The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.4, which introduces faster R300 graphics drivers, improved video playback on G5-based systems, support for non-native display resolutions on various PowerBooks, screen blanker password protection, and numerous bug fixes and other improvements. For an overview of the included changes, please read our release notes.
Some serious improvements in there. Their market is probably small, but they release new versions at a relatively stable pace. One of the very few alternative operating systems that has managed to survive over the years where so many others fell.
MorphOS is interesting on its technical merits, even though it appeals to a very tiny market segment. I admittedly bought a used Power Mac G4 just to give it a spin, but I couldn’t justify the cost of buying the full MorphOS install. For Amiga enthusiasts, it’s potentially a better AmigaOS than the real AmigaOS 4. (I wish the competing camps could put their differences aside and merge, but that seems highly unlikely.)
MorphOS’s Quark microkernel has some neat features, and MorphOS almost qualifies as a real-time operating system. Given the widespread use of PowerPC chips for embedded applications, I hope the Quark microkernel can be used as an RTOS for these embedded systems (especially the rad-hardened avionics boxes that power spacecraft.) Does VxWorks have any competition as an RTOS for spacecraft avionics?
Edited 2013-12-18 03:05 UTC
Without the Amiga hardware it is not the same thing.
If only, if only, we knew back then it would end some day and we could have enjoyed our Amiga even more.
Computers today lack personality. If you had a computer in the 80’s you’d know what that means.
Sure do. My first computer was Timex 2068 around 1985.
Still remember seeing them sold as DYI kit, like the PI nowadays.
I looked it up, looks very nice and seems like a fun computer!
By that time, my computer was a Zenith Data Systems PC/XT: Intel 8088 8MHz, 640 KB (who needs more…), EGA adapter, 30 MB hard drive.
Due to a really nasty BIOS bug, the hard drive operated really slowly when booted straight away, and I had to floppy-boot MS-DOS in order to have it work at a decent speed.
Totally no personality at all.
Ran King Quest I fine though.
Being a young-un, my first PC was a PIII IBM Thinkpad T21. That had plenty of personality. If you count memory errors and a dodgy IDE chipset that ate HDD’s for breakfast as “personality”.
Though I have to say, my favourite computer i’ve ever owned was an EeePC 901. Beautiful design, (relatively) fast, and wonderfully portable. Supported Haiku like a dream, and definitely stood apart from any other device i’ve ever owned. Shame i sold it.
Edited 2013-12-18 19:04 UTC
Exactly, what made the Amiga cool was the fact that it was filled with custom chips and had an OS written from the ground up to take advantage of that particular hardware.
MorphOS still has to support a heck of a lot more hardware than the Amiga ever did and its certainly not being written to precisely target a single hardware config to squeeze every drop of performance out of it. That is what made those older computers cool IMHO, they were being written with the kind of focus only seen today in embedded OSes. The OS wasn’t designed to be upgraded, the CPU, memory, all of it was gonna pretty much remain static so they could write the OS for that exact piece of hardware.
And while I love the fact my PC and even my cellphone can get OS upgrades can you imagine what kind of performance you could get with today’s level of hardware with an OS that tightly focused? Just imagine how fast a system you would have if the OS was written for that EXACT configuration, with every cycle and byte of memory known and taken into account by the devs.
As you wish!
MorphOS 3.2 running on an Amiga 4000.
http://imgur.com/81kIU4O
http://imgur.com/2zaV4ny
http://powerup.morphos-team.net
Whaa.. I thought they dropped classic amigas with 2.0
MorphOS doesn’t really utilise classic Amiga chips, not the way classic Workbench does.
I had to go into the FAQ area to see pricing…
I put MorphOS in a triple boot setup with Mac OS X and Linux on a Apple Mac Mini G4. In my testing, MorphOS was so much faster in general boot times and use. Mac OS X came in second, and Linux in a distant third. All three were base GUI installs, so admittedly I didn’t go crazy trying to modify configs on the Linux install, but I did try a lightweight X-windows manager for Linux. Still MorphOS was so much faster I came away impressed, and removed Mac OS X and Linux during an upgrade to MorphOS.
So if you have a old PPC Mac computer that is supported (http://www.morphos.de/hardware), and would like to use it for basic functions (web browser, jabber client, music, etc..), then this is a good way to bring life into that computer. It boots up in seconds and everything runs quickly. Origyn Web Browser (OWB) is the best web browser I have found on any of the Amiga clones. Given the fact everything has a web based equivalent now in days (Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, etc.), I think the web browser is the most important application you need on a desktop.
