Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => MorphOS => MorphOS -- Hardware requirements and availability discussion => Topic started by: runequester on April 08, 2011, 01:10:06 AM
-
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?
-
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?
Ask Piru. The development team just teases us users (mere mortals we are) about the details on future developments.
We know that they intend to release Powerbook support and that that development should bring 3D video drivers for the R300 Radeons.
After that, its anyone's guess. They've shown us screenshots of Apple G5 hardware running MorphOS (iMacs and Powermacs), and there's been talk of drivers for the R400 video cards and the X600. But all with disclaimers that nothing is decided and that these may never be released.
-
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?
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.
-
They're busy implementing IPv6 support all over the place.
-
Well, the real question is whether their entire OS will end its journey after they support G5 Macs and Powerbooks, as there arent any further PPC machines worth porting.
So after Powerbook and G5 support, the hardware scenario seems really obscure to MOS.
-
Well, the real question is whether their entire OS will end its journey after they support G5 Macs and Powerbooks, as there arent any further PPC machines worth porting.
So after Powerbook and G5 support, the hardware scenario seems really obscure to MOS.
I can only guess, but my guessing has been right so far. My guess is PPC mac hardware makes sense now and is a relatively easy port. I would have to guess the ultimate goal is commodity PC hardware. In the last ~3 years the MOS team seems to be on a logical path. My mind tells me where logic continues to. Time will tell.
-
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.
-
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.
MorphOS really just works. Look at the supported hardware list and buy/build a machine that fits the specs and try out the free demo. You can find systems meeting the specs for negligible prices or free so you can test drive MorphOS for almost nothing.
-
THe only thing around here for "next to nothing" is 300 mhz G4's from the dawn of time :)
I'll keep my eyes peeled if something nicer shows up cheap over the summer
-
MorphOS really just works. Look at the supported hardware list and buy/build a machine that fits the specs and try out the free demo. You can find systems meeting the specs for negligible prices or free so you can test drive MorphOS for almost nothing.
How much did you sell that one Powermac for Red?
-
I'm really hoping for Wifi support so I can sell this Netbook and FINALLY have a portable computer that runs something besides Linux or Windows.
G5 support will rock! As for it being the end of the road? NO! This might well be the new beginning. Asiding of writing drivers for more graphics cards, the only other logical path is to continue research to find a means to allow MorphOS support even more classic 680x0 and PPC software.
For instance, I'd still really like to see OctaMED S.S. running. That would be a plus, MIDI or no MIDI. Also, I'd love more PPC games working proper. Shogo would be one example. I get sound in the menus, but once I get to the main menu and game, I loose sound. It's a random bug that effects some users but not others. Likewise, I'd love to see Heretic II and other classic PPC games working in MorphOS, but still nothing. Only a handful work.
Aside of those gripes, I have to say that MorphOS is TOTALLY worth registering! Will it replace your classic Amiga? Well that is a rhetorical question now isn't it? I can say though that it does run a large number of classic apps, and it has a great library of apps and games written or ported to MophOS specifically! On top of this, I have to say that this is the most stable, most fluid, most near perfect Hobby OS that I have used to date! I would say BeOS, but it has a lot of catching up to do in it's new incarnation Haiku, so yes, for the time being, I prefer this to all other hobby OS's out there and I can see why there is a price tag on it. A rather small one at that. Just register already, sign up and become a member at Morph Zone, learn and be happy!
P.S. I'd REALLY like for Keyboard/Mouse assigning to Joypad would be a lot easier. That is something the MorphOS team could prioritise.
-
well, Im not registering anything until I have a machine to run it on ;)
-
I am real happy with MOS. TBH, runs my dodgy old legacy Amiga SW better than my SAM does (BBS software). I am waiting to get a more powerful machine before I register it, though. The mini won't do what I need it to do in the long haul.
-
Likewise, I'd love to see Heretic II and other classic PPC games working in MorphOS, but still nothing.
I'm quite sure that I saw that game being played under MorphOS_1.x to 2.7 several times on various meetings.
