“The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.2, which introduces support for Power Mac G5 workstations, iBook G4 laptops and additional PowerBook G4 models. The 3.2 release also has a strong focus on improved network support with a completely new and improved NetStack core as well as support for wireless networks. In addition, there are several new network-related tools such as VNC client, a Remote Desktop Client and a tool showing detailed network statistics as well as many other fixes and improvements.”
An outdated os for hardware that is not and will never be current again, that I have to pay for the privilege of using, and which just now got support for Wi-Fi?
You can always read poptech blogs like Engadget and The Verge if stuff like this doesn’t interest you
.
I didn’t say it didn’t interest me, but I also can’t see the practicality behind it. Were it open source or otherwise free, certainly. It’s always cool to reuse old hardware for new purposes, but what I can’t figure out is why anyone would pay for something this obsolete especially since there are other alternatives if Amiga is your area of interest.
Is it worth 111.11 EUR to you to make that G5 supported and give it a new lease of life?
I have one sitting in the corner (DP 1.8) which I Want to find a use for but haven’t running an old version of OSX. G5 supporting Linux is shockingly sparse. I dont think this is for MY needs, but it gives me the option!
p.s. if this was ^Alb20 I would probably ‘give it a go’ just out of interest
Edited 2013-05-28 15:16 UTC
Nope, because I put NetBSD on it and turned it into a server, at no extra cost.
Got the same machine and managed to coerce Debian testing on there. Had to tweak the xorg.conf, but it’s running KDE (with openbox instead of kwin for window management) and I can’t really complain. Built the latest rekonq from source and it a completely usable internet computer (depending on your feelings about flash, of course). MorphOS would be more tempting with a lower price tag, but such is life.
And in case anyone is curious, I (stupidly) paid out the rear for this machine and I’m not getting rid of it until it melts. I don’t care if it’s next job is over-sized doorstop, for that kind of money I’m dedicated to making it work.
So it’s good to know MorphOS has G5 support – this tower would make a lousy door stop. Good to have options.
And there’s the whole point, 111EUR is a high price to pay…
The OS may be “supported”, but it doesn’t have a lot of third party software – less than the “unsupported” macos 10.5…
On the G5 it only supports 1gb of ram, some G5 macs supported 16 (and can supposedly run with 32).
You can put the latest linux or bsd on a powerpc mac for free if you want something actively maintained, and there is a lot more software available (almost anything with sourcecode will compile on ppc).
Also considering their age, most ppc macs are sold for less than 111 euro these days… The idea of an os which costs more than the hardware it runs on is ridiculous.
So morphos is little more than a curiosity, and a curiosity is not worth 111 euro. If it were free, or very cheap, i might consider putting it on one of my old ppc macs.
Demo version which is not restricted except that it slows down 30 min after each boot up is totally free. It’s easy to testdrive and evaluate MorphOS. If you then decide it may be something for you to dig deeper into it’s time to think about a registration.
A fair option IMHO.
I use it as primary OS for my personal computer use ona powerbook G4 and Mac mini. But then again I am coming from an Amiga background and am very used to teh Amiga way of things – it’s no wonder that MorphOS got me hooked.
so basically, it does not interest you then…
I think its perfectly crumulant to simultaneously be interested in a technology while questioning the practicality and price point.
I think there will always be a market for past their prime alternative operating systems at the 100 euro market. Yellow tab/zeta was the first I was aware of, but there is also oscommerce, Morpos, RiscOs and probably a few others I’m forgetting.
Its nice to have to nostalgia uses, but outside of a few edge usecases, they really aren’t worth the price. I think that’s okay for us to admit. Its also okay to admit that somethings we spend money on would seem as foolish to others as paying for these olden Os.
RiscOS is now free to download if you want to play with it… (me, under emulator)
The big IBM iSeries use PPC systems, how cool would it be to have MorpOS running on them?
Just random thoughts. Sadly, you can buy old PPC G5 macs for cheaper than you can buy old Amiga 68060 accelerators.
That’s really the only thing my Amiga 4000D is missing (once I get my USB card, which is on the way).
