Resolved I give up on Leopard

[torvan]

I am tired of all the video glitches with my FX 4500 and my G5 Dual 2.0 /16GB Ram/2TB SATA. I will get things like leftover windows, the title bar pix-elating, window frames blanking out and then coming back in weird colors, the list goes on and on. I have even erased and started from the DVD and still get this.

Yet none of this happens at all in Tiger. Everything flows smoothly and everything works incredibly fast, all games work as expected, and all transitions are normal.

So I have given up on Leopard.

Tried all the Linux things that I read in the forum, but none of them would really install. I mean none of them--and I tried 8 different flavors.

Therefore, Tiger remains. That is okay--what I use the G5 Dual for is perfectly fine.

 

[MBAir2010]

Tony the Tiger would agree: The OSX is grrrrrrreeeeat!
(i hope you know who tony the tiger is)

 

[TheShortTimer]

Tried all the Linux things that I read in the forum, but none of them would really install. I mean none of them--and I tried 8 different flavors.

Totally unsurprised by that. I tried a dozen distros on a Wintel machine and most of them wouldn't even install and those that did were all afflicted by the same core problem. After going through that, I threw in the towel and restored Windows 7 and gifted the computer to a relative. Linux is still a hit and miss affair and it's an absolute joy when you find a desktop distro that works reliably.

(i hope you know who tony the tiger is)

I certainly do! I grew up hearing that catchphrase during British TV ad breaks.

The power of successful advertising that the slogans, catchphrases and imagery remain cemented in your mind decades later.

 

[alex_free]

Totally unsurprised by that. I tried a dozen distros on a Wintel machine and most of them wouldn't even install and those that did were all afflicted by the same core problem. After going through that, I threw in the towel and restored Windows 7 and gifted the computer to a relative. Linux is still a hit and miss affair and it's an absolute joy when you find a desktop distro that works reliably.



I certainly do! I grew up hearing that catchphrase during British TV ad breaks.

The power of successful advertising that the slogans, catchphrases and imagery remain cemented in your mind decades later.

How recent was this? I was exactly like you until I tried Fedora around New Years and literally everything works by default, even the touchscreen of the laptop and all the media keys! Wine has also gotten very good, I have yet to need to reinstall Windows for the last four months. I even fire up Fallout 3 from time to time on Fedora.

 

[eyoungren]

I am tired of all the video glitches with my FX 4500 and my G5 Dual 2.0 /16GB Ram/2TB SATA. I will get things like leftover windows, the title bar pix-elating, window frames blanking out and then coming back in weird colors, the list goes on and on. I have even erased and started from the DVD and still get this.

Yet none of this happens at all in Tiger. Everything flows smoothly and everything works incredibly fast, all games work as expected, and all transitions are normal.

So I have given up on Leopard.

Tried all the Linux things that I read in the forum, but none of them would really install. I mean none of them--and I tried 8 different flavors.

Therefore, Tiger remains. That is okay--what I use the G5 Dual for is perfectly fine.

My 2.3DC G5 has a Quadro FX and runs Leopard. I have no issues. My Quad runs a X1900 XT, still no issues. Then there's my G4/500 with a Rage 128 Pro running Leopard and…no issues.

I have a 17" PowerBook G4 and a 12" PowerBook G4, both running Leopard with no issues. And last, but not least a 2.7Ghz Dual Processor G5 with a Fire GL X3 running Leopard and no issues.

I know you said your problems go away under Tiger, but I really don't think the problem here is Leopard.

One thing to note…

On my Quad, my X1900 XT was acting flaky at one point. I put that down to needing to repaste the chip because it's overheating. I did have graphical issues. However, I booted into safe mode and removed the ATI display kext files. I don't get certain aspects that Leopard provides but the graphic issues went away.

You might try booting into safe mode and removing the NVIDIA kext files, rebooting and then seeing what happens. I have not had to do that with my DC and it's Quadro card, but it might work for you.

 

[Amethyst1]

However, I booted into safe mode and removed the ATI display kext files

That disables graphics acceleration, with all the nasty side effects, and should thus be a last resort.

 

[eyoungren]

That disables graphics acceleration, with all the nasty side effects, and should thus be a last resort.

Yeah, it does. But it allowed me to still use the system without having to dig it out, tear it apart and repaste the chip. My main use of that Mac, like my MP now, is graphic design and word processing (plus internet browsing). Had I been using it for gaming, video editing or anything really graphic heavy I would have sucked it up and repasted the chip.

 

[alex_free]

Me and you both, I just upgraded from Leopard to Tiger on the Mac mini G4. Leaving leopard on the iBook G4 since it supports OpenGL 2.0.

 

[TheShortTimer]

How recent was this? I was exactly like you until I tried Fedora around New Years and literally everything works by default, even the touchscreen of the laptop and all the media keys! Wine has also gotten very good, I have yet to need to reinstall Windows for the last four months. I even fire up Fallout 3 from time to time on Fedora.

It's good to see that you've enjoyed the success that's eluded me several times.

