The pickle jar
Usually what I do first in a review like this is provide an overview of the history of the operating system I’m about to dive into. The plan for this review is no different, except for the fact that I found it very hard to find good information on MorphOS’ rather short but eventful history. This probably has something to do with the sharp disagreements that took place between a number of developers and Genesi, the company funding development. It is likely this condensed history contains errors, so feel free to correct me.
Anyway, I’ll do my best to get an as accurate as possible overview of MorphOS’ history. You can pretty much follow the AmigaOS history which I jotted down for the AmigaOS review up until the mid-’90s. This was a tumultuous time for the Amiga platform; Commodore toppled over in 1994, and after that, the Amiga trademark was bounced around from owner to owner, but mostly as an empty shell without any real products.
Fed up with all this stuff, a few members of the Amiga community decided to build a new PowerPC platform and operating system from scratch. The new hardware platform was designed and built by bPlan/Genesi, while the operating system was developed by a number of individuals from the Amiga community. This would become known as MorphOS, and it started in 1999.
The earliest versions ran using PowerPC accelerator cards in classic 68k Amiga machines, while also needing parts of the AmigaOS in order to function properly. It wasn’t until 2002 that the first, non-prototype Pegasos machines appeared out of collaboration between bPlan/Genesi and Thendic France, which could run either MorphOS or Linux.
Things got a bit hectic and dark in 2004, when several MorphOS developers accused Genesi of not paying them. A page was put on the MorphOS website which detailed what amounts of money Genesi owned the developers; the page itself is gone, but the thread on MorphZone is still there. Development was put on hold.
Genesi responded that they were trying hard to remain afloat themselves, but how exactly the situation has been resolved is still a mystery to me. All I do know is that at some point development picked up again, with Genesi still being the major backer of the effort. Ambient, MorphOS’ desktop environment, was released as open source (GPL) too around this time.
The hardware situation for MorphOS used to be relatively bright, but currently, it’s all rather bleak. Genesi had the Pegasos I, a PowerPC G3-based motherboard, followed by the Pegasos II, which used a different northbridge and introduced some fixes. The Pegasos II became available as a model with a G4 processor, too. You could also get your hands on a Pegasos II motherboard by buying Genesi’s Open Desktop Workstation, a complete computer with casing and all. All of these are currently discontinued.
MorphOS also runs on Genesi’s EFIKA, a small motherboard built around the 400 MHz Freescale MPC5200B SoC-processor. Further specifications include a 44-pin 2.5″ IDE slot, USB ports, a serial port, stereo audio in/out jacks, a 100Mbit ethernet port, a 33/66 MHz PCI slot, and 128 MB DDR RAM.
Since the EFIKA has been discontinued as well, it is very hard to get your hands on hardware capable of running MorphOS. There have been numerous clues that the MorphOS development team is working on porting the operating system to the PowerPC Mac Mini, and maybe even other PowerPC Macs too. Sadly, after Apple’s switch to Intel (have you heard?) this is just a stop-gap solution. Genesi, in the meantime, has more or less dropped their interest in the PowerPC platform, and are now focusing entirely on ARM – which MorphOS does not (yet?) support.
A third platform for MorphOS is classic Amiga machines equipped with PowerPC accelerator cards. A special version of MorphOS, called PowerUP, is available for these machines, and is free to use. The accelerator cards, however, are no longer in production.
This leaves MorphOS in a bit of a pickle. Without any hardware to run on, it’s difficult to envision a future for MorphOS, so the rumoured PowerPC Mac port is rather vital for the platform’s survival. A port to the sam440ep board would also be welcome, as ACube is still making and selling them.
I’ll first dive into describing the hardware used for this review, during which I will also explain why I found it very difficult to review MorphOS properly (clue: it’s a hardware limitation). After the hardware, I will detail some of the characteristics of MorphOS and what differences I – not an Amigan – found between AmigAOS 4.x and MorphOS. As a result of MorphOS being very much like AmigaOS 4.x, as well as because of it running mostly the same applications, this review will build upon the AmigaOS 4.1 one. Especially on the applications front, the operating systems have a lot in common, so rehashing everything seems a bit redundant.
As always, keep in mind that I will not compare MorphOS to Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Such comparisons are useless and completely beside the point. If you do not understand why, you are probably reading the wrong website.
Wait what? They’re all dying?
I think what he means is that eventually people will tire of not being able to use their favorite OS on the hardware available to them. This in turn forces them to move on. I may be wrong though.
I think he meant “the number of ex-Amigans still using an Amiga or Amiga-like platform”, but he made it sound as if the actual number of ex-Amigans was decreasing, which could only mean they’re dying off
.
If they’re still using the platform, that doesn’t very well make them “ex-Amigans” now does it?
Heh, what are you, a lawyer?
“People who used to use the original Amiga hardware and OS, then switched to a different Amiga platform (PPC), then stopped using that platform as well” – something like that? 
But that would be true also.
Well, for their sake, I sincerely hope it’s not that many!
No they are giving up.
I had a pegasos 1 but tossed it in the bin a while ago after dong nothing with it for ages.