It is at least good to see there is development going on with all fronts of the AmigaOS. There is 4.x, MorphOS, AROS and even AmigaOS 3.x is getting updated Boing Bags!
It’s amazing with how ‘dead’ the Amiga platform is, and yet there are those that keep the spirit alive!
One really needs to admire their persistence.
The Amiga computers were great, but I cannot feel anything more that just some nostalgia.
Amiga OS4 and MorphOS are useful operating systems.
Amiga OS4 lacks features and It’s not user friendly if you don’t have an amiga user background… but MorphOS is excellent and It’s accessible to just anybody. Amazing OS.
I have MorphOS installed in my old Powerbook 17 and It flies, I highly recommend it to any (PPC) Mac user. Better than run unsupported OS X.
I would really like to try out either AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS, but unfortunately both of them have a steep entry level (AmigaOS 4 more so, since it requires a very small area of hardware, and MorphOS because I’d have to get a second hand Mac, which would make me feel somehow dirty inside..)
Too bad MorphOS or even Hyperion couldn’t get a hold of some hardware manufacturers and make their own hardware… I really would like to get an X1000, but due to price/usefulness I have to hold off. The X1000 looks like it’d absolutely rock, but I think AmigaOS4 still doesn’t support all of it’s features. (anyone correct me on this?)
In benchmarks where all systems are running Linux (I suspect Debian,) the AmigaOne x1000 had comparable performance to a high-end Powerbook G4 or a single core Power Mac G5. That’s pretty sorry, considering that the x1000 will run you about $3500 once taxes and shipping are factored in.
I was interested enough in MorphOS that I bought a used PowerMac G4 on CraigsList for a whopping $30 (although maxing the RAM out added quite a bit more to that bill!) The MorphOS trial is interesting for the first 30 minutes before it locks up, but it’s severely hampered by the lack of software. For Amiga die-hards, it would seem much more practical to run an AROS distribution like Icaros or Broadway for free on common PC hardware than it would be to buy a PPC Mac and MorphOS. Better yet, remember the Amiga for the classic games, and play them on an emulator!
Exactly… Ridiculously priced.
Performance comparable to a lowend G5, price comparable to a high end G5 when they were new, a product which was discontinued in 2006 and can now be found on ebay for a fraction of the cost.
These costs force out even many diehard amiga users, and pretty much eliminate any potential new users.
Making their own hardware is exactly what’s turned away a great many potential amigaos 4 users…
Making your own hardware is expensive and time consuming… Who wants to pay a fortune for obsolete hardware? All of the hardware capable of running amigaos 4 was obsolete before it even went on sale, and always hugely overpriced. Morphos fares slightly better because while the hardware is now horrendously obsolete, at least its cheap and easily obtainable.
I imagine you are not old enough for having used an Amiga when they were modern and in most European households.
It is not the OS that counts, but the uniqueness of Amiga’s hardware combined with the operating system.
Sure you can try to replicate the operating system, but where are my friends Agnus, Denise and Paula?!
Pure nostalgia as it stands.
Amiga was a mind-blowing platform for 1985. But sadly, Commodore was a company mortally-wounded by the price wars of 1984; unable to market the Amiga to the millions who bought a C64 and unwilling to spend the cash needed to keep Amiga competitive during the 1990’s.
Amiga-like OS’es (MorphOS, AROS, Amiga OS4) are interesting, but ultimately hampered by a measly selection of applications, and outdated approaches to protected memory and other conventions of modern OS design. The modern OS which comes closest to capturing the spirit of Amiga would definitely be DragonFlyBSD. Lead developer Matthew Dillon has taken many of the lessons from his Amiga days in designing his fork of FreeBSD.
Edited 2013-05-29 02:26 UTC
Have you actually used MorphOS? it’s definitive not a nostalgia OS. It’s not there to blow out Linux or Windows or OS X. but it is a pretty useable and modern OS that has advantages and disadvantages. taste differs – MorphOS is not for everything and everybody, but there are folks who like it and work with it productively.
No, because it is not an Amiga, as such it is already out of the equation for me.
In those days the computing experience was what the integration of hardware and software provided to the user/developer.
