The team behind MorphOS has just announced the release of MorphOS 2.3 for the PowerPC-based platforms, the Pegasos and the Efika. This new release comes with a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements, but also packs a number of new features.
Sifting through the release notes, a few things stand out to me. Since I’m easily annoyed by slow windowing operations (resize, move, etc.), I like the fact that the team has been doing work in that area to enable flicker-free resizing. They also updated the USB stack to Poseidon 4.2.
There are also a number of new features which seem to be coming from the work done on the MorphOS port to the Mac Mini (the G4 one, obviously). Read-only support for HFS+ formatted volumes has been added, and a utility called SHIFTCLICK has been added, which is described as a “Helper for Mac users with single-button mice”. In other words, hold shift and click to get a right click. Come to think of it – iBooks and PowerBooks, anyone?
By the way, I’m happy to say that very soon, you’ll be seeing a review of MorphOS here on OSAlert, thanks to a very generous OSAlert reader who has offered to loan me his Efika machine with MorphOS installed. Stay tuned!
…I hope it is deep and lengthy. (Seriously)
I’d like to see comments about development environment[s] available on MorphOS, web servers and other server software, as well as typical user applications and commentary on the operating system design and function.
Might be worth picking up an old mini on eBay.
MorphOS really isn’t a server centric OS. The Amiga’s (and Amiga like OS’s) are very much end user oriented. MorphOS is a great and visually pleasing OS. I am looking forward to it’s future on ARM (if that’s still the plan).
There have never been any plans to port MorphOS to the ARM architecture.
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
This particular discussion thread mentions Genesi’s ARM hardware and your own suggestion to port MorphOS to the same architecture. I fail to see how this could be in any way interpreted as “the MorphOS Team plans to port MorphOS to ARM”. As I wrote above, there are have never been any.
I know, but if it is threaded and has an IP stack, it could be used in that manner, for personal websites, website development, etc.
There is a list of MorphOS Software:
http://morphos.lukysoft.cz/en/
Internet category – 119 programs incl. Apache HTTP server, PHP, MySQL, FTP servers, Samba and other interesting stuff like very good Origyn Web Browser based on Webkit (latest version OWB 1.4 is included on MorphOS 2.3 CD).
Development category – nearly 100 programs in list… There is MorphOS SDK (free, GCC) or Cubic IDE (paid, but often reduction in price). Cubic IDE supports many languages (C/C++, HTML, LISP, REXX, Hollywood, HTML… color syntax, special GUI panels, etc. Big minus is that there is still no Java for MorphOS
Cubic IDE homepage (MorphOS, AmigaOS development):
http://devplex.awardspace.biz/cubic/index.html
Total: 1350 programs, demos and games. But it’s not everything of course. I try to update and add new software to the list every day
It’s compatible with many AmigaOS 68k/PowerPC programs – f.e. Lightwave 5.5!
MorphOS Ambient desktop is fresh new, open source and actively developed – much better than Workbench desktop for AmigaOS 3/4 from my point of view.
MorphOS deserves much better machine for testing than EFIKA 5200B – at least primary Pegasos G3/G4 machine! EFIKA’s 1 watt CPU 400 MHz is very slow and limited with 128 MB RAM – not much for todays usage (many tabs in webbrowser, a lot of gfx, etc.) I hope many of you could taste MorphOS soon f.e. on Mac Mini G4
It’s nice, optimized and fast OS!
MorphOS has also good community…
http://morphzone.org
Bye,
Luky
Still living from the past and software already available on alternatives like GNU/Linux and BSD. Where are the exclusive and revolutionaire killer apps like in the old Amiga days? Things changed a lot, and Amiga is not more than a nostalgic dream now.
About Ambient, I don’t see it so actively developed.
The website doen’t work properly and lacks a news section: http://morphosambient.sourceforge.net
And the SCM is not active since… April 04 2009! http://cia.vc/stats/project/ambient
Seriously, I appreciate MorphOS and would love to see more activity. It seems the project is losing fuel.
What about porting Ambient to AROS? Maybe that could reactivate the develpment. AROS needo a proper desktop manager, sorry but Wanderer is not my thing.
