MorphOS 3.0 released - PowerBook G4 support and new pricing

[takemehomegrandma]

in regards of misleading, where, please, can I obtain that "AmigaOS +"?

Depends on what you mean? What *I* meant was some kind of common term describing all the developments post 3.9 for enhancing the 68k Amigas (including UAE, and indeed (if it ever will get here) the NatAmi) during the past 12 years, that either replaces (Open Source) or extends the features (or both) of the original OS, in parts, or as a whole. Some people are still interested in working on the 68k part of the community, Amikit is proof of that, and AROS 68k. An eventual NatAmi would be pointless if it didn't update parts of the OS to utilize the "new chips", and some obviously see a point in having an open source 68k OS, for various reasons. Not everyone considers 68k to be dead and replaced by OS4; it's not like Amiga "moved" to OS4 (or MorphOS), that's more of a parallel thing. The real Amigas are still here, there is *still* some development going on, maybe not very visible, but I really don't think it would be fair to neglect this in a chart aiming to describe the evolution and the situation of the Amiga platform at large.

BTW, What do you mean by "misleading"? If anything, it's that *other* picture that gives the false impression that all Amigans natural evolution path and interest would go from 3.1 to 3.5 to 3.9 to "4.0" in a straight line of descendants (and putting MorphOS and AROS aside BTW(!!)) and leaves no room for a *continuation* of the 68k, which obviously isn't the case! Many Amigans couldn't care less about OS4 (or MorphOS, or PPC, or x86 AROS or whatever), they think Amiga is 68k. Again, OS4 is more of a "parallel" thing, interesting to some, but it *has not* replaced the 68k Amigas if looking at the community as a whole, not by far, and AFAIK (and as I said above) development work is being put into *all four* parts of the community.

[takemehomegrandma]

id say amiga os+ is clearly rather meant for additionally patched 68k system.

Patched and somewhat evolved and developed (unofficially) in an decentralized and ad-hoc manner, by several independent entities, for the past 12 years and still going on today. The first image (who obviously someone put on wikipedia :rolleyes:) tries to make it look like 3.x ended with Hyperions 4.0 release. For many people, 4.0 was never a continuation, but some kind of a *fork* on different hardware they never could connect to, hence always irrelevant to their Amiga interests, and various developments has continued (as mentioned above) on the 68k Amiga platform that indeed never ended, still goes on today, and that wikipedia picture does not show this. There are four directions in the Amiga community (listed in the order they appeared): Amiga (68k), AROS, MorphOS and OS4, and OS4 could very well be the least significant of them all; so in short: that wikipedia image has it completely screwed up!

[takemehomegrandma]

It's not a trivial job to write a driver, especially if there is very little info about the device. There really aren't that many in this community who can do it properly, and then there's always the timeissue.. many of the capable ones are already fully occupied. Ambient is already opensourced so that's one way to support development.

Indeed, and drivers are at no use if you don't have any underlying technology in the OS to handle the kind of devices in question. A driver for a soundcard would be no fun without the AHI technology, a driver for a USB2 card would be no fun without an USB stack, a driver for some ethernet chip/card would be no fun without a TCP/IP stack. AFAIK there is much more to it than just a driver for the wireless HW to be developed, you must also create the technology that can utilize the drivers in a sensible way. MorphOS 3.0 made great progress by incorporating a lot of essential laptop technologies, like multi-finger touch pad, battery management, CPU throttling, back-light control, energy profile management, etc. Much of this work probably represents technologies that can be reused on other laptops, using other drivers.

Many people screamed for powerbook support in MorphOS, many wanted it now *despite* they knew WiFi wasn't ready. And there was *no secret* about the WiFi status, it has been in the open for a *very* long time, so why act surprised? I think the MorphOS team did the right thing to release it now. You can very much use the powerbooks for Internet, through cable, and all other essential laptop technologies (except bluetooth and WiFi) is present, as is all the benefits from MorphOS 3.0, the entire MorphOS with all the bells and whistles is there, it's not like it would be something completely unusable like some people wants to picture it.

