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What MorphOS Is All About
Gentu writes "Genesi released today an extensive feature list of MorphOS, the pre-emptively multi-tasking operating system for PPC. MorphOS/Pegasos is a brand new platform (the last full OS+HW platform released was 7 years ago with Be's BeBox) so it is very modern and it has support for 3D cards, USB, SMP while it also features partial Amiga application binary compatibility! Additionally, OSNews today features an interview with the Eclipsis Project Manager, Nicholas Blachford, about MorphOS, and they include three exclusive screenshots of the OS."
Anything with Amiga Support is cool. Also wanted to get the first post in.
...if the guy announcing a PPC product isn't wearing a turtle-neck and saying "oh and...one last thing," I don't care.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Will this one offer HPFS file systems?
We as voters have given up essential liberty. We hoped to purchase a little temporary safety. We in fact deserve neither
Comment removed based on user account deletion
These exculsive screens even show that it can handle mp3 playback and timezone changing at the same time. What next, reading email while doing graphic design?
Where Dilbert creates a device to convert pocket lint into a parsley substitute:
"That's absolutely brilliant, and completely unmarketable."
- MorphOS Feature List
- MorphOS Info
- OSNews Interview
- More on Amiga
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I have been using the MorphOS System with a Pegasos board for a while, in a corporate environment. I feel it would be appropriate for me to share for the benefit of the greater good.
Our MorphOS Systems, one of which I currently am using to post, are very nice. They're for the most part homebuilt with COTS components. The Pegasos Mainboard basically is a MicroATX board with a PowerPPC 133FSB slot, ATA100 3 PCI, 1 AGP, onboard LAN and FireWire. It's amazing how empty the board looks (find the photos on their web site) compared to a normal x86 board. So what you do is you get that board, a PowerPC CPU, some RAM, a case, a hard drive, etc, and you have a fully working PowerPC system devoid of an OS. It isn't cheap, but you don't pay the Apple Markup
To that hardware platform I added MorphOS, and started developing applications, alongside a team of six programmers. We have been learning the ins and out of MorphOS, and we are producing some very nice graph visualisation software for our product. The amazing power of the PowerPC coupled with the surprising APIs of MorphOS, as well as its unique scheduler, enables us to develop much faster on that platform.
I think MorphOS has a bright future ahead, if only people will give it a chance, and realise how good it is.
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After the third time that I read that a company when bankrupt on the path to creating what is now MorphOS, I began to think that maybe this isn't such a good idea. But what do I know about business, I'm an engineer!
will it make the Internet faster.
MacOS Xe eBSD/ppc
LinuxPPC
MkLinux
NetBSD/ppc
OpenBSD/ppc
Fr
BeOS
Hell, even that old version of Windows NT.
Which one of these does *not* feature pre-emptive multitasking?!
Damn, too bad it doesn't run Photoshop. We all know running Photoshop is the way to unleash the real power of the PowerPC chip.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If this can get support from game companies it has a lot more chance of being successful.
It takes more than Solitaire to make an OS. They already have 3d card support, so if I can play counter-strike on one of these it would be worth giving it a shot.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
I just dont understand why you would use something like this. I mean, what possible profit generating nitch can this thing fill?
We as voters have given up essential liberty. We hoped to purchase a little temporary safety. We in fact deserve neither
So, pardon my ignorance, but what real world applications actually run on this OS? Please don't bombard me with GNU/development/programming stuff or 10 year old Amiga apps. Is there any compelling reason to use this other than the geek factor?
People want a nice smooth migration path. It's even OK to have a major inovation once in a while, as long as it still works with their older stuff (and without a huge performance penalty, which is why IA64 is going nowhere fast).
IBM tried to do away with the ISA bus in 1987, by pushing their proprietary MCA bus as an all-or-nothing proposition. Despite its technical merit, it failed to take over any of the PC market. EISA, VESA local bus, and PCI were more successful because they were provided as a gradual shift. "Look, you can have some ISA slots AND some PCI slots." Of course, now ISA slots have almost vanished, but the transition period was eight years.
EISA and VESA LB died because although they also offered a gradual transition, PCI had more technical merit. So technical merit does count for something, but it's not sufficient to justify an overwhelming degree of incompatibility.
Yes, so modern that it does the same stuff as all the other OSes out there. Oh, except actually having any application software. And it won't support all the 3D cards and USB devices, just a few that they've written drivers for. Great, if I want to run a few old Amiga games, it can do that. Woo hoo, I'm so excited.Pardon me if I don't rush right out to buy one. I think I'll stick to my dual Athlon box running Linux. It has support for 3D cards, USB, and SMP, and actually runs the applications I need.
