What To Do With an Old G5 Tower? 417
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?"
PPC Linux (Score:5, Informative)
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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!)
Re:PPC Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Best recommended use by far! (Score:3, Funny)
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 net
yellow dog linux still around? (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
What To Do With an Old G5 Tower? (Score:2)
(singing): "Put 'im in the bilge and make 'im drink it, Ear-lye in the morning!"
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Then you have to carry the drive around like some sort of cretin. File servers are more useful this decade than last, when I can store every DVD I have as iso and a format my smartphone can play.
Re:yellow dog linux still around? (Score:4, 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? (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? (Score:4, Informative)
It's about right. From Apple's docs: [apple.com] 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.
Genius (Score:5, Funny)
I think I speak for all of us here on Slashdot when I say, porn file server running Linux.
Ubuntu 9.04 (Score:2, Informative)
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http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/ [ubuntu.com]
Lucid as well.
Ubuntu 10.04 (Score:3, Informative)
retire it (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 (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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:retire it (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
That must have taxed your brain to come up with this comparison. I'd slap Debian Sid on it, used it for distributed compiles, LLVM builds, development and basically learning the PowerPC architecture while running Computation Fluid Dynamics, FEA, etc. When it's sufficiently pointless one can use the Case and strip out the guts and build your own custom PC.
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Unlike my computers a G5 will probably be worth quite a bit in 20-30 years tho
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Back when Intel was busy pretending that the P4 could actually
Re:retire it (Score:5, Insightful)
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> 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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:retire it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:retire it (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.
Re:retire it (Score:5, 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 (Score:5, Funny)
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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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.
Filling it with cement won't keep it from dissappearing.
If you're serious about the lulz, you need to bolt it to an immovable object, then fill it with cement.
Reminds me of the good old days when I superglued coins to the floor.
It's the best entertainment you can get for a quarter.
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Re:retire it (Score:4, 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 (Score:5, 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.
power hungry, yes. Trivial performance, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
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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
Re:retire it (Score:4, 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.
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Stats for that?
Re:retire it (Score:4, 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 (Score:5, 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.
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G5s are power hogs (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.
Like the look of the G5 ... (Score:2)
Unless you just like the look of the G5 ...
If its being kept around just for the look then gut it and put a PC motherboard inside? From what I heard it may take a little more than a phillips screwdriver to accomplish this.
Re:Like the look of the G5 ... (Score:5, Funny)
it may take a little more than a phillips screwdriver to accomplish this.
Yup, you'll need a Torx driver instead.
Re:G5s are power hogs (Score:5, 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.
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That Is The Correct Answer... You're doing no-one other than your power company a favor by resurrecting the G5 tower.
...until the guy who buys it asks the same question. Heh.
ubuntu? or just rsync? (Score:2)
I've seen ubuntu on numerous triple-boot (os x / linux / windows) macbook pros. that's intel though. I don't know how good the open firmware boot selectors are (as opposed to RebelEFI) nor how good ubuntu drivers are for powerpc. But worth looking into.
I have yet to run into a redhat installation on a mac. (referring to the article tag as such)
I used a PMG5 for quite some time as a backup server (rsync) running OS X 10.4 Works very well for that, had lots of attached storage. FW800 FTW. But that got
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I don't have direct experience with PPC, but I've had decent results with Fedora on my Intel iMac. The only problem in the very beginning was lack of support from the Nvidia driver for the native screen resolution of the built-in LCD panel. That got fixed later. Apart from the inconvenience of having to keep up with binary Nvidia drivers, it ran like a champ. Used it to get through Doom 3 and Quake 4. Fedora supports PPC, and AFAIK should run on anything that would run OS X.
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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.
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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 yo
Old Games (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm in the exact same position... (Score:2)
And my current plans are to strip the case and stick a updated system in.
Which OS has best support for the box? (Score:3)
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.
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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!
Audio Workstation/Recording Studio (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.
Re:Audio Workstation/Recording Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
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Perfect use for a G5. (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 nex
Re:Perfect use for a G5. (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian (Score:5, Informative)
Debian or Recycle it (Score:4, 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.
