Leopard and I are getting married!

Question

Leopard and I are getting married!
I've been screwed by it enough times, I figured I should tie the knot.
Here's my install history:
11 clean installs ending in blue, grey and black screens, beachballs, kernel panics, disappearing users and unbootable hard drives. Some with the login/keychain update.
3 upgrade installs, two from a full up and running production drive image (10.4.10) with software installed, one from a clean 10.4.10 install, all ending in the same manner above.
1 install destroyed (yes, destroyed) a perfectly working 15" 1.25 Aluminum G4's graphics/logic board. 4 years with Tiger, and no problems. Leopard took 4 hours to kill it.
The 14 installs above were on a working (with Tiger) 17" 1.67 Aluminum G4 - all failed.
The last install destroyed the hard drive.
I bought a new hard drive, put it in.
We have a winner.
Leopard installed. On restart, I started adding apps. Immediately powered off (crash) on sleep. (This invariably happened the first sleep after every install) On restart, the Dock, Finder, and everything else hung and crashed. The PB to be shutdown from Terminal on another Mac (running Tiger). Spotlight had to reindex twice, as the first time was corrupt.
So now, after 5 days, averaging 6-8 hours a day, a dead Powerbook, a dead hard drive, gigs of bandwidth used up at the Apple Forums, and enough alcohol to kill the remainder of my soul, I have a working Leopard install.
At first my friends laughed at me, tried to convert me to Linux, and asked why Apple couldn't get Leopard running on their own hardware, while some rag-tag group of hackers already had it running on generic white box PCs.
This soon turned to pity, as they saw their friend who had previously heralded OS X as the best thing out there, now reduced to reinstall after reinstall.
But five days later, I have a working Leopard install.
My shock that Apple would release this hardware-killin', blue screen makin', alcoholic-inducin' OS in this state is mitigated somewhat now, as five days later, I have a working Leopard install.
I don't trust it. It now runs like greased weasels, but every moment I wait for a blue screen, a beachball, a hung app, a lost user, a destroyed logic board.
I've been through every Kitty. I jumped on 10.0 when it came with my 733 Quicksilver, and realized that this was a diamond in the rough! Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger came, and I was amazed every time. As a early adopter, I avoided many of the pitfalls that seemed to plague others - sure, there were little problems here and there, some incompatibilities, but never like what I've just gone through.
Never. Not even Windows has pistol-whipped me like this.
Leopard has done more damage than it's trail of dead hardware and lost time. It's damaged the trust I had in Apple. The trust to deliver great hardware and software, while making it easy to get my stuff done.
But hey, I have a working Leopard install.
Let's see how long it lasts.

Answer 1

OlsonBW wrote:
Sorry to "hear" that it went so bad for you.
My issue was the fault of Logitech that use the "APE" (Application Extender) which caused me to have a blue screen after install. Once I found out what caused it, it's the first time I swore something bad about Logitech as I really like their keyboards and mice.
Leopard works great on my iMac. I just wish I could find a way to install it on my 800mhz G4 iMac and PowerBook, both with 1gb of RAM installed but they are just below the qualifying line. I was hoping to be able to install it on them just for TimeMachine for easier backups.
Some have been able to install Leopard on slow machines using them in the target mode and putting the disk in a qualified machine. It might work for you. The speed limitations are "fuzzy" and if you manage to get Leopard installed it might not run as fast as your older machine, but you will have Leopard It might also run OK.