Submitted by The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.8, which introduces support for ACube’s Sam460 series of mainboards and numerous Radeon graphics cards from AMD’s X1000 and HD series. In addition to various performance improvements related to the Quark kernel, Exec, 3D graphics and video playback, MorphOS 3.8 also adds the ability to use state-of-the-art 4K displays in their native resolution. For a more extensive overview of the included changes, please read our release notes.
Looks like a great release. It’s so tempting to get a G4 Mac for this one.
The software improvements make it tempting to pick up an old Mac, but the ageing hardware makes it less tempting. I haven’t followed the project much lately – have the developers ever indicated an interest in porting to a modern platform? Last I read about, they seemed entirely against it.
Yes:
“MorphOS 3.8, which introduces support for ACube’s Sam460 series of mainboards “
you just called a 1.1GHz PPC platform modern hardware. heh.
With MorphOS it sure becomes that. MorphOS even works fine on Efika 400MHz PPC with only 128MB RAM. A bit difficult to browse big sites like Facebook or YouTube. But it is a very fine IRC and Messaging machine which is totally silent. Also AmigaOS programs like TVPaint, Final Writer and PageStream works without issues at all. You can even watch movies on Efika if you want!
I would say. MorphOS makes 1.1GHz machines useful and have always done that. Now people should come and support the platform. Develope, Comment it, Spread it…!
Exactly – I tried the previous version on a g5 and had completely forgotted how slow these things are compared to modern hardware.
Good riddance.
I still think MorphOS is worthwhile and interesting, it’s just not some I would use day-to-day because of the slow hardware.
Slow hardware? You realise that its not about hardware, but software and the operating system controlling the hardware? When I changed from OSX Tiger to MorphOS on my iBook G4 it was like day and night. iBook G4 suddenly feels like a 3GHz PC for sure!
Just try AROS on your PC and you understand what I mean. Windows and OSX are huge. Same with Linux. MorphOS is small and effective OS. Sure you will be able to do your work on it. Remember that people have used all sorts of software on slower hardware and its all okay for them. MorphOS can run almost anything from AmigaOS rich archive. The programs is also optimized and runs miles around any OSX or Windows program today.
In MorphOS programs starts instantly and you can switch easy between screens like in METRO for Windows 8, just that MorphOS and AmigaOS had this feature since the very beginning. But in MorphOS, MUI (Metro) doesnt destroy the desktop functions at all or MUI is taking over everything. No, you as the user can change as you want.
I don’t know why you think that. Not long ago Bigfoot, a core developer, wrote that they will eventually port to AMD64. One desktop and one laptop. This is the first time the word “when” was used instead of “if”.
But for now they stick to PPC since an architectical shift is a huge undertaking. There is still things that can be done with PPC too.
I use an G5. It feels quite quick and responsive on MorphOS. It can even play 1080p movies. I don’t personally need more power than that for a hobby OS.
PowerPC motherboards supported:
Efika
Pegasos
Pegasos II
eMac G4
Mac Mini G4
PowerMac G4*
PowerMac G5*
SAM460 / AmigaONE 500
PowerPC laptops supported:
iBook G4
PowerBook G4*
* = Only ATI Radeon graphic cards are supported.
The prices are:
111.11 EUR for one PowerBook G4 system, iBook G4 or PowerMac G5,
79 EUR for one eMac, Mac mini G4, Pegasos I, Pegasos II or PowerMac G4
49 EUR for one EfikaPPC or Sam460 system.
If you have one of these PowerPC systems which MorphOS runs on, try it out. MorphOS will still be available for PowerPC for a loong time. Later MorphOS is also going to support AmigaONE X5000. This is a really small and nice OS for sure. The OS doesn’t take more than 218MB in size and requires very little CPU and MEM to work.
I am certain that MorphOS on mobiles and tablets would be as great as QNX is on BlackBerry devices. Multitasking is always great and the fast loading of both OS and software would make it to a really great competitor with Android, iOS and Windows for the tablet market.
To run MorphOS on a Efika 400MHz PowerPC motherboard with IDE controller that has no DMA and a PowerMac G5 at 2GHz is almost no difference in terms of using the OS. Sure a PowerMac G5 makes it all feels a little bit more faster, but the boot times is like 12 seconds vs 5 seconds.