Crappy slow hardware with a awfully slow memory interface.
What?! You threw away perfectly good (as in: working) hardware?? You should’ve given it away, at the least. Next time, contact me first
I’m doing you a favour
It was no good.
Today you can get an pc mainboard for 50 euro (I have a asrock K10N78fullhd (almost everything onboard) with nvidia graphics (usefull in linux) and an 80 euro AMD Athlon II x4 620 and some RAM. It is reasonably snappy.
Ah, but that’s just it: it’s a PC. Although my main computer is a PC, I just love alternative platforms. Even if they are relatively crappy.
Please port this to ARM so it has a fighting chance. I know x86 would be the easy way to get it to everyone, but ARM would be great due to MorphOS being such a light weight OS and many good arm devices comming out. Having it avalible for the PPC mac mini’s isn’t going ot help much in the long run. it might get it in the hands of more people for the time being, but those systems aren’t being made anymore (and for some time), and it’s just porting it from one aging platform to another.
I guess i can hope anyways.
… I have one still, a usb one, whose case looks almost identical to the one that EFIKA is housed in
That is pretty cool.
Yes, I would bet the case is exactly from an old external Optical Drive!
The side with the power plug is the proper back, the long pair of slots that are covered used to hold the old 50 pin SCSI connectors back then.
The side with the ports (video, USB, etc.) is the proper front, the big flat bezel is where the CD/DVD drive would have been inserted.
The Beagleboard would be a great hardware platform for MorphOS and is much more capable than the EFIKA.
Go to the genesi web page. The new efika is freescale i.mx515. The old ppc efika is gone. without hardware the morphos guys have to choice but to port to arm. Too bad arm is still only 32bit and memory limited.
I hope there will be a review for AROS (x86 compatible).
It’s quite difficult to handle a proper AROS review. It’a still a “moving target” and even Icaros Desktop, my distribution, is not ready yet for such a test.
Ever since I caught wind of the MorphOS project back in, maybe, ’06 I’ve wanted to give it a try. I was a bit shocked to find it was only available for such an obscure platform. I would almost be willing to find an EFIKA if Morph was open source.
As others have said, ARM would be a nice choice. I’m already hoping the Haiku ARM port will be successful.
They are still available:-
http://ausppc.blogspot.com/
But it’s not Open Source. An important fact about MorphOS that was not in the review, is that they key file to stop the demo version from timing out after 30 minutes costs 150 Euro. http://www.morphos.de/news.html
Edited 2009-10-10 19:40 UTC
Move the platform to x86 pls, I want a new Amiga OS that I can run !!
Then AROS is for you
Edited 2009-10-09 23:06 UTC
no, please don’t, it will kill the platform
Why? It’s already dead, for all practical purposes, and can only use dead hardware? How can it become deader? That’s not even a word.
And that is why I visit OSNews.
Edited 2009-10-09 23:53 UTC
Hell yeah! I second that! 😀
I don’t know the exact history of MorphOS but I do know you got it all wrong!
It all started back when Amiga Technologies owned the Amiga. They planned a switch to PowerPC back in 1996, the development would have been farmed out to a company called Phase5 who made Amiga accelerators.
This all fell apart when AT’s parent company crashed but Phase5 went on to produce PowerPC accelerator cards for the Amiga. This is where PowerUP came from.
Eventually as the Amiga market went into terminal decline Phase5 also crashed. Out of this was born a new company called bplan – who went on to produce the Pegasos and later, the Efika.
The aim of the Pegasos and MorphOS was effectively to create a completely new Amiga, both hardware and OS. At the time Amiga inc. were doing nothing with the Amiga. It was only after Amiga inc. got wind of MorphOS and they started up the OS4/Amiga One project both outsourced to external companies for development.
It was bplan who developed the Pegasos and to a degree MorphOS. MorphOS is owned by the developers so it’s never really been a true commercial OS, the development model is much more like an open source OS …except it’s not open source.
The Pegasos and MorphOS were sold by Thendic-France (I worked for Thendic France) and later Genesi.
Further details about the history as well as a link to the article “MorphOS – the lightning OS” in several languages:
http://www.pegasosmorphos.de.vu
Hey everyone – I’d just like to mention that I put that Efika system together and I still have a few systems available. If you’re interested, have a look at http://ausppc.blogspot.com/ and also feel free to email me at [email protected]
From the article:
Things got a bit hectic and dark in 2004, when several MorphOS developers accused Genesi of not paying them. A page was put on the MorphOS website which detailed what amounts of money Genesi owned the developers; the page itself is gone
_________
But it can be found on the wayback machine at
http://web.archive.org/web/20041117030925/http://www.morphos.net/
Genesi doesnt seem to a company that you’d want to do business with. I recall this lack of payment also included the person working on the OpenBSD port.
Genesi doesn’t own MorphOS. They have backed MorphOS for Pegasos and Efika and I’m not sure what else.
Anyhow, Genesi is good about getting the goods to customers.
Thom Holwerda, wow, nice review. It is amazing to read from semi-mainstream reviewer how responsive MorphOS on such a light processor, and so sad to read how crippled by just 128 megs RAM.