Um, you just reposted the same links used in the article. In addition to the article, these 4 links are in the "Related Links" column at the top right corner of the page. Do we really need to see them a third time? Next time you post anonymously, do it for the right reason: you're redundant!
I think people should put more interest in OpenBeOS than some new Amiga-ish thing
Sure there is the Amiga name, but there is so much more that solidarity behind (Open)BeOS can offer, increased driver support, ports to other platforms, and more robust and numerous applications can be a boon to the OSS community. Yes, Linux and *BSD are nice, but as a desktop machine, I have yet to see anything (on x86) rival the grace of BeOS.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I'd like to run something non-x86 based.
What are the price differences though? If PPC for example is more, why bother if I'd be running the same operating system & GNU software base as I would with x86?
- temperature
- durability
- price now
- devaluation
A blog I run for the wealth
This is very interesting. Should be fun to check out.
But...what does "partial Amiga application binary compatibility" mean? The bouncing ball will be all white and lack the red checker pattern???
The only part which I found rather misleading, was the AmigaOS4 vs MorphOS part.
> It's very difficult to compare the implementations of
> the two as Amiga have never really shown much working in
> public yet
Actually quite alot has been showed to the public, however components weren't fully integrated yet. But with regard to these components quite alot was shown, and is known to the Amiga public already.
> We are one of the few companies in the world who design
> our own hardware and write our own OS (Amiga do
> neither).
Amiga does work on its own operating system and related technologies (AmigaDE/AA). But they have partnered with 3rd parties as well to build a new Amiga desktop computer.
Actually I greatly prefer partnerships instead of having everything under one hood.
Of course, now ISA slots have almost vanished, but the transition period was eight years.
Can anyone recommend any decent boards that still have ISA slots? Just one or two would be fine. 1.3Ghz or better (or thereabouts, soft limit), more than 2 IDE channels, and a few ISA slots. Find me a dual-capable board (Intel or AMD) and I'd be very happy. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I looked at the screenshots, and there are icons for Quake 2 and Quake 3. I don't know, but IIRC Quake 2 is never released for Amiga, nor is Quake 3. To me this seems a bit fake, like "Look, we can run native apps released for other platforms".
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
The only reason "cutting edge" drives the economy, and determines whether or not a technology lives or dies, is because the economy is driven by "bleeding idiots" who are manipulated by anyone that wants to stay ahead of the curve.
Every Amiga user I've talked to [one] can't stop raving about how wonderful it was, and how it got them interested in programming, and computers. Maybe we leave the bleeding idiots in the dust this time, and set our own trends...?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
..and that's not the Quake 3 icon. That's an icon for plain old ordinary Quake, and then Quake 2 right beside it.
Slagborr
the pre-emptively multi-tasking operating system
Is it just me or isn't pre-emptiveness kinda required for multitasking? "Well, I'd love to accept some keyboard input, but I'm afraid seti is busy now..." Smells like buzzwords to me.
Any mention of what license this OS uses? And if it's non-free, why on earth would I want to tie myself to using it when there are free(as in free to do whatever I want, free to not be controlled by a company's whims) OSes with more software support.
>MorphOS boots in under 3 second
Now this is an OS I'll be keeping my eye on. I wish it ran on old Mac hardware though...
---
Open Source Shirts
random thought... pertaining less to MorphOS and more to an insomniac's late night niggle post. hehe niggle... funny word. I think it is real. anyways... the gui is old, it is dieing... we need something less tiresome then double clicks and appearing windows. interaction needs to be efficient... not hollywoods "virtual reality", minority report style. no aqua interface. maybe instead of a mouse, our hands can be tracked... and really not have to leave the keyboard. hmmm.... imagine typing, and then lifting the right hand a couple inches above the keyboard and slightly outstretching the fingers, similar to the shape of a pistol and pushing objects in a mock three dimensional environment. picture a word processing cube- one side of the cube could be the document itself. another side could be temp clipboard space. type away at the keyboard, lift the left hand... spin the cube and punch the printer that is rendered on the "tools" side of the cube. to save, just punch the white typed document through the wall into the cube and push the entire cube to the side of the virtual space. The document was saved within the cube... would you like to play a game? lift the hands from the keyboard, with the palms to the air, grab the sphere that is dropping from the top of the monitor and punch a side of it to start up virtua girl... I dunno, what the hell I'm talking about. ahhh sleep...I'll try that !
