OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18270/MorphOS_2_0_on_EFIKA_Presentation_at_SceneCON Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:51:25 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255716 http://osnews.com/thread?255716 just a little idea: to begin the one-hour video with the 14 minutes of MorphOS 2.0 or my guess is that MorphOS video will be only for the happy few. But, it is already like that, no? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (roger64) Comments RE: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255747 http://osnews.com/thread?255747 Not a problem if you use the Google video link, you can skip to any part of the video. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Buck) Comments yow http://osnews.com/thread?255748 http://osnews.com/thread?255748 Interesting (though long) video. Looks like this Ekiga could become interesting. With some more ram, it becomes very usable for a more fully featured desktop like KDE or Gnome. And with embedded video and other peripherals, it becomes even smaller!

Though I'm also eagerly awaiting a dualcore VIA @ 1.2 ghz or something. With embedded video & a decent amount of ram, what more would one need for a perfectly performing, modern linux desktop? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments RE: yow http://osnews.com/thread?255754 http://osnews.com/thread?255754

Though I'm also eagerly awaiting a dualcore VIA @ 1.2 ghz or something. With embedded video & a decent amount of ram, what more would one need for a perfectly performing, modern linux desktop?

It depends on what you want - a Via processors are great if you a fanless machine that is cooled passively - just remember there is a price to pay, its performance isn't going to be as good as say the top Intel or AMD processor.

Now, if you were to use it as desktop stuff, no problems. If you wanted to create a set top box running MythTV and Linux, yeap. But for a compilation server or something that requires alot of grunt, no. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments Interesting board, now needs more options http://osnews.com/thread?255758 http://osnews.com/thread?255758 I hope soon to appear different flavors of efika like one version including one full of NICs (5 gigagit ones, useful for custom switchs) and a pair of minipci slots for wireless, one with a dual core G4 or builtin graphics card.

This is an interesting family of boards and can compete in terms of power consumption with VIA EPIA, and being more powerful than the ARM SBC computers. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (timofonic) Comments Mirror http://osnews.com/thread?255760 http://osnews.com/thread?255760 Temporary mirror:
http://www.kirilla.se/efika/ Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jonas.kirilla) Comments RE[2]: yow http://osnews.com/thread?255761 http://osnews.com/thread?255761 Of course. But for normal desktop work, it's good enough. I own a laptop with a P3 800 mhz, and that's plenty - the 256 mb ram is clearly the limiting factor. Of course, Via has to ensure their 3D drivers are good enough for Compiz/Beryl/whatever like stuff, as I'd want that, but aside from that, I don't worry about performance. And having it all fanless - lovely!

Would make an excellent laptop as well - no fans, just passively cooled. Dump the cd/dvd drive as well, and you'll have an ultra-flat, ultralight laptop which can be used for like 10 hours straight. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments very nice! http://osnews.com/thread?255764 http://osnews.com/thread?255764 morphos2 looks soo nice...makes even thinking about running anything else on efika feel like blasphemy Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kishe) Comments not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255778 http://osnews.com/thread?255778 I really can't get that worked up about the Efika. It has no SATA, no USB 2.0, no GB networking, no PCIe. Basically it's all > 5 year old stuff, and they're acting like it's the next best thing. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jal_) Comments Burp http://osnews.com/thread?255779 http://osnews.com/thread?255779 I didn't understand one f--king word of it. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE: not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255798 http://osnews.com/thread?255798 Just one little remark: five years ago nobody could produce a system with this performance, and just 4 watts of power usage, or 10 watts when built as a complete machine with HDD and video card. And I'm still not aware of any other machine providing this flexibility and processing power, while consuming less (or even just a little bit more). Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pczanik) Comments RE: not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255799 http://osnews.com/thread?255799 Yes, the Efika is very basic. And I'd guess their goal was to make the smallest sized desktop computer out there with low cost & power usage.

Most people can do without some of the stuff you mention.

GB networking isn't really a big issue for most.
AGP will work pretty good ( doubt there'll be any really intense 3D games played on the Efika to require PCIe )
SATA won't make a big performance difference.
USB 2.0 would be nice to have though.

It would be great to have the above features to make it more modern but most aren't too important or essential.

The real issues are the 128MB Memory & 400Mhz processor & NO onboard video. Try running Linux with this low end system & Gnome/KDE & you'll see how it slows to a crawl.

MorphOS will probably run well but any Linux/Unix OS will have to be stripped down ( bare minimum ) to run well.