I invite and urge most of PowerPC Mac users to try MorphOS out. We need developers and I am certain that with more support, the OS could boost a lot.
I would happily try it out, and i have a PowerMAC G5 already (the last model with pcie and 2x dual core cpus)… That said, 111EUR to play with a hobbyist OS is a bit steep, that’s more than the hardware is worth. Also reading the hardware compatibility list suggests my model isn’t supported, and i suspect it would boot on only one core in any case?
Also the announcement talks about 4K resolution support, but does any of the antiquated hardware that morphos runs on actually support 4k resolutions?
It’s free to try, the only restriction with the demo version is that it times out after 30 minutes of use, after which it slows to a crawl. A quick reboot (I mean really quick) and you’re back running.
As for the 4K support, there are a few machines supported that have PCIe slots (including possibly yours) which means they can accept the various modern Radeon graphics cards listed on their support pages.
It’ll cost you nothing to try it (except perhaps a blank CD), so it’s well worth a look.
Last I heard is the transition is supposed to take place with version 4.x, though I don’t know that they settled upon a CPU type yet.
The developer Bigfoot has named AMD64 as the successor.
I still have two g4 minis.
I think i’ll give it a try.
Hi,
does anyone know if this bug has been solved?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmWIqqRR-g
Also, seriously 110 euros for a hobby OS on a ten year old hardward whose harddrive is likely to crash anytime soon? I know they need to pay their bills but I seriously doubt that they make enough money to live on this anyway. I thought the goal was 1) first to create a user base of people willing to pay for software then 2) making money by selling the updates or something like this. but no “hey look, how cool it is. Give me 110 euros and you can play with it. Have fun mate”
If Beos couldn’t make it, no one will, seriously.
Edited 2015-05-18 02:33 UTC
I can understand your issues, but MorphOS is actually getting better all the time. I bought my keyfile when MorphOS 2.0 came out, and now MorphOS 3.8 is out. So there is no need to pay for updating the system which is great.
Also, these coders is helping a platform surviving in a Windows and OSX world. At the same time the OS stretches out as a superb multimedia and multitasking OS. It have all the goodies of AmigaOS but at the same time have tweaks and support for modern hardware. MorphOS is also very adjustable to your needs and if you want to contribute youre welcome to #MorphOS channel on Freenode IRC server.
MorphOS is a good choice and it deserves so much more support than it has. It is proof that there is will in humanity to give some competition. Because MorphOS offers things that I dont have in Windows. Flexibility, Multitasking, Configuration and Speed. And the fact that iso file is only few hundred megabyte in size, tells you how “big” the OS is. It isnt.. so programs and anything flies on it. AmigaOS should have been on every phone out there. On every tablet. Not Linux hungry Android or iOS. Just look at how QNX runs on BlackBerry devices. Its fantastic!
But, QNX is in no way related to Amiga OS, apart from the aborted attempt to base Amiga OS 4 on QNX. But that failed dismally.
Hard drives are easy and cheap to replace, and if you later decide you’re not interested or the machine otherwise dies, well now you’ve got a spare hard drive you can use to upgrade another machine.
And MorphOS is free to try, so it doesn’t cost you anything to download it and play with it to see if it’s worth buying a licence for.
Linux has really destroyed peoples sense of value. Some seems to think that “if I want it to be free (or cheaper), then that is in itself an argument that it should be”.
Remember the good old days before Linux, Libre Office, Gimp and darn cheap internet? When you had to pay 150 dollars for a word processor. 300 dollars for an image manipulation program. 500 dollars for decent C/C++ compilers. 2000 dollars for UNIX. And when you had to pay minute fees for using internet besides the phone bill?
Development cost money! Either by the end user paying for it with their hard earned cash or by the developer doing it on their own spare time, not making a dime. Free software is _never_ free.
According to the MorphOS Team members they don’t take any salary. They use the little money they earn from about one sold licence a day to pay for hardware to support, server expences, internet fees and so on. Or should they pay it from their own pockets, besides working for free too?
Don’t want to pay for it? Then don’t. But please don’t devalue what they do by telling them their tens of tousands of manhours spent should not come with a price tag.
So, I suppose my G4 Cube is not supported?
http://morphos.de/hardware