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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?"
Yellow Dog probably has the best support, but you could always look at the PPC version of Ubuntu.
I think I speak for all of us here on Slashdot when I say, porn file server running Linux.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
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.
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.
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.
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.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Debian's PPC port works well, I used it on an iMac G3.
it may take a little more than a phillips screwdriver to accomplish this.
Yup, you'll need a Torx driver instead.
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.
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.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You're an idiot if you really believe an Atom will out preform a G5 processor.
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.