What about Reggae? It’s one of the most promissing amiga-like technologies, a proper evolution of the great amiga datatype concept like “Translators” from BeOS. Is going to be massively used or not?
What about the future direction of MorphOS? Is going to be simply a (very good) enhaced AmigaOS clone or there is a solid roadmal and WIP effort in making a total great evolution of the AmigaOS concept into something fresh and innovative?
MorphOS Team are more secretive than Apple and Nintendo at same time, that’s very frustrating and make users to get bored waiting for the next big thing.
MorphOS is…
– fast (beats linux, windows, macos, bsd etc)
– tidy (you know where libs, fonts, tools and utilities is etc)
– instant (programs starts instant. the 4 or 5 seconds you have to wait in macosx etc isnt on morphos)
– configurable (yes, even the end user can change the look, icons and much, much more!)
– programs (aminetradio, titler, owb, songplayer, amigaamp, tvpaint, fxpaint, quake 3, openttd, simplemail, amitradecenter etc… makes morphos great, usefull and fun to use..)
– aminet (one of worlds biggest archives on the net. updated daily)
– community (on amigaworld.net, morphzone.org.. on freenode #morphos +++)
To like MorphOS, you need to like a fast os. An operating system which does what it supposed to do. A nice compliment to daily usage of Windows, MacOSX or Linux/BSD for sure.
As an OS, I prefer MOS to AOS4.1 . I have both AmigaOS4.1 and MOS 2.3 installed on my OpenDesktop Workstation and have tested both of them extensively. MOS is much faster booting (about 4 seconds) than OS4 (about 40 seconds)and the interface is much snappier, better looking, and more intuitive. It also has the advantage of better USB support. OS4 has the nostalgia factor and looks very much like OS3.x. I’d switch over to MOS completely if not for the lack of some software that I just can’t do without, namely, AmiCygnix. If MOS had a modern office suite instead of forcing me to rely on old 68K office software, I’d remove OS4 entirely. Origyn Web Browser (OWB) has progressed by leaps and bounds for MOS, recently adding flash video support. Adding a Google Gears plugin to OWB would be something that would help both AOS and MOS as far as modern office software. I hope my patience will pay off.
That’s one of the biggest problems of operating systems like MorphOS or AmigaOS4: they look like a secret sect.
You must “live” with MorphOS, their forums and IRC channels. If not, you will lost tons of info and looks like being even more inactive. No proper communigation channels in yorm of proper officical sites and lack of news coverage. Even small sects have better ways of spreading “the message” than the amiga-like community.
I’m sorry, but I use IRC rarely and just on a very low number of channels. The days of massive chatting ended for me, I even use instant messaging too few. I prefer to use email for communicating and newsfeeds (RSS, atom…) for informing of stuff I consider interesting. I don’t want to be all day in an IRC channel asking or reading, I have tons of other things to do than chatting or visiting forums in an obsessive way. I comment here rarely too, just when I have the enough personal motivation for doing it.
Ambient is developed on MorphOS CVS server, that’s why you don’t see changes on Ambient sf, will be synced back again to sourceforge (I was told). They moved development of Ambient to their server for a while, because of syncing code to 3 servers (1 sf.net) is too much. I can’t compile daily builds now, so no news on Ambient homepage. I will update some info there.
Yeah, porting Ambient to AROS would be great. I don’t like AROS Wanderer too.
Reggae is cool. Bienvenue – MorphOS welcome screen
MultiView is using Reggae, DigiFilter, Shuffle game… I hope for great future of this object oriented multimedia processing framework, we will see, it’s up to developers. MorphOS MUI (Magic User Interface) v4 has many great new futures too, a lot of changes since Amiga days and MUI 3.9! Actively developed too, a lof of public betas.
MorphOS future direction? First target now: Mac PPC platform (I think). I know that it’s not produced anymore, but there is many many more pieces of this hardware and more powerful than very hard to obtain Pegasos I, II, EFIKA machines. MorphOS needs more hardware to run now. A lot of people is waiting for Mac PPC port. We must hope, that Mac PPC will bring new people and developers to our platform. There are some innovative things under the hood, f.e. thanks to Ambient desktop – very good and configurable user interface, Enhanced Display Engine, Reggae, MUI v4, faster TLSF memory system… I like Trance (68k -> PPC) for Amiga compatibility.
