What To Do With an Old G5 Tower?

PPC Linux by worx101 · 2010-07-23 11:39 · Score: 5, Informative

Yellow Dog probably has the best support, but you could always look at the PPC version of Ubuntu.

Re:PPC Linux by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2010-07-23 11:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I run a stripped PPC Ubu on a Blue and White G3. Works. As good as the R4000 Indigo on Irix 6.5 that sits next to it. (NOT NeXT to it!)

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Never been known to fail..."
Re:PPC Linux by cynyr · 2010-07-23 12:43 · Score: 5, Funny

I'd run gentoo on it but I run gentoo on everything, including my dead badger ( http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml ) http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ppc.xml

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All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.

yellow dog linux still around? by alen · 2010-07-23 11:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

Re:yellow dog linux still around? by h4rr4r · 2010-07-23 13:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

The lack of RAID does that for you.
Plus the lack of rsync to automatically backup everything for you, and the fact that your other network devices cannot easily access it.
Re:yellow dog linux still around? by beelsebob · 2010-07-23 19:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. The Powermac G5s all idle at around 150W, and most used about 600-700W under load. Left idle all year serving files it'll cost $150 a year just in electricity to run... All this for a slower machine than a MacMini, which doing the equivalent thing would use 10W.
Re:yellow dog linux still around? by TheRaven64 · 2010-07-24 02:37 · Score: 3, Informative

It's about right. From Apple's docs: idle 120W, max 420W for the single-processor 1.6GHz version, idle 140W, max 604W for the dual-processor 2GHz version. The old G5s were power guzzlers. Each CPU could use 100W by itself. They were the reason that Apple laptops were so slow for so long: IBM couldn't produce a decent low-power chip. Even the 'low power' FX variant used up to around 50W - there was no way Apple could fit that in a laptop. Remember that these machines come from the same era as the Prescott P4s, which peaked at 120W per CPU. Two CPUs, a load of support chips, RAM, multiple drives, and so on all added up.
Some of the G5s were water cooled, and all of them came with an impressive case design to maximise air flow.

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Genius by binarylarry · 2010-07-23 11:41 · Score: 5, Funny

I think I speak for all of us here on Slashdot when I say, porn file server running Linux.

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Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!

Ubuntu 9.04 by Fookin · 2010-07-23 11:42 · Score: 2, Informative

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/jaunty/release/

Re:Ubuntu 9.04 by adam.dorsey · 2010-07-23 13:09 · Score: 2, Informative

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/
Lucid as well.

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retire it by joe_bruin · 2010-07-23 11:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by jtownatpunk.net · 2010-07-23 12:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by je+ne+sais+quoi · 2010-07-23 12:06 · Score: 4, Informative

Say what?! One of my older machines is a G5 dual proc, 2.7 Ghz. That's still a VERY respectable clock speed, it's 64 bit and the dual procs means it's still pretty fast. The submitter didn't mention what speed his was (I'm guessing slower) but depending on that, a G5 could very well be a useful machine. It's not like it's an Athlon or something that is both slow, 32 bit and single core.

Since the G5 was designed for performance, it's not exactly a great file server chip though. But it's far from being a "space heater" as you say -- mine gets used every work day. As others have pointed out, either put linux on it, or put an older version of OS X on it. I still have 10.4 on mine because it was the last OS Apple produced that was streamlined for the PPC. However, now that Apple has stopped supporting it, I'll have to break down and put 10.5 on it. On other older machines though I have installed both pbbuttons and gtkpbbuttons which support a lot of of the media keys on the keyboard pretty well.

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Re:retire it by Swampash · 2010-07-23 12:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Agreed 100%. Have it recycled.
Re:retire it by Rinikusu · 2010-07-23 12:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Re:retire it by Kenja · 2010-07-23 12:09 · Score: 4, Funny

Sad, but true.

I'd use it for a practical joke, will it with cement and put it outside with a "free" sign on the side. Sit back and watch the hijinks.