There are a lot of strong contributions to the OS itself to make MorphOS as good as it is. On the app side lately, Fab Couerjoly (sp?) has furnished not one but two cornerstone GREAT apps: OWB port and mPlayer port. MPlayer on MorphOS particularly is incredible and way above IMO its implementation on other platforms.
If the MorphOS Team does a *solid* PPC Mac mini version of their OS, it’ll be a real gamechanger. Such hardware, although second-hand, is readily available. The release will stir a lot of interest and I hope you and others get to review it right away, maybe even a pre-release review.
Nice job!
Both me and Thom have G4 Macs armed and ready should a G4/MacMini port of AmigaOS/MorphOS ever arrive; which I do hope.
MorphOS, will be released for all makes of PPC MacMini, hopefully by the end of the year, Possibly sooner.
AmigaOS4.1 had early ports for the MacMini, but have been officially abandoned. I can’t say I agree with with that, but it’s what Hyperion wanted.
The Sam Flex, capable of running OS4.1 are still available
In the UK:-
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=…
Other sellers are available.
I’m showing my age here, but … it just really bothers me to think of any OS, especially one that’s supposed to be a viable alternative/derivative for AmigaOS, as being “crippled” by “only 128M” of RAM!
I remember being ecstatic when I souped-up my A2000 with a GVP SCSI board that allowed me to have a whopping additional 2M RAM, with a 250M Quantum hard drive — this setup gave me an amazing 3M RAM.
It’s a shame that MorphOS is facing this problem in the hardware platform it’s currently supported on.
Please dont’t take my comments to be a criticizm of the programmers on this project — it looks like they’ve done an amazing job, especially given the constraints they’ve been working within. I’d love to see MorphOS thrive & grow … we can never have enough OS choices
“The MorphOS team also shows its commitment to newcomers to the Amiga world by loading the Click-to-Front utility by default.”
Just for the record: there’s no such thing as a click-to-front utility on MorphOS. The MorphOS’ intuition.library (the heart of the GUI) can do everything for you in this manner, and much more. All such windowing-behaviour, mouse commands, hotkeys, whatever else can be controlled and fully customized to users’ needs via the iControl page in System Preferences.
It’s true tho’ that the default configuration is tuned to match the needs of an average user as much as possible, still with respect the roots of the system in the Am*ga world.
If only there was better hardware available to run it on than the EFIKA, this would be the best OS ever. One thing I think they should have done would have been to port the thing to the PS3’s Other OS environment. While its too late to do so now, had they put their effforts into that rather than a port to PPC Macs, I think they could have sold many more copies.
It is hard for me to get excited about a proprietary operating system developed for non-existing hardware that has none of the serious features that I expect from a current operating system.
Maybe this will turn into something worth my while one day.
Linux with its open development model is only now making headway now into being really known by the general public and that is an open platform that runs on all kinds of processor architectures with thousands of mature applications available.
So how is something like MorphOS supposed to compete with Microsoft for usershare/mindshare, which in turn is how you get applications developed for your platform?
If you tell me the only point of this OS is to be an intellectual exercise for its creators, then fine, because right now that is what it looks like to outsiders like me.
Both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.x have a lot of interest, but only amongst ex-Amigans and OS nuts like us. Both of these systems have a set of pluses and minuses that make them both attractive and repelling. Where they are going to offer the end user something different from the pack is to concentrate on the positive aspects, like the lightning fast boot times and thrifty resource management. They both need to round out their application libraries.
In MorphOS’ case, discontinued Apple hardware may get a hobbyist on board, but it is by no means a good model. Will they port to ARM? Does it matter? How big is the market for a desktop OS that runs on an exotic, embedded platform. Again, great for the enthusiasts, but no splash elsewhere. On top of that, while small form factor and passive cooling are nifty, such a machine makes a mediocre linux system compared to just about any x86 desktop.
I have had an overwhelming compulsion to run both OS’es for a long time, but I just can’t get myself to plunk down that much money for a second hand Pegasos. Both of these operating systems would receive an immensely larger user AND developer audience if ported to x86. I’m not holding my breath for either to do so.
>MorphOS is owned by the developers so it’s never really been a true commercial OS, the development model is much more like an open source OS …except it’s not open source.
In “open source”, you also have the word “open”: MorphOS isn’t open-source, nor… “open”. It’s more closed than any other closed source OS… Even MacOSX is more “opened”.
Check your facts?
MorphOS is “open” if you show some interest. Several *interested* developers integrated the core team during all these years. You can also contact directly the developers and have some direct support through the appropriate channels. That’s quite open, in my opinion.
And about “open source”-ness (as if closed-source was a bad thing…), the desktop (Ambient) is GPL and quite a few other components are opensourced too.
I did sent this a while ago to OSnews, but it got rejected:
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
Anyway, if some people are still interested in new powerpc hardware, please read the post/thread and send email.
For those screaming about porting it to ARM.
http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika
Looks like they are way ahead of you.
Today the MorphOS-Team released V2.4 of MorphOS. The most important change: Support for all Mac Mini G4 models!
Demo version freely available.
http://www.morphos.de