It *needed* to have 256MB Memory, 800Mhz processor & decent onboard video card.

Below are the specs for the Efika system:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/efika.php

The funny thing is that their *old* discontinued Pegasus board looks better to me ( allowed more RAM & faster CPUs ):
http://www.genesippc.com/pegasos.phpEdited 2007-07-16 16:53 Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments RE: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255807 http://osnews.com/thread?255807 I believe the video was more to showcase the Efika itself because they spent most of the time to show and discuss the Efika hardware. Ran 2 different Linux distros on it and also showed MorphOS working on it.

The video was somewhat dull & boring. I was hoping to see them run more Linux & MorphOS applications. They did very basic things with the OSes. No 3d, no video playing, no games, etc.

It looked more like they wanted to demonstrate that different OSes will work on the Efika.

Actually this News story should have been called "Efika Presentation" because I saw very little of MorphOS use.

MorphOS looks pretty cool by the way. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments RE[2]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255811 http://osnews.com/thread?255811 3D, video, games? It's hard to believe that such things can work on this computer and, probably, it is not intended to do that. 400MHz processor is just to slow and 128 MB of RAM is not enough for that in my opinion. Even on this presentation it is visible that linux loads quite a long time (especially SUSE with KDE). Morph OS looks great, but they didn't show any heavier programs running on it. OS is responsive, however, is it usable? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vezhlys) Comments RE[3]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255818 http://osnews.com/thread?255818 In regards to MorphOS on the Efika,
You're right that 3d might not work well on that system ( probably crawl ).

As for games, I wanted to see them play some 2d games which I'm sure it could handle.

For videos, I'm certain it can handle mpeg2, but I wonder if it could playback divx/xvid well & what processor usage. Can it play multiple mpeg movies simultaneously?

They didn't show how it handles multimedia, etc. Or try to stress out MorphOS to show what it could handle.

And the system specs are just too low - that only the real enthusiasts will end up buying it. If they want to get serious they need to up the specs to something more realistic as outlined in my previous post and create a good demo video to show off MorphOS on the Efika. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments RE[4]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255824 http://osnews.com/thread?255824

For videos, I'm certain it can handle mpeg2, but I wonder if it could playback divx/xvid well & what processor usage.

It shouldn't have a problem (assuming overlay support in the video drivers). I used BeOS on a P3 450 until about 2004, with VLC it had no problem with MPEG4 playback - used about 50-60% of the CPU, IIRC. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments Again, for those of you interested :) http://osnews.com/thread?255836 http://osnews.com/thread?255836 The EFIKA has a few things going for it with regards to 3D and video.

1. The people writing the drivers have access to hardware/software specs for the XGI video chip that is being used to demo this particular configuration. XGI requires an NDA for this, like Nvidia and AMD/ATI.

2. Genesi is apparently assembling/producing the XGI cards for use with the EFIKA.

3. This means that the MorphOS people have access to the information they need to write the drivers.

4. The video card they are using, the XGI V3XT, has hardware Mpeg-2 decoding support built in. The hard part is DMAing everything to the card via the drivers if it's already MPEG-2.

5. There are working AIGLX drivers already for Linux for this particular card.

6. MorphOS, due to the fact that the overhead is significantly less than Linux, probably screams with their drivers.

SceneCON was a good place to show this hardware. Remember, many of the demo scene people run Amigas. This is being positioned as a replacement for them.

The card isn't the fastest out there, but that doesn't matter when you have specs to write the drivers. Recall what platform we're talking about here. If the drivers are small enough and target specific hardware features, video will fly on this. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mbpark) Comments First try http://osnews.com/thread?255838 http://osnews.com/thread?255838 EFIKA in its current version is the v1. It is here for Genesi to make some money. Once some cash in hands, Efika v2 and v3 are planned (or were, check powerdeveloper.org)
with onboard video (XGI) and more horsepower. It even was talked about a DSP on it, months ago. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (erebos) Comments Why Efika http://osnews.com/thread?255853 http://osnews.com/thread?255853 Why not an x86 port of the os? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WyldStylist) Comments RE: Why Efika http://osnews.com/thread?255858 http://osnews.com/thread?255858 possible but with alot of work.
Morphos is based on a microkernel and make heavy use context switches and powerpc is better at this.

