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."

Comments

That's Great...

[Quaoar]

...if the guy announcing a PPC product isn't wearing a turtle-neck and saying "oh and...one last thing," I don't care.

FileSystems availible

[AndreAtlan]

Will this one offer HPFS file systems?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Multitasking

[Comster]

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?

Re:Multitasking

[Jace of Fuse!]

While that is funny, I don't think anybody who has ever used an AmigaOS back while it was still reasonably modern would ever be able to honestly complain about it's multitasking capabilities.

It was quite an efficient system. I personally ran a 10 line BBS off of a single 28 mhz computer, and it was often packed full of users that were doing a combination of playing games, chatting, uploading or downloading. The single system was running the BBS software, any of the online program files for the users were running, and hosting a very large mud game. It also had FidoNet feeds and was very frequently tossing large message packages and network mail. The system never slowed down and had months of uptime only interupted by power failures. Not bad for 28mhz and 16 megs of ram.

I have been debating buying a new PPC system to run MorphOS and or the new AmigaOS on. Not as a main system, of course, but as a neat toy to poke around with. I already run several other operating systems, and I hate them all equally. I can name less reasons not to toy with new operating systems than I can to remain exclusive to the ones I'm already using.

It's not like my other computesr are going to get jealous if I use another OS.

to paraphrase an old Dilbert strip

[Anonymous Squonk]

Where Dilbert creates a device to convert pocket lint into a parsley substitute:

"That's absolutely brilliant, and completely unmarketable."

Here are some related links...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll save everybody some time and post some related links:

• MorphOS Feature List
• MorphOS Info
• OSNews Interview
• More on Amiga

Posting anonymously so noone thinks I'm a karma whore.

My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

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.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: i am sllort [slashdot.org] and here's why i post AC [slashdot.org]
subscribe [slashdot.org] to /.'s premiere meta publication, Trollback [slashdot.org]

iD8DBQE994YeKpz2COjVE3YRAjj8AKC7crHc87aNKmhVY7jW aX ELQlrKHQCgszrq
iUKD4oiIGlSH3OMEdrWYNbk=
=mTZl
- ----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Yea but,

[Kurt Russell]

will it make the Internet faster.

Re:Yea but,

[falzer]

Quoting simpsons at length without getting modded up as funny... that's a paddlin'.

No Photoshop?

[User 956]

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.

A question that I need answered

[AndreAtlan]

I just dont understand why you would use something like this. I mean, what possible profit generating nitch can this thing fill?

Re:A question that I need answered

[Kurt Russell]

"I just dont understand why you would use something like this"

Are we not Nerds?

Applications, please

[tinrobot]

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?

Re:Applications, please

[axxackall]

You are right. Nothing's there. I've asked the question about applications on other forums and the best answer I've got: MorphOS runs most of the Amiga software. There are over 25,000 amiga titles out there. Trust me, you won't feel the "lack of applications".

Hmm, I guess those people used to count files, rather then features. But I see something positive in Morphos and Beos. At least now when someone points to Linux and calls it a geek factor we can answer: Linux is not a geek factor, it's a real OS with real applications for real business tasks. Beos and Morphos are a geek factor. Personally, I think that Macosx is also a geek factor, just very professional and proprietary one. (here is more about geeks)

As for freeware (GPL and BSDL) applications, many of them are still in a geek stage. But other many have already achived a very good level of stability and usefulness (especially, when they are designed and developed, not just evolved). Today I cannot imagine my work without (X)emacs, GCC, Apache, Python, GIMP, OpenOffice, Mozilla and other applications doing real-world tasks. And that is exactly we are looking in any new desktop OS we are introduces.

Can it do it? Not yet? Never will? Don't bother me again.

New platform

[Eric Smith]

MorphOS/Pegasos is a brand new platform (the last full OS+HW platform released was 7 years ago with Be's BeBox)

And it's doomed to failure, just like Be, because people don't want another new, different, mostly incompatible platform. They want improved software for the platform they've already got, or improved hardware that's still compatible. Otherwise people would have ditched PCs and Windows many years ago.

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.

so it is very modern and it has support for 3D cards, USB, SMP

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.

while it also features partial Amiga application binary compatibility!

