Almost exactly 18 months after 3.19, the MorphOS team has released MorphOS 3.20. This is a major release, as it adds support for the upcoming Mirari PowerPC motherboards, which we talked about when that project was first announced. I’m quite excited about the Mirari, and can’t wait to have one, and MorphOS is the one operating system I really want to run it on. I have an almost mint condition PowerBook G4 17″ specifically for MorphOS, but the hardware is simply too outdated to keep up with modern demands, which is sad, because MorphOS can clearly keep up if it had modern hardware.
So, MorphOS 3.20 adds support for the Mirari platform and its various components, like its thermal management solution, networking, and so on. MorphOS 3.20 also expands the number of support Radeon graphics cards, improved support for various HDMI and DisplayPort ports, better support for multiple monitors, and overall better graphics performance in general. There’s also SFS2 support throughout the operating system so MorphOS now supports file sizes of up to 4GB and partition sizes of up to 2TB. The Ambient UI has also seen extensive work to improve performance and stability, as well as add a bunch of new features.
Several new applications and utilities are included in MorphOS 3.20, such as DriveImager, MirrorBackup, SMARTDoctor, OFHTTP, OFHash, OFDNS, Replace, and Automator for scripting and controlling MUI applications. Iris has been updated to version 1.53 and now includes the new Contacts companion application for CalDAV-based address books. FlowStudio received extensive improvements for project management, printing, Markdown support, and development workflows.
Networking and connectivity have also been improved with updates to OpenSSH 10.3p1, TLS 1.3 support in RDesktop, expanded SMB2 filesystem improvements, and improved USB, audio and multimedia subsystem stability. Numerous system libraries and frameworks including MUI, ixemul, Cairo, Harfbuzz, Freetype, OpenSSL4, and ObjFWRT have been updated or significantly modernized.
↫ MorphOS 3.20 release announcement
Of course, there’s also the long list of smaller changes, bugfixes, and performance improvements. MorphOS has wide support for Apple PowerPC hardware, which is probably your best bet for using the operating system for now, at least until the Mirari becomes available for purchase.
