What To Do With an Old G5 Tower?

lunatic1969 writes "I've got an old G5 PowerPC tower that's sitting in a spare room not seeing much in the way of use. I'd like to stick a Linux distribution on it and maybe breathe some life back into it. I've got a few vague ideas — it might be a handy file server, streaming video for a security system, or simply just to have a spare box around. My question is therefore in two parts: First, are there any particularly creative projects or ideas anyone has for an old G5, and second and most important, which distribution currently offers the best support for this box?"

Comments

yellow dog linux still around?

[alen]

personally i'd send it to China for "recycling" or just junk it or donate it. you'll get better performance buying a new iMac and virtualizing the G5. File servers are so last decade. just get an external hard drive and connect it to a TV all of which come with USB ports these days and play a long list of media files

retire it

[joe_bruin]

A G5 tower is a monstrous waste of electricity with trivial performance in return compared to a modern machine. Its primary use these days is as a space heater.

Re:retire it

[jtownatpunk.net]

I'm glad somebody said it. The money you'd save on electricity in a year would probably pay for a little NAS appliance that barely takes up more space than the drive(s).

Re:retire it

[Swampash]

Agreed 100%. Have it recycled.

Re:retire it

[Rinikusu]

What utter nonsense.

I'm typing this now via my Dual G5 2.3ghz powermac that is perfectly servicable. Running OS X 10.5, as well. For web browsing, hulu, ableton live + reason + native instruments, even gaming (world of warcraft, soon to be intel only, though). Everything I want to do, I can do on this machine. Would a new machine be more efficient and even do tasks faster? Yes and probably not because I'm user constrained when it comes to music production (for the most part). however, I'd still have to part with my hard earned cash I'd rather spend on drugs and alcohol than buy another machine where I wouldn't see any 'dividends' for many years down the road.

Re:retire it

[je ne sais quoi]

Another thing I'll point out is that debian includes binaries compiled for the ppc. I've never had any problems putting debian on ppc hardware. I would think Ubuntu would work as well, and as others have mentioned, yellow dog is still around. The days of needing a specialist distro for a ppc are long gone though.

Re:retire it

[DAldredge]

This $299 T110 from Dell will be much faster and use less power than the G5. http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/poweredge-t110?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

Re:retire it

[hairyfeet]

Put them on Freecycle. Just because you don't have a use for them doesn't mean someone else can't find one. I've found even broken PCs get snatched up pretty quick on Freecycle by the DIYers, so instead of making more E-Waste put it on Freecycle where someone will give it a good home.

Re:retire it

[peas_n_carrots]

You're parting with your hard earned cash by keeping that G5 running. Your higher electricity costs would probably pay for a new, power efficient system in a year or two. Just admit the fanboism and we can settle the debate.

Re:retire it

[beelsebob]

Consider that a bottom of the line MacMini is faster than your G5, and consumes 140W less power when idle, and 600W less power when under load. If you're not using your G5 much, you'll pay for the MacMini in 4 years by trashing the G5 now, if you *are* using it (and it sounds like you are), you'll pay for the MacMini in only 1 year.

G5s are power hogs

[sith]

Unless you just like the look of the G5, I think you'd be better off trying to get a little money for it on craigslist, and then buying/building a cheap x86 machine if you need a server. G5 power consumption is pretty crazy for the performance you get - best case, at idle, you're looking at 140w, but in reality it's much higher.

Make it a modern Mac

[Stormwatch]

Gut it and use the case to build a modern PC, on which you can install Mac OS X by using Prasys' EmpireEFI. Or just install whatever you want. The G5 may be outdated, but the case is still beautiful.

I hate to say it...

[MarcQuadra]

I hate to say it, but the nature of CPUs has changed so much since the Core architecture that you might want to eBay that box and buy something like an Atom Nettop.

The G5 and P4 were both pretty much the 'end of the line' of the idea that faster=hotter and more power-hungry.

I keep a G4 dualie around for Mac work, but it's basically a space heater. I advise clients to decommission their P4-based systems ASAP. My dual-core Core 2 idles at under 60W, the G4 uses almost 200W and shows a lot less for it.

Seriously, somewhere out there is a young web designer who wants that G5. eBay it. Take the money and buy a modern machine that -is- supported by the latest distros and won't silently cost you $10/month.

I really like the Atom 330/ION combination, you get low-power, dual-core, accelerated video and 2D, and 64-bits of goodness. Sure, it's slower than a G5, but it's enough to saturate a gigabit pipe, or play 1080p h.264 via HDMI, browse, type, serve files or multimedia, etc. You could probably buy three matching ION-based nettops if you tossed the G5.

Malware Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a G5 be the ultimate in security-by-obscurity? A G5 won't run Intel binaries, and who the hell is going to take the trouble of digging up a PPC compiler? It's the closest you can get, at this level of computing power, to building your own machine with its own binary architecture and microcode/instruction set.

Re:Audio Workstation/Recording Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because it's not important at all for things to be quiet in the mixing room.

Sell it

[Teese]

You'd be surprised what an older G5 desktop sells for on the used market. Any software dev that supports PowerPC apps needs testing machines, and dev boxes. Faster PowerPCs like G5s are in demand out there.

Sell it

[sqrt(2)]

Sell it or maybe use the case, they look quite nice. That might take some work to get non-Apple components in it though (I'm not familiar with how they are set up internally). I was in a similar situation with an old P4 Dell. It's just not worth the noise, heat, and power drain for what essentially is a low intensity task. Serving files or even streaming video doesn't take that much power and G5s and P4s are just too inefficient for what you get.

Sell it and get a Mac mini, or some other comparable low cost/efficient computer. Attach some external drives to it and you're done. Alternatively you could buy an Airport Extreme and a USB hub, plug in a few external hard drives and you have a much better and efficient home server.

Re:Perfect use for a G5.

[trapnest]

You're an idiot if you really believe an Atom will out preform a G5 processor.

Re:ubuntu? or just rsync?

[Larryish]

At some point you have to listen to the voice of reason when someone says "it's OLD, time to REPLACE it", when you want to reply "but it still WORKS FINE".

No, you don't.

Sell it to a sucker

[drinkypoo]

Sell it to a sucker while it still has resale value. Someone out there would surely like to use it as a Linux desktop. Personally, I just want the CASE. But I imagine even empty G5 cases are still worth some money.