MorphOS 3.0 Released: Refusing To Let the PPC Desktop OS Die Gracefully 214
An anonymous reader writes "Version 3.0 of MorphOS has been released. It's the independent PPC OS designed for outdated Apple systems like G4 PowerBooks (5,6; 5,7; 5,8; or 5,9) and eMacs (1.25 GHz/1.42 GHz) and PPC Mac Minis, and some G4 PowerMac models (depends on graphics hardware). It further runs on discontinued and niche Genesi desktop systems (Pegasos) and the stunted 128-megabyte-of-RAM tiny Efika. MorphOS is a nice-looking, low-resource, and nimble OS that can't match the capabilities of current Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its installation/live CD is free without caveat, and runs for 30 minutes at a time, as many times as you like. You may purchase MorphOS to remove the time limit. A particular weakness of MorphOS is its lack of support for wireless networking."
Another weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
... might be the price. Good luck, I guess.
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Free crap is still crap.
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Free crap is still crap.
It's about the same as I'm getting from my latest Ubuntu installation. :(
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If the best response is to ignore them, why are you replying? Seems that if it were the best response, you would have taken that path.
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its not astroturf, its people getting snarky at the increasingly shittier versions of linux, myself included. Glad you love it so much, not that any of us cares cause your a pussy who wont sign in, but for many of us its sad and apparent that the absolute best desktop linux has been was Ubuntu 8.
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Re:Another weakness (Score:4, Informative)
TBQH sounds like a hardware issue, or else a bad misconfiguration / botched upgrade. You checked dmesg or any of the logs? You tried a clean reinstall?
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Re:Another weakness (Score:4, Funny)
Yup, that Free copy of Windows 7 on my last laptop was quite crap. Fixed it with a BSD install.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
pay more for the OS than the obsolete computer is worth.
what's wrong with running debian on these things?
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pay more for the OS than the obsolete computer is worth.
what's wrong with running debian on these things?
I have an old GP4 station running debian.
Only used for some text input, word processing and reading the odd pdf.
works very well on debian
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. I have an old PowerBook G4 that I still use on a weekly basis to run a particular piece of old software, but I thought it might be fun to fool around with a different OS for a few bucks. At €111.11, it's well beyond the "let's have some fun with something different" range.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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How is MorphOS providing full Amiga compatibility if not for emulation?
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"That can't even do wireless" is a dubious way of assessing its worth.
If most PPC systems still in use are desktops with no WiFi, it might simply not be worth porting a wireless stack for the few laptops or wireless-connected desktops that might buy it, but the rest of the system might be rock-solid. Or it might not -- lack of WiFi doesn't really say anything about it.
Bullshit. It says it isn't ready to be sold for money. There is nothing dubious about that assessment. It means it is not complete and should not cost anything if they want to use people as beta testers. Hell, I have an old G4 tower that I connect via wireless. I'll bet a lot of people do the same. You're either astroturfing for them or just trolling.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. It's as I thought. Troll. I never said I need wifi, I said I expected it as a feature of any OS that costs money. I use it on the old G4 out of convenience. Most of my boxen are connected via gig-ethernet. A very subtle troll though, so hats off to you for that.
Your attempt at using windows from bygone years as an example was weak though. This is 2012. Any OS that costs money should have wifi support. If it is beta that's fine. They shouldn't be charging for it then.
Re:Another weakness (Score:4, Insightful)
This is 2012. Any OS that costs money should have wifi support.
How nice that you think so...
http://drdos.com/products/dr-dos/ [drdos.com]
http://www.ecomstation.com/ [ecomstation.com] does have limited WiFi support -- there's a number of old 802.11b chipsets supported. So maybe that doesn't count, but I'd hardly call that acceptable in 2012 -- FOR GENERAL-PURPOSE OSES FOR NEW HARDWARE.
Unfortunately for you, your thoughts != reality. Y'know, reality, where real businesses need to (or find it cheaper to) run real legacy apps from pre-WiFi times, in the same non-WiFi use cases for which the apps were originally developed. Where "OS for legacy apps" is a real thing, and has different requirements than for new desktop OSes.