Decaffeinated coffee? Kinda like kissing your sister. - Bob Irwin
EINAL. hmmm that really doesn't sound good.
Must be, You can see the flag waving. NASA claims to have used MorphOS on the moon.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm sorry, but the desktop looks dated and unprofessional. The icons, while detailed, lack a unifying theme other than photorealistic. OS9, OSX and BeOS have (about 99%) of their icons under their respective unified look. Dare is say it, it looks like a bunch of Linux icons I saw about 5 years ago.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Do note that everything you currently see within those screenshots is the ABOX environment. This ABOX uses a reimplemented Exec kernel (AmigaOS) on top of an "alien" (read non AmigaOS-like) kernel called Quark(/MorphOS), with this kernel(/OS) being completely hidden from the user. So currently this OS uses a two kernel approach, unlike AmigaOS4 which will use a new fully native ExecSG kernel with alot more added features (compared to the classic Exec or MorphOS' reimplemented AmigaOS3.1 Exec).
This approach could be largely compared to Wine, but is in use and approach more similar to the Amithlon AmigaOS emulator, as its hides the underlying technology completely from the user. In the case of Amithlon this is Linux.
For instance the directory structure, startup-scripts, components structure and features are currently the same or similar to the way the classic AmigaOS was designed. Instead of to the PPC native Ambient environment, MorphOS users are even able to use the classic AmigaOS3.1 Workbench environment on top of this MorphOS/ABOX environment. Regarding to what the QBOX environment will be like in usage (i.e. AmigaOS-like) in the future, very little is actually still known.
That this all is possible can mainly be attributed to the fact that the classic AmigaOS is extremely modular, for most OS components there are several 3rd party alternatives available. For example Workbench/Magellan/Scalos, Reaction/MUI or Picasso/Cybergraphix etc.
I went to see the comments and already knew what to expect..
.. There are word processors, image manipulators, etc, all released in the last few years.
:-)
1) It's going to die just like Be / whatever
2) Ok, so it'll run 10 year old software / a few old amiga games, so what?
So:
- If you say it'll die because of the same causes Be died, you're wrong. Be was totally new, but the new Amiga compatible systems build on an existing user base (albeit small) and existing application base. It's enough to get started and if the better CPUs allow developers to do more cool stuff, perhaps someone's head will turn.
- It won't run any old Amiga games without an Amiga emulator, because it doesn't have Amiga's custom chips! These STILL aren't anything that resemble your old A500s.
- Amiga software development has been going on all the time in the last 10 years we've been without Commodore. We even got a new OS for the 68k machines in 2000. Y2k wasn't 10 years ago! The latest update was in March this year.
- The web browser I use at home has the copyright date set at 2002, the IRC client I use at home has the copyright date set at 2002
Some of you are asking because you don't know, but some are just bashing without even wanting to find out. The latter is what gets to me.. What is wrong with you people? Go get laid or something..
-Jope
When can we expect ChasOS? Or even TonyHartOS?
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
well, you say that bebox failed, and it was very much ahead of the game.
then you say morphOS is on par with the rest of the guys. wouldn't that mean morphos has good chance?-D
cutting edge hw costs, unless it's pc, in which case it's cutting edge because it reads so on the fancy box with cyberman riding a cyber surfboard.
niche product, for niche people, cool anyways.
one of these products would make a worthy addition to anyones nerdy room, and you don't buy a mac because you want a ppc, you buy a mac because you want a mac.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Is this or is this not another new Linux distro ... ?
[SIG]Please tell me, is this line of any value to you?[/SIG]
I don't really get. Some of us here are either too pessimistic or too ultimative. And don't see the real mean of this news. And the news is: for years we haven't seen any major OS development. However, there are a few people who still break the ice. That's bad news with some light for hope.
For these last years we hanged over a few systems, majorly divided on three architectures: Windows/OS/2, *NIX, Apple/Mac. We had or have also such things like Amiga or Netware. However, we are trending into a world where we may get some weird mix Windows/*NIX. Frankly, in the bottom line, that's not bad. It's horrible. If you take into account the ideas, ideologies and theories about operating systems, which blossomed during the 70's and 80's, the Windows and *NIX architectures are pure crap. They were systems that look much like a temporary agreement between old and new theories. However, due to the fact that they became very popular, they seem to look tip-top for everyone. Unfortunately this popularity went so far that deeply froze the development of new systems.