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"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Re:retire it by the+linux+geek · 2010-07-23 12:17 · Score: 3, Informative

G5's aren't incredibly slow, but nor are they particularly fast. The clock speed bump over the G4 meant the loss of some performance per cycle, and the amount of heat those things put out is obscene. A reasonably clocked C2D or any Nehalem should be vastly faster than a G5.
Re:retire it by je+ne+sais+quoi · 2010-07-23 12:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Re:retire it by Brett+Buck · 2010-07-23 12:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

Hey, I am using a Wind Tunnel G4 right now. It works fantastically well and is lightning fast at running satellite simulations. Faster than my Core 2 Duo PC by a fair margin.
Re:retire it by 0100010001010011 · 2010-07-23 12:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

So turn it on when needed, but I wouldn't say it's a waste of electricity, considering it's already paid for.
Apple has done a great job of making XGrid platform independent. If you code with Xcode it'll speed up your compile times. If you do any video rendering, it'll speed that up.
Or toss OS X server on it and use it as a home server (if you continue to use OS X) or Debian
Re:retire it by UnknownSoldier · 2010-07-23 12:46 · Score: 2

> It's not like it's an Athlon or something that is both slow, 32 bit and single core.
I have an Athlon XP 3200+ you insensitive clod!
(Upgraded to an Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6 GHz though :-) (Yes, o/c'd from the stock 3.2 Ghz on air)
Re:retire it by anss123 · 2010-07-23 12:46 · Score: 2, Informative

In those benchmarks the Core 2 was running Rosetta (a PPC emulator) so they're hardly a good measure for comparing G5 to Core 2 performance.
Re:retire it by Blakey+Rat · 2010-07-23 13:06 · Score: 4, Informative

Yup, I was going to post the same thing. I was using one as a file server until recently, when it occurred to me to check how much power it was consuming. Christ! For the cost of running that beast a few months, I could have just bought a cheap NAS.
Basically, yah. It's useless, sell it to some sucker, buy a cheap NAS, and move on with your life.

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Re:retire it by Brett+Buck · 2010-07-23 13:08 · Score: 3, Informative

On the core 2 duo, it takes about 10 minutes for a 3-day run, on the G4 it takes about 3.5 minutes.
Brett
Re:retire it by DAldredge · 2010-07-23 14:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

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 by SpazmodeusG · 2010-07-23 14:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

There are so many reasons why that can happen though. One of the first things i think of is that your program works well with the cache line size of the G4 (32bytes, i think) whereas the Core 2 is loading up more than it needs when it loads each new cache line (256bytes, i think).
You'll probably find if you make even the slightest changes to the data structure size or alignment in the program the benchmarks will switch around.
In the end CPUs have to be general and there is no doubt that in general the current x86s are faster. If you find the G4 is faster for you well then i say keep using it. It's an exceptional circumstance that you happen to have where your code closely matches the design of the G4.
Re:retire it by Mr_eX9 · 2010-07-23 14:54 · Score: 2, Funny

The real fun is when they take it home and turn it on--the CPUs will melt the cement!
Re:retire it by hairyfeet · 2010-07-23 15:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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Re:retire it by peas_n_carrots · 2010-07-23 17:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

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 by beelsebob · 2010-07-23 19:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Re:retire it by otuz · 2010-07-24 02:42 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, it depends on the model and how much you load it and how many cards you have installed.
If it's a Single-1.8GHz 2004 model, it'll use 120W idle, 160W max and 552W fully-loaded max.
If it's a Dual-2.5GHz 2004 model, it'll use 120W idle, 406W max and 604W fully-loaded max.
If it's a Dual-2.3GHz 2005 model, it'll use 165W idle, 450W max.
If it's a Quad-2.5GHz 2005 model, it'll use 185W idle, 550W max.
The PSU itself is rated 600W and the fully-loaded means the most power-hungry pci-cards imaginable installed in all slots.
The performance per watt is comparable to other performance-oriented machines of the era; Athlon64's / Opterons and Intel P4's / Xeons.
Here are some benchmark scores to compare with other macs: http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/
A PowerMac G5 could be perfectly fine as a desktop machine running OSX 10.4, 10.5 or a linux distro. The power consumption isn't such a big issue, if the machine is put into sleep mode or shut down when not used.

G5s are power hogs by sith · 2010-07-23 11:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:G5s are power hogs by Albanach · 2010-07-23 11:59 · Score: 4, Informative

That Is The Correct Answer.
You can get a nettop for about $200 that will have as much storage. It will be fast enough and be x86 so give you a wide choice of distros and with the correct choice of GPU will do hardware accelerated 1080p. Finally it will be a fraction of the size and consume 20 watts.
You're doing no-one other than your power company a favor by resurrecting the G5 tower.

