So whats on the horizon for MOS?

[takemehomegrandma]

I wasn't sure which forum to put this in. Any ideas or hints at what is on the horizon for Morph OS? Anything exciting in the future or any broad roadmap of stuff?

There has been several hints of various developments for upcoming versions. It has also been hinted that PowerBook support won't come in v2.8. G5 support is *very* far off. If it will come at all. To quote MorphOS developer jacadcaps: "It's been said many times already, but let me say this again: do not buy hardware with Morphos in mind unless support for it is officially announced on morphos-team.net!"

MorphOS 2.8 is mostly likely going to feature a disc burning application, that will burn/copy discs and make ISO's. It has already been shown publicly on various occasions.

What has also been shown is the "updated 3D drivers, reaching 140fps in Quake III running at 800x600 on an humble Mac mini. That's roughly 50% better than last year, that in turn was already 100% faster than what we have in the public version of MorphOS." (meaning: 3x as fast as current MorphOS! Picture.)

Improvements in Ambient, like a new dock system with several new features. Personally, I'd *really hope* for that cool "video-preview-in-icons" feature that was shown years ago would materialize (where you apparently hold the mouse pointer over the icon of a video file, and you get a nice preview of the video in the icon), although I'm not holding my breath. Apparently that one was put on ice long time ago.

[takemehomegrandma]

They don't publish a road map. That is both good and bad. For the current market, it is probably mostly good. They have suggested PowerMac G5 and Power Book support is upcoming. I tried out the demo of MOS 2.7 recently on a G4 PowerMac and it is pretty impressive. I came very close to registering, very close indeed. I recently told myself that I am giving up on all retro computing. If they release G5 support in the near future with a couple more features, I may have to back out of that statement. MorphOS is really looking good. The OS is polished and pro looking, plus it just works.

Did you try "Pack Ultimate" for it?

It's a very quick and easy way of getting a pre-configured system up and running, with lots of applications installed, system settings configured, etc! Perfect if you want to really see the strengths of the system in a quick and easy way, without spending an eternity of setting things up yourself (which you will hardly do when using a demo).

Here is a cut'n paste from the "readme":

Code: [Select]

Hello,

I am Papiosaur, webmaster of website www.meta-morphos.org

I present you Ultimate pack v1.6.4 for MorphOS 2.7.

This pack aims to promote applications dedicated to MorphOS.

You must install it just after a new installation of MorphOS 2.7 (registered or not)

This pack is not official and always in version beta.



Here is a list of preistalled software :

- WEB:
AmiRSS
OtrMUI
WallGet
WBRSS

-Communicate:
AmiGG
AmIRC
Jabberwocky
PolyGlot
SabreMSN
SimpleMail

-Audio:
AudioEvolution demo
AminetRadio
CodeAudio
DigiRoller
ExciterPlayer
SongPlayer
UADE

-CD-DVD:
CD Tools
FreeDB
FryingPan demo version
Ripper

-Development:
Scout
FileX
SimpleCat

-Desktop:
April
ClockToy
CLONCK
CRABUM
Dragon
Elephant
Meridian
MisterBanana
PolyNET NG
Wetter
ZoomIt

-Files:
AMUIDiff
MultiRen
R
Rival
SimpleFind
Voodoo-X

-Hardware:
PCITool
TopCPU

-Log:
SnoopDos

-Monitor:
GammaMeter

-Network:
AmiTradeCenter
dNETc
GiftMUI
MLDonkey
RC-FTPd
RDesktop
SmartSMBFS
TwinVNC
VNC Server