Well, to some of us, it may look that we don't need any other systems and we should keep happy using and developing the present ones.Wrong. That's the same kind of behaviour one gets in a totalitarian regime: you're happy because you haven't seen through the Iron Courtain. This blindness can be dangerous as we may get very deep inside the crap. And when we realize that we need something else, it will be very difficult to do it, as we no longer have the experts, the theoretics, the engineers and developers capable of working from the zero line. BTW, this thing is already seen on many fields. If we do not support a stable path of development for such things, even if, presently, they would not be so bright and shiny like Windows or Linux, we surely will loose the capacity to have real choices in the future.
However, this MorphOS thing worries me on some details. The most is that, at their site, they not quite generous on giving information.
The Hardware:
www.pegasosppc.com
MorphOS Applications and links:
www.morphos-news.de
As far as I can remember, democracy requires an active citizenry who understand the issues before them, who engage in public dialogue, and who excercise their political power by engaging in the decision-making process (normally through voting, which is still a pretty weak system, IMHO).
Business requires a passive market of consumers who believe everything they are told, surrender their rights to whatever licences are associated with the product/service, and are willing to complain ineffectively to phone support drones from a third company. And the only effect they have on decision-making is by holding voting shares in the business.
Then again, the real difference is that in a democracy it is "one person, one vote". Hardly so in business, where it is "one dollar, one vote".
So, in your conception "democracy" allows for rule by the wealthy. Which, I guess, is pretty much the standard definition of democracy these days, so I'll shut up now.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I've looked at the screenshots; had some designers look at the screenshots.
;-) )
It looks hideous! If you want to be taken seriously, have a look around at other GUI operating systems. This reminds me of a rework of the original 1985 Amiga interface with mabled widgets. Definitely not good enough.
(on a positive note, the Amiga had a pretty cool OS for the rest, so the OS may be fairly neat once they fix the UI look
This is simply kewl, Amiga support ^_^ even partial =D Looks good also. Now i must say that i did not read the article, i just browsed the pics. But if they make it compliant enough and/or easy to port software to it, it seems nice competition to PPC powered market... Where's x86 support please ;)
Maybe we will see that someday also.
All new competition to OS market is very welcome in my humble opinion.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
No joke: it would be really great to see if someone could get MorphOS running on a TiVo.
Obviously, just to be able to say "well... I got tired of linux on my tivo, so i put morphos on" brings a certain amount of geek kudos.
Or should I go and get a life now?
--- My dad's political betting
On top os AmigaOS3.1? MorphOS does not use the AmigaOS3.1, it reimplements and extends it's APIs.
Huh? MorphOS related stuff, including the MorphOS website and some other stuff are hosted on Zapek's Vapor server that runs the Arcnet network and quite a few FTPs, as well as the vapor website itself and on Thendic's server.
Wow, a new Amiga OS (well, sorta). I wonder, do they still get Guru meditations? I won't buy it unless it displays Guru Meditation error messages. Maybe they could be haiku-type error messages displayed in a Guru's thought bubble. That would be cool.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
They have a hardware abstraction layer, which: "Makes MorphOS hardware independent"
So... Why are they designing their own hardware? Or do I not understand the business relationships involved? Maybe this is a hardware company, and morphos is the only thing that runs on it?
Then why not port something that already runs on PPC - one of the BSD's, Darwin or Linux?
Someone explain this, please. Because it seems pretty risky to gamble on both a new hardware platform and the acceptance of a new OS simultaneously. Isn't that what stunted and ultimately killed a young and promising Be?
RadeON drivers are in development.
This is on their to-do list for next year!
There's also new a site at http://pegasos-usa.com/ that is the new sales / information point for the US market.
Mike, Amiga Inc would have done the OS in-house if they had the money, but they didn't. Gateway wasn't interested in the OS either, or indeed the entire platform, which again was why they farmed it off. As a business decision the only reasons you do something like that is a) if you don't have the money to do yourself, or b) if it sc$$ws up then you have someone else to blame.
.. that unlike AOS4 it is available now.
People, your OS Biodiversity is INCREASING for the first time in years! A small company is making a modern GUIed os that boots in 3 seconds and has already gotten to the maturity plateau where you can read your e-mail and surf. Are you all so beaten down by the beast that you can't even dream of a new OS? Yes, you need to buy new hardware. The hardware platform you are running on (appologies to Mac, BE, and WAP slashdotters) is over 20 years old. You are still using Serial ATA, with Floppy drives and PS/2 ports in the back, aren't you? And your 20 year old DOS system has just been replaced with a 15 year old NT/XP system... Have you even looked at the folder heirarchies? People, we can do MUCH, MUCH better.