I know price is an issue, but a positive way to look at it is your supporting the MorphOS team with the cost of a license so we all see future updates. I purchased a license since I felt it breathed new life into my Mac Mini PPC, plus being a past Amiga user I felt comfortable with the interface. I felt the cost of the OS was comparable to what I would pay if I wanted Windows OS on a machine, and I always feel better supporting a small MorphOS team, then Microsoft.
Hey, can you tell us how this version of morphos stands compared to os x ? According to that video, as soon as there’re too many open windows, the os starts to be slow and unresponsive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmWIqqRR-g
Djamé
Would anyone running MorphOS be willing to re-run this experiment? The video was of version 2.0 of the OS, and I am curious if it is still true. At the very least one would hope that it has been fixed.
The problem, it seems, is that MorphOS wasn’t managing video memory well. Which means it would run a few windows well, but as you added them, it was thrashing trying to manage a precious resource.
There are a number of reasons I don’t use MorphOS. The biggest three are the lack of a reason to (aside from novelty), fact that I don’t run any hardware it can run on, and the cost.
More to the point the biggest advantage I hear to MorphOS is that is is fast and lean. But in looking at this demo, it is clear that MorphOS boots faster, but once it has the performance seems to be on par for real world tasks.
I’ll try to find some time over the weekend to recreate it.
I have a PowerBook G4 5,8 with a 128MB Radeon 9700 Pro, a PowerMac G5 7,3 with 256MB Radeon 9650 Pro (I have a 9800 somewhere but not sure exactly where it is in my mancave) and a Pegasos II G4 with a 128MB Radeon 9250.
I’ll do it on at least one of them, maybe all of them if my wife gives me time off from slavery^H^H^H^H^H real life.
Thank you!
I kind of retried that experiment. I opened up 10 full screen windows of Odyssey web browser (1280×1024 24 bit). Once Gfx RAM is filled up and you open a new window it takes a little time during that the computer is swapping VRAM and changing things. but once this moment is over everything is snappy again.
In general use you almost never run in situations where the gfx ram is fully occupied. When you do it slows down for a few moments and there you go again. The moment is a few seconds. Probably that situation is still better handled on OS X, but the test scenario is rather artificial. And behavior is not like shown n that video anymore. Other situatiosn are better handled by MorphOS than OS X. Non eof the both OSes is wiping the floor with each other – they are different with different strengthes and weaknesses.
MorphOS is more than useable for many things. And compared to OS X it just flies on the same hardware. I like to have a dual boot setup and normally boot into MorphOS instead of into OS X. It’s great to have both systems. But well, I am kind of an “Amiga nut” anyway…
Djamé-
I have the exact same system as the demo you linked to and tested on the latest MorphOS 3.4. The same thing that happened to him in the video happened to me when I opened a lot of OWB windows. The issue as it said in the comments is because opening multiple OWB windows uses more video ram, and once all the video RAM is gone, the system slows down. To avoid this with OWB, instead of opening multiple windows, I opened multiple tabs inside of OWB. When I did this I didn’t have the same issue where it exhausted all the video ram.
So yes, I guess even with the latest version if you exhaust all the video RAM, MorphOS is not as smooth as Mac OS X. Then again there are not many applications that use that much video RAM, and OWB would probably be one of the heaviest ones, and opening multiple windows is not something you would normally do versus opening up tabs in OWB. So the test does expose a weakness, but not run I would normally run into without going out of my way to find an instance to exhaust all the video memory. I didn’t even know about this until the video showed me how to exhaust all the video memory.
Regardless if you have video memory then everything is fast, and this thing boots up in 5-10 seconds (BIOS takes up half the boot time easily).
Just to play devil’s Advocate, there aren’t that many apps to run on MorphOS, and if you are a modern user a web browser is one of them.
I currently have 6 Browser windows open with between 2 and 20ish tabs in each — each one representing a different subject. I admit this isn’t that typical, but even my wife likes to keep 2-3 browser windows open.
So I wouldn’t simply dismiss this issue.
Obviously use whatever OS makes you happy, and more power to you. I am mostly shocked this issue doesn’t seem to have been addressed.
Actually if you include all the Amiga applications on Aminet that run on MorphOS and all the MorhpOS applications in the package manager that are available, then I would say there are more then a few apps. I guess it can look like a few when you compare to Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. I do agree when you speak of a modern application, the web browser would be the most important a OS would need to run. So having a good web browser on a modern OS is very important.
