I took the plunge and decided to upgrade to Mac OS 10.5 a.k.a. Leopard this weekend. Here’s how it went…

Initially I made sure I had two full cloned and boot-able backups that I made with CCC. After this I actually tried booting off them just to make sure. Having backups before such a major upgrade is a mandatory step for all people whom undertake any OS upgrade.

Secondly I decided on the upgrade path. I plopped in the 10.5 DVD (Family pack!) and kicked off the upgrade.
At this point all looked fine, but this is where the initial problem occurred. People had said 10.5.0 was unstable, but I had thought I could at least login and kick off the 10.5.2 combo update. How wrong I was.

The combination of a Powerbook G4, and and upgrade from 10.4.11 -> 10.5.0 rendered the OS unusable.
I had heard rumours of this sort of thing, but I had not expected it. Finder would lock up on login and no amount of coaxing, safe mode, or anything else worked.

So I tested my external clone once more to make sure I could boot off it, and took the plunge. ERASE AND INSTALL.