Media Center/File Server (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Two options... (Score:3, 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. [google.com]
~Philly
Re:Three options... (Score:3, 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 [arlo.net] :-)
RISC blows CISC away: [skip or walk]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computing#RISC_design_philosophy [wikipedia.org]
- so much so, that they still bolt it on CISC
Perfectly usable and powerful with OS X (Score:4, 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? (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 (Score:4, Informative)
Old PC (Score:2)
Fileserver... (Score:2)
Make it a modern Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
Gut it and use the case to build a modern PC, on which you can install Mac OS X by using Prasys' EmpireEFI. [prasys.info] Or just install whatever you want. The G5 may be outdated, but the case is still beautiful.
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Rip the guts out and out a Mini in there.
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Rip the guts out and out a Mini in there.
That'd be missing the point of a hackintosh (a powerful and expandable Mac for a low price) and the point of a Mac mini (a very small and discreet computer).
Unless, of course, you intend to plug a bunch of external drives to the mini. Then it'd make sense.
I hate to say it... (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.
Macs are to graphic artists, as are . . . (Score:2)
Guns to NRA members. It's an SAT question. Old Macs can never be disposed of. Stash 'em in the attic, in the cellar, in the closet . . . Macies just cannot part themselves from 'em. I live with a graphic artist, and any time I mention that she should get rid of those old Macs, I face an armed insurrection. Two G4 Towers stuffed away somewhere, and a "7600" (whaddever the fuck that is) in the attic.
It really reminds me of some old geezer talking about his firearms:
"Well, it might not look like much to
Probably not worth keeping... (Score:2)
Frankly, you might want to just decommission this machine. Those G5 CPUs and the associated fans draw a lot of power and throw a lot of heat. Replacing my G5 with a Mini (as a file server) produced a negligible drop in performance as a file server (OS X Leopard Server) by using FW800 drives with hardware RAID instead of SATA drives with MacOS X Software RAID. But the temperature in my home office dropped by a couple of degrees once I turned that G5 off. (It tossed an amazing amount of heat, even when it
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How are you doing raid on the mini?
Or is this more a file losing server than a file hosting server?
G5s are old now? (Score:2)
I WANT IT!!! (Score:2)
Space Heater (Score:4, 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.
Sell it to someone who wants a Mac (Score:2)
It is still a very capable machine and can run a currently supported OS (Leopard) as well as accepting a decent amount of RAM. If someone wants to get into Macs, a G5 tower isn't a bad way to do it as it is decently quick and most software is still compatible with PPC. It would give them at least a couple of good years desktop service and that would be far better than relegating it to being a server.
UPS ( Brown truck varitey ) (Score:2)
And send it to me.
Unload For MacMini (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, the G5 is a power sink. If the power bill is of little concern, the box will work well as a media server, cd/dvd ripper, and everything else server. I've found both Debian and Ubuntu to be good matches for previous PPC systems, but at the moment I'm using OSX 10.5 to support a few favored apps for when my wife beats me to the Powerbook.
If you wanted a server that went easy on the electricity, I'd research the delta - if any - between the G5 and a Mac Mini PPC/Intel.
Sell it (Score:4, Insightful)
Sell it (Score:3, 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.
Quite simply (Score:5, Funny)
Fish tank
Nice case. (Score:2)
Debian (Score:2)
Debian should work fine on it. I had the latest debian running on a G4 iMac.
That's easy. (Score:2)
Get two of them and a nice wooden board for the top. Build yourself a desk.
You can even put a computer from this century on top of it.
Sell it to... (Score:3, Informative)
...a user on Al'Kabor.
http://eqmac.com/forums/index.php [eqmac.com]
Buy OS X Leopard (or server) and use it (Score:4, 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.
Creative studio (Score:3, 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/ [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/ [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/ [digikam.org]
Personal information management: KDE PIM
For personal finance: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html [sourceforge.net]
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 [rpmfusion.org]
You can see pick your download here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/12/ [fedoraproject.org]
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).
Re:Folding@Home (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
So you use it as a stylish space heater? :p
Re: (Score:3, 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 n