Grrrr. Apple decided that they would no longer support older beige G3s when they released OS 10.3. Apparently, if the machine doesn’t have built-in USB capabilities and a PCI video card, it doesn’t qualify. This is rather sad, as the machine in question could easily handle 10.3 otherwise. In fact, from my research, 10.3 actually runs faster than 10.2, which would easily make it worth the upgrade cost. But, Apple has said I cannot use it, so purchasing the upgrade would be a waste of money.
I found a few sites discussing ways to circumvent the issue. Some people have been able to install 10.3 on older machines, using XPostFacto, but frankly, there are too many hoops to jump through, without any guarantee that it will work, or that it will remain stable over the long run. This is not a good thing as I plan to use the machine as a simple file server. Stability is kind of important, right? Right.
I repeat….Grrrr
Maybe Linux would suit well for a simple file server ? Nope ?!
(Yes, even on a G3…)
The Mac is actually replacing an old Linux box. I got 10.2 up and running as a file and print server, thanks to the BSD core of the OS. Thanks for the idea though!