Old Games by painandgreed · 2010-07-23 11:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm keeping mine around to run games on, especially old classic games that have stopped working under newer versions of OS X or Intel chips. In addition to that, it might go to my photo studio as a browser and photo editing machine.

Re:Old Games by painandgreed · 2010-07-23 15:36 · Score: 2, Informative

Marathon... ...and Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire

Which OS has best support for the box? by Culture20 · 2010-07-23 11:56 · Score: 2

Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.x). A group at work still uses a "cluster" of these for Final Cut rendering.
I'm not sure about the Mac Pros, but I know that a lot of hardware support is missing in Linux for the iMacs, including (especially) temperature gauges for fan control.

Re:Which OS has best support for the box? by tibit · 2010-07-23 12:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

Adding to benefits of OS X 10.5: a lot of good open source is available from MacPorts. Heck, MacPorts still doesn't run a lot of things under Snow Leopard (wxWindows, native gimp, ...). So your results with MacPorts under OS X 10.5 running on G5 may well be better than with 10.6 running on Intel hardware!

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.

Audio Workstation/Recording Studio by dangitman · 2010-07-23 11:57 · Score: 5, Informative

If you have the model with the PCI-X, rather than the PCI Express bus, then probably the optimum usage is putting it in a recording studio. There are some great rack-mount multi-channel (like 10 in, 10 out) audio interfaces by the likes of M-Audio which use the PCI bus, and have never been updated for PCI Express compatibility, so they won't work in a Mac Pro.

The G5 has plenty of performance for audio work, and plenty of space for internal hard drives or RAID. This would really be the optimum niche for such a machine. For other purposes (file server etc), it sucks too much power and takes up too much space for its usefulness. But for audio work with dedicated hardware, it's perfect.

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... and then they built the supercollider.

Re:Audio Workstation/Recording Studio by jewishbaconzombies · 2010-07-23 14:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

Bingo.

I had the bottom of the line G5 for a time and had 2 other computers that had replaced it. Between Berkley and Emeryville, there were several studios and colleges for advanced audio. I think I got about 60-75% of what I paid for it. They didn't even haggle (and I priced a bit high for haggleability).

Perfect use for a G5. by BitZtream · 2010-07-23 11:58 · Score: 2, Funny

Wipe the drives, dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whatever works.

Then turn it off

Then say 'its the new replacement for timothy and kdawson. They are now new and improved and no longer post stupid shit like a question that should have been asked on some random forum somewhere rather than on a site with a title of 'News for nerds'.

Listen, its not 'help for newbies'. Its not 'your personal place to question people with an actual clue'.

In reality though, just throw it away. You'll spend more in electricity in the next year than if you bought a brand new Atom PC that will whip its ass. G5s are horrible power hogs compared to current chips.

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Re:Perfect use for a G5. by trapnest · 2010-07-23 13:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

Debian by dandart · 2010-07-23 12:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Debian's PPC port works well, I used it on an iMac G3.

Re:Like the look of the G5 ... by Darth+Sdlavrot · 2010-07-23 12:02 · Score: 5, Funny

it may take a little more than a phillips screwdriver to accomplish this.

Yup, you'll need a Torx driver instead.

Debian or Recycle it by dondelelcaro · 2010-07-23 12:04 · Score: 3, Informative

You can rather easily run Debian on the thing with support for all of the non-architecture specific packages that you'd find on an equivalent machine running another architecture; I had quite a few of them around at one point.

That said, you really should strongly consider not running the machine unless you have a very specific use for it; there are many lower powered machines which won't waste as much eneergy and will provide equivalent functionality.

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http://www.donarmstrong.com

Media Center/File Server by Doctor_Jest · 2010-07-23 12:05 · Score: 2, Informative

I have a dual 2.0GHz (the one with PCI-X instead of PCI-e) that I threw two giant HDDs in and turned it into a file server (time machine backup server) as well as a media center for my PS3 and 360. I rip my movies to that HDD and watch them via the uPnP stuff on my game consoles (when the mood strikes me.) It's great for storing music collections, backups and other fun items. :) Be a digital packrat.

I still have Leopard on it, but that's just because it was the last OS I used before I re-purposed it. I could stick ubuntu on it later on, but there's nothing pressing me to do so just yet (I will eventually, I suspect.) It still sits in the cubbyhole of my super-cheap computer desk in my office, and I use the front USB port if I ever need to reboot it or anything (it's got an insane uptime...) heh. I use screen sharing in OSX to connect to it using my Mini or MBP. It serves up itunes to all my Macs (and mp3s/etc to my PS3/360)without any fuss or overly spastic noise. :) Well no more noise than any other tower PC I've had.