And yes, that means giving money to developers. Tightly knit, well-funded companies are capable of outperforming Open Source development in certain respects... It's just that they are so mired in money that many forgot how or why.
Did Be Fail? They wrote a truly modern and elegant OS, spawned new interface paradigms, failed to seize Microsoft's crown, and took over Palm. That sounds like a pretty good ride... we should all be so lucky. Palm OS 6 should bring forth the real fruits of the project.
The sales volume of a song does not determine its quality. If you really believe in code poetry, the same applies to us.
-C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Buy it now ! quickly ! in two year's time they will be bankrupt !
I think I'll buy two machines just so I have spare parts when the first one dies.
This is so great, I can hardly wait...
</sarcasm>
The icons are nice though, maybe after they die we can reuse them for Linux...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
While the icons of an OS say nothing about the quality of the OS, the icons and the widgets of this OS look like they're a labour of love. Beautiful.
If I had the extra money at the moment, I would buy one just for the OS.
SuperMicro makes a bunch of boards just like this, lots of minor variations.
Not sure of the exact model numbers, but a friend just got one this week with 2 isa slots, 3 pci slots, 2 64bit pci slots, agp and dual PIII sockets.
No Comment.
We don't have everybody the same sized hands.
I have tried the "ergonomic" keybarods and those were a pain for me (20+ y, and rheumatic tendence, if it changes anything). the keys are too far for me.
On the other hand, my bf can hardly manage to type on my laptops. the keys are too close to each other for him.
i am 16 - 20 hours a day at my computer, and have no pain. or, no pain since i use just the ibook keyboard. but i know that for many people it's not probably so comfortable; if you have big hands or fat fingers, you may want a bit bigger keyboard.
i saw a month ago a really small keyboard, and was thikning that it would do for me.
but where are the different sized keyboards? s, m and l.
if you move your fingers and hands how they move naturally, thus have a right sized keyboard, that'd resolve something.
sorry, i noticed aferr posting i was writing it in the wrong tab. :(
The Amiga is dead but this doesn't mean that I don't like the AmigaOS, I LOVE it and that's why I'm interested in MorphOS. The Amiga platform is dead, the AmigaOS is not just yet. And MorphOS is certainly not dead:) As long as it's fun to use and has the stuff I need everyday, I'll use it. If it doesn't, I already have a PC.
Please, Please no more Amiga threads. I loved the Amiga as much as any die hard fan out there but there is abosolutley no reason other than the different factor to go out and buy one.
The time that Amiga was to be inovative was when the company went bankrupt, they took 10 years and 3 companys to decide to use the PPC chip.
To little to late.
Whoever owns the Amiga should spend thier time and money on improving what is already out there.
Or build another game console. (yeah right)
Hey here is an idea! design a Sony Playstation board that plugs into a PCI slot and uses the exisiting CD rom dive and utilize the Memory and processing power. That would be a WOW factor of 10!
Do you think it would be easy to have wxWindows bindings?
That would surely increase the amount of new software available for it.
And the design of the toolkit is WAY more elegant and functional than Java can ever hope to be for GUI development.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Is it just me or does... "...it also features partial Amiga application binary compatibility!" sound a little like: "Jumbo Shrimp" or "Driving on a parkway" or "Parking on a driveway"
/* No Comment
Ehm, MorphOS consists of the Quark kernel (a micro/pico kernel mixture) on which, the A/Box, an AmigaOS reimplementation with MANY extensions and improvements, runs hosted. It's VERY cleanly implemented. It's main concern is to run PPC native applications but it includes Trance a 68k>PPC JiT that can produce code that runs at 50%-70% of the native PPC speed (tested by users, not some wierdo benchmark they did themselves). But, that's not it's future, they already plan the Q/Box, a new operating system that has nothing to do with AmigaOS, running on the Quark kernel. AmigaOS and PPC A/Box applications will still be able to be run in the A/Box, in parallel, like Classic in OSX. More information about all these are here.