And...Morphos uses sandboxes, and implements AmigaOS API, this means that it's binary compatible whith system friendly AmigaOS software. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (erebos) Comments boring presentation http://osnews.com/thread?255866 http://osnews.com/thread?255866 The morphos 2.0 part was very boring, only mentions that there is alpha transparancy on windows and an integrated tcp/ip-stack, not much so see at all. I haven't watched the begining thought. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE[2]: not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255867 http://osnews.com/thread?255867 Old pegasos was overkill and more expensive, and since the intrest for these machines and oses aren't that huge I guess a small cheap board for people who wanna try morphos is a much better choice than expensive highend machines which noone buys.

The efika motherboard, cpu and memory is 75 euro, how can anyone complain? It's not more than a decent mouse damnit ;D Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE[3]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255868 http://osnews.com/thread?255868 lol, you doubt 400MHz and 128MB ram is enough? How did you survived in the P2 days? Linux and X and KDE wastes way more resources/memory than Amiga apps, old Workbench took like 300kB of the 2MB memory in the A1200, of course MorphOS uses more but 128MB is plenty as long as you don't do heavy computing stuff of course.

It's not the best database server platform... But for AmigaOS-like desktop it's more than enough. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE[3]: yow http://osnews.com/thread?255900 http://osnews.com/thread?255900

Of course. But for normal desktop work, it's good enough. I own a laptop with a P3 800 mhz, and that's plenty - the 256 mb ram is clearly the limiting factor. Of course, Via has to ensure their 3D drivers are good enough for Compiz/Beryl/whatever like stuff, as I'd want that, but aside from that, I don't worry about performance. And having it all fanless - lovely!

Would make an excellent laptop as well - no fans, just passively cooled. Dump the cd/dvd drive as well, and you'll have an ultra-flat, ultralight laptop which can be used for like 10 hours straight.

I guess it depends on what you use your laptop for me - if you use it as a 'mobile computer' but your primary machine is a desktop, then I could understand. VIA would be great for those who want an ultra-portable device. Then again, it would cool to see a UltraSPARC IIe in an affordable mobile device.

For me, I got rid of my desktop over a year ago, and now use my laptop for everything - so for me, its a must that it has alot of grunt. The Core 2 is excellent for what it can do with so little power; the new VIA processor (64bit) will be interesting to see how Solaris runs on it - that being my primary platform. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[3]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?255901 http://osnews.com/thread?255901 The openSUSE part was a bit messed up :-) I made a last minute change to configurations to also demo, that XGL also works nicely, even if a bit slowly on the machine. Of course, one should not make such a change in last minute, while it worked before the show, it failed ugly during the show. The law of Murphy was upon us...
Without XGL and GDM running, xfce starts and works quite fast on this machine, and with Opera, Gnumeric & AbiWord, most of today's desktop usage is covered with fast and easy to use applications. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pczanik) Comments RE[2]: not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255913 http://osnews.com/thread?255913 Most people can do without some of the stuff you mention.

GB networking isn't really a big issue for most.
AGP will work pretty good ( doubt there'll be any really intense 3D games played on the Efika to require PCIe )
SATA won't make a big performance difference.
USB 2.0 would be nice to have though.

I agree on the GB networking. But AGP is dying out, with more and more PCs having PCIe only, it's only a matter of time before no AGP cards can be found anymore. Same for non-SATA IDE drives, although that'll take some more time. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jal_) Comments RE[3]: not impressed http://osnews.com/thread?255915 http://osnews.com/thread?255915 The efika motherboard, cpu and memory is 75 euro, how can anyone complain? It's not more than a decent mouse damnit ;D

Although the Genesi website claims 75 euro for the mainboard, that's just the recalculated dollar price excluding VAT. European resellers ask more than double that price: 168 EUR at ggsdata.se and 199 at vesalia.de. And that's quite a lot of money for such low-end hardware.Edited 2007-07-17 08:02 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jal_) Comments GGS data http://osnews.com/thread?255926 http://osnews.com/thread?255926 I didn't know Gunne had them, I knew someone said shipping fees where quite high thought (from Genesi that is.)

168 euro would be so worth it for a taste of Amiga again thought, heck I bought a 2x5 cm piece of steel for 595 sek a few days ago..

Both SATA hdds and AGP graphics cards are available NOW, and people will have old ones later on, it's not like you need Nvidia 9800 Ultra or whatever next generation cards will be called..

I guess you do have to understand that there might not be as up to date chipsets for the embedded PPC market as there is for the PC desktop market.