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It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Two options... by phillymjs · 2010-07-23 12:07 · Score: 2, Informative

If it's a run-of-the-mill air-cooled model, just sell it. I just sold mine for $200 direct to someone (who I found on here, actually), but on eBay they were going for around $250 when I looked. Put the money toward buying/building a smaller, less power-hungry box if you're looking for something to do server duty. The person who pays your electric bill will thank you.

If, on the other hand, it's one of the liquid-cooled models, keep it and definitely use it for something suggested in this discussion, but make sure you keep good backups-- Eventually it will develop a catastrophic coolant leak which will destroy it, and if you take it to an Apple Store they might just give you a free Mac Pro.

~Philly

Perfectly usable and powerful with OS X by astro · 2010-07-23 12:12 · Score: 3, Informative

We're using a G5 PowerPC tower to run all functions, including 24/7 streaming, of an internet radio station. Tons of modern software for it (including being able to live-stream after a compression and other audio manipulation chain)... I love Linux and use it on many machines for many purposes, but there's no reason to ditch OS X just because the machine is aging.

A file server? Linux? by Darth+Sdlavrot · 2010-07-23 12:14 · Score: 5, Informative

Seriously? Okay. The OS that probably works best with this machine is --- drum roll -- OS X.

Without hardly thinking about it it'll serve files via AFP and SMB.

Google will tell you how to enable the NFS server on it. (That's right, you don't need OS X Server.)

Streaming video? If there's open source software for Linux to do this, there's a pretty good chance it'll build on OS X too.

Best Buy Trade In Program by mory · 2010-07-23 12:15 · Score: 4, Informative

Trade it in! Best Buy has an online trade in program where you can get cash or a Best Buy gift card. I got a $200 for mine. You fill out some stuff online, print a pre-paid UPS label, wait about 3 weeks. Same money you'd get from craigslist, none of the emails for interesting trades. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Electronics+Promotions/Online-Trade-In/pcmcat133600050011.c?id=pcmcat133600050011

Make it a modern Mac by Stormwatch · 2010-07-23 12:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Circumcision is child abuse.

Re:Folding@Home by Macrat · 2010-07-23 12:23 · Score: 3, Informative

I don't think you realize how much electricity a G5 tower sucks up.

I hate to say it... by MarcQuadra · 2010-07-23 12:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails

Space Heater by djdavetrouble · 2010-07-23 13:02 · Score: 3, Funny

Get those CPU's working and those 5 fans cranking and it makes a pretty attractive space heater.
I know that my Macpro with dual 8800GT's is in a pretty fair matchup against my 5000 btu air conditioner.

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music lover since 1969

power hungry, yes. Trivial performance, no. by SuperBanana · 2010-07-23 13:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

They may be power-hungry (idle power usage is 120-160w depending on the model/year; the later models were more power-efficient) but the G5's had a very impressive memory architecture. That and the G5 processor itself were designed to shovel bucketloads of data, mostly for media. Keep in mind that MacOS resumes from sleep mode very quickly, and power usage in sleep mode is nil. Not great for servers, but great for occasional work with media like photos or video.

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Sell it by Teese · 2010-07-23 13:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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"I'm a Genius!"*

*Not an actual Genius

Sell it by sqrt(2) · 2010-07-23 13:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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Quite simply by cyberzephyr · 2010-07-23 13:22 · Score: 4, Funny

Fish tank

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I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.

Ubuntu 10.04 by hedronist · 2010-07-23 13:28 · Score: 2, Informative

I had such a bad experience installing 10.04 on a vanilla Dell laptop I wiped it and went back to 9.04. I don't know what they did to the install process, but the suckage meter was pegging.

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 by Shompol · 2010-07-23 15:36 · Score: 2, Informative

I had the same problem. Then tried 2 months later and not only did it install, but new Atheroes wifi card magically started working, while it did not work under 9.10. They are working on it, don't dismiss it just yet.

Re:ubuntu? or just rsync? by Larryish · 2010-07-23 14:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Re:Conspicuous Consumerism by rwa2 · 2010-07-23 14:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah, word... Definitely don't trash it. Sell it on Craigslist to some Mac fanatic. There are so many of them, it's amazing how well they hold on to their resale value.