It takes me about 8-10 windows before I have issues. If I would have had 2 or 3 windows open each with like 10 tabs, I wouldn’t have had issues. I do agree the fact the OS allows all the virtual memory to be used up, which in turn causes system slow down is an issue. The OS should try not to use video ram (or reserve video ram) for the OS GUI if it runs out. So I don’t dismiss this issue, I am just saying that in my current usage this issue did not come up until I purposely used it in a way I normally did not. If you use 8 Browser windows open with 20 tabs in each, then MorphOS will probably not be the best solution for you until they fix that slow down issue of it using up all the video ram.
Being a old Amiga user, MorphsOS was the cheapest solution for a modern day Amiga like system, since it ran on old Mac hardware. I mostly use it as a hobby system. My primary systems I use for more power solutions are Windows and Mac OS X based on the desktop. So don’t get me wrong when I say I would use MorhpOS as my main desktop. All I can say is on this old Mac Mini G4 I have, MorphOS runs the best.
My PowerMac G4 lacks Core Image support so OS X Leopard is a no go, thinking of going MorphOS exclusive on that one – problem is there was no DMA for the mac.ide device (superdrive attached) in MOS 3.2 and that means choppy dvd playback & very slow disc burning
My PowerBook G4 runs even Leopard well but I’m probably doing a Tiger/OpenBSD combo on that one as 111.11€ is a bit much…
From what I can tell, it seems like MorphOS only runs on discontinued Apple products, and discontinued Gensi products.
Taking my personal feelings and previous comments and put them aside, and looking at this objectively; this just doesn’t bode well.
Were I on the MorphOS team I would be lobbying heavily to make the OS portable so it can run on x86 and/or ARM. Running MorphOS on a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone is much more attractive than running on legacy hardware.
Yes that is correct, it runs on discontinued Apple products because it needs a PPC CPU to run and be fully compatible with many old Amiga programs. The Mac Mini G4 I have was discontinued in 2006. Development started on MorphOS back in like 2000, and continued while there was still a chance of PPC going somewhere. They originally wanted to make it for old PPC boards for Amiga’s and custom PPC products like Genesi. Of course we know how that whole PPC story turned out.
I think going into recent times they realized it is too much work to port to X86. Even if they did, would anyone really use it with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux being available? I personally think it would be a waste of time for them to do a full port of the current MorphOS codebase to X86. Instead I think they decided to continue PPC support since the OS was engineered for PPC, and it continues to appease the current Amiga and PPC Mac fans.
If they wanted to develop an MorphOS X86 like experience with limited amount of time, they should just make a really good MorhpOS Linux distribution. Basically they could make a windows manager that runs on Linux, but incorporates an MorhpOS look (MUI) and feel, and totally integrates UAE (so it runs seamless). The GUI would look and feel just like MorphOS, but could run all the Linux applications plus the old Amiga/MorphOS apps using emulation. Both applications (linux and uae) would run in GUI windows that look and behave exactly the same (like what VMware Fusion does on Mac OS X with virtual machines). So it would be a seamless environment where Linux and Amiga/MorphOS apps run side by side. That is the realistic direction I think MorphOS or AmigaOS should take if they want to make it to X86 using the least amount of resources and time, and have a chance at a decent userbase. The closest thing to this type of setup was Mac OS X Snow Leopard, when it ran new X86 apps, plus ran the old Mac OS X PPC applications seamless. Actually I still use Snow Leopard and still think it is the best Mac OS X OS for the desktop. Most every OS after Snow Leopard was more to look and behave like iOS, and support power saving features.
Another possible direction if they wanted something more unique then using Linux, would be to use DragonFly BSD as the base for the next OS, since it is actually developed by a old Amiga user. DragonFly BSD with a good MorphOS or Amiga based windows manager would be fun to use.
I think you are missing my point. We can argue if PPC is an evolutionary dead end or not, but there is other PPC hardware out there. But MorphOS ONLY runs on on discontinued hardware.
This does not give me warm fuzzy feelings.
And it seems silly that they don’t support the AmigaOne X1000. It may be niche and expensive. But it is still in production…
I don’t think anyone says MorpOS is fully compatible, but let us say as compatible as possible and call it good.
But if you read the comments on just about every MorphOS post on OSNews, the bulk of the MorpOS website, and every MorphOS fan I have encountered; they aren’t really running old Amiga Software.
They argue that is a fast and lean OS that gives new life to lower power hardware. That mission does not require PPC at all.
Which was a problem from the start. Portable OSs have been the vogue for decades, and the Amiga transition from 68K to PPC should have taught even them that platforms change.
They chose not to make a portable OS and are paying the price for it now.
Well Linux is available for PPC and all the Apple products MorphOS supports. By that logic there isn’t much point in running MorphOS on Apple.
