AAAACK... I bought a Mac! Now what OS?

[HeXploiT]

So i broke down and bought an older Emac G4 700mhz rig.
I had one once and sold it and have, as of late, found myself grieving that i ever sold it in the first place.
I know nothing about software for the mac however so i'm wondering what the latest and greatest os's are for this thing. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Also any tips on good dvd & mp3 players would be appreciated.

 

[n0cmonkey]

OS X10.4 comes with both mp3 and dvd players.

The BSDs should work fine.
Linux probably works.

 

[Evander]

i think apple gives away for free old versions of macOS

 

[Rilex]

If you don't want to run OS X for some reason, you could run a Linux distribution with good PPC support like Gentoo.

 

[Mesix]

Or ubuntu

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Or the latest Suse.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
OS X10.4 comes with both mp3 and dvd players.

The BSDs should work fine.
Linux probably works.

Debian would be the Linux to choose. It's the most complete support for PowerPC.

The biggest problem will probably be living with a single button mouse. In that case you can do three things I know of...
1. replace the mouse with a new one.
2. use mouseemu to emulate mouse buttons.
3. use xmodmap to map 'Pointer_Button3' and 'Pointer_Button2' and checkmark "Enable Mouse Keys" in the Gnome keyboard accessability options. (don't know how to activate that in other desktops).

Otherwise if you have 256 megs of RAM then upgrade to 512 and that will provide the most bang for the buck upgrade you could get irregardless of the operating system.


If you want to stick with OS X then get the latest version from Apple that supports your system. You'll want 512 megs of ram for that if at all possible. It looks like OS X 10.4 supports your Emac, which is pretty good as it's the latest version. So get that.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Mesix
Or ubuntu

:thumbsup:

edit: If it has less than 256MB RAM, though, I would go with Xubuntu.

 

[greylica]

Yellow Dog Linux ???

 

[Rilex]

Last I used YDL (admittedly some time ago), it really sucked :/

For not particular reason, it just wasn't a very "nice" distro to use...compared to Gentoo or other modern ones mentioned above.

 

[Nothinman]

For not particular reason, it just wasn't a very "nice" distro to use...compared to Gentoo or other modern ones mentioned above.

Probably because it was based on RH so if you tried to too long ago it had all of the dependency-hell problems that RH had. And I believe they were the ones that inflicted yum upon the Linux world so I can't say I'm too fond of YDL.

 

[dclive]

Any old PC can run Linux. For your Mac, grab OS X 10.4.8 and the iLife 06 applications. A 700 Mhz G4 will be on the slow side, but will run it all (save possibly GarageBand) without issue.

 

[chcarnage]

OS X 10.0-10.2 is outdated in terms of stability and ressource hunger, try to get 10.3 or 10.4. If you can afford it, buy some more RAM because the standard 128 MB are a humble amount (but sufficient for OS 9 which this Mac can also run).

For MP3s i suggest iTunes or any other player you may find here, DVDs should run well with Apple's DVD Player software or VLC. You can find a list of recommended free OS X software in this thread. HF with your eMac

 

[HeXploiT]

Hey thanks everyone. Looks like i'll go with OS X 10.4 and possibly even go for a dual boot setup with another linux version. The mac(when it gets here) will have 512mb ram and i plan on ocing it as well just because...well...just because. I really did miss having a mac around. Having a mac in the room is kind of like having a warm fireplace nearby. Nevermind that it's 2ghz slower than my pc. No games for this rig. It's purely for exploring new worlds.

 

[drag]

The thing I like most about the Mac is that they are (generally) very quiet.

It's tough to get a quiet PC, even when your building it yourself.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: greylica
Yellow Dog Linux ???

Didn't they drop desktops when apple moved to intel?

 

[keeleysam]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: greylica
Yellow Dog Linux ???

Didn't they drop desktops when apple moved to intel?

Nope. YDL is still working on PPC desktops (like the PS3).