Poll: What version of OS X for Powerbook G3?

[livingfortoday]

Okay kids, I'll be getting my new Powerbook G3 in a few days, and I'm looking to triple-boot it with Ubuntu, System 9, and some variation of OS X. That's where you come in. On my old G3 desktop I ran Jaguar, but I'm thinking of going with Panther or Tiger (with XPostFacto). So, I'm starting this poll to see what people think I should run. Take into consideration performance, awesomeness, and features. I like Tiger, but I like Panther too. Jaguar might be faster, but lacks Safari and Expose. So... vote!

Ah, and the specs are:
333Mhz G3
192MB RAM (which will soon be upgraded to a full 512MB)
and I will be getting a 5400rpm HD for it soon too

 

[yellow]

Panther, max.

Tiger is just too RAM & Processor intensive for old Macs. IMO.

 

[princealfie]

Tiger 10.4.6

 

[livingfortoday]

Holy crap, in the time it took to set the poll questions I got three responses. You guys are awesome.

 

[yellow]

Let me put it this way.. I have some late model G3 iBooks as loaners. I put Tiger on one of them and it sucked. Just too damn slow, even with maxed out RAM. I'm probably just spoiled by faster Macs and expect all my Tigers to respond the same, but I just don't want to have beachballing simply because I need the latest and greatest on ancient hardware.

Stick with Panther. It's a great release of OS X and will be plenty fast and viable for you.

 

[aquajet]

Old G3's just feel so much faster with OS 9. Stick with a lean OS 9 system to keep it fast and stable.

 

[Snide]

Forget Jaguar; Panther and Tiger roar on G3!

I have Tiger running on the following:

400 Mhz Pismo with 512MB RAM and a 7500 RPM HD
400 Mhz iMac DV with 320MB RAM and 7500 RPM HD
233 Mhz iMac Bondi with 384MB RAM and 7500 RPM HD

I would not consider Jaguar on any of these machines because Panther is
astonishingly faster. That is no joke. I didn't notice Tiger being any slower.
While I could max the RAM on the iMac DV and the Pismo to 1 GB,
it wasn't cost-effective to do for the workload of these machines.

 

[yellow]

I can't believe you're not pulling out your hair with Tiger on G3s and only 300ishMB of RAM! Kudos to your sense of willpower!

 

[xsedrinam]

I stopped at Panther 10.3.9 on my pismo. I may just skip over Tiger completely and mess with Leopard and the MBP when all the Pro Apps align with Jupiter and Mars. Widgets aren't my thing and Cmd+F is fine with me.

 

[atari1356]

Panther, unless you upgrade it beyond 512Mb

 

[livingfortoday]

Panther, unless you upgrade it beyond 512Mb

Can't, the max on these is 512MB.

 

[joepunk]

Panther. Jag. would be slow imo on the machine. It was slow on the G5's at my old school before we got Panthar installed. Wham! much faster with Panthar.

 

[Queso]

Panther definitely. It's very usable on a 400MHz G3. I used to run it on my iMac G3 with 768MB RAM. Very nice.

Tiger however....well, it was okay if I was only doing one thing at a time. It's too G4/G5 optimised for the older models IMO.

 

[iGary]

Panther, max.

Tiger is just too RAM & Processor intensive for old Macs. IMO.

I concur.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I've seen Tiger run very well on a 400MHz PowerBook G3 (Pismo) with 512 MB RAM, just as long as you don't go overboard with widgets and try to run too many apps simultaneously... Tiger even ran fairly well on a Pismo with just 320 MB RAM, but that did lag a bit. If you give it enough RAM Tiger will run better than Panther on most set-ups that allow it, IMO...

 

[dextertangocci]

Doesn't OSX generally get faster with each new release?

 

[livingfortoday]

Doesn't OSX generally get faster with each new release?

Not Tiger, as far as I've noticed. On my Powerbook Ti it felt slower, so I went back to Panther. But I won't be using too many widgets or running too many apps on this here (basically just word processing, internet, and email), so I'm giving it some thought. Tiger was the first iteration of OS X that also wouldn't natively run on the later G3's, so it may cause the Lombard to take a speed hit. Not sure though, which is why I've started this thread!

 

[yellow]

Doesn't OSX generally get faster with each new release?

There is a point of diminishing return baseed on what kind of hardware you're putting it on. For example, Windows XP on a P3 would be (i think) much SLOWER than Windows 98 on the same hardware.

The overhead is just too intense.

 

[livingfortoday]

Well, I guess the majority has voted for Panther, and though Tiger came in really close, the most persuasive arguments were for Panther. I'm going to go with Panther, then!

Thanks for all your input!