I am not trying to logically trap you, I just don’t think the argument is a good one. Again the features I see people talking about are it being fast and lightweight.
So then the clock is running out for MorphOS then. It won’t be that many years before it will start becoming hard to find Apple PPC hardware. It will have an increasingly hard time attracting new users which is the only thing that will fuel new development… unless they go open source.
One could argue that is perhaps what they should have done in the first place, but with filesystems, and an API layer to support Amiga compatibility… but that approach would defeat the fast and lean thing.
But it really does come down to one thing: unless they support hardware that is still in production, the clock is going to run out on MorphOS sooner much rather than later. All the same arguments can be made about AmigaOS as well.
The world is (and will continue to be) dominated by a couple of major platforms. However there is most definitely a place for alternative operating systems, but they simply can’t run on legacy hardware alone.
Edited 2013-12-21 02:04 UTC
I think they decided to use discontinued Mac hardware because more of that sold and is out there then any other PPC hardware I know if (except PS3 consoles if you consider that a desktop computer). If you have numbers showing other PPC hardware more available (in numbers and price), then by all means let me know. I think their goal was to hit the largest PPC hardware market MorphOS could run on, and that was discontinued Mac hardware. Yes I agree it is too bad they didn’t support other PPC hardware also, maybe they felt resources were better used targeting a larger section of PPC hardware.
I agree, “fully” compatible might have not been the best words. As you said they try to be as compatible as possible. I personally ran old Amiga software (Jabber client for example), and it worked fine. Usually I try to find a MorphOS version, and if not I fall back to an Amiga version. This approach has given me access to a lot of software to select from which is the point I was making when it came to amount of software available (where you hinted at there being very little).
As I said prior, on my Mac Mini PPC G4, it seems to run the leanest then either Linux or Mac OS X when I triple booted. So their mission seems to be valid in my use. Now would this be true if MorphOS ran on other CPU hardware, who knows.
Agreed if their goal is to run the current code on another CPU architecture.
Huh!?!? As I stated several times before in my comments, in my personal opinion MorphOS ran faster and leaner then both Mac OS X and Linux on my Mac Mini PPC. Actually Linux was the worst by far and I tried different distributions and Window managers. So yes there is a point to running MorphOS on old Apple PPC hardware.
I think my argument is a good one. Basically I am saying in my tests on my old Mac PPC hardware, MorphOS ran the best. I wanted a retro type Amiga machine, that could at least run a web browser decently. It served my needs. If they ported the current MorphOS codebase to X86, I wouldn’t dump Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows in favor of MorphOS. If you want MorphOS on X86 and would pay for the software, then good for you, I wouldn’t. I will stick to Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows desktops on X86, and MorphOS on old PPC where it found a niche. If they make a MorphOS X86 that supports all the Linux/BSD software ports, has a clean and nice GUI that feels like MorphOS, and seamlessly has emulation (UAE using VMware Fusion integration), then I would consider using it, and even pay to support development of this.
If you think a cutting edge new X86 OS can make it (like a MorphOS X86 port), then I would use SkyOS as an example of a noble attempt that went nowhere.
Yes I agree, I think MorphOS is a dead end road. As I said in my other post, a better option would be for them to make a MorphOS Linux (or BSD) distribution, with a emulation layer. That at least allows them to tap into all the existing Linux/BSD ports available.
[/q]I agree, they should have done this earlier for sure if they wanted a path forward. There is a end of life for MorphOS and AmigaOS as we now it, and it will always be a niche market for past Amiga users (like myself). MorphOS or AmigaOS will not be popular as a desktop OS unless it is based on something like Linux or BSD with a large software base. That is the only chance it has going forward.
If they want the approach of being fast and lean on the desktop (mobile area is dominated by Android in fast and lean), then they should do what Apple did, take a Linux/BSD core, and clean-up the GUI foundation. The lean, fast, and familiar interface can come by way of optimizing the GUI layer and make it looks like the familiar MorphOS (MUI) interface. I think they need to take the direction Apple took with Mac OS X.
MorphOS and AmigaOS4 camps were kinda hostile to each other in the past… might be one of the reasons why they don’t share efforts more.
I definitely agree that DragonflyBSD should be the basis for a next-gen Amiga! I’ve toyed with this OS a little bit and it definitely needs a lot more polishing before it’s ready for desktop computing; it seems like a task that would take forever to accomplish unless a commercial software vendor took up the task. Porting the hosted version of AROS from FreeBSD to DragonFlyBSD should be straightforward, so there’d be a way to maintain compatibility with programs from the days of Amiga OS 3.1 and prior. DragonflyBSD has a lot of potential as an OS for servers and supercomputing, regardless of whether it is used for a next-gen Amiga.