Can you not conceive that the OS market is not one giant mass of identical requirements? If you can, why do you think WiFi should be the one thing that transcends such divisions? And no "because I say so", which is all I've heard from you so far, isn't a good answer.
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Sadly, a lot of people believe that is something does not meet their needs then it is bad for everyone. I always take it as a bit of ego.. they are so representative of 'real' users that if they don't like it, then no one should.
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Yeah. It's an OS for 2012 meant to run on hardware from the dark ages. Chances are that this ancient hardware is already doing quite well without modern wifi support.
There's some hardware that require 3rd party payware device drivers on the latest Mac. So the claim that an "OS for today" needs to have every random device accounted for is not that realistic really.
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hell it was an option for the G3 models, apple was the first to really hype up wifi in its "Airport" branding of things
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Funny)
My wife has a G4 MacBook Pro (maybe a Powerbook?) that was the last PPC laptop Apple made. She won't throw the thing out. It's got 10.5.8 I believe.
She runs Octave and AUTO on it for wave simulations and other PDE shit I don't understand (she's a mathematician). Python and believe it or not, Fortran (I guess a lot of fluid dynamics types use Fortran still for some reason).
I keep wanting to buy her a new laptop, but she always says she paid more than $5000 for that thing and won't give it up until it dies. I practically could have bought her a i7 gaming laptop for the price of all the new batteries I bought for that thing. Put Linux on it and she's got a numerical math monster. Maybe I'll go buy her a brand new Macbook Pro and switch them and hope she doesn't notice.
I am SO sick of having to look for old versions of XCODE and other software for PPC.
I have to admit though, the thing was built like a tank. It just keeps working and working and after a few hours you can grill a bratwurst on the keyboard, it gets so hot. It looks almost exactly like the new 17" Macbook Pro.
So my question: is this grounds for divorce? (just kidding hon'). I don't even think she likes OSX all that much. It's just because the thing was so expensive and it has worked and worked. How do I convince her to give it up without actually smashing it to bits?
Wait, I know. I'll tell her that new machines will let her watch Netflix.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Informative)
Python and believe it or not, Fortran (I guess a lot of fluid dynamics types use Fortran still for some reason).
There are three reasons we still use Fortran in the CFD business. First, a lot of good old numerics code is written in Fortran, and interfacing between languages means overhead. (You see, we're the types that define and use onethird=1.0/3.0 if we have to divide by 3 more than 10 times in a tight loop since multiplication is faster than division, or loop over j in the outer and i in the inner loop because that's how arrays are stored...)
Second, for the type of stuff we normally do, Fortran is 10-20% faster than C and orders of magnitude faster than other languages. (C is faster at file I/O.) This is important when you measure runtimes in weeks. (With Python, the simulations I did for my thesis would literally take years.)
Third, there is still significant work by large companies to create even more efficient Fortran compilers (see Intel, PGI, NAG).
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That makes sense. When she goes out of town for a conference, she leaves me to occasionally look in on her simulations which are running for weeks and weeks on these HP workstations back in her "sewing room". Come to think of it, I've never seen her do any sewing in that room, so I'm not sure why we call it the sewing room. She also has me water the plants, which measure their runtime in months, if not years..
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When she goes out of town for a conference, she leaves me to occasionally look in on her simulations which are running for weeks and weeks on these HP workstations back in her "sewing room".
In a former life, I was running simulations that ran for months at a time. Then, the first Athlon based machines showed up. Those things blew through those jobs in days. After a bit, I just stopped queuing jobs on the site's "big iron" clustered machines, because I could get the job done on the Athlons before they really even got started on the cluster.
That might be the way to get her to retire that old box you complain about, and those HP workstations. With a more powerful box in her hands, she could r
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Man your compiler sucks if it can't figure onethird thing out on it's own.
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One wonders why you don't buy her a new MacBook Pro 15" I7. The increase in speed would be HUGE.
Re:Another weakness (Score:4, Funny)
This may sound crazy in the 21st century, but we long ago agree to discuss any >$1000 purchase. She's always saying, "Why should I spend the money if my Mac works still"? (in her Eastern European accent).
