Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Install Experiences

I finally got my Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) upgrade DVD in the mail this weekend and promptly upgraded my laptop. I ended up doing an “erase and install” as I’ve never been a fan of operating system upgrades (Windows taught me not to believe in them). Having read Ken’s horrible upgrade experience, I’m glad I went with the full install.

The install took only took an hour. I ended up selecting the MacOS Extended (case-sensitive, journaled) disk formatting option during the install. I made sure to backup some of my more critical files prior to the install. The folders I backed up prior to the install were:

• <user home>/Library/Application Support
• <user home>/Library/Preferences
• <user home>/Library/Mail

There are other files I could have backed up but that is all I really cared about. I was able to restore all my calendar and contact info from my iPhone. I had spent the last month installing so much crap to learn how things worked with the Mac OS that I was glad to get a fresh system again.

I really love all the little enhancements, especially with the Mail.app. I’m also turning into a Stacks and Spaces fan as well.

4 Comments to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Install Experiences

1. 

   Awesome, I’m going to have to give it look and see how it installs on my PC’s. One thing I wanted to post though is that I just finished reading an article about the included firewall with Leopard. Here’s the link:
   http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2209676,00.asp?kc=EWKNLBOE110307STR1
   l8s
Matthew Struck on November 5th, 2007
2. 

   I’d be interested to hear how things go with your install on one of your custom PCs as I have a desire to do the same thing (or I might just end up using Ubuntu Linux).

   Thanks for the article. I have seen related news in my feed reader as well. There are mixed feelings about this and it looks like a there is a bit of setup to get this right. I hope to play with it more myself soon.
Brooke Kuhlmann on November 7th, 2007
3. 

   Hey, Matthew, there is a partial answer to your question on Unwired.
Brooke Kuhlmann on November 9th, 2007
4. 

   I also think it is best to start with a clean system install on a clean hard drive. Instead of a reinstall over a previous or new operating system onto itself, leaving the rest of the hard drive as is.

   None of that crap! A person should do it right and start nice and fresh with a clean hard drive. Just as you shouldn’t fill up an aquarium that you know has a leak, or use contact cement near a pilot light. Common sense, I think! Take time to back up important files and then reformat.

   I must admit that Apple’s tech help of their website is handy. For Instance, I took me three hours to try installing system 10.4.6, the versions right before Leopard came out. The DVD would absolutely not track up worth anything on the DVD drive. Now, before you think I was and idiot and using a external drive to install it, I wasn’t. Although, I had the drive out of the computer so much, I could have been a external one! I was switching the jumper on the back, back and forth from slave to master, hoping this would solve things. But after troubleshooting on Apple’s website I found the soultion. If you happen to have a previous OS ystem 9 on the machine, you need to take the fonts folder out of the system folder, and place it on the desktop. After that, everything just worked smoothly. The DVD tracked up, and I was able to load 10.4.6 just wonderfully! Afterwords, I then restarted in Classic mode (OS 9), to put the font folder back in it’s system folder, to cure any other problems that that might have caused. It’s funny how little things like that can waste a good Saturday afternoon. Also, a tip: If you’re machine is password protected, don’t lose that password!! If you do, you may as well reinstall the OS software again to get back in. As I was locked out for a while, and logging in as guest gets you nowhere in getting things done on the computer.

   Macuser109
Brian Emmons on December 13th, 2007

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