achieve this goal, and it COULDN'T be *too* massively difficult.

The question is... How?

How might we?
 
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The OS would have to be stripped down TREMENDOUSLY. Think a build like Lubuntu. Strip everything unnecessary out of it, including unneeded processes.

Honestly, I don't think Leopard was optimized for PowerPC very well, if at all, though. It was the first truly universal OS from Apple, as Intel happened during Tiger and not before it. So I have a feeling PPC stuff was there as an afterthought and it's really coded for Intel and POSSIBLY the G5 towers.

However, if you want more speed and can take the OS hit, reinstall Panther and use it.
 
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MysticCow said:
The OS would have to be stripped down TREMENDOUSLY. Think a build like Lubuntu. Strip everything unnecessary out of it, including unneeded processes.

Honestly, I don't think Leopard was optimized for PowerPC very well, if at all, though. It was the first truly universal OS from Apple, as Intel happened during Tiger and not before it. So I have a feeling PPC stuff was there as an afterthought and it's really coded for Intel and POSSIBLY the G5 towers.

However, if you want more speed and can take the OS hit, reinstall Panther and use it.
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We could strip it down. That's not impossible.

Of course it wasn't, this is evident.

But this is about Leopard, not Panther. Panther has its own thread. We've got WebKit, TFF, PPCAppStore, so we have the applications. The question here is, how do we get the system?

How might we go about manually polishing it?
 
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z970mp said:
We could strip it down. That's not impossible.

Of course it wasn't, this is evident.

But this is about Leopard, not Panther. Panther has its own thread. We've got WebKit, TFF, PPCAppStore, so we have the applications. The question here is, how do we get the system?

How might we go about manually polishing it?
Click to expand...

Dive into Activity Monitor and shut down every process, one at a time. If the system doesn't go berserk, trash the original file. I do fear this is going to trial-and-error.
 
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eyoungren said:
@z970mp Have you looked through here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-leopard-speed-improvements.1723868/

Lots of things to do first before we start making Leopard into Snow Leopard.

Display of sheets, Secrets Prefpane, killing spotlight, turning off the eye candy, Shadow Killer, turning off Beamsync, etc, etc.
Click to expand...

Just saw that thread now.

Thank you, that was a good input.

We could build from what we learned there! Progress will be quicker!

EDIT: Thanks to your suggestions (I think), I have enabled OpenGL, QuartzExtreme2D, and disabled Beam Sync, set sheet speeds to very fast, and restarted. I can confirm that there is a noticeable difference. In fact, I managed to shave off 6 whole seconds of boot up time! I recommend this to everyone with a G5 or a very high-end G4. Of course, always better if said machines are fully upgraded, too. 😉
[doublepost=1501175585][/doublepost][copied and pasted from the Leopard Speed Improvements thread]

Although it isn't really speed related, this does make Leopard better appear to be running on an Intel machine. It makes everything that displays on your screen look deeper, more vibrant, and less washed out, too.

Go into System Preferences, then Displays, Color, then select your current profile, and click the 'Calibrate' button. Click continue when the window comes up, and then choose '2.2 Television Gamma', instead of '1.8 Standard Gamma'. 2.2 is the setting all Intel OS X releases have used by default since 10.6.

Anyway, after that, set the white point at its native setting, then save the profile. Your computer will now look much better.

-

I've got another tip for speeding Leopard, though. (And this works with all OS X releases, too.)

Launch System Preferences, and open the Keyboard and Mouse pane, then you should be in the 'Keyboard' section by default. Set the 'Key Repeat Rate' to 'Fast', then 'Delay Until Repeat' to 'Short'. Typing should now be much zippier, without feeling too fast. Learned that on an edition of the MacWorld magazine. 🙂
 
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Don't you think the authors of Onyx have already squeezed every ounce out of Leopard that's possible? Leopard was designed for Intel - there's only so far you can go without recoding.
 