That's a reply I wrote to some person that I believe that is interesting to read. -- Ehm, MorphOS consists of the Quark kernel (a micro/pico kernel mixture) on which, the A/Box, an AmigaOS reimplementation with MANY extensions and improvements, runs hosted. It's VERY cleanly implemented. It's main concern is to run PPC native applications but it includes Trance a 68k>PPC JiT that can produce code that runs at 50%-70% of the native PPC speed (tested by users, not some wierdo benchmark they did themselves). But, that's not it's future, they already plan the Q/Box, a new operating system that has nothing to do with AmigaOS, running on the Quark kernel. AmigaOS and PPC A/Box applications will still be able to be run in the A/Box, in parallel, like Classic in OSX. More information about all these are here. -- Feel free to reply with any questions, or flames;)
By knowing how it was developed and how helpful and open the core developers are, I can assure you that it's nothing like this.
*We are about to be crushed. He means Genesi (Pegasos/MorphOS) + Hyperion (AOS4) and Eyetech (AmigaONE) if they act as competitors and not partners. *Do you understand what needs to happen before this will? There is a Pegasos G4 now He talks about the Terrasoft TeronPX G4 and AmigaONE XE GE (the same board actually). *And, before you think this is a "group hug" thing He actually wants them to cooperate. *There is no leadership or vision and we need both fast or we can forget it. He talks about Amiga "We sell coupons to make a living" Inc.
Hi! I never see a Pegasos board. I've once seen a Morphos running on an PPC equipped Amiga. OK. I'm using Amigas for more than 10 years. If anything can reproduce the AmigaOS feeling, I think it will be great. And I'm not interested in yelling "That is a Mac, that can not use HPFS filesystem" and so on. If the current Morphos can do the same smooth multitasking even without memory protection (like AmigaOS - if you can code, your program will run smoothly without errors, if you're a lazy coder, your code will crash the whole system - yeah, you was needed to be a good coder!!!!! not like now, in the MacOSX - slowware -, or WindowXP(?) - slowware too days). That's all what i feel to say. CU all!
Ohh.. this'll be a bit longish. I may be ranting.
What I think most people don't realize is that PCs have transformed into a home appliance from the custom made tool built for a few. Yeah, now they're just like your common toaster, and people are not keen on buying 3000-slices-of-bread-simultaneously type industrial toasters. Not even the household toasters that survive, say, 40 hours of continued toasting, not even the ones that have extra controls aside the standard dial-and-lever.
_And that's just fine._ Only a toastery (if any such word exists) would reasonably want the industrial toaster. But what with the others?
Well, similarly, not everyone wants toasters to have toast hue control dials and auto humidity adjustment circuits built in. They don't want it because they don't need it, or they don't _know_ they need it. They may very well be unaware of their existence.
Now, to substitute 'computer' for 'toaster':
This is the reason, why piles of crap like ATA{33|66|100|133}, IDE, PCI, AGP, USB(2.0), x86, DDR, BurnFREE, you name the next one, exist. The majority of the market has no need for decent, let alone industrial quality.
Where I live, in Hungary, as of December 13 2k2, I know of _2_ hardware vendors, who have SCSI CD-RWs in stock. That's still fine, few people can afford and few people need them. But I'd hate to see them totally phased out, because I believe in them being a better solution.
But that's still just the industrial vs. home toaster question. Let's change 'dials' to 'software':
Personally, I don't blame major OSes. They have their market share, many people worked on them, putting in a lot of effort. All their design decisions, however, are geared towards greater profit and all their marketing strategies convey is that you don't need control, you need integration with _their_ control. How true: if you don't want the things they can't offer, you're satisfied. Hint: "Please wait while the *nstallSh*eld W*zard initializes to _guide you through the rest of the setup process_" or anything similar...
As I see it, as long as alternatives exist, there is not much to worry about. BeOS, MorphOS, AmigaOS, Linux and the likes show that there are still people who think they want more of a computer, even if countless others - who fail to recognize the window close button in any environment other than Windows - live happily with their box.
My personal view is that there are no 'minority' OSes, just 'segment' OSes, with each taking its rightful place. Oh, I do have my preference, but that is quite irrelevant here.
I believe in computers being a healthy 50/50 mix of hardware and software. I have yet to see the computer which satisfies my needs, or at least which allows me to satisfy my needs, and I want to try anything that comes by, so I am overly happy when I see anything new to me. The real 'nerd/geek factor' is, IMHO, the drive for something better without a tradeoff or pitfall.
If you realise something's amiss or are just plain unsatisfied, you're halfway to understanding this.
I'm not pessimistic neither optimistic about Pegasos/MorphOS. I will try it and make a decision when I have the chance and I recommend everyone to do so. It will do good to me and to the project, too. Be open!
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An extremely funny signature is left an exercise to the reader.