We do have a special anniversary present exception to the "spending over $1000" rule, so maybe I'll get her the big Macbook Pro then.
Marriage, man. As the philosopher said, it's one long negotiation.
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Hold on... your wife is geeky; has an eastern European accent; and multiple HP workstations in her "sewing room" amongst other computers?
Ummm... want to swap? My German wife has both installers and application shortcuts cluttering her whole desktop.
(safe to post under my own username: She doesn't read slashdot (and doesn't speak English that well)... but just in case "I'm only joking Schatz, I love you!")
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Informative)
The funny part is she's not really that geeky. She's got all the computers and stuff, but she's a mathematician, so she knows how to write programs to do fluid dynamics simulations but calls me to come install Adobe Reader. Or maybe she's just giving me some little menial task to make me feel a little bit useful.
And get this (I swear it's true) when I met her, she was a stewardess for a European airline, back when stewardesses had to be hot.
I am an unexceptional person. But I hit all five numbers and the powerball when it comes to finding a wife. It is by far the luckiest break I ever got in life.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another weakness (Score:4, Informative)
Ah FORTRAN.. the cockroach of computer languages...
We've been allowed to call it "Fortran" for quite a few years now, and cockroaches are a very successful species.
Besides, with all the time and effort invested in Fortran development, there's a vast installed codebase of tested code out there, possibly even rivalling or bettering things like CPAN for perl.
Re:Another weakness (Score:4)
"Maintain it"? Except for switching the occasional battery, there has been just about no maintenance required. I just want to see her get something newer and faster and better. She's one of them frugal wives, which has mostly been a good thing, except when I wanted to buy that silver-plated handmade chromatic harmonica.
She bought the Macbook Pro/Powerbook with money she got when she got her first decent tenure-track faculty appointment. She bought that >$5000 laptop with the money, and to show you how long ago it was, she also bought a 21" LCD monitor which was nearly $700.
after more than 20 years of marriage, "whipped" sounds kind of OK, actually. Maybe a ball gag and a butt plug too.
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B&W G3 case (Score:2)
Oh man, those were wonderful cases weren't they? I still remember the first time I saw one opened at the computer lab - I never much cared for Apple, and didn't really care much for the visual design, but WOW. That fold-out motherboard tray was brilliant! Working in one of those babies was to a standard tower case what a tower was to a desktop. I can only assume that Apple wrapped the design tight with patents, or that every other case manufacturer on the planet is stupid. In a perfect world every towe
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Seems rather a shame to me to take such a nice compact motherboard and stick it in a huge honking case, but then I'm a fan of the engineering design, not the visual aesthetics. If you find it decorative, well then I can see how the idea could appeal. You'd certainly have enough unused space to pile in hard drives, popcorn makers, etc. Heads up though, old Macs don't use standard ATX power supplys even when the plug is mechanically compatible. Supposedly it's not too difficult to rewire the motherboard
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Apple sold a shitload of iBooks and the like, but most probably have been dumpstered by now.
I see quite a lot of them around actually but I am sure the owners are happy to be running macos on them, and linux is stil available for ppc.
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My wife's pretty happy with her iBook running 10.5 and an old version of Office v.X - she doesn't use it regularly, but gives her what she needs when she's off at a conference or whatever.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Informative)
What the summary fails to mention is that MorphOS grew out of AmigaOS and can run a lot of Amiga software. People who like Amiga software find it useful to continue running it on hardware that can still be maintained to some degree, which has built in ethernet and USB ports - all stuff the original Amigas lacked.
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Weirder still, its like 30 euro more on a Powerbook than a desktop, and yet without wireless networking, its far less useful on a Powerbook than on a desktop!
I'm a big Amiga fan, still run one for nostalgia gaming sake, but MorphOS is crap developed by arrogant krauts.
Re:Another weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, if it was free or at least very cheap people might consider using it, but at 111 euros? That's more than the price of OSX or many versions of Windows...
And being such a niche product, i doubt it will even tempt anyone to release a cracked version.
Creating a niche OS that only runs on obsolete hardware, and costs more than that hardware itself does? That seems to be an extremely poor business model...
