What to do with a G5 iMac

I recently acquired a free iMac G5. What do I do with it?

I can't update it past a certain point, and I gather not a lot of recent software is going to run on it. So what do I use it for? I hate just letting a working computer go. I'm trying to think of a purpose for it...

I would sell it but it seems to be going for around $35 on ebay.

From what I remember, the G5 iMacs are notorious for leaky capacitors on the motherboard. That's probably why they're cheap on ebay.

If yours really works, that's cool. You could make it a file server if you hook up a big drive via Firewire. I wouldn't want to browse the web on it, but someone might. You can still put current versions of LibreOffice on it.

My last dealings with a G5 were in 2009 or so, and it was showing its age then. Just keep in mind you're working on a machine that was competitive with Pentium 4s. Even a fresh Windows XP install on a P4 PC would feel like a dinosaur by today's standards.

I suppose you could gut the case, shoehorn a regular PC motherboard inside, and make a Hackintosh out of it.

I recently purchased a G5 Mac, the big aluminium boxy thing, not an iMac. Nice machine. Thoroughly obsolete, but still works fine and runs Ubuntu Linux rather well.

These machines are useful to people working on embedded Linux for big-endian targets -- far easier to debug code/drivers on a desktop machine (eg. G5 Mac) than on a teensy embedded platform with less advanced interfaces. The big boxy G5 even has PCIe slots.

Cheers