Thinking of converting an old G5 computer into a Windows/Linux clone

[Joe]

I've got a spare G5 lying around which is obsolete so i figger instead of throwing it out, why not just recycle it?

Apparently that case is quite a favorite among Wintel users who are converting them now with state of the art PC components.

...anyone here have any idea how this is done and the difficulties that one can encounter?

And what kind of components would you suggest for purchase? Which ones work best together and are most compatible with Windows and Centos/Ubuntuu linux? What are the best brand hard drives, gpus, ram & muscellaneous components for a PC clone these days?

Im not a hardcore Windows PC user so Im not up to date on what has come out in the past 20 years. I just remember the Pentium 4 that ran with Dell Optiplex way back when. Im even thinking of converting it into more  modern hardware as well. For the greater part I've mostly used Apple computers.

Rather than throw away these old computers I figger its better to recycle them.

Is this viable or even worth the bother?
Post your thoughts or prior experiences here.

[Oliver Clotheshoffe]

Mixing new hardware with old hardware rarely works well. You'll probably get a lot of conflicts to deal with so I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get Windows 10 to run it on either, maybe XP or even Windows 98 but if you don't already have a copy I doubt you could even find them anymore.

I would wipe the hard drive and install Linux so you can learn it and if you screw anything up just wipe the drive again, reinstall and start over. Here's a website where you can get all sorts of distros -

https://distrowatch.com/

You'll notice MX Linux is the number one download, that's the one I use on my old Dell 780 with 2GB of ram and a geforce 210 graphics card and it works fine.

Good luck!

[Joe]

Mixing new hardware with old hardware rarely works well. You'll probably get a lot of conflicts to deal with so I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get Windows 10 to run it on either, maybe XP or even Windows 98 but if you don't already have a copy I doubt you could even find them anymore.

I would wipe the hard drive and install Linux so you can learn it and if you screw anything up just wipe the drive again, reinstall and start over. Here's a website where you can get all sorts of distros -

https://distrowatch.com/

You'll notice MX Linux is the number one download, that's the one I use on my old Dell 780 with 2GB of ram and a geforce 210 graphics card and it works fine.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply Ollie.

Actually I was gonna rip out the existing apple hardware and replace it with new PC Windows compatible motherboatd, hard drive. Put linux and windows on separate hard drives or ssd memory sticks.

Maybe install a platter of separate ssd and hdd hard drives?

Put a nice gpu and compatible memory etc.

I was not planning to retain the old internal  apple hardware. So the plan is it'd look like an Apple computet on the outside but be a brand new wintel pc on the inside with possibly a few Hackintosh versions of Apple OS X installed.

And since the Operating systems would be installed on different hard drives this might eliminate any software conflicts. Does that seem reasonable?

So it could boot into different operating systems.

[Oliver Clotheshoffe]

Thanks for your reply Ollie.

Actually I was gonna rip out the existing apple hardware and replace it with new PC Windows compatible motherboatd, hard drive. Put linux and windows on separate hard drives or ssd memory sticks.

Maybe install a platter of separate ssd and hdd hard drives?

Put a nice gpu and compatible memory etc.

I was not planning to retain the old internal  apple hardware. So the plan is it'd look like an Apple computet on the outside but be a brand new wintel pc on the inside with possibly a few Hackintosh versions of Apple OS X installed.

And since the Operating systems would be installed on different hard drives this might eliminate any software conflicts. Does that seem reasonable?

So it could boot into different operating systems.

As far as I remember only one hard drive can be bootable so I don't know if it's possible to boot from others. It's quite easy to install both Windows and Linux on one drive and then choose the OS at bootup but install Windows first as it uses the entire drive then Linux can partition off the disk and install itself next to it. Or you could install Linux on a bootable USB stick and run it from there.

Keep us posted on how it goes!

[Joe]

As far as I remember only one hard drive can be bootable so I don't know if it's possible to boot from others. It's quite easy to install both Windows and Linux on one drive and then choose the OS at bootup but install Windows first as it uses the entire drive then Linux can partition off the disk and install itself next to it. Or you could install Linux on a bootable USB stick and run it from there.

Keep us posted on how it goes!

Thanks for the info.

Thats interesting.

I seem to remember I had an old pc way back when and it had win 98 and win 2000 on the same hard drive and i could boot from either one.

However like u indicated it was just a single hard drive.

I suppose in the wintel world all the operating systems need to be on an originating primary drive and the extra hard drives are just for storage or saving files too?

Apple seems a bit different because they do allow installations on separate hard drives and you can boot from them separately. So one drive can have osx the other windows and another linux

[Oliver Clotheshoffe]

I remember back in the old days I had a 486 with four hard drives installed, 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drives, a SoundBlaster card, a 48k modem, a Trident video card, DOS 5 with a whopping 2mb of ram, a dot matrix printer... man I miss those days...

[Joe]

I remember back in the old days I had a 486 with four hard drives installed, 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drives, a SoundBlaster card, a 48k modem, a Trident video card, DOS 5 with a whopping 2mb of ram, a dot matrix printer... man I miss those days...

Well I still have an old Dell GX260 optiplex with a Pentium 4 and Windows XP.

Still worked OK til the on board graphics card burned out. Its gotta slot for an agp card so i'll try to revive it. Truth be known it was just as fast as Windows 7 only it wasnt 64 bit. I gotta lotta older programs on it that work just fine so I plan to get it up and running again.

If a person really needs the newer versions of software they can essily work on the older 32 bit programs and then just save and open them up in Windows 10 and save them to a newer version.

Old computers are still useful. You just need a way to migrate your old files over to the newer pcs.

[Oliver Clotheshoffe]

And now for the dark side of Linux...

I was running MX Linux and had it set up perfectly... and then I hit the update button.

Update, reboot, and wonder why Linux won't start.

Turns out it updated the Nvidia legacy drivers which can only be installed manually... allowing the computer to do it breaks the system. There's no documentation on this but I discovered it after doing it a few times.

Okay, no problem, it's Linux! Just reinstall and start over!

I break out the same disc I used before and ran the install program. Reboot the computer - and there's no graphical interface, just the command line.

This is the exact same computer I've been using all along, haven't changed any hardware or anything.

Tried reinstalling again, same result. Tried again and the DVD drive started sputtering and wouldn't finish the install.

Went to remove the DVD drive to replace it with another one and got so mad trying to get it out I started pounding on it and sent it off to DVD heaven. Finally got it out, go to get the other one and...oops, I don't have another one!

So now I gotta get a replacement DVD drive not even knowing if that was the problem and then get back to getting the install to work.

Fortunately I always have my data backed up on a USB stick so I got my old computer out and I'm using that now.

Lesson learned - once you have your computer set up how you want NEVER hit the update button. 

[Joe]

Well Ollie instilled rather seamlessly on ny Mac using Parallels. I even managed to install some programs.

So at least on my end linux is as solid as windows....so far.

I wanna get a quarduple boot on my computer. Mac os x, centos linux, ubuntu linux and windows.

Get the best of all 4.

That way, no program or software left behind!

Might be a good setup for you too cuz you could do work on all platforms and make money on just about any file a prospective client hands you ta work on

Thats why I decided to get a multiplatform os machine so I could be more versatile and potentially get more freelance work. I'm really a Mac guy...but if I tell em "Oh but I can do work in Windows and do work for you on that platform."

Suddenly their eyes light up.

Windows still has more credibility and clients take it more seriously its the one the vast majority worldwide are familiar with.

Truth be known I think 98% of the world still uses Windows of one version or another. Mac, Linux and the other also rans are bit players in tge market.