If it was free or dirt cheap, people might be tempted in it to breathe new life into old hardware... But at that price, you might as well just buy some newer more capable hardware.
As for the lack of wireless support, the changelog for 3.0 cites one of the biggest new features as "PowerBook support for 1.67GHz models"... So a laptop with built in wifi, but you can't use wireless on it?
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They probably would have made more money if they put it on kickstarter.
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Yeah but this isn't OS X or Windows.
No, it's a more expensive product so you'd expect to get what you paid for... Windows and OSX are fairly polished products that will install easily on supported hardware, will support the full functionality of that hardware and have a good selection of third party software available.
What you actually get with morphos is a system that is only partially functional on most of the hardware it supports and has a pretty poor selection of available applications.
Fuck your business model. The OS has been made for over 10 years. The developers try to earn something from it. Why should they give it away? That's a poor business model if anything.
You don't earn money from a niche os, you develop it
They seem to use that word a lot. (Score:5, Interesting)
free without caveat, and runs for 30 minutes at a time
Either "free without caveat" or "runs for 30 minutes at a time" does not mean what I think it means.
Re:They seem to use that word a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
free without caveat, and runs for 30 minutes at a time
Either "free without caveat" or "runs for 30 minutes at a time" does not mean what I think it means.
Let me translate that for you: its like windows but free
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The website lies by omission: the only reference I can find to the fact that it's a commercial product is one mention of a 'free trial version'. Very sleazy.
AFAICT this is just an AmigaOS clone, anyway. Is it just a rebranded AROS?
So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
... it's not as good as Linux and you have to pay for it?
I wonder how the PPC port of Haiku is doing?
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It's still in development (but then, it is still ongoing and not dead).
BSD and Linux run fine on PPC macs.
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Debian/Ubuntu PPC are alive and well (Score:5, Informative)
The Debian [debian.org] and Ubuntu [ubuntu.com] PowerPC ports are alive and well. Main lack for modern use is Flash. But I long dual-booted Ubuntu PPC on a G3/G4. A more reliable DVD burner than Mac OS X 10.4, and wider hardware support.
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How is the lack of flash something bad? Now that youtube supports HTML5, there's no need for flash, unless your job demands it.
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The lack of Flash is why my PPC Mac Mini is still running some ungodly useless version of OS X. I mean the machine runs and it does shit just fine but I'd really like to have more use for the machine than simply being a paperweight.
At first I was excited to read this, thinking I could use it again, but then I realized I already have a Roku for my media and I really have no use for the old Mac Mini anyway. Then I saw the price and said, "oh right I don't care at all."
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My 5yo daughter has an ancient Mac G4, with Apple Cinema Display (with the funky plug that doesn't fit any known standard, so I can't just reuse the display on a sensible computer), as her very own. She watches television and plays Flash games on it. Mac OS X 10.4, Firefox 3.something, Flash some obsolete version. It's only Flash - the one thing she really uses it for - that keeps me from Ubuntuing it. Failing that, the current upgrade plan is to pay £25 for a 19" LCD and get someone's discarded P4 an
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Adapters exist to attach normal monitors to a Mac, but not to attach these monitors to a normal PC - the "adapter" has to power the monitor as well, so cost more than a new monitor would.
FreeBSD (Score:4, Informative)
Also has a PPC edition, as does NetBSD.
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Amiga support, presumably. Includes a "native" emulator for 68k Amiga hardware, too. Just in case you want to play Fire and Ice on your G4 laptop, I guess.
Re:FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience as a Certified Amiga Nut, most users of MorphOS are Amiga nuts who are pissed off with Amiga, Inc's mishandling of the IP, or are pissed at Hyperion Entertainment, so they won't use AmigaOS 4.1, or else they really want a PPC Amiga laptop (as opposed to just running WinUAE on a PC laptop, and getting excellent 68040-based Amiga compatibility.)
It's a niche of a niche.
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Also there is still Yellow Dog Linux, which has always been exclusively for PowerPC systems.
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It's my 5yo daughter's computer. Flash is pretty much what she uses it for (BBC CBeebies television and games, YouTube, assorted Flash games) and Gnash isn't yet up to the demanding needs of a five year old.