Dronecatcher said:
Don't you think the authors of Onyx have already squeezed every ounce out of Leopard that's possible? Leopard was designed for Intel - there's only so far you can go without recoding.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bank on it. 😉

Picture 1.png
 
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SourceSunTom said:
Apple recoded Finder in snow Leopard if i remember, making it more stable, we can't do that unfortunately
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Yep, in PPC is was a Carbon app and in SL they made it Cocoa. Which makes me wonder, would using another file manager app in place of Finder be faster, assuming the app was a Cocoa app?
 
SourceSunTom said:
Apple recoded Finder in snow Leopard if i remember, making it more stable, we can't do that unfortunately
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Well... Maybe we could leave out the coding bit. Unless some magical wizard lurking around here could create some kind of miracle app that you run once or twice and your machine is now suddenly zippy and super-tuned-tweaked-optimized for PowerPC, AltiVec, dual processors, etc... - Honestly, I don't see it not happening. I could damn well see myself making something like that a little bit down the line. It would just require the developer to get his hands dirty in the system files with lots and lots of trial and error. But I could totally see that happening.

What I mean is maybe stick to really, really, in-depth customization and optimization for now. Perhaps there is some kind of a collection of super in-depth release notes that Apple made about the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard somewhere. We could follow that and start from there. 😀
 
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Rather than chase the impossible.... do all of the documented speed hacks, get more memory or SSD if practical and then look at your work flow/useage. There's so much you can gain by choosing the apps that work best for you and ditching the ones you don't need.

Incidently, I've always found the speed hacks more relevant on G4s for obvious reasons and the fastest by far is ShadowKiller - Finder snaps open windows - that alone makes the OS feel like it's much faster.
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z970mp said:
super-tuned-tweaked-optimized for PowerPC, AltiVec, dual processors, etc...
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I think the G5 has lots of untapped potential - Apple ditched it before it had realised it's limits.
 
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I'm gonna take a couple of the most helpful excerpts from the old Speed Improvements to Leopard thread and put them here. All credit goes to Altemose, eyoungren, and Intell. All rights are reserved to them.

"You maybe able to boost your graphics performance a little bit more by enabling OpenGL. In my tests, graphical applications performed smoother and faster. To do this simply open a new Terminal session and enter this command.

Code:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver \QuartzGLEnabled -boolean YES
A way to speed up the Finder is to speed up the Finder's UI performance is to use OnyX to speed up the display of sheets. To do so, simply download and install the last version of OnyX for Leopard (2.0.6).

Open OnyX and go to the "Parameters" section and set the "Speed of Display of Sheets" to "Very Fast"."

"Just note that QuartzGL/Quartz 2D Extreme requires a CoreImage card. The GeForce 5200 is not able to properly run it as it is missing one of OpenGL/Quartz 2D Extreme's critical instruction sets."

"I just wanted to share a tip with you PowerPC enthusiasts. Apple and other OS manufacturers use a technology called V-Sync which essentially vertically refreshes the screen. It is mainly designed for CRT displays rather than LCDs, so we can safely disable it.

Anyone who has used Tiger knows how smooth the dock can be on opening applications, minimizing windows, and magnification. Unfortunately, many late PowerPC Macs like my PowerMac G5 and early Intel Macs are slowed by BeamSync (Apple's term for V-Sync). I am not sure of the root cause of the slowness, but it is rather disappointing to see choppy opening animations."

"If you have the Secrets pref pane installed, just search for Beamsync (it's in the System section) and turn it off there."