These experiences were several years ago but I take the view that it's a hit and miss affair because a distro can work well on particular hardware but not so well - or even at all with other hardware and strange, irrevocable problems can develop. I had a particularly annoying incident where an installation worked perfectly for a month or two and then it failed and no amount of clean installations and troubleshooting were able to correct whatever had caused the issue.

 

[z970]

@MtLoin2020

"Mac OS X Tony will change the way you eat cereal. Breakthrough crunch technology, stunning sugar and carbs, unparalleled marketing, an intuitive complementary spoon, and a virtual cereal box chock full of cleverly integrated features — all atop a rock-solid wheat flour foundation — give you the most coolest, goodest, and GRRRRRREATEST edible operating system within 500 miles. Probably."

 

[alex_free]

It's good to see that you've enjoyed the success that's eluded me several times.

These experiences were several years ago but I take the view that it's a hit and miss affair because a distro can work well on particular hardware but not so well - or even at all with other hardware and strange, irrevocable problems can develop. I had a particularly annoying incident where an installation worked perfectly for a month or two and then it failed and no amount of clean installations and troubleshooting were able to correct whatever had caused the issue.

I totally understand this. A few years ago I could never use Linux and Linux only, I had the same kinds of issues, or WiFi wouldn’t work, stuff like that. I really wanted to use BSD but it was and still is slightly worse with driver support then Linux itself.
The best of both worlds is a Linux distro that includes closed source proprietary firmware/blobs by default like Fedora. The freesoftwarefoundation/GNU hate these distros because they include ‘blobs’. I think they take the whole open source thing too far, we can never expect to have both a fully usable Linux OS and 100% open source drivers that actually work well, hardware vendors have 0 incentive to open source their stuff...

Really I never imagined Linux on my daily driver as the only OS, but it’s been four months and I’ve always found some way to do what I want up to now.

Windows is overrated and getting bloated compared to Fedora+wine, and this gap is only going to get bigger over time. I have a no name random HP laptop from like 2013 crashing less and better supported then both windows 7 and 10, which I’ve ran on this as well.

Of course your mileage may very, but my touchscreen even works! Blown away...

I don't know if the year of the linux desktop will ever actually happen, but for me it's pretty close. I did not buy this laptop and research compatibility before I got it as it was essentially just a gift. "It's running so slow, you can just have it (running Windows 10)".

 

[torvan]

Tony the Tiger would agree: The OSX is grrrrrrreeeeat!
(i hope you know who tony the tiger is)

Yeah, I am 52 after all, I remember it all to well AND it was one of my favorite cereals as a kid.

 

[torvan]

My 2.3DC G5 has a Quadro FX and runs Leopard. I have no issues. My Quad runs a X1900 XT, still no issues. Then there's my G4/500 with a Rage 128 Pro running Leopard and…no issues.

I have a 17" PowerBook G4 and a 12" PowerBook G4, both running Leopard with no issues. And last, but not least a 2.7Ghz Dual Processor G5 with a Fire GL X3 running Leopard and no issues.

I know you said your problems go away under Tiger, but I really don't think the problem here is Leopard.

One thing to note…

On my Quad, my X1900 XT was acting flaky at one point. I put that down to needing to repaste the chip because it's overheating. I did have graphical issues. However, I booted into safe mode and removed the ATI display kext files. I don't get certain aspects that Leopard provides but the graphic issues went away.

You might try booting into safe mode and removing the NVIDIA kext files, rebooting and then seeing what happens. I have not had to do that with my DC and it's Quadro card, but it might work for you.

I did that as my first option and did it in Safe Mode, and the issues never went away unfortunately.

But I will say Tiger runs a lot better on my machine. Maybe he is just homesick for the day he was the king of the block.

 

[Jubadub]

My BR Quad and my GER Quad both run and work flawlessly with a Quadro FX4500 perfectly. And with all sorts of other graphics cards, flashed and stock (X1900 XT, multiple X1950 XTs, GeForce 7800 GTX 512 etc.).

If Tiger runs graphically-intensive software with perfection, thus probably excluding the possibility of it being a hardware problem, the first thing I question is your Leopard install. Where is the install DVD sourced from? Is your 2TB disk an HDD or an SSD? (I have had data corruption issues with the former, never had any with the latter.)

Leopard is good stuff. Might want to keep looking into why it isn't working, until it's working. I would also try investigating with only 2 RAM sticks installed, if all else fails.

 

[Amethyst1]

The freesoftwarefoundation/GNU hate these distros because they include ‘blobs’. I think they take the whole open source thing too far,

Without wanting to start a flame war, I agree fully. To them it's ideological, but as for poor old me, I just want my "evil" hardware to work.

 

[Hughmac]

If the Tiger graphics drivers worked well for you, have you tried using the 10.4.11 kexts on your Leopard install?