MorphOS cannot offer me the Amiga experience no matter how hard it tries, because the Amiga hardware is no longer part of the equation.
I am just fine with WinUAE.
Good on them! The more OS flavours there are, the more colourful the world is.
I commend them for having price gradations (seems new to me) so it does seem possible to have your PPC fun at a reasonable price in certain circumstances and help keep an alternative going.
But why not go one further and do a ‘humble-bundle’ on the price? Seems there are more than a few here who might part with some cash to get something rather than simply be minded to say, either donate outright or pay what they see as an inflated rate (& I can understand that, too).
But targetting a G5? The power consumption alone I imagine might put people off, unless MorphOS is particularly light on power use. PowerBooks, Minis and, yes, even G4s of a certain vintage (PPC Luddite has some good information on this) but G5s? Really?
Since MorphSO supports only one G5 core the other cores are put to sleep. While this is a shortcoming on the one hand it saves quite some electric juice on teh other hand. But I agree the G5 is not really energy efficient.
Thanks for the information. I guess that as someone else has pointed out, in quite a few cases it will be cheaper overall to use one of the alternatives (AROS) on their existing PC than source a separate PPC machine. Somehow I just can’t imagine anyone going out of their way, if they don’t already have one, to obtain a G5, and even if they have one, as people have already mentioned, there are different things you can do with such a piece of kit with free operating systems.
They should forget about that PPC nonsense and port it to the Raspberry Pi, if they don’t want to port to regular PCs. And if they set the price to 10 ^a`not, it’ll sell like hot cakes.
It’s a shame to see all these interesting operating systems being wasted because they support such a limited range of dying hardware or have unattractive prices, while makers of 1 ^a`not braindead videogames make lots of money.
Edit: I own an iMag G5, but even if they support it, I wouldn’t put 80+ ^a`not for another OS for it – Leopard does its job nicely, and there’s a selection of Linux and other open source OSs for it.
Instead, I would easily throw 10 ^a`not at a nice alternative for my Raspberry Pi to play with – I find Linux and similars almost unuseable on such a limited system.
Edited 2013-05-29 09:26 UTC
Just use Aros or RiscOS instead then,
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=64451
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2338
I’m already playing with RiscOS, didn’t know about AROS, thanks!
I love(d) the Amiga, but I don’t know why one should pay a relative large amount of money and need obsolete hardware (which makes it difficult to fix or obtain) to be able to run an AmigaOS clone/variant that has little to no applications.
For me an Amiga is the total product of a combination of hardware, operating system and software. An old Apple computer with an AmigaOS look-a-like and no software doesn’t really hold true to my vision.
Compared to OS X you’d be paying to downgrade the computer.
I’d pay more to have a computer with an Amiga logo on it, that runs AmigaOS and runs (original) Amiga software (including games). I guess if I want such a computer I’d need to buy an Amiga.
Depends. I have dual boot systems of MorphSO and OS X. OS X crawls where MorphOS flies. The web experience with MorphOS/Oddyssey is IMHO actually better than with OS X. But then again OS X offers good/standard software as Adobe CS or MSO which MorphOS lacks. But unless I need to use those programs I prefer to boot into MorphOS because it is faster and better customizable and has a very flexible UI. Others may see that different.
If it’s just a faster browsing experience is it worth they money and dual boot hassle?
I can’t imagine it being that much faster and I wonder how things like Adobe Flash and Java will work, let alone all the other plug-ins and browser extensions people like.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against MorphOS and it may be great, but I just wonder about the price and hardware choices.
I don’t want to spend so much money on what is really a pricey hobby OS and when my old Mac fails I need to search sites like eBay for a replacement.
Like someone else mentioned it would make much more sense to lower the price and target something like the Raspberry Pi. I’m pretty sure it would sell more Pi’s and MorphOS’s. Hell, I’d buy one!
@ MOS6510
It’s totally fine not to buy MorphOS. It’s just an option for those who like it. MorphOS isn’t there to challenge MS, Apple or Linux, but to have fun. The demo is free and thus it’s very easy to get a first hand experience. Most about it is hobby and Amiga heritage. But it is far from being useless or nostalgia only. It actually works and I do my dailly things with it.