No real point (Score:2)
If you are running old hardware like this, its most likely because you either cant afford to upgrade, so having to buy this is a show stopper, or you need specific support for something, which you would lose even if it was free.
If you just like old stuff, ( many do ) there are free alternatives still, so again, why would i pay?
And what sort of desktop environment in 2012 doesn't support wireless in some manner? wtf?
Quark, Abox, L4 and OSFree (Score:2)
All that is correct. That said, the one thing I find interesting about it is the Quark microkernel, and the fact that this OS is targeted towards non-x86 platforms. The Quark microkernel is a variation of the L4 microkernel, and the Abox that sits on top of it is an AmigaOS sandbox that sits on it. If this works, other subsystems can be tried out on this as well.
An FOSS project similar to this, called osFree [osfree.org] is also out there, and it aims at doing the same thing. The sandboxes in osFree are called per
Miss Amiga? Try DragonFly! (Score:5, Informative)
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Why "-1 troll"?
Dragonfly BSD really appears to be a viable alternative to MorphOS.
Knowing nothing about both cases, I would moderate parent as "+1 Informative". Not liking the information does not justifies "trolling" it. :-(
What is the market for this? (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to be aimed at Amiga enthusiasts/nostalgists who no longer have any actual Amiga hardware, but do happen to have some old PowerPC Mac hardware around, and want to run their old Amiga software on that rather than under UAE, and are willing to shell out a fair amount of cash to do so.
Seems likely to be a rather small market.
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It seems to be aimed at Amiga enthusiasts/nostalgists who no longer have any actual Amiga hardware, but do happen to have some old PowerPC Mac hardware around, and want to run their old Amiga software on that rather than under UAE, and are willing to shell out a fair amount of cash to do so.
Seems likely to be a rather small market.
Take a look at their support page. If you don't like the way something is done, they are very clear that YOU (the user) are WRONG. It's obviously run by a bunch of engineers ... so take that into account when using MorphOS.
... just use linux. It'll cost less, there are more people using it, and you're much less likely to run across a stuck-up engineer that can't let go of "his baby" when looking for help.
Tip: If you want "support" for an OS that is made primarily by engineers
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It started in the late 1990s as part of a project to make an Amiga-compatible and possibly Amiga-flavored operating system available on newer hardware, with some companies expressing an interest in putting out some kind of dedicated MorphOS-based box. Some overlap in ideas with the BeBox, which also hoped to target an audience that wanted something other than a PC or Mac, around the same time.
This retargeting towards people who want to repurpose their old PPC hardware seems like a bit of a last gasp.
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Your post was modded "Funny" but I think you're probably exactly right!
If you're like any of the typical long-time Mac users I know who keep vintage hardware around? You're still happily running old versions of MacOS on it! I don't see why you'd really go looking for another commercial OS alternative for such a system, unless it promised to give you something new you couldn't do otherwise.
In this case, you'd actually lose major functionality like wireless card support by switching to it. The *only* really
I would say.. (Score:5, Insightful)
free without caveat
only being able to use the free version for 30 minutes at a time is a pretty fucking large caveat.
Why not just put it in the body... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is Amiga compatible for those who don't know.
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A lot of people (unconsciously or not) still feel threatened by the Amiga. It's interesting to see how the revisionism of history and denial of the Amiga's existence and what it represented evolves, if it were only not for these pesky hobbyists who are still hacking at it. After all, you cannot learn from history if it's not even there to learn from...
No, not denial of the Amiga's existence. People just want to forget about the annoying cult that made Apple evangelists seem like resonable people in comparison.
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Give it up. I used an Amiga 4000 well past when it was obsolete and loved it. But I won't for a second pretend that today we haven't surpassed AmigaOS in every possible way. UI responsiveness on my $1300 macbook air is light years superior to the old 4000. I expect this, I'm happy with this. Suggesting those who were never Commodore fanboys are somehow threatened by it is lunatic.
As someone with a great fondness for memories of the classic Amiga and even purchased an AmigaOne when they first came out (now considering the X1000, but not sure yet); I have to agree with you on all points but one. We haven't surpassed AmigaOS in EVERY possible way, just almost every possible way.