Anyway, it's not like MorphOS 3.0 was all about Powerbook now, right? I don't have a powerbook, but there is so much new and improved stuff in MorphOS 3.0 that makes it worthy the version bump even without the new HW support. I think it's nothing short of amazing! :cool:

This is a safe claim: MorphOS 3.0 represents the *peak* of the entire Amiga evolution, all flavors/colors counted.

In short: MorphOS 3.0 is Amiga done right!

But don't take my word for it, go get some cheap Mac G4 and try for yourself!

[takemehomegrandma]

I was under the impression that OS4 was the only one of the three that actually used the OS 3 sources, though...?

Here is the thing: The source code for Amiga OS was created over a long period of time time using several different and more or less exotic programming languages and 68k assembler that were popular at the time (and this was a different time altogether), and it was very much hardcoded for 68k CPU's and the Amiga custom hardware (the HW was the point back then, the OS just a HW enabler). This is the "Amiga OS source code", but what OS4 is based on, is a *rewrite* of the Amiga OS source code in GCC, a cleanup so to say, with portability in mind thus stepping away from being hardcoded for A1200 etc. The real "Amiga OS source code" with the original toolchain etc that commodore used for the various OS components, should output OS 3.1 binaries that would be *identical* as those you can find on any 3.1 workbench disk, you should be able to do a CRC check and they would be one and the same. If you would compile the GCC *rewrite* of it however, it would *NOT* output identical binaries. Simply because it's a rewrite, for a different compiler, it's simply not the same sources anymore! The point of the rewrite was to create an OS with an identical Amiga API that could actually be used for further development and targeting HW beyond the Commodore Amigas that were already aging, and here is the point — in no way does this differ from MorphOS or AROS. Hence the "somewhat artificial as an argument (and not entirely true, technically speaking)" comment above. The API is the key, and AROS, MorphOS and OS4 have all made their own respective re-implementations of the OS in GCC to achieve this, at "alien" CPU's even! Maybe having access to the Amiga OS source code made the rewrite process easier and faster? Or maybe not? Because it's a fact that MorphOS has far better Amiga compatibility than OS4, and it was here long before OS4! That's how relevant that "sources" argument is in practice...

[takemehomegrandma]

I'll ask you again TMHG, have you even tried OS4?

I had a AmigaOne XE with OS4, but that was indeed a long time ago. Won't ever happen again, I swear!

You're the same guy that said 4.1u2 and 4.1u3 "didn't work for anyone"

More like OS4.1.3 was the most bug-ridden release of OS4 ever, which it was (this far at least). Occasionally you can *still* see posts from people trying to install OS4.1.4 and stumbles and fall on the OS4.1.3 release once they gets there (since you on OS4 have to first install the OS, and then the whole sequel of separate updates, one after another). OS4.1.4 was released to correct  OS4.1.3, but to reach it, you'll have to make it through 4.1.3 in the update process. Works great for some, but far from everyone.

You also claimed that incremental updates on Windows cost money, so you could fluff the MOS pillows with the free 3.0 update

Eh, no ("Windows", WTF?!) but OS4.0 cost money, OS4.1 cost money and OS4.2 will cost money, and yet Hyperion boasted about "free upgrades as always" or something when they made some 4.1.x release, like it would be a generous deal. I bought MorphOS 2.0, paid once, and have got MorpOS 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and now 3.0, later 3.1, 3.2, 3.x, etc. And just for fun, you could compare what you actually got in those updates, both for OS4 and for MorphOS, and how much it cost you.

I never paid a thin dime for *ANY* incremental windows update.

Neither have I...

lying about the competition ...  Jehovah's Witness ... Yada yada

Someone posted a picture from Wikipedia that obviously is erroneous and misleading, I talk about why. Someone posts a link with the usual "but it doesn't have the sources", and I talk about the sources. Someone made a post that MorphOS 3.0 would be worthless on Powerbook because it doesn't have WiFi yet, and I commented on that.

