MorphOS on x86???

[downix]

ferrellsl wrote:
OK, if it's not about making money, then give MorphOS away for free instead of charging 150 EU for it.  And port it to x86 for free too.

Don't try to make us believe that MorphOS is a charity OS.  150 EU is a lot of money for any OS.

When you guys stop charging 150 EU for it, I'll stop believing it's a business.

It is?
**checks prices**
Vista Ultimate: $450
Windows Server: $1000+
Netware: $36,642.00

MorphOS looks pretty reasonable to me.

Hey Piru, any chance of getting MorphOS onto SPARC instead?  At least we have new hardware and are BE.  

[downix]

Home Premium is buying half an OS.  To compare to MorphOS, you must go Ultimate.  So the comparison is invalid.  I went by MSRP, not some undercutting dealers price.  We don't have millions of dealers competing, to force a price war.

But frankly, MorphOS guys can set whatever price they choose, it's their OS.  Don't like the price, don't buy it.  just that simple.  I'm considering it myself, but the lack of suitable hw holds me back.  I consider it reasonable compared to how much I've spent for Be, OS/2 and Solaris in my day.

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:
Michael, thank you for porting it to x86 the far biggest, the cheapest, most scalable, most powerful platform available. I run it with astronomical speed on an x64. Personally I wished you had worked on a browser but I hope it will come any way and that will make a big difference for my use of AROS on a more daily basis.
Amiga made a bad call in not recognizing the worlds demand for 3d. Amiga needs power behind it. Going x86 is in IMHO the cheapest and most reasonable way.

Not the biggest, as x86 is found primarily in desktops, and the cell phone market alone dwarves what you can find x86 based CPU's running in.

Not the cheapest either, as I can pick up SoC's where the whole system is less than just the x86 CPU.

Not the most scalable either, as you can find chips like PPC, ARM and MIPS running in a wider variety of devices.  

So please, inform the class your proof for such wild claims.

The desktop is on the way out.  It's market dominance is fading in light of such magnificent devices as smartphones, UMPCs, and the like, which run online.  Once you step out of this little bubble that is the desktop world, it's a whole new ballgame, and a whole new set of rules.  

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:
@Painkiller

Well a PS3 is a PS3 (Never owned one. Always did work and played games on PC with the latest graphic cards.) But if you buy an old PC for a dollar you can run AROS. If you make a HTPC you can run AROS or you can run it on a brand new power PC or a small pico itx. The versatility is the heaviest argument for me.

If it walks, flies or swims you can use it if it's x86. That's that extra ability that makes it compelling to me.

Alright, and you're going to hire the people needed to code for the billions of possible combinations of hardware, right?

x86's strength is also it's weakness, too many choices, too difficult to support as/is.  Hence my other suggestion that if one did go x86, to limit the support to a few mobo/peripheral combinations.

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:
@downix
In my experience I found it easier working by a desk than walking blindly in traffic.  

I don’t believe desktops are out. By the time your small devices are capable of what a power machine can accomplish  today, that power machine will accomplish ten times the handheld for a smaller price with the best games and apps following its demand.

I don’t buy your logic here.

You said: Alright, and you're going to hire the people needed to code for the billions of possible combinations of hardware, right?

I said now: Ask sammuraicrow. I think he is implementing that LLVE thing or something that will make AROS very processor independent indeed. I haven’t looked at it. And I don’t understand it, but I think it will be important for the future development.

Finally: This is an Amiga community. If AROS can run the Amiga software then the programs that are liked can be used. Final writer and so on. And it is possible to make better versions because the added power of AROS and the hardware under it.
 
Have a hard time seeing the end of the world.
The only thing that is sad is that all expert programmers should work on one single OS, but that is a personal opinion. So much more could be accomplished in shorter time that way. But....

You continue to miss the point.  The CPU is nothing, nada, irrelevent to the arguement.  The arguement above was cheap systems.  Well, cheap systems can have the same CPU family, sure, but they likely will have different chipsets, pic controllers, CMOS settings, SATA controllers, networking capabilities, GPU's, DSP's... even multiples of each.  To make any OS work with such a large number of possible hardware combinations is not work to be taken so lightly.  Look at AROS, even now it has support for a narrow range of hardware.  

I did not say Desktops are out.  I did say that they are not where the growth is.  If you want to release a new platform, the desktop is an also-ran.  Microsoft's OS dominance is wearing out due to the desktop becoming an older market, no longer do you have the rapid growth to enable an edge in for a share of the pie.  That ship has sailed, much like the workstations did in the 1990's and the MiniComputers in the 1980's.  You'd make as much sence demanding a port to the VAX or PDP-11.

The Amiga was about being the next big thing.  Frankly, there is no NBT in desktops.  There is, however, in smaller, lightweight products.  And the Amiga, and MorphOS, are uniquely situated to such markets.  Instant-on, multitasking, and scalable.  And the weakness of the design, not so relevent anymore once you get to that scale.

[downix]

Hammer wrote:

Not the most scalable either, as you can find chips like PPC, ARM and MIPS running in a wider variety of devices.

X86 scales from embedded micro-controllers to super computers. Majority of X86s falls between netbooks to servers.

From 2005 market share(from memory)
~700 million ARM
~200 million X86
~140 million MIPS
~60  million PPC

PS; I need to find an updated market share stats.

Not that much different, save MIPS now has a Chinese firm pushing it hard in that rapidly growing economy.  PPC has also grown.  

x86 does scale, but not as completely as other options for a reasonable price.  New MIPS netbook announced last week, $100.  New x86 netbook announced last week, same features, $350.  

Not saying it can't go x86, just that x86 is not this magic bullet gee-whiz-fix-it-all.

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:
downix you said:The Amiga was about being the next big thing. Frankly, there is no NBT in desktops. There is, however, in smaller, lightweight products. And the Amiga, and MorphOS, are uniquely situated to such markets. Instant-on, multitasking, and scalable. And the weakness of the design, not so relevent anymore once you get to that scale.

I say: I can see your point. And agree. But I have a different view about Amiga's possibility to snatch back market shares and finding its place next to PC and MAC. And why? because being in the Amiga OS is an experience, that is special.  

And out of date.  10 years ago, you could make the claim still for it's features.  Now, it's a quaint novelty system for a desktop.  The last big chance was in the early parts of this decade, but that ship has sailed.  

Yes, a case can be made, and I've made it in other threads, but we have to be realistic here.  None of us have the cash to do what needs to be done.  We can do this for fun, and if we stick to it being fun, we will never die.  

If someone came to me tomorrow saying "I've bought out Hyperion and AmigaInc, and hired the MorphOS guys, I have $12 million in the bank, and I need the best team to develop a machine" then yes, I'd be all over that.  I don't see that happening, but stranger things have happened.