MorphOS 3.0 Released: Refusing To Let the PPC Desktop OS Die Gracefully

An anonymous reader writes "Version 3.0 of MorphOS has been released. It's the independent PPC OS designed for outdated Apple systems like G4 PowerBooks (5,6; 5,7; 5,8; or 5,9) and eMacs (1.25 GHz/1.42 GHz) and PPC Mac Minis, and some G4 PowerMac models (depends on graphics hardware). It further runs on discontinued and niche Genesi desktop systems (Pegasos) and the stunted 128-megabyte-of-RAM tiny Efika. MorphOS is a nice-looking, low-resource, and nimble OS that can't match the capabilities of current Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its installation/live CD is free without caveat, and runs for 30 minutes at a time, as many times as you like. You may purchase MorphOS to remove the time limit. A particular weakness of MorphOS is its lack of support for wireless networking."

Comments

Another weakness

[twilight30]

... might be the price. Good luck, I guess.

Re:Another weakness

[Dexter Herbivore]

2 words - Why bother? Alternatively just one word - Why?

Re:Another weakness

[Anonymous Coward]

pay more for the OS than the obsolete computer is worth.

what's wrong with running debian on these things?

Re:Another weakness

[Anubis IV]

Seriously. I have an old PowerBook G4 that I still use on a weekly basis to run a particular piece of old software, but I thought it might be fun to fool around with a different OS for a few bucks. At €111.11, it's well beyond the "let's have some fun with something different" range.

Re:Another weakness

[Bert64]

Yes, if it was free or at least very cheap people might consider using it, but at 111 euros? That's more than the price of OSX or many versions of Windows...
And being such a niche product, i doubt it will even tempt anyone to release a cracked version.

Creating a niche OS that only runs on obsolete hardware, and costs more than that hardware itself does? That seems to be an extremely poor business model...

If it was free or dirt cheap, people might be tempted in it to breathe new life into old hardware... But at that price, you might as well just buy some newer more capable hardware.

As for the lack of wireless support, the changelog for 3.0 cites one of the biggest new features as "PowerBook support for 1.67GHz models"... So a laptop with built in wifi, but you can't use wireless on it?

Re:Another weakness

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 2012. Any OS that costs money should have wifi support.

How nice that you think so...

http://drdos.com/products/dr-dos/

http://www.ecomstation.com/ does have limited WiFi support -- there's a number of old 802.11b chipsets supported. So maybe that doesn't count, but I'd hardly call that acceptable in 2012 -- FOR GENERAL-PURPOSE OSES FOR NEW HARDWARE.

Unfortunately for you, your thoughts != reality. Y'know, reality, where real businesses need to (or find it cheaper to) run real legacy apps from pre-WiFi times, in the same non-WiFi use cases for which the apps were originally developed. Where "OS for legacy apps" is a real thing, and has different requirements than for new desktop OSes.

Can you not conceive that the OS market is not one giant mass of identical requirements? If you can, why do you think WiFi should be the one thing that transcends such divisions? And no "because I say so", which is all I've heard from you so far, isn't a good answer.

Re:Another weakness

[Anonymous Coward]

Liar.

"Because in any discussion involving Linux/FOSS, Burson Marsteller astroturfers have to plant a horror story about Linux. It's part of their contract.
Check back in on any of the past stories and you'll find the same thing - a barely tangential anecdote about how Linux was unusable for their sockpuppet because of some exaggerated flaw.
Best response is to ignore them, and to carry on using the very fine tools FOSS provides without financing the creeps who're destroying online tech discussion."

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2906441&cid=40272709

I would say..

[gallondr00nk]

free without caveat

only being able to use the free version for 30 minutes at a time is a pretty fucking large caveat.

Why not just put it in the body...

[anlprb]

It is Amiga compatible for those who don't know.

Re:Why not just put it in the body...

[MrHanky]

A lot of people (unconsciously or not) still feel threatened by the Amiga. It's interesting to see how the revisionism of history and denial of the Amiga's existence and what it represented evolves, if it were only not for these pesky hobbyists who are still hacking at it. After all, you cannot learn from history if it's not even there to learn from...

No, not denial of the Amiga's existence. People just want to forget about the annoying cult that made Apple evangelists seem like resonable people in comparison.

Facepalm

[jones_supa]

Again one of those websites which are sprinkled with links having only the text "here" or "this page". Go there, see here, this, that, everywhere. You don't as quickly see where the links are pointing, and it kind of feels like pushing the reader around. Just for a comparison...

For installation instructions, please go here. The free trial version is available for download on this page.

To get started, please view the installation instructions. The free trial version is available for download.

So much nicer to read.

Re:FreeBSD

[damnbunni]

In my experience as a Certified Amiga Nut, most users of MorphOS are Amiga nuts who are pissed off with Amiga, Inc's mishandling of the IP, or are pissed at Hyperion Entertainment, so they won't use AmigaOS 4.1, or else they really want a PPC Amiga laptop (as opposed to just running WinUAE on a PC laptop, and getting excellent 68040-based Amiga compatibility.)

It's a niche of a niche.

Pessimistic subject much?

[cgenman]

This is the most unnecessarily pessimistic summary that I've ever seen. It should be: "Oh look, this experimental Amiga based OS has just updated! Isn't that kitchy and fun?"

Why focus on the lack of wireless networking, running on Power PC (Which still deserves respect as an amazing processor you witless bastard kids), or having a cost of about 1/20th of a computer? It's a custom kernel underdog operating system written for unique and impressive platform. If that doesn't get your juices rolling, turn in your geek card.

Re:Pessimistic subject much?

[H0p313ss]

This is the most unnecessarily pessimistic summary that I've ever seen. It should be: "Oh look, this experimental Amiga based OS has just updated! Isn't that kitchy and fun?"

Why focus on the lack of wireless networking, running on Power PC (Which still deserves respect as an amazing processor you witless bastard kids), or having a cost of about 1/20th of a computer? It's a custom kernel underdog operating system written for unique and impressive platform. If that doesn't get your juices rolling, turn in your geek card.

20 years ago it was cool. And it was cool for a couple of years, very very cool.

But your average cell phone today is more powerful in every way, hell the iPhone is running a micro-kernel and Android phones are Linux.

Amiga died, mourn it if you like, but please stop trying to drag the rest of geekdom into your sad little world.