The one feature that always stands out to me is the AmigaOS datatypes system. I really miss having the ability to download a simple "hey this is how PNG images are handled" file, and then being able to open an
Facepalm (Score:5, Insightful)
Again one of those websites which are sprinkled with links having only the text "here" or "this page". Go there, see here, this, that, everywhere. You don't as quickly see where the links are pointing, and it kind of feels like pushing the reader around. Just for a comparison...
For installation instructions, please go here [morphos-team.net]. The free trial version is available for download on this page [morphos-team.net].
To get started, please view the installation instructions [morphos-team.net]. The free trial version is available for download [morphos-team.net].
So much nicer to read.
Re:Facepalm (Score:5, Funny)
Again one of those websites which are sprinkled with links having only the text "here" or "this page". Go there, see here, this, that, everywhere. You don't as quickly see where the links are pointing, and it kind of feels like pushing the reader around. Just for a comparison...
Website wording aside...
Why not just go here [ubuntu.com]?
Does Ubuntu have not-an-emulator for Amiga? (Score:2)
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I know Ubuntu has ABI compatibility with X11/Linux applications (because it is an X11/Linux distribution) and Windows applications (sudo apt-get install wine). Perhaps the advantage of MorphOS is ABI compatibility with Amiga applications, running them faster than UAE.
I suspect that you'll find a wider customer base for an emulator for Babbage's Difference Engine than for Amiga on Linux, nobody is doing it because nobody gives a flying.
Amiga is dead, they should have called it Zombie OS and code named the release Apocalypse, then at least they'd get some attention.
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Again one of those websites which are sprinkled with links having only the text "here" or "this page". Go there, see here, this, that, everywhere. You don't as quickly see where the links are pointing, and it kind of feels like pushing the reader around. Just for a comparison...
For installation instructions, please go here [morphos-team.net]. The free trial version is available for download on this page [morphos-team.net].
To get started, please view the installation instructions [morphos-team.net]. The free trial version is available for download [morphos-team.net].
So much nicer to read.
Totally agree. Also makes the site more accessible as visually impaired users may iterate over hyperlinks only.
So... (Score:2)
MorphOS is a nice-looking, low-resource, and nimble OS that can't match the capabilities of current Windows, Mac, and Linux.
So, it's like OS 9.6?
Open source? (Score:2)
I would love to kow how much open source code there is in this thing. It could easily be FreeBSD, but the I suppose wifi wold work.
What a terrible website (Score:2)
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111.11euros. their site and pricing structure sucks(price depends what you run it on)
meh (Score:2)
I have a old 603e machine, so I am not going to purchase another OS for it, already bought 9.22 and 10.2 and had to use patches and installers to get those working but this thing is not giving me any compelling reason to even think about it.
I click features and get a buglist of crap thats been fixed, those are not features... Whats the system requirements? I know almost all non mainstream OS's, linux included think its passe to list a fucking system requirement like ram of CPU but its usually not buried dee
Pessimistic subject much? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most unnecessarily pessimistic summary that I've ever seen. It should be: "Oh look, this experimental Amiga based OS has just updated! Isn't that kitchy and fun?"
Why focus on the lack of wireless networking, running on Power PC (Which still deserves respect as an amazing processor you witless bastard kids), or having a cost of about 1/20th of a computer? It's a custom kernel underdog operating system written for unique and impressive platform. If that doesn't get your juices rolling, turn in your geek card.
Re:Pessimistic subject much? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the most unnecessarily pessimistic summary that I've ever seen. It should be: "Oh look, this experimental Amiga based OS has just updated! Isn't that kitchy and fun?"
Why focus on the lack of wireless networking, running on Power PC (Which still deserves respect as an amazing processor you witless bastard kids), or having a cost of about 1/20th of a computer? It's a custom kernel underdog operating system written for unique and impressive platform. If that doesn't get your juices rolling, turn in your geek card.
20 years ago it was cool. And it was cool for a couple of years, very very cool.
But your average cell phone today is more powerful in every way, hell the iPhone is running a micro-kernel and Android phones are Linux.