I think you miss MOS6510’s point, at least as I understand it.
MorphOS is interesting, but it is expensive. Their pricing structure is doing them no favors, IMHO. There are three separate price points for the exact same OS, the price varying based on the hardware you are using.
The other thing is they have locked themselves into PPC. Which means if you want to try MorphOS you either have to buy expensive new hardware, or out of date and out of service old hardware.
I personally think they would do themselves great good by picking a single SKU, and expanding their support to include ARM based hardware like the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, pcDuino, et al.
PS: They have one other little problem, I find rather amusing: go to http://www.morphos.de and try and figure out how to buy their product. Hell to even find out the price(s) you have to go to “Help Desk” and go down a few questions.
Edited 2013-05-30 16:35 UTC
I understand that the price tag is a little steep. And the different prices may seem a bit random. And PPC has no future. That’s alright (no sarcasm included).
I think at least if the price would be below 100 EUR for all systems that would sound much better. Then again the expensive price tag gets a lot better when you know that updates are free (my 1st registered machine got 10 updates for free already).
My price sugesstion to the MorphOS team was 79 EUR. For the already longer supported machine that is indeed the current price tag. The price policy to register machines instead of copies is unusual, but quite attractive. That way you can be rather sure everyone has the current OS version, there’s really no reason to skip an update – that’s good for developers as they can adapt new features w/o thinking about whether the user base will update or not. But on first seight registration fee looks high with such a system.
And getting rid of PowerPC is the major problem MorphOS has to face (albeit I personally stll like ppc). With the old Apple kit at least prices for suitable machines are low. A used powermac G4 doesn’t cost much more than a Raspberry Pi. Yeah, it’s old, it’s bulky, but pretty powerful (compared to the Raspberry Pi – not to an i7 of course).
My used Powerbook costed me less than my Atom netbook and eats that one pretty much for breakfast. Relying on used hardware is not really attractive on first sight, but actually it’s good for ecology and your wallet. Of course eveyone would be glad if powerful new hardware for MorphOS would be available, but currently MorphOS is PPC trapped. This will very likely change in future, but not tomorrow as it will lead to major changes of the system and introduce incompability to legacy software. And coming from the Amiga heritage one of MorphOS goals was always to maintain a very high Amiga compability (it’s kind of fun to use 25 year old software still natively).
Thing is, MorphOS community knows pretty well about the problems present. But with the given constraints MorphOS makes he best out of the situation. And one constraint is to stay original. Who thought that in 2013 (19 years after Commodore died) there are still actively developed Amiga systems (beside MorphOS there’s also AROS and OS4) that actually are at least remotely current.
Oh yes.
Not random, but based on a strategy (capability based pricing) that normally only applies to enterprise systems, not consumer grade. Nor do they do anything to justify why there are these price differences.
Even at 99 EUR it is still more expensive than Windows 8 (just for comparison), and if far less capable. It might run well on that hardware, but to the best of my knowledge it still doesn’t have WiFi support (and I would love to be proved wrong). And that is dealbreaker for 20XX (pick almost any year in the last decade and that statement is still true).
Personally I think it was shortsighted to lock themselves in to a single architecture back when they started. Portable OS’s started in the 60s, those who fail to learn those lessons ^aEUR” hell fail to learn the lessons of AmigaOS itself which was largely written in an obscure language (BCPL) and depended to much on CPU dependent assembly ^aEUR” pay the price for it.
Yes I can go out and buy old macs for a song, mind you they are power hungry, bulky, and evolutionary dead ends. Its easy to find them now, but it won’t be long before that statement isn’t true anymore.
N.E.R.D ^aEUR” Nothing Ever Really Dies. There are emulators for for almost every major OS made. A few years ago I was contacted by a company that wanted to move software from their DataGeneral Nova (not SuperNova, but the original) hardware to a PC running an emulator.
You can still get “Atari” systems that run something that when you squint could be called “TOS”. Hell you can still get “Sinclair QL” systems that run the unofficial successor to QDOS.