Thanks to personal experience and going over this thread, I have found that Onyx, Secrets, and ShadowKiller are most helpful applications when running Leopard. Like eyoungren raised, Onyx is helpful for disabling Spotlight, Dashboard, and Bonjour (I'm pretty sure), too. Secrets for disabling Beam Sync, and enabling OpenGL and Quartz Extreme 2D. And I believe turning off the menu bar transparency via System Preferences, launching ShadowKiller, disabling Beam Sync via Secrets, and enabling the 2D dock via Onyx, are also the most helpful tips especially when running Leopard on a G4 of any kind. Coupled with all the other findings of ours from this thread so far, of course. 😀

EDIT: I actually wouldn't turn off Beam Sync, even if you're on an LCD. While browsing these forums on WebKit, there was a constant white flickering about the pages. So I turned off Quarts Extreme 2D, and OpenGL, no difference. I turn them back on again, set Beam Sync to 'Automatic', restart, and the flickering is now gone. All back to normal.

So I actually suggest just turning on OpenGL and Quartz Extreme 2D and leaving Beam Sync alone. I still have the updated graphical performance, and I still got the boot up time to be lessened even more by 8 seconds with Beam Sync on automatic, only now, no internet flickering. So my boot time is 40 seconds with Quartz Extreme 2D and OpenGL enabled. My machine's specs are in my signature.
 
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eyoungren said:
You've been talking to rabidz7.

According to him Apple has a PowerPC and Intell version of every version of OS X locked away somewhere.
Click to expand...

They did have insider Intel versions of OS X from the very beginning.

PowerPC versions however, only went up to 10.5. Funny.

I'll have whatever he's having.
 
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eyoungren said:
You've been talking to rabidz7.

According to him Apple has a PowerPC and Intell version of every version of OS X locked away somewhere.
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That's stupid... So rabidz7 thinks you could possibly install every version of OS X on a PowerPC based mac? lol

First of all, why would apple do that, because they are PowerPC fanboys 😛 ? Why would apple developers work on creating kernels and compiling all apps to be able to run the powerPc architecture.

And even if we found some sort of kernel hack someday, the highest version we would be able to run would be 10.6, as it's the latest version supporting 32bits, (or Os x Lion beta 2), except 64bits G5 machines.

If we were able to run a later version of OS X (or macOS) somehow, it wouldn't improve our performances, but slow everything down...

Edit: Apple even had problems making both architectures compatible together (Rosetta)
 
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SourceSunTom said:
That's stupid... So rabidz7 thinks you could possibly install every version of OS X on a PowerPC based mac? lol

First of all, why would apple do that, because they are PowerPC fanboys 😛 ? That's stupid, Why would apple developers work on creating kernels and compiling all apps to be able to run the powerPc architecture.

And even if we found some sort of kernel hack someday, the highest version we would be able to run would be 10.6, as it's the latest version supporting 32bits, (or Os x Lion beta 2), except 64bits G5 machines.

If we were able to run a later version of OS X (or macOS) somehow, it wouldn't improve our performances, but slow everything down...

Edit: Apple even had problems making both architectures compatible together (Rosetta)
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Well…you know. Rabbids.

Rabbids%2BInvasion3.jpg

[doublepost=1501191700][/doublepost]
z970mp said:
You know I was kidding.
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And I provided a pic of a logicboard with a torn off GPU.

So…kidding back. 😀
 
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eyoungren said:
Well…you know. Rabbids.

Rabbids%2BInvasion3.jpg

[doublepost=1501191700][/doublepost]
And I provided a pic of a logicboard with a torn off GPU.

So…kidding back. 😀
Click to expand...

Ohhh...

I just realized another problem of Leopard not being optimized, what are the chances of repairing permissions in Disk Utility becoming any faster? Tiger had them really speedy, and it takes like 5 minutes for Leopard to do them every time.

Could we fix that? Possibly? Maybe? Yes? 😛
 
z970mp said:
Ohhh...

I just realized another problem of Leopard not being optimized, what are the chances of repairing permissions in Disk Utility becoming any faster? Tiger had them really speedy, and it takes like 5 minutes for Leopard to do them every time.

Could we fix that? Possibly? Maybe? Yes? 😛
Click to expand...
That's a result of Leopard introducing ACL's. It's not only determining permissions it's checking the list and fixing that as well.

A faster hard drive or an SSD would speed it up. About all you can do.
 
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