The Best OS for Your Hardware: Linux, Windows, or OS X?

There are two types of computer users. Some just turn the computer on, do their thing, and then turn it off, not caring at all about the hardware and software they're using. Others are very particular, choosing both their hardware and software for a variety of carefully considered reasons and doing our best to maximize its efficiency, power, or entertainment value.

The first group tends to use whatever operating system comes on their computer for its entire useful life. These are not the people you saw waiting in line to buy retail versions of "Tiger" on release day. They don't upgrade memory or hard drives, and they will only a see a new version or different OS when it comes time to buy new computer.

These people don't read computer-oriented websites - and that includes Low End Mac.

This article is for the second group, of which we are all members.

Computer hobbyists and professionals share the goal of maximizing the capabilities of their hardware and software, even though they often do so for very different reasons. For these people, operating systems, while not sexy or fun, are the starting point to "getting it right".

With a new computer, it's not often an issue, as the new machine comes with the newest OS, and everything is roses. It's the older equipment or older applications that sometimes send us back to older OS versions - or even completely different platforms.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Back when OS X first came out, it was, to be blunt, underwhelming in its performance on most contemporary Mac hardware. Yes, Mac OS X 10.0.0 would run on a PCI Power Mac with a 604e processor and 128 MB of RAM, but it was dog slow even on a fast G3 - and bordered on unusable on the older PCI Power Macs.

Of course, the whole reason for OS X's existence is that the classic Mac OS was past its prime, with many users needing a modern OS with protected memory and true preemptive multitasking. OS 9 wasn't that system, and OS X wasn't suitable for anything but the very latest (and most expensive) hardware.

I remember reading many articles in those days about versions of Linux for PowerPC Macs.

PC users faced the same problem a year earlier when Windows 2000 was released. Windows 2000 would run on most PCs of the time, but it was expensive even for upgrade versions and required a lot of memory for the day. Again, Linux gained many converts from people fed up with the instability of DOS-based Windows who didn't want to pay for the hardware (or software) to run Windows 2000.

Those same factors remain today. There is a lot of discussion among the writers at Low End Mac about which version of the classic Mac OS or OS X would make the best fit for a given older Mac. When we buy a new computer, many of us recycle our older ones to a friend or relative, or we set up the old machine for less demanding tasks or to serve as a backup. I've maintained two laptops for my personal use since 1996, and it's kept me productive through crashes, both of the software and the 3' drop to the floor variety.

How do you match an older computer to an OS version that will maximize its capabilities?

A good place to start is with the recommended minimum hardware specifications. Apple, Microsoft, and most Linux distributions give a pretty accurate requirements list that, if followed, will give a satisfactory user experience. Apple set the bar for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) at Macs that came with onboard FireWire, while Panther set it to those with onboard USB.

No, FireWire and USB ports have little relation to OS performance, but they do mimic Apple's hardware chronology, with USB ports coming out with the original iMac and FireWire with Blue and White G3. I've used Tiger on a Blue and White G3, and the experience was quite pleasant.

This isn't a perfect approach, as machines like the 400 MHz Lombard PowerBook are "officially" not up to Tiger's specs, but once installed (some trickery is required - I moved the drive from another Mac) it works just fine, about the same as that officially supported Blue and White.

Microsoft is much the same as Apple in listing hardware requirements. Windows 2000 requires a 133 MHz Pentium, while Windows XP bumped that to a 233 MHz Pentium II.

We don't know what Apple will require for Leopard, but rumor is that a Power PC G4 will be the minimum price of admission, which isn't far out of line with Microsoft's requirements for Windows Vista, which requires an 800 MHz Pentium III. I've run Vista (RC2) on an 800 MHz Pentium III - a laptop no less - and it is fast and stable, though most of the eye candy doesn't work.

Eye Candy

This brings me to the main issue at stake with most OS upgrades, eye candy. Eye candy is not only the fancy ripple effect on a Mac with a modern video card that delights you every time you drop a widget into your dashboard; it's also the thumbnail views of movies, the Genie effect when minimizing a window or application, and those beautiful anti-aliased fonts.

OS X has a lot of eye candy, and much of it has pretty beefy hardware requirements. Use a Mac with an older or unsupported video card, and you lose some of the eye candy.

