Tiger or Leopard upgrade?

Hi all,

I have an iBook G4 (PPC processor) with OS X 10.3.9 Panther, and would like to upgrade to Tiger or Leopard as Apple does not support Panther anymore.

What would you recommend as the minimum requirements so that the system doesn't run too slow realistically?
I assume there would not be incompatibility issues with such an upgrade, at least with the Apple software that came with the iBook.

Some people seem to have performance issues with Leopard on new Macs more powerful than mine. But a person used Disk Utility under Applications and that solved the problem for them.

I was thinking to wait until next year that Snow Leopard comes out. That is when Apple may presumably stop supporting Tiger. However initial info says that Snow Leopard will work only on Intel Macs :-(
(Not to mention the amount of processing power and RAM required, prehaps more than the full RAM on my IBook).

Thanks.

You can find the exact requirements on this link.
What are the specs for your iBook? (processor speed, screen size, ram installed...)

specs

1.2 GHz, 1.25 GB SDRAM

I think both OS's would run well on your iBook. Leopard has more features than Tiger, and as you mentioned, Leopard will probably be the last PPC OS.
As of now, Snow Leopard is listing as Intel only.

Personally, I would go with Leopard. After using Tiger, you would eventually want to upgrade to Leopard. Most that have problems with Leopard usually just use the "upgrade" install, and it has caused some problems. I would recommend the "erase and install" option and start fresh. Afterwards, update to the latest version, 10.5.4 and use Disk Utility to repair permissions. You shouldn't have any problems going that route.

But it's your decision. And there is nothing wrong with Tiger. It's a great upgrade from Panther and it runs very well. I'm still using it myself and have no problems. But if I had the extra money, I would upgrade to Leopard.

You can also check Ebay for a more reasonable price. Just make sure it's the full retail version, for either one.

As Soulwar suggests go with Leopard. It is very stable and fast and in time you will want to go that way even if you do install Tiger.

Make sure you purchase a full retail install DVD, which are black coloured of either OS. Also some more memory would assist greatly. 2GB would be the bees knees if the machine will hold that much.