There is not much news on MorphOS Team homepage, but you can join #morphos IRC channel on freenode.net, cca 60 MorphOS users regulalry online, many MorphOS Team members. You can catch some new MorphOS info or sometimes even screenshots (MorphOS 3.0, Mac Mini version and MorphOS PowerBook G4 photos). Same for community/news sites like mentioned MorphZone.org. True is that they don’t tell you release date (except MorphOS 2.0’s Q4 2008). But latest MorphOS 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 versions were released in short intervals – 4 versions in last 13 months. Not much time to wait. Mac PPC version is developed in parallel. Good progress, I think
I’m keeping my PowerMac G4 dual 450Mhz around for this very reason. I hope that the future Mac PPC support for MOS extends to PowerMac G4s as well.
Where are the Exclusive and ‘revolutionaire’ apps for Linux? All the good software for that comes from Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and at a push GIMP work on Windows.
If a Decent Application came out only for Linux, it would soon be ported to Windows/MacOS, and if MorphOS or the like could gain a foothold, to that as well.
—-
Compare with the best in the areas, not the ones that give you an easy way commenting.
Microsoft’s Windows has most of the most important games and technical software exclusive to it. CAD, electronics, 3D…
Apple’ MacOS X has the “artistic” way: photography and graphics, sound. Their shareware community is quite creative and commercially very active. They also have a nice eye candy experience and an integrated environment.
Free Software has a very big and powerful community of developers and advanced users. They have a giant ecosystem of projects sustained by communities, non-profit organivations and big corporations. Their community is one of the most creative ones. Linux is now considered as the default kernel of the Free Software world not only because being the most actively developed by individuals and corporations, bu because it’s excellent hardware support between all kind of platforms. Linux Foundation is one of the smartest ideas in Linux as being strong pillars, it’s going to be their best defense against competence.
Haiku is a project moved in the right direction. Their aim is reviving BeOS and upgrade the OS to today’s standards. They are careful about when release their first official alpha because afraid of people having a bad impression about the project and it makes sense. They created a foundation like in Linux, so they are making a solid project too.
If MorphOS wants to survive, they must create a non-profit organization, a solid structure and making the project more open. Free Software is the right direction, but that can be difficult to understando by certain old-school amigans and specially the ones being skilled developers from environments like demoscene.
Edited 2009-08-11 18:59 UTC
They should add drivers to support Mac G4 hardware! I would buy this if I could keep my old G4 hardware useable (And secure)
Amen, brother – I mean it; it’s one of the only reasons i keep my old G4 tower!
Current confirmed schedule for Apple hardware includes support for all G4 Mac Minis only. An experimental port was shown for the G4 Powerbook, but there is no confirmation that the Powerbook will be supported in the foreseeable releases. Support for the iBook would be nice as well, and generally not unlikely but isn’t confirmed or shown.
The release for the Mac Mini will probably follow in the not too distant future – my Mini is desperately waiting for it.
In the meantime I tested MorphOS 2.3 on my Efika and it is real fun on that maschine now. It got more stable and faster, also the RAM footprint seems to be a tad tighter.
In general MorphOS is a pretty nice system, but one must be aware that it really is a different system than most OSes out there. It is a home computer OS in a very classic manner. Many ppl will not be happy with it (the server guys and security fantics) and MorphOS will not and should not replace *nix or other server OSes. But in the home computer domain it is IMHO the best OS available. Pretty easy, super fast, very logical, massively customizable.
Is there a place I can buy a PowerPC system? I would like to try out PowerPC with various OS, but I have no clue as to where I can get one, that is why I am so eager about the ARM based netbooks.
If you do not mind building your own system, you could buy an Efika mainboard ($99), case + PSU ($99) and a low-profile graphics card ($39) at the Directron website.
For a pre-assembled system, you might want to contact AusPPC (google the name).
If you do not mind using a second-hand system, you should consider buying a MacMini with G4 processor (and preferrably 64MB of graphics memory). MorphOS should become available for this platform in the forseeable future. If you do not like to wait, you could hunt for a Pegasos mainboard / system at the usual places (ebay, et al).
I would much rather build it. Thanks for the info.