It's eye candy that wows people at the Apple Store, and it's often the eye candy that makes people plunk down their credit card for the next OS upgrade.

What many users don't realize is that newer OS versions can be vastly accelerated by disabling some of that eye candy.

What many users don't realize is that newer OS versions can be vastly accelerated by disabling some of that eye candy. Last year I had a 400 MHz Lombard PowerBook (it finally died a few months ago) that ran Tiger and Office 2004 without any issues. It booted quickly and was very stable. Of course, if I used Expose or Dashboard, it was dog slow, and I had all of the dock animations disabled. It looked very low-tech, but it allowed a 7-year-old laptop to remain productive on a modern and stable OS version.

Windows is the same story. Vista beta testing aside (I never use a beta of anything for real work), XP SP2 runs just fine on older hardware, as will Vista when the final version is available next month. I've run Windows XP Professional SP2 on a 300 MHz Pentium II laptop with 512 MB of RAM and, except for a 45 second boot time, it runs beautifully on general office productivity applications. No, it won't play TV shows in iTunes, and DVD movies stutter, but Word launches quickly and, while slow to launch (10-15 seconds), Firefox is very responsive once open.

Don't Downgrade to an Older, Unsupported OS

It is often tempting to install an older OS to boost performance. Panther (OS X 10.3) was faster than Tiger on that Lombard PowerBook, for example, but there are benefits to staying up-to-date. There are features that, even if slow on older hardware, are still useful (Expose, Spotlight).

More important, however, is security. Tiger, as the current version of OS X, is patched regularly and more closely watched by Apple. I'm sure Panther is still a secure OS, but Tiger is probably even more so.

For Windows, it's even more critical to use a current version. Many people still use Windows 95 or 98 on their older hardware because it's a very fast operating system. Fast is nice, but neither of those operating systems are still supported by Microsoft - and even when supported they had gaping security holes. Windows 2000, XP, and Vista are the only versions of Windows with regular security updates, and thus they are the only versions that should be used anywhere near the Internet.

Older Macs are much faster in OS 9, but you are giving up the same security and stability benefits as Windows users who downgrade from 2000/XP to 95/98. The price for that speed is just too high, in my opinion.

The Very Low End

If your hardware is too slow for Windows 2000 or OS X, then you really only have two choices: Be super-careful or switch to Linux. Being super-careful means no constant Internet connection unless you are behind a robust firewall (if you can afford a firewall, you can afford a faster computer) or not using that machine on the Internet at all.

There is nothing wrong with installing Windows 95 on a machine used for older games if that machine is not on the Internet.

The better option is Linux. I'm not a Linux expert by any stretch, and I know that modern distributions when fully installed require the same hefty hardware as OS X and Windows do. What many don't know, however, is that you can install a modern (meaning secure) Linux operating system and leave off most of the fancy interface elements.

Gnome and KDE are the most common user interfaces for Linux, and both are pretty demanding, but there are far more minimalist interfaces available that are a better match to older hardware. I tried Xubuntu, a distribution without the high-end graphics, on that old 300 MHz Pentium II laptop and was very pleased with its performance, which was faster than Windows 2000 on that machine.

What I Use

I currently use or maintain four Macs, three PCs (plus three more temporary PCs), and am preparing to upgrade my office network to run from a dedicated server on a domain (the subject of a future article). The oldest and slowest is a 750 MHz Pentium III laptop, and the newest is a 1.66 GHz Core Duo tablet, with all of the Macs toward the high end (1.0 and 1.5 GHz G4 and 2.1 GHz G5) of the performance scale.

My Macs are all running Tiger, even though two of them do not support CoreImage. I depend on my Macs every day and just will not trust my mission-critical work to a computer not running a modern, fully patched and supported operating system.

My PCs run Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 SP4. All security updates are installed, and I use very aggressive protection from spam, spyware, viruses, and adware. Again, I would not trust my mission-critical hardware to anything less.

I like eye candy and whiz-bang features as much as anyone else, and on the machines that can handle them, I use many of these features, but I also believe in maximizing the longevity of my hardware investments. Modern software with resource-heavy features disabled is my favorite way to do that.