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.

Re:New platform

[Julian Morrison]

Who cares about what "people want"? Business isn't democracy, it's about finding a niche. If these folks can find buyers, and if they don't stupidly overextend themselves dotcom style, then they could keep ticking along despite never eclipsing the existing OSes.

As a Be advocate of sorts,

[zephc]

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.

Re:Fake screenshots?

[Svenne]

The source code for Quake 2 was relesed months ago. There has already been several ports of Q2 to AmigaOS, so there's no reason to think it hasn't been ported to MorphOS too.

Quake 3, on the other hand... Hmmmmm...

Desktop critique

[zephc]

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.

About the current MorphOS/ABOX

[Mike Bouma]

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.

Ah! The crowd has fulfilled it's expectations!

[vjouppi]

I went to see the comments and already knew what to expect..

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 .. There are word processors, image manipulators, etc, all released in the last few years.

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.. :-)

English Joke

[Chembryl]

But is the mascot a little brown plasticine man?

When can we expect ChasOS? Or even TonyHartOS?

What's up with you people?

[Ektanoor]

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.

Re:What's up with you people?

[starseeker]

Well, there is GNU Hurd. I guess you could argue that's old too, but the concept is exceptionally powerful and the new L4 development efforts can be utilized (in theory, at least.) Innovation is slow. But things aren't completely frozen.

Re:What's up with you people?

[HiThere]

I am reminded of Stephen J. Gould's "Wonderful Life". In the early days there was a vast radiation of phyla, to a diversity not since seen. Then something really bad happened, and almost everything died. There were some survivors, though. We are their descendants.

The interesting point here, is that there appear to have been no new phyla created since the cambrian extinction. Appearantly the startup costs are too high. (All those inefficiencies that need to be fixed! Garbage collectors to redesign. Now to tune the scheduling alogrithm. Etc.)

I suppose that one could claim that anything new doesn't need to fight a lot of competitors, because MS has eliminated the competition. Well... except for Palm (a new phylum), Apple (a survivor), the *nix groups (a surviving phylum that seems to have split.. sort of like the insects and the arachnids and the millipedes).

As I look this over, it looks like anything new is probably going to need to establish itself where it isn't facing competition from the established groups. (Which is probably the reason for no new phyla.)

OTOH, splits from existing groups into new species happen constantly. So you see Windows CE, and Linux for palmtops, etc.

This analysis is not only bad news for MorphOS, it's bad news for the Hurd. The Hurd has the advantage that it's got a devoted coterie of developers who aren't planning to make any money from it anyway. And I consider it very important because of absurd patent law possibilities. It's the suspenders that you wear with your belt. But what is the point of the MorphOS?

Looking at their web site, the MorphOS is a receration of some work from Commodore. Not a bad idea, but...
I'm not sure of the license. If I guessed, I'd guess GPL, but I didn't see it mentioned on the web site. The closest thing was some notes about porting gcc. And I didn't see anything important enough about it to justify putting a lot of time and effort into it (though obviously some people do). Still....

This could have a place as another insurance project. It runs on ppc instead of intel, so if intel commits firmly to palladium, this would be a third choice for a non-palladium system (Mac, Linux, and MorphOS). Of course, that's ignoring the ARM systems, but the arm is a relatively weak processor. And it's ignoring a bunch of other minor players, that might suddenly become more important. But if you can, it's best to have your insurance in place *before* the accident.

For PPC... will it run on my TiVo?

[rcs1000]

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?

Cyberdiversity

[Chris Canfield]

I was going to write a parody of all the negative posts here, but this situation is just so gut-wrenching that I can't make fun of it.

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

Re:Cyberdiversity

[Pengo]

Well put,

A while ago I read a post here on slashdot that has stuck with me. Had to do with Slackware, and them not having the success that RedHat and SuSE, even Mandrake have had.

Basically the poster has said that just because their definition of success (being Patric & Co. at Slackware) isn't the same as say, RedHats, doesn't mean that they are not a success. Reaching their goal is what defines success. I found the original author of that comment quite insightful and really tweaked my perspective on things after that.