You can build a complete and nicely working Efika _NOW_, lets worry about the future in the future.. And if SATA is all there is then I'm sure they will support SATA.

I doubt IDE will die for quite some time, thought the rate the controllers are dimishing from Intels motherboards are worrying. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE[4]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?256008 http://osnews.com/thread?256008 Efika is a PowerPC developement platform which can - due to it's price - be very well used as a home media center, home server, lab device, office desktop, musical instrument, thin client, robot controller, car computer, information kiosk, etc, etc. And it's cool and quiet!

Is there a jet engine in your father's lawn mower? Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marafaka) Comments RE[4]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?256048 http://osnews.com/thread?256048 Yes, I agree. That if you mainly want to run MorphOS then the Efika is good enough but running Linux on it will be like pulling teeth. Which I can't imagine being fun.

And at the selling price of $168 Euro I can get a much more powerful mATX x86 system ( dual core with latest technology too ). It won't be as quiet, or have low power usage or be as cool or small as the Efika but it'll be able to run more OSes and do hard core computer crunching. 3d gaming, video conversions, etc.

I was impressed by MorphOS. This OS looks pretty well done and unfortunately I'll never get the chance to try it out. But the Efika system seems too low end. I'd guess that only real enthusiasts will be buying this.

Back in the Pentium2 days things were different & simplier. :-) Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments RE[4]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?256054 http://osnews.com/thread?256054 "Without XGL and GDM running, xfce starts and works quite fast on this machine, and with Opera, Gnumeric & AbiWord, most of today's desktop usage is covered with fast and easy to use applications.

I can run Linux with KDE ( or Gnome ) on my x86 system & it'll run better. And how many Linux users run xfce? :-)

I can run Abiword, Firefox & Sum-IT on BeOS & it'll be pretty fast too. Though I've never used MorphOS myself; it does remind me of BeOS ( from a performance perspective ).

So, buying the Efika to use for Linux certainly is not a selling point. It is mainly intended for MorphOS and that Linux also *somewhat* works on the Efika is just an added benefit.

I own 4 x86 systems and even my oldest one has 256MB RAM ( 2 X P2 350mhz ) and the newer ones have 1GB. 128MB is good for MorphOS, but too little for Linux these days. ( CPU speed won't matter much unless you intend to run cpu intensive programs ). Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments RE[5]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?256066 http://osnews.com/thread?256066

I can run Linux with KDE ( or Gnome ) on my x86 system & it'll run better. And how many Linux users run xfce? :-)

Actually most of my friends use it, even on monster machines, as it's a lot more friendly on resources. I use it on a dual-core, 2Ghz machine with 4G RAM :-)

So, buying the Efika to use for Linux certainly is not a selling point. It is mainly intended for MorphOS and that Linux also *somewhat* works on the Efika is just an added benefit.

I own 4 x86 systems and even my oldest one has 256MB RAM ( 2 X P2 350mhz ) and the newer ones have 1GB. 128MB is good for MorphOS, but too little for Linux these days. ( CPU speed won't matter much unless you intend to run cpu intensive programs ).

When properly configured and used with resource friendly applications, like those I mentioned, it works nicely, not just somewhat

Linux does not mean, that it can only be used as a desktop machine, one can easily make a thin client out of it, or a home server. Just take a look at: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1223 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pczanik) Comments RE[5]: one hour video.... http://osnews.com/thread?256134 http://osnews.com/thread?256134 It looks like you're very sure about wrong technical decisions made in Genesi. Maybe you should contact their management and offer consulting? Or borrow a cluebat somewhere? Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marafaka) Comments RE[3]: yow http://osnews.com/thread?256148 http://osnews.com/thread?256148 superstoned:
There are not many fanless VIA CPUs available. When
that big myth started a few years ago there was only
one fanless board available; EPIA 5000, 533 MHz. 533
very slow MHz which equaled to somewhere around P2
266 MHz.. The 800 MHz version had a noisy 40 mm fan.

They also have a pretty fat heatsink, much thicker than
any laptop you can purchase today.

That's why temperature-controlled CPU fans are totally
necessary in every new laptop. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ironfist) Comments RE[4]: yow http://osnews.com/thread?256222 http://osnews.com/thread?256222 Jos van den Oever has a DELL laptop with a passively cooled 1.2 ghz Celeron, so it's possible to have no CPU fan AND decent performance already. And have a look at this page, VIA's proc's up to 1.5 ghz run fanless: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/ultra_mobile/ultra_mobile.jsp Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments