iMac G4 700MHz - 10.4 or 10.5?

[HFTaylor12]

Hello,

I have the original iMac G4, 700MHz with a 15 inch screen. I'd like to start putting it to a lot more use, and that had me wondering about an OS. I have 2 options: 10.4, or 10.5 (unsupported). What do you think is best? I plan to do web browsing, YouTube (with PPC Media Center) music, word processing... basic stuff like that. Tiger has the advantage of speed, however Leopard supports more software, and newer versions of software. For web browsing, I used to use Leopard-WebKit but now I'm using TenFourFox as my default browser, no matter which OS. So what do you think? Tiger or Leopard? I'm curious to hear your opinions.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

10.5 will run like crap on that hardware. Stick with 10.4 and keep your expectations very, very modest.

 

[HFTaylor12]

OK. I find that 10.4 runs really well, though. If Leopard is even 60% as fast as that I'm happy.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Leopard really needs 2GB of RAM or more to be happy if you're planning to use it.

 

[rsolberg]

I have Leopard on my 800MHz 15" iMac G4 and it's pretty sluggish even with the maximum 1GB RAM and a fast SSD. Tiger is far more usable.

 

[Macdrone]

10.4 so you have os 9 also.

 

[HFTaylor12]

Thanks everybody. I think I'll go with Tiger based on what you're saying. I'm ok with a little slowdown for Leopard features, however this big of a slowdown seems too big. Thanks!

 

[bunnspecial]

Leopard really needs 2GB of RAM or more to be happy if you're planning to use it.

I'd disagree with that statement(typed from a dual 1ghz Quicksilver with 1.5gb RAM that runs Leopard as its main OS).

I don't like Leopard with under 1gb, but anything above that will generally be okay. It does run decently well on G4-upgraded beige G3s, which max at 768gb.

One of the biggest handicaps to Leo on all in one systems is usually the GPU. I'm at a big advantage in my Quicksilver in that I can(and do) run a Core Image card. On beige boxes you can run a Radeon 7000 or Radeon 9200, both of which are a big improvement. In NWR PCI towers(B&W and Yikes!) you can even get Core Image if you want to go to the trouble of flashing a card.

All that aside, I've been perfectly content with Leopard on my 700mhz eMac, which is very similar to the 700mhz iMac.

 

[HFTaylor12]

I agree with this post. My 1.33GHz iBook G4 runs Leopard really, really well with 1.5GB of RAM.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Which 1.33GHz iBook? The 12"? If it's that model of course it runs Leopard pretty well; it has a Radeon 9550 which is Core Image capable.

 

[HFTaylor12]

12 inch. It actually ran Leopard decently with 512MB of RAM.

 

[RhianB]

I'd disagree with that statement(typed from a dual 1ghz Quicksilver with 1.5gb RAM that runs Leopard as its main OS).

I don't like Leopard with under 1gb, but anything above that will generally be okay. It does run decently well on G4-upgraded beige G3s, which max at 768gb.

One of the biggest handicaps to Leo on all in one systems is usually the GPU. I'm at a big advantage in my Quicksilver in that I can(and do) run a Core Image card. On beige boxes you can run a Radeon 7000 or Radeon 9200, both of which are a big improvement. In NWR PCI towers(B&W and Yikes!) you can even get Core Image if you want to go to the trouble of flashing a card.

All that aside, I've been perfectly content with Leopard on my 700mhz eMac, which is very similar to the 700mhz iMac.

 I agree with this as well. My Dual 1Ghz QS powermac runs 10.5.8 just fine with 1.5GB ram and does not have a CI supported GPU - still running the GF2 MX 32mb AGP card it came with. In fact, aside from boot up, most everything about Leo in terms of speed is on par with Tiger and software support is so much better with Leo.

Certainly the single cpu will be slower with chubby apps on the imacg4 but from using my QS when it had the single 733mhz cpu before its D1ghz upgrade, I think the imac should still be quite usable for modest everyday sort of stuff. So yeah, try it and if it sucks, reinstall Tiger lol.

Oh yeah, this is my first post here. Hi everybody, I'm Rhian

 

[HFTaylor12]

Honestly, I am totally OK with a slow OS. I use a Power Mac G5 as my main Mac, so I'm not spoiled by all of the new fancy Intels. So what some of you might see as "slow" could be fast to me. We probably have different definitions of "usable" and "unusable" too. Some here might know that I seriously was going to use a G3 Clamshell as my only Mac for a week... but I couldn't get Tiger installed, so that didn't work out. Honestly, if I can load apple.com in 15 seconds or under I am happy. So I'm totally fine with "slow".

I'll also point out, I'm not using this as a daily driver or anything. I just want a computer that can handle some light web browsing, email, word processing, and maybe some other software (my main reason for wanting Leopard).

EDIT: Also, I get the "macOS Sierra Theme for Leopard"! I'm sure many of you have heard of that. Really awesome... there is almost no way to tell your PPC is outdated.

 

[HFTaylor12]

Well, in about 20 minutes, I will install an OS on this iMac... I think I'll go with Tiger, but if any more opinions can get in before then I will read them!

 

[Cory5412]

If you already have a newer/faster web-faring machine, what if you just install 9.2.2 on that iMac? Then, you can run 10.5.8 on that G5 without worrying about having Classic Mode on it.

Alternately: 10.3 should be fine on that hardware.

How much RAM does that iMac have?

 

[bunnspecial]

I've yet to see a situation where Panther ran noticeably faster than Tiger on any given set of hardware. To me, it's hard to make an argument for using Panther in any situation anymore as the software availability for Tiger is many times better.

 

[HFTaylor12]

Well, here's one of my reasons for going with Tiger... this iMac has 512MB of RAM. Now, I remember 512MB working well on some other Mac models for Leopard. But I think that in this case I should go with Tiger.

 

[Cory5412]

I had a TiBook and a blue-and-white G3 when 10.4 came out and later replicated everything I'd tried on those on a Pismo.

I've yet to see a situation where Panther ran noticeably faster than Tiger on any given set of hardware. 

I have all the weird problems with Macs and my Windows installations run flawlessly for years on end -- but I had so many problems with 10.4 when it was new. It was worse at literally everything and I always ended up reverting back to 10.3.

It pretty much wasn't until I had an Intel Mac that 10.4 was semi-stable, and I moved to 10.5 the literal instant my preorder of the new version arrived at my house.

Later, I would do up a bunch of G4-Intel machines for a K12 environment with 10.5 client and server. It 10.5 was "acceptable" on a group of 700MHz iMac G4s, IIRC with 512M of RAM, but this was also literally ten years ago (well, eight, but who is counting?). It ran "fine" but it was by no means "very good" -- the machine that really struggled was a Power Macintosh G4 dA/466 with either 128 or 256M of RAM. It ran, but it was not pretty.

Well, here's one of my reasons for going with Tiger... this iMac has 512MB of RAM.

Honestly, either is going to be slow. I'm betting if you put tenfourfox on any OS on that hardware and try to go to most modern web pages you're going to find yourself swapping to disk. I'm not sure that it makes a material difference which version of OS X you run, because even 10.2 really wants a half a gig if you can give it.

Perhaps what you should do is just get a bunch of different things and try them? Heck, try Linux on that machine, too. If you want to run it on a network, that's going to be your safest and most up-to-date bet.

 

[HFTaylor12]

Perhaps what you should do is just get a bunch of different things and try them? Heck, try Linux on that machine, too. If you want to run it on a network, that's going to be your safest and most up-to-date bet.

I'd like to! I've never really tried Linux before. Once I tried Debian, but my computer wouldn't boot up correctly after installation. Do you have any good recommendations? I'd really, really like a GUI with this also. . Also, I need something that supports a fully up-to-date web browser, 'cause OS X can do that (TFF).