If you don't like what I have to say, don't read it. In threads, topics of discussion can evolve, that's natural in discussions, but this post of yours was the first really useless and completely off topic one in this thread this far. Utterly pointless. Congratulations!

[takemehomegrandma]

if Macs don't make you puke you can run MOS however Mac is worse than Atari computers Yada Yada Yada

Mac computers, just like any other computers, are made with various components soldered onto a PCB, that's what Mac's are, that's what every other computer on the planet is.

The minute you install MorphOS on a Mac, it stops being a Mac and turns into a MorphOS box. It's the OS that defines the HW. You aren't using Mac then, you are using MorphOS, the furthest evolved, most full-featured, most stable and best Amiga compatible Next Generation Amiga system in existence on this planet!

[takemehomegrandma]

I just wanted to stop for a while and reflect about what actually made it to the 3.0 release, and what didn't, based on early communications about MorphOS future from autumn 2011. This was the list presented at Alchimie 111111 (translation mainly by google translate):

GREEN = Things they planned for the 3.0 release
ORANGE = Things planned for later 3.x releases

MorphOS 3.x
Top new features planned for future versions 3.x:

• Support the PowerBook G4 (models 5.6 to 5.9).
• AGP transfers on platforms that support it (macs).
• WIFI drivers and integration with the TCP / IP: Atheros5000, Airport, ...
  
• Drivers SATA and SCSI (Symbios) functional on PowerMac G4.
• Faster 3D drivers, VBO, medium r300 (Radeon 9500 to 9800).
• Integration layer Firewire Helios.[/COLOR]
  
• Improved systems components: MUI, Ambient, Multiview, HDConfig, mount.library, ...
• New applications: FTP / SFTP, CD / DVD burning software, new PDF reader, modern text editor, ...
• File systems: NTFS3G (write), SMBFS (64bit), SSFS, IceFS, ...
  

[/COLOR]
Support for PowerBook
Many challenges are related to the support of the platform:
[LIST=10]

• Touchpad with gestures (scrolling, right, ...).
• Special keys of the keyboard (Fn, brightness keys, ...).
• Support for various screens (15 ", 17" and variations thereof ...)
• PCMCIA port
• WIFI drivers: Atheros5k (via Cardbus), Airport
  
• WPA/WPA2 (wpa_supplicant) in collaboration with AROS.
• Sensor monitoring: fan speed, battery level, temperature, ...

• 3D driver for R300 (Radeon 9700 for PowerBook).[/COLOR]
  
  • Energy management control of different components depending on the sensors and user preferences (processor speed, low power mode the graphics card, disable the modem, network,[/COLOR] brightness, backlight keyboard, hard drive standby, ...) .
    
  
  Drivers
  Apart from specific drivers PowerBook, drivers on other machines will be supported or updated integrated:
  [LIST=19]
  
  • Symbios SATA drivers on PowerMac G4
  • AGP transfers (4x,> 1GB / s), useful when vram swap, video playback, 3D, ...
  • WIFI Atheros 5k driver (PCI)
  • Faster 3D drivers, VBO, support for r300 (Radeon 9500 to 9800)
  • Helios firewire drivers[/COLOR]
    
  
  File Systems
  An effort was made to the adaptation of standard file systems:
  
  • A port of FUSE to make porting some open source filesystems easier.
  • NTFS3g (writing enabled)
  • SSHFS (SFTP transparent)[/COLOR]
    
  • SMBFS (64bit)
  • ICE-FS[/COLOR]
    
  
  System Components
  [LIST=24]
  
  • Ambient: a transparent panel, sub-docks and plugins, video thumbnails, ...
    
  • MUI: deactivating effect improved, rendering the framework of the active object configurable tabs Reorderable, ...
  • Multiview: integration of more new features and formats
  • Integration WPA/WPA2 (wpa_supplicant), indicators, configuration, ...
  • HDConfig / mount.library: better management of mac partition tables
  • Cairo / Pixman / Fontconfig supplied with the system
  • MagicBeacon: visual notifications on different types of events (new mail, download finished, dvd inserted, ...), highly configurable (contrib?)
  • Grunch: package manager (contrib?)
  