Not that I would care a rats behind for such a crap-game .....
-
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 (http://www.amigapage.it/index.php?pl=image-view&modo_view=3&categoria=fiere&name=I11112010-10).)
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. :)
-
yeah, it seems the development is pretty glacial. But then, it also seems to be pretty good already.
Once we move to a bigger apartment in a month or two, a morph machine is probably going to happen.
-
Well I'd love to see Heretic II running as well... (need help)
The updated 3d Graphics Drivers sound like they are going to bring Quake III and Return to Castle Wolfenstein up to speed on my lowly eMac!!!!
As for the Mouse Pointer over Video feature. YES! I've seen that on another OS and loved it!
I'm eager to see what these new docks will be like. On that note, the more Dopus Magellen like features that can be added, the better!
-
yeah, it seems the development is pretty glacial. But then, it also seems to be pretty good already.
Once we move to a bigger apartment in a month or two, a morph machine is probably going to happen.
It's solid,"you will buy a G4 Tower, you will buy a G4 Tower" (hypnotically waves hand in front of RunEquester's face).
Seriously though, the OS is solid as it is. If you've played with a lot of Hobby OS's, you'll be like,"Wow, this just works!!!" Well more or less. Occasionally you got to tweak something, but that's what the forums are for. Though, I will say that there are a few games and emulators that only have Keyboard support, so you have to use Trident to assign Keyboard and Mouse movements to your Joystick. This can be tricky. Assigning the buttons is easy enough, but assigning the direction pad thus far has been impossible for me, and I've spent a few weeks trouble shooting this.
Such things are easy as cake in Windows. How Windows tends to shame us some times... :/
But ya, other than that, rock solid, and besides, nearly everything already has Joystick support, though this is not the case with the Playstation emulator. VERY DEPRESSING! A gold mine at my finger tips and I can not play it except with a freaking Keyboard. :(
-
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":
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"! ;))
-
I know the mac mini's are all the rage, but what other options are worth considering?
-
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! :)
-
whats the least hardware that it'd still be worth running it on?
-
Mac Mini with 64Mb Video RAM.
Hmm, I'm shocked that the software packaged mentioned above does not include HD-Rec. For shame!!!!
-
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
:)
-
I've got an eMac, it's nice, I'm getting by, but I despise the fact that I have to be so damned protective of the mere 32Mb of Graphics RAM. I have to turn off all MorphOS's eye candy which really doesn't bother me too much, but still, I press the Graphics RAM limit. Especially with game settings. I have to turn things way down with Quake III and Wolfenstein.
It is for this reason I suggest getting a Mac Mini with 64Mb of RAM. I'm not sure which particular configuration is the right configuration so you'd want to read the compatibility list, but that's what I'd go with if I didn't have my sites set on a the fastest G4 Tower I can get my hands on! :)
-
Quite soon there will be MOS for x86 cpus and then...
-
And then we'll be able to network 12 Atari 800XL's and run MorphOS on top of them as one Multi CPU machine. It will be amazing!
-
Quite soon there will be MOS for x86 cpus and then...
I have a feeling that ARM would be a better option...
:)
-
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! :)
-
whats the least hardware that it'd still be worth running it on?
Are you looking for low price or minimal performance. The Efikas been mentioned, but I've seen 1.25Ghz Emacs running at about $35. If your willing to put up with 2D graphics only the 1.42 Ghz eMac will also work (and has 64mb of video memory).
Powermacs are also cheap. I have one I paid less than $50 for. Anything 733Mhz or faster is fine (you could even consider slower models but why).
Powermacs also have several PCI expansion slots.
-
my g5 is ready to go, should one day, support for g5 become official ;)
-
my g5 is ready to go, should one day, support for g5 become official ;)
Yeah, we're not supposed to buy hardware ahead of time, but I've got a FireGL X3 video card that has been re-flashed with a Mac Radeon X800 XT BIOS (in case R400 support is introduced).
I'd love to see G5 support too, but we've been told that isn't happening any time soon.