Mac Challenged- Ancient G5 desperately seeks upgrade

I have a MacPro G5 circa 2003. I need to upgrade my OS from 10.3 to 10.5 so that I can update my internet browsers and surf sites such as youtube etc....I have been told I may need to upgrade my DVD drive to dual layer in order to support the Leopard disc I am considering purchasing.

Has anyone out with an earlier Mac like mine upgraded the dvd drive to a dual layer drive? Also, is it really necessary to erase the old OS and programs, etc. in order to upgrade to a more recent OS?

Any help would be appreciated.

~Alice

Is the above Power Mac G5 the one you have, Alice? Just to clarify, you can install up to Mac OS X 10.5.8 on your Power Mac G5 and it is correct that you will need to upgrade the Optical Drive (click here to watch a YouTube How-To).

The Full Retail version of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 is comes on a Dual Layer DVD so if you want to do the upgrade then you'll need to buy the Leopard software & the new Optical Drive. This will be a very worthwhile upgrade in my opinion.

From a brief look, both Tiger and Leopard are fetching premium prices at resellers and on eBay. Be sure you get the (Universal) Full Retail Version and not computer specific gray discs, or upgrade discs.

Also, you shouldn't have to wipe the hard drive to jump from Panther to Leopard because AFAIK, Leopard allows you to seamlessly upgrade (without deleting programs and user settings.

Having said that, I would strongly suggest you check to see if there are any Leopard compatible versions of the programs you rely on for every day use.