I recently sold a POS 600Mhz G3 ibook that I had bought for my wife (who had always been a Mac person until I bought her one of her very own). It was half the speed, RAM, even color depth than a much newer Dell laptop I had bought for my mother, and yet there was a lot more interest in the Mac. It wouldn't even run a version of Firefox newer than 2.0 because I didn't bother to pay for new versions of OSX every few years.

So I'm still stuck with the Dell laptop... whatever. it makes a great random photo frame viewer and terminal :P

Best recommended use by far! by ROMRIX · 2010-07-23 15:46 · Score: 3, Funny

My favorite use for any G5 has been in the Marine environment as a Geo-Synchronous aquatic stabilizer.
To use simply load any flavor of Linux you prefer, attach one (1) CAT5 securely to the G5 unit and to your MTV (Marine Transportation Vehicle). Place the G5 into a solution of 100% Dihydrogen Monoxide and feed out the CAT5 cable as needed to achieve Geo-Synchronous aquatic stabilization. If however you prefer to use a solution of 96.5% Dihydrogen Monoxide and 3.5% Sodium Chloride then I highly recommend networking a minimum of 100 G5 units securely attached with multiple CAT5 cables or scaled to the size of your MTV.

Sell it to... by Jerry+Rivers · 2010-07-23 17:14 · Score: 2, Informative

...a user on Al'Kabor.

http://eqmac.com/forums/index.php

--
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY

What To Do With an Old G5 Tower? by infiniphonic · 2010-07-23 17:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'll trade you something for it.

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Crisis is the rule, not the exception.

Buy OS X Leopard (or server) and use it by Ilgaz · 2010-07-23 19:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

Geez, that is not a G3 Machine for God's sake. It is a workstation which is still used in production environments.

It is supported via OS X Leopard which the Snow Leopard doesn't share the same name just because Apple couldn't find a new cat name, it is because Snow Leopard was _built on_ OS X Leopard. Just like Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista. Of course, Apple did "security/safari/itunes only updates" but, it was their own choice with lots of iPad/iPhone stuff going on. Also you wouldn't want "snow leopard" pure 64bit OS on it since on G5, "pure 64bit" really means "access more than 4 GB on a single application", not anything else. It is not x86 which had "bonus stuff" coming to that archaic architecture which wins because of popularity. I am telling these "karma suicide" things since if you actually go pure Linux, make sure you pick a 32bit distro as "pure 64bit coolness" may&will mean overhead and slowness.

Unless developer is a complete "trendy type", he/she still supports OS X Leopard/PPC since there is no reason not to. Of course, I speak about "native OS X apps", not Adobe stuff coming with lots of Windows/X86 copy paste code. Look to top 10 downloads in various sites, they are all PPC/X86/Leopard+. Tiger has issues since it doesn't have kernel functionality in some cases, like the VLC (I heard it is about threads).

For the people saying "massive heat", "power". G5 in Workstation configuration, idles 37 degrees celsius. How much does your Intel do? SJobs had very valid points, about future of Apple and how IBM G5 (PPC970) doesn't fit to it... But the "heat", "watt" etc. were all misunderstood, out of context. It doesn't fit to portable future (which was proved right), it happily runs on desktop, _still_ with IBM current AIX 7 (beta, massive specs) included.

I owned a G5 1600, moved to Quad G5 2500 so I can keep on PPC arch for a long time (was proved right not to jump to those early Intels), I also got G4 Mini, there are more Intel Macs in house... I try so hard to get "impressed", like Wow factor, when you as Amiga 500 user, run Amiga 4000 first time... Can't yet... As Apple keeps doing crazy things like using core duo in this age, where i5/i3 exists, for a long time, I am staying. If Developers doesn't support? "My" vendors are real Mac software houses, you know the ones running XCode. They still support and unless a real necessity happens, they will keep supporting.

It would be "fun" to suggest some nerd fantasy, some kind of joke but, really if you come to slashdot asking "what to do" with a 64bit RISC processor which, if it was IBM pSeries, would have current OS.... You get it... Check the websites/irc channels you frequent, someone really did some reality field distortion to you.