I wouldn’t go that far as to call any of the hardware out today to be an Amiga. MorphOS, AROS, et al, share a OS heritage, but as a guy who owned one of the first 1000 Amigas ever made, and did professional development on one, I wouldn’t call any of the current systems Amiga.
The Amiga hardware was a philosophy of tightly integrated hardware and software for a peak multimedia experience ^aEUR” and came with significant compromises to do so. And like all tightly integrated dedicated systems it did amazing things, and then was outshined by generalist modular approaches.
The only “Amiga” out there that comes close to the original vision is the “X1000” which doesn’t even showcase its own technology well.
Even in the ARM world the Efika MX SmartTop ^aEUR” which can’t run MorphOS, and can’t be purchased at the moment, but I am making a point ^aEUR” compares poorly in almost every way to the BeagleBone Black. If MorphOS didn’t limit itself to an increasingly obscure hardware platform, they could leverage others advances in hardware.
I wish I had your optimism. I am afraid I don’t. People can keep a hobby going for a surprisingly long time (I know this from personal experience), but one day you wake up and realize just how much weight you are carrying around.
Were it me back around the turn of the millennia, I would have taken linux as the base OS, ditched X, and used AROS as the graphics and GUI layer. Today I would tweak that formula a bit. It would be its own set of compromises, but it would have come with portability, device support, and more.
I don’t think there is anything else I have to add to this conversation, so I give you the honor of the last word. Enjoy!
This was my point as well. +1
While there’s no support for build in Airport cards there is actually wifi support for Atheros WLAN cards at least. For Powerbooks quite an option.
For the price, yes it’s not the lowest price, but rememeber updates are free. I paid 111.11 EUR years ago for V2.0 (IIRC summer 2007) and received 10 free updates since. If that fact isn’t negelcted all the time, the price really comes down to a way more attractive level.
Well and about the X1000 – that’s just a PowerPC desktop computer in the league of a Powerbook/Atom. Eventually it is stuck in the same dead end as the used Macs, but way more expensive (something about 3000 EUR). And the Xena/Xorro thingie eventually is only a marketing stunt – it’s an attached ^AuC (XMOS XS1) everyone can attach to any computer with usb or pci. But if ppl have fun with that machine, good, It isn’t my cup of tea though. Ppl have different tastes and interests – I accept and welcome that.
Edited 2013-05-31 23:35 UTC
Let’s just go ahead and say it – present “Amigas” are, architecturally, PCs (just with weird CPUs for no good reason other than the old hate of Intel)
Well at the time ^aEUR” the turn of the millennia ^aEUR” Amiga users were stuck with two options:
<ol>
<li>Use ever more advanced versions of the 68K line, which were faster than what they were using, but more or less dead ends.
</li>
<li>Look to another architecture with growth potential</li></ol>
At that time PPC was a superior architecture to X86. PPC performed better at the top end, had a better SIMD implementation, and had a clear and smooth 32 bit to 64 bit migration path. Back in 2000 a lot of my fellow engineers used to joke we were using the right OS (Windows 2000), on the wrong architecture (x86).
Eventually AIM faltered, AMD showed a better way to get to 64 bit, and Intel got where they needed to go. But at the time it wasn’t clear that x86 would be the winner it is now.
Apple was smart, they kept their OS portable, and were able to migrate to a new architecture quickly. But MorphOS, and to a slightly lesser degree AmigaOS didn’t learn their lesson and stuck to a single architecture.
If you want to play around with something Amiga like, then UAE, or AROS seem like better options than MorphOS.
But the things which made PPC “superior” shouldn’t matter much to amigans – Amiga was never about top end processors, and none of ~Amiga OS migrated to 64bit even now, plus AFAIK they barely utilise SIMD.
Generally, IMHO, you assessment of the x86 situation at the turn of the millennia isn’t accurate. It was like you write, x86 vs other architectures, but in the earlier 90s (and even then Apple CEO thinks he made a big mistake by going with PPC instead of Intel: http://macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7045 ); but Pentium Pro and the rapid march to 1 GHz was the sign of things to come with x86.
Remember Amithlon? It was, back then, by far the fastest Amiga. But it was essentially killed by the Amiga community. No, I think there was (and still is) some hate of x86 among that community.