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MorphOS 2.5 Released, Supports More Old Macs
An anonymous reader writes "The MorphOS Team has released version 2.5 of its PPC computer-only operating system. The new version extends its support of the PPC Mac range to include the eMac, which was the 2002-2006 Mac model consisting of a CRT monitor and computer in a single housing. MorphOS previously and continues to support the PPC Mac mini, as well as the Pegasos and Efika niche computers (all discontinued but available second-hand). MorphOS includes a web browser and TCP/IP stack and a few traditional baseline OS-associated apps among its features. Further software is available from a range of online repositories. MorphOS 2.5 comes on a bootable 30-minute demo live CD ISO which may also be installed. The ISO is available for free download by anyone. The 30-minute limit is removed by online purchase of registration/key file which is available for a limited period for the sum of 111 euros to celebrate the launch of this version."
This is quite clearly a sales pitch - am I the only reader left thinking, 'well so what'?
Its all well and good keeping old computers running (providing the OS is secure enough), but I for one feel that this is neither news for nerds, nor stuff that matters.
And I'm not even clicking the link to vindicate the posting, click-through-wise.
People'd use this for the same reasons they'd use BeOS and ReactOS. You're right, though -- they'd probably be able to get actual work done with a Linux distribution.
Well, MorphOS is one of the few Amiga-compatible OSes that remain that can run natively ... MorphOS has some interesting concepts by itself ... it does have some applications. I used it on Efika for a while ... the only thing about MorphOS I came to dislike was the lack of virtual memory and the fact that it was closed-source. But certainly, you're right ... Linux and even the BSDs are so good nowadays that there's barely a reason to use MorphOS (let alone AmigaOS 4) except for people who want (or need) to run an Amiga-like OS natively. The speed is certainly impressive. You'd get a lot of bang for the buck if everything related to it wasn't so expensive (the hardware, the OS, some of the software). There was an Intel-based clone of AmigaOS once but Amiga Inc. forced it off the market. Another aspect speaking for it is the simplicity of writing device drivers. So it can have some applications in the embedded area where time-to-market and speed are more important than price.
For $150-ish dollars the same price as the OS, you could easily buy a cheap, second-hand x86 computer and do more. Or heck, why not just get PPC versions of Linux?
Unless MorphOS has some killer feature like the ability to emulate Windows perfectly, or something that Linux doesn't have, I'm not seeing the point in wasting hundreds of dollars on software that nothing really runs on.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
you could consider AROS to be intel-based although it runs on other architectures :)