# Leopard on a G4 Powerbook??



## debiso (Nov 13, 2007)

My son has a G4 Powerbook 1ghz, 1.25gb ram.  He wants to upgrade to Leopard.  Will this work OK?  What will happen to his apps like Garage band and Photoshop?  Do I need to buy a specific version to run on PPC vs Intel?


Thanks!
Joe


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## Giaguara (Nov 13, 2007)

That should work, as he has system requirements.
Mac OS X install discs should be universal.
Garageband and iLife - will depend on the version he runs now how smooth they will work, the recent ones will work better.
For Photoshop ... have a search for the 10.5 issues and bugs thread, as that has some versions of CS listed. If it's an older version of Adobe, it may not run or not run as good.


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## Cow Loon (Nov 13, 2007)

I have a 1.5ghz G4 powerbook that I have installed leopard on, and it runs. There was no special version of leopard for PPC at the store. I don't have garageband or ilife.


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## Yellowbeard (Nov 13, 2007)

I have the same system & it actually feels quicker after the Leopard upgrade.  I am very happy with it.


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## debiso (Nov 13, 2007)

Sounds like a go!  I will give it a try tonight.  Now for the BIG question...  Full install, archive & install or upgrade?!?!?


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## Yellowbeard (Nov 13, 2007)

Well i have heard good and bad about all, you should have faith and feel good about doing the upgrade, that after all is the easiest.  Whichever way you go BACK UP THE CURRENT INSTALL FIRST.  I used an unregistered copy of SuperDuper & an external firewire drive to do this, then I whipped the disk clean and did a full install.  Upon reboot I used the migration assistant to import my user folder from the backup.  Sure I had to reinstall all my apps, but I also got rid of some that I never use and will install others as I need them.  Overall I am really happy with the way that it went and highly recommend going that route.


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## Cow Loon (Nov 13, 2007)

My experience was that I first upgraded with archive and install, and it hung with the spinning ball from the village in the tv british show the prisoner, of death, after booting. So, I did a clean install and that worked.

But, it might have been the same problem I had later, which is that DiVX hangs on startup. So, maybe after upgrading, you could boot to single user mode (hold down cmd-s during boot) and remove (move away) /Library/QuickTime/DivX... and/or /Library/DivX...". and have it work.

There other thing I read about searching the web was people having Application Enchancer (APE) cause hanging. I didn't have that problem.

But a clean install was what I ultimately did and it worked for me.


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## SGilbert (Nov 13, 2007)

Go for it!

Be aware, however, that there is NO CLASSIC whatsoever.  Also, if you have Photoshop 7, it will not work.


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## g/re/p (Nov 13, 2007)

I had my 12" Powerbook (G4 1Ghz, 1.25 RAM) HDD already set up with two 40 GB partitions, 
one of them empty.

I did a full install of Leopard on the empty partition and then used migration assistant to import 
all applicable apps, files, folders and network settings from the Tiger partition - it went smoothly with no problems whatsoever - i have not even booted back to the Tiger partition since then.

I did the same thing with my Dual 1.25 GHz Powermac, and have no had no issues, period.

IMHO, you are just asking for trouble if you choose the Upgrade method when installing a new OS.


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## dissentern (Jun 17, 2011)

I know this is an old threat but if someone is still looking I have to say that I have a powerbook g4 12'' 1.5ghz 1.25gb ram and Tiger runs perfectly but Leopard is king of choppy. Overall I think it is not worth running Leopard because there are only a few benefits and you would have to deal with an overall slower experience.


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## fryke (Jun 18, 2011)

Hm. Not only is your answer probably too late for most users, and I think most users would agree that your 12" should run Leopard just fine, theoretically. Also, the benefits can be quite large: Want to use a newer iPod or iPhone or an iPad? Leopard's a requirement for newer versions of iTunes, which in turn is a requirement for the newer iDevices. But there's also quite a lot of newer software that doesn't run on Tiger anymore. I'd say anything above a 1 GHz G4 with 1 GB of RAM or more is quite decent for Leopard, if Leopard's a requirement. (And it often is.)


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