Porting MorphOS to x86 seems like it’d be redundant with what AROS has already accomplished. MorphOS is the more advanced OS, but AROS has already achieved the goal of running Amiga software on x86 hardware.
IMHO, the best way ahead for the Amiga-PPC community is for Hyperion (Amiga OS4) and MorphOS to combine efforts under the banner of Amiga OS 5. Use MorphOS as the basis because of its advanced kernel (with better support for multi-processor and multi-core systems) and merge the two API’s for compatibility with old software. Port the drivers for Amiga-PPC systems like x1000 and SAM over to the new OS. But I suspect personalities will get in the way of practical decisions for saving the Amiga-PPC platform.
You sure about that? A good friend of mine had a conversation with someone from MorpOS and they don’t support SMT (simultaneous multithreading). So what is your basis for saying that MorphOS supports multiprocessor/multi-core systems?
I stand corrected. Did a little more digging, and while MorphOS runs on the Power Mac G5 it doesn’t support SMP.
MorphOS 3.4 running on an Acube SAM460 motherboard.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/1410816_33695…
“MorphOS NG” is currently under discussion by the MorphOS Team and will most likely be for ARM or AMD64. From what little i know of it, it will probably break source and binary compatibility with Amiga software though.
If you don’t want to shell out for MorphOS and some PPC hardware then you can use AROS on your existing x86 hardware. It’s much faster obviously but not quite as polished as MorphOS.
http://www.icarosdesktop.org
Very interesting, but can I point out that isn’t on the supported hardware list: http://www.morphos.de/hardware
So I will amend my statement, they don’t officially support it on anything but discontinued hardware. Still doesn’t give me warm and fuzzies.
Link? I Just did a number of searches and could find references to speculation, but nothing that said anyone actually knew anything.
Binary sure — for PPC — unless they are doing some kind of JIT or AOT PPC compilation. Source would be a more complicated story. The 68K and PPC chips in question are all Big Endian (or are configured to be Big Endian); x86 and ARM are Little Endian (or are configured to be Little Endian).
68K code would continue to be handled by the AROS portions of MorphOS, and should be fine (probably).
Some code would break in such a transition, code that tries to read directly from the hardware assuming bit order, or read or write files serializing data structures directly.
It is hard to say what percentage of apps would just compile and run, but I bet a majority would. It really depends on how defensive the coders were. But even the ones that don’t should be relatively easy to port (if the developers have the will).
[/q]
Missing my point. I am not saying I want to run some Amiga like thing, I am talking about MorphOS specifically. I don’t have an interest in running old Amiga software (that ship sailed for me a very long time ago), and if I did I would just use UAE — for the ilk of software I might care about.
No, the reason I might be interested in MorphOS is the first thing I hear everyone say about it: it is fast, light, and polished… which are the reasons I might be interested in it.
Which makes the hardware quite easily available and inexpensive, as far as recent ~Amiga hardware goes. :p
They likely couldn’t do it, too many Amiga-isms to port over. Plus, large part of Amiga community seems to have an irrational hatred of x86…
We always have AROS going forward.
But for how much longer? I think we are past the tipping point, and Apple PPC hardware is going to become harder to find, and start failing.
If their only plan (and I am not saying it is) is just to run on someone else’s discontinued hardware they only have a handful of years to go.
Well they aren’t dependant on any Amiga hardware so they just have to port the hardware layer, deal with endian-ness, and run on a single core (for now). I am not saying it is easy, but it isn’t rocket science.
But honestly if they don’t port to something — and it doesn’t have to be x86, it could easily be ARM — then they have no future.
Their plan is to enjoy what’s there. Not much more.
But of course the view is also put into future from time to time. And teh ISA switch is rather inevitable. Apple PPC hardware will last a few more years, but it falls back in terms of computing power and of course teh hardwrae is simply aging. The problem is known and aware.
AFAIK the ISA switch is not yet set into stone but will probably focus on X64 and bring a few API changes if modern features like SMP should be used (which would be stupid if it wasn’t…). Hence a simple recompile will not exactly work. But if done with care the required changes to the API should be rather small making porting existing MorphOS applications to MorphOS NG a rather simple work.
I think a straight forward way to do MorphOS NG would be like outlined here: http://via.i-networx.de/q86.htm
And MorphSO 3.6 will again support a computer still in production: the Acube Sam460. Not the most powerful computer one can think of and not exactly a bargain but at least a new RoHS compliant hardware with warranty and high quality of production.
Edited 2013-12-22 23:00 UTC