  Applications
  The application domain has not been neglected:
  
  • Jalapeno: CD / DVD burning software and to create ISO, controllable from Ambient, ...
  • VPDF: A modern PDF reader compatible with multiple views, based on the  Poppler engine.
  • Transfer: FTP and SFTP client, multiple views.
  • Scribble: Text/SourceCode editor, based on Scintilla. Project management, autocompletion, context-sensitive help, syntax highlighting for different languages, ...
  • Odyssey Web Browser: with a recent Webkit, adding new features, ...
  [/COLOR]
  
  In hindsight, it's clear that not everything made it to the 3.0 release. On the other hand, some other things that wasn't planned or expected, did make it! :)
  
  The energy management components made the Powerbook support much more solid, this was a pleasant surprise. The PFS3 file system was also a surprise, at least for me. I know it would eventually find its way into MorphOS, but didn't expect it in 3.0 already. MorphOS is getting quite a substantial collection of file systems now, and I'm looking forward to Ice-FS as well. Been wanting to try that one out for a long time, sounds very promising, but somehow I have never actually done it, don't know why. Also looking forward to SSHFS! :)
  
  I've read somewhere that the next release, MorphOS 3.1, will mostly be fixing/correcting things they overlooked, but I also believe there could be some new stuff added as well, and that it will be released quite soon. The Atheros Wifi has been said (in various forums) to be quite far developed for instance. I'll guess we'll now in a relatively short period of time.
  
  There has also been hints about upcoming support for iBooks (don't ask me why, because the Powerbooks are so much better, and aren't really that expensive after all), but if that happens, it won't be until MorphOS 3.2 at the earliest.
  
  Rock on, MorphOS! :D

[takemehomegrandma]

@Duce

This is the second pointless OT post you make in this thread in a short time. If MorphOS hurt your eyes this badly, then I think for your own sake that you should leave, there are many other threads you can read. The topic here is MorphOS, especially MorphOS 3.0, get over it!

[takemehomegrandma]

@Digiman

Sure, not everyone is prepared to pay a hundred dollar (or a few) to obtain what's needed to try MophOS. But if you really are interested in Amiga NG OS's, the necessary MorphOS HW is totally within anyones reach (it's not that $3,000 A1X1K we are talking about after all). MorphOS never set out to be a commodity OS for the broad public of general users, but it is the one offering the most and the best to the small *Amiga community* (I'm very happy with my Mini 1.5GHz/64MB VRAM, got everything I need, maybe I'd like to be able to play true 1080p video without framedropping (720p works) but that's about it), and if you are really interested, then neither price nor availability won't be an issue for most people. But of course, if you think it's too much money, then pass and move on, your choice!

[takemehomegrandma]

Here comes a nice youtube video from danwood, showing a bit of MorphOS 3.0:

[youtube]LQxJgw0GhJo[/youtube]

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQxJgw0GhJo)

[takemehomegrandma]

Danwood is a legend. He makes the best tech videos around  

Agree, nice videos...

[takemehomegrandma]

If you want to run Amiga games ... AROS would be a better choice.

:confused: :confused: :confused:

[takemehomegrandma]

Second to a real Amiga, Windows is the best choice as it's most supported... but AROS would definitely be next as it runs on hardware several times faster than any PPC box, whether it be AOS or MOS, and the x86 version uses JIT.

If your goal simply is to play old Amiga games, then indeed a real Amiga or WinUAE would be the recommended way to go, but if your user ambitions is more towards "Next Generation" Amiga, then there simply is no alternative to MorphOS if you want the most and the best (AROS doesn't really fit the picture, AROS has some fundamental differences to both MorphOS and OS4, and is in many ways severely underdeveloped in comparison)...