Amiga died, mourn it if you like, but please stop trying to drag the rest of geekdom into your sad little world.
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hardware obsolence (Score:2)
I assume the OS depends on obtuse ppc assembly or needs to run old ppc binaries. Otherwise, why not recompile for amd64 or arm?
In which case, plans to target current ppc hardware? E.g. Wii and xbox360 are ppc based if you can boot your own OS on them.
Putting things into perspective (Score:3)
As always anything Amiga-related brings out the preachers saying what others should or should not do - particularly whether things should be allowed to live or not. As most Amiga history is, the story of MorphOS is convoluted. But let's instead look at what it does and what it can offer to those interested.
First of all it's Amiga-compatible. Out of the currently available "next-gen" AmigaOSes, it's probably the most backwards compatible. Now this obviously only matters if you already own Amiga software or like what's on Aminet - which means you're likely an Amiga user already and get what it's all about anyway.
Everyone else might find it interesting because it's lightning fast even on these older machines. I am actually typing this from a 1.25 GHz G4 Mac Mini with 512MB of RAM, and it's every bit as responsive as my i7 Mac Mini server with 16 GB of RAM. In fact it boots and launches the apps I need much faster (if both are turned off - the server usually isn't).
Why you might like it:
What it is great for is general surfing, mail, light productivity and such. To an extent a lot of the same stuff your typical Linux distro is good at. Except faster - even faster than something like Puppy Linux or DSL. It is quite easy to learn your way around like the other Amiga-based systems - far easier than the mainstream operating systems IMHO.
It has a lot of nice apps built-in like CD/DVD authoring, text editor with syntax highlighting, basic music player, picture gallery software, CD-ripping software,FTP/SFTP client, PDF viewer and a Webkit-based browser. It also has some a very lovely SSH client, some very good IRC clients, some nice VNC and RDP clients, lots of emulators, a lot of games and game ports, graphics software like Blender and much more. A lot of the same goes for other Amiga-like flavours and both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 can run a lot of older Amiga apps out of the box as well. There is also software actively developed by third parties like Hollywood from Airsoft Softwair which I cannot say enough nice things about. Publishing software like Pagestream is also still maintained.
In other words you have a functional and fast computer out of the box and you can explore a lot of software afterwards. OS geeks should have as much fun with this as with Haiku, various BSD and *nix flavours and so on.
Why you might not like it:
Your kids want the latest and greatest Flash games. You want to watch 1080p video (not really an OS limitation but rather hardware). You want to run a server or have a multiuser environment. You absolutely cannot tolerate a crash (while I have yet to see a system crash, there is no memory protection. It IS very stable, though). You're just not curious about other operating systems and like what you have.
Additional:
It should also be noted that WiFi support is on the way, and like previous updates it's likely to be free. Yes, the entry price is somewhat steep, but historically a one-time purchase (license is tied to the machine) gets you all subsequent updates for free. I bought it at 2.5 if I remember correctly and have not paid anything since. That's pretty decent value to me.
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It would be a pity to throw away a good piece of hardware because Java 1.6 and recent OSX API are not supported.
While I understand that the hardware still works, and that it was certainly good equipment when you originally bought it, it is still an 8-year old laptop. It's still functional, it certainly doesn't owe you anything, but you do need to consider what you actually have.
8 years ago would be 2004.... the tech specs are here: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP83 [apple.com]
In the 15" model, you have an LCD at 1280x854. At absolute best possible configuration, you have 2GB of memory in it, and a 1.5GHz G4,
rounded out with an 80
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yea but whats 350 really getting you, a 1.8Ghz with intel video and 2 gigs of ram, or maybe a 2.2Ghz intel video 2gigs of ram in a shitty case from acer ... or you can plop about 75 bucks in this thing for a ram upgrade and be pretty much in the same boat?
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Debian still supports PPC, I have 6.0.5 on a powermac 9600, xfce, iceweasle, chromium, libre office the whole 9 ... yea its slow on my 300mhz cpu, but its perfectly useable and your G4 should smoke it
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Not even emacs comes with a good text editor.
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nedit
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I didn't know Linux can run Amiga software.