Also, @LightBulbFun discovered an updated official Nvidia driver package that may work for you - see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/some-ppc-openmark-benchmarks.1848060/post-23511868. I've checked and his link is still available to download.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Jubadub]

On the FSF thing, it's just a matter of priorities. Their approach is vital to ensuring what we can do today can still be done in the future, and a requirement for computer security. It's just wise, but impractical. Meanwhile, the so-called ""open-source"" approach (which is less open) is "practical" (if you can even call any GNU/Linux distro or BSD flavor practical, that is, as we all know too well here from experience), but wisdom be damned.

But make no mistake: I, too, hate ideologues, be it the FSF kind, the open-source kind, or any other kind. However, although ideologues are terrible, it doesn't usually mean merit and true worth can't be extracted from different parts of a given ideology. I say "take the good, leave the crap".

I appreciate we have an ecosystem that gives room for libre OSes, hybrid (AKA ""open-source"") OSes and fully-proprietary OSes. They help contrast each other's weaknesses and strengths just from merely existing, and that is constructive feedback for us.

Speaking of priorities, one thing I absolutely hate about the FSF side of things is how little-concerned they are about the complete lack of libre distros on libre-compatible architectures, such as PowerPC, because ALL their endorsed distros are exclusively bound to hardware (mainly x86, but also ARM) that directly go against their values. And they have had 15 years (and counting) of time to do something about it, which they would if they cared. Do they actually care? Clearly not as much as they say. Closest you can get to is Debian, which they don't endorse, which is a wee bit extreme of them, as it's a technically-libre distro out-of-the-box.

Me, personally, I like that libre stuff exists, and I hope they continue the good fight (without them losing their sight), but generally I just like having innocent fun with my Macs, Mac systems and stuff. The fun camp is an important camp, too.

 

[Amethyst1]

ALL their endorsed distros are exclusively bound to hardware (mainly x86, but also ARM) that directly go against their values.

What about Loongson?

 

[Jubadub]

What about Loongson?

Wow, you are right, actually. I stand corrected on that. According to this, it supports gNewSense and Parabola, with development being done for Ututo (at some point), as well. Somehow that completely went under my radar. Kinda weird choice, but that counts.

For the record, if I recall correctly, there is an ancient, decrepit, highly unstable PowerPC build of Parabola, which can be dug out from somewhere, which never went forward. That was also the only FSF-endorsed distro with an ARM port that I knew of, though I see something for Guix now, too. Everything else is x86 only, AFAIK.

Looking things up just now, though, Talospace mentions Guix having some development towards POWER9, so I'll let the FSF off the hook a bit for now...

 

[repairedCheese]

Without wanting to start a flame war, I agree fully. To them it's ideological, but as for poor old me, I just want my "evil" hardware to work.

Funny enough, this is the main problem with 3rd party Android roms. Android may be a Linux kernel based open source operating system, but the drivers aren't, so most 3rd party roms have blobs that have been hacked into a state that they work on newer versions than was released by the people who made the thing. It's usually important stuff like modems and cameras.

To make this evil hardware work, you need to break the ethos of of open source. It's just a lot easier to follow on x86, because the open source drivers are simply better there. I don't think it's bad to have people pushing to make everything open, though.

After all, having a good open source AMD video driver makes things better for anyone trying to use AMD gpus. It's why Radeons are the card of choice for PowerPC Linux.

 

[David Hassholehoff]

Speaking of priorities, one thing I absolutely hate about the FSF side of things is how little-concerned they are about the complete lack of libre distros on libre-compatible architectures, such as PowerPC, because ALL their endorsed distros are exclusively bound to hardware (mainly x86, but also ARM) that directly go against their values.

What are you on about? Current releases of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD all run on PowerPC, with RISC-V being brought to Tier 2 in FreeBSD 13 and NetBSD running on almost anything in existance.

I stopped using GNU/Linux when it became GNU/systemd so I haven't followed those projects in a long time, but it would surprise me if platform support is so ***** as you describe it.

 

[Amethyst1]

Funny enough, this is the main problem with 3rd party Android roms.

Yep. I lost some features of my old Xperia's camera when I replaced stock 'droid with LineageOS. Something about DRM keys. Fortunately the camera was broken anyway.

 

[repairedCheese]

Yep. I lost some features of my old Xperia's camera when I replaced stock 'droid with LineageOS. Something about DRM keys. Fortunately the camera was broken anyway.

That is specifically a Sony thing. They all do something funky and you can't always get it back. But I have a tablet from 2013 running Android 11, and the whole point is to keep old hardware working as long as possible. I love to do the same thing with these old Macs, and in this case, finding the right graphics card is a challenge, which, seems to be the OP's problem at the end of the day.

 

[Amethyst1]

That is specifically a Sony thing.

Yep. But Sony was pretty much the only manufacturer of small phones with good specs. Anyway, back on topic!

 

[Jubadub]

What are you on about? Current releases of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD all run on PowerPC, with RISC-V being brought to Tier 2 in FreeBSD 13 and NetBSD running on almost anything in existance.

The FSF does not endorse any BSD flavor (scroll down to "BSD systems"), nor is any of them libre. I specifically addressed FSF-endorsed and libre OSes in what you quoted.