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."

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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?

My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

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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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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'.

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?

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.. :-)

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.

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