- Office:
AntiWord
GhostScript
MUIBase
ODG-Viewer
PointRider
SCANdal
XML-Viewer

-Orga:
CManager
PolyOrga
SAB

-Paint:
TVPaint

-Picture
Gallerius
PicShow
PtpDigCam
WAManager

-Text:
NowinED
VisualGuide

-Video:
BlueHD
FlashPlayer
MPlayer
RadioScript
ScreenRecorder
Titler
Tubexx

- Commodities
Altabber
KidLock
Lucy
PointIt
Scube
sZoom
Unmask


You can lauch Amiga software and games with contextual menu (dms, adf, executable) copying the contents of disk Workbench 3.1 to
sys:Applications/Emulators/UAE/HardDiskS/Workbench/ (Attention, do not replace startup-sequence file).
You must also copy ROM 1.3 image file for Amiga 500 (named kick13.rom) and ROM 3.1 image file for Amiga 1200 (named kick.rom) to
sys:Applications/Emulators/UAE/Roms/

IceFoldersPack and PlexiFoldersPack, Wallpapers and also mimetypes have been realised by Patbest.
You can download others Icons, Wallpapers and mimetypes on his website : http://amigaos0morphos.olympe-network.com.

A big thanks to the developpers of software available in this pack and of course to the MorphOS Team for MorphOS ;-)

Don't hesitate to support them.

If somebody want to contribute to the evolution of the pack Ultimate, the is no problems ;-)

You can send me suggestions and remarks to my address mail : (removed by me)

Thanks

Papiosaur
You'll find a download link in this news item:

http://www.morphzone.org/news/1845.html

Also, don't forget to download the very latest OWB for it (and also don't forget to really read the documentation in order to get the most out of it):

http://www.morphzone.org/news/1849.html



(EDIT: Oh, and I wouldn't really consider MorphOS to be "retro". That's certainly not its ambition. Retro is the Classic Amiga HW (or UAE), OS's, games and apps *of the past*. MorphOS clearly aims to be a real OS you can use for real stuff, and although it lacks some features normally seen on desktop OS's (like memory protection, etc) and some apps (office and flash is at the top of my mind), it doesn't make it "retro". I'd instead call it an "Enthusiast OS for Amigans, that actually can be used for real stuff in 2011, but in an Amiga environment"! )

[takemehomegrandma]

I know the mac mini's are all the rage, but what other options are worth considering?

Powermacs can be either cheaper or faster (depending on model and configuration) and they are expandable with their big boxes.

eMacs can be found practically for free.

I like my Mini though (1.5GHz/64MB VRAM), and wouldn't trade it for any of the above!

[takemehomegrandma]

whats the least hardware that it'd still be worth running it on?

Depends what you'll do. Some people are happily running MorphOS on their 400MHz "G2" Efika's, and you'd actually be surprised how fast and snappy runs is even on such a low spec machine (although you shouldn't expect to be able to play x264 720p streams!)

Personally, this is the least HW I'd consider it worth running it on (note that this is not the most current version of MorphOS):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TomrykR0AIc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBl_yfGHm34

[takemehomegrandma]

Quite soon there will be MOS for x86 cpus and then...

I have a feeling that ARM would be a better option...

[takemehomegrandma]

Any news or talk about wireless support? Thats one of the bigger things bugging me.
 
I am very tempted to jump in despite my reservations.

Been digging a bit about this, and while I am no Andreas Wolf (i.e. human web spider (cheers Andreas! ) ), here is the latest thing *I* could find about this issue. It's from the Bad Bramstedt Meeting in 2010:

"- About the releases for other Apple hardware: ... That said, he told the PowerBook G4 version basically ony lacks graphics acceleration support for R300 chipset and wireless support. The first one (both 2D for enhanced displays and 3D) is a must have, while the second is really a nice to have for a portable, but nobody is working on it right now and so a first PowerBook release might eventually happen even without the wireless supported. Frank used his PowerBook G4 as his only machine during the 2 days and it seemed stable and nice."

http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7532&post_id=79108&viewmode=flat&sortorder=0&showonepost=1

Ah well...

But I agree with you, and IMHO this is a core feature of any 2011 OS. But who knows, the MorphOS Team has surprised us Amigans many times before by introducing exciting new stuff!