Re:ubuntu? or just rsync? by segin · 2010-07-23 21:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Thank you! I have an old 486 that runs NetBSD 5.0. There are spells that are months long that I don't power it up, but when I do, it's debuggerin' time! I use the extreme constraints to refactor code for performance. Just stretch your expectations for execution time by times 5. A C2D is 100 times faster than the Am486DX2, but I like to torture myself until whatever it is I was coding runs no slower than 5 times longer than it originally did on the C2D. This is actually reasonable given the "slow but safe" model for the original draft code - it leaves plenty of room for improvement, and a 20x speed increase is quite possible in many cases - first draft code is never the best. When I finally take my code back to the C2D box, it screams. Old machines might be energy hogs per unit of performance, but any good programmer can use one to tighten code down as long as the code can reasonably be made to run on the old iron. If not, try on slightly newer iron until it at least runs, and then code on whatever oldest hardware you can get your code to run on. Don't stop til it runs reasonably given the hardware it is on.

Creative studio by V!NCENT · 2010-07-23 22:17 · Score: 2, Informative

You could simply use it as a desktop. Linux has grown leaps and leaps and leaps forward and in many ways ahead of the Mac as a desktop, so read on.

KDE SC 4.5 (about to be released in a few days/weeks) is leaps ahead of the Mac OS X 10.5 GUI. The only catch is that it is not minimalistic. If you want minimalism you have to pick Gnome with Gnome DO and set it to act like a docky. Put a Mac OS X wallpaper in place and install a Mac OS X theme. However KDE has focussed on more minimalism since KDE4 without sacrificing features.

There is a KDE application for video editing that is unparalleled: Kdenlive: http://www.kdenlive.org/
It slaughters Sony Vegas in functionality and is free of charge too. It may not be stable enough yet (version 0.7) so it might be a little bit of a bumpy ride at first.

There is also a kick-ass music management application: AmaroK: http://amarok.kde.org/
It is compatible with iPods that are not of the latest generation (USB encryption crap)

KDE SC's default webbrowser is Konqueror, which, since KDE SC 4.5 also has WebKit support.
Google's Chrome is now also runnable on Linux.
If you don't like the Google privacy stuff than search for the Iron browser (they took the Chrome's source code and stripped it from any call home functionality)

For managing photo's, use DigiKam: http://www.digikam.org/

Personal information management: KDE PIM

For personal finance: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html

Office work isn't Linux' best aspect, so you could install OpenOffice.org. It is however the best Office Suit available for the PPC. It doesn't look all that good if your distro of choice hasn't supplied their own KDE4 integration into it.

Now there are a lot of distributions, so what should you pick?
The best and most stable KDE4 distro I have ever tried is Fedora. The default download option is with Gnone so search for a PPC KDE version. Because Fedora core is not using anything that is even remotely patented, you have to go to the RPMFusion website to add Adobe's Flash, MP3 and QuickTime codecs and whatnot: http://rpmfusion.org/RPM%20Fusion

You can see pick your download here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/12/
The Problem I am seeing here is that the current version of Fedora is 13 and the latest PPC64 builds are for Fedora 12. This leads to a little outdated software (1 year).

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Re:ubuntu? or just rsync? by TheRaven64 · 2010-07-24 03:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Or you can develop your code on a modern machine (where compile times are much faster) and run it with an account limited to using 1% of the CPU. Or if you really want a slow machine, you can get something cheap based on an AMD Geode or ARM core, and use under 10W for the entire system.

Generally, though, testing your code on old machines makes you optimise for the wrong thing. On a modern machine, you can often get a large performance increase at the cost of a few MB of RAM. On a 486, that means that you're using all of your RAM, so the swapping makes the code slow. On a modern laptop, you're using 1% of your RAM for a 2 or more times speed boost. On a modern machine, offloading work to the GPU can make things faster and use less power. The same with tweaking SSE routines. With a 486, you won't be able to do either.

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Re:Three options... by not_hylas(+) · 2010-07-24 05:47 · Score: 2, Informative

The haters are out this morning:

"... Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL,""

http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml :-)

RISC blows CISC away: [skip or walk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computing#RISC_design_philosophy

- so much so, that they still bolt it on CISC [with some success]

[Don't bother with the subheading "Diminishing benefits", it's BS, look at IBM's POWER]

RISC vs. CISC:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2000-01/risc/risccisc/

Our G5 x2 2.5 is soon to be a companion to our Xserve x2 1.33 [redundant DNS].
Just add:

Swift Data 200:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2490

Inside your Power Mac G5:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1305