Ok, I really need some advice

[Piru]

@vic20owner

How is MorphOS compared to OS4? PegasOs? Are they all similar to AmigaOS as far as libraries, devs, shell commands, etc? Is Amiga C code portable between these operating systems without much modification (GUI libaries,intuition, etc)?

Pegasos is the hardware. MorphOS is the OS.

MorphOS is very similar indeed, you find all the familiar libraries, devs, shell commands from it. You can even mix 68k and ppc libraries, devs, commands freely, there is no difference for the user or the calling app, they're 100% transparent.

Code portability is very good between AmigaOS 3.x and MorphOS, often the only consideration being making sure that ppc/68k function (if mixed) get called properly (very trivial once you get hang of it). For more about MorphOS coding, see MorphOS Developer Connection (you need to sign up first though).

PS. Since I'm part of the MorphOS team, I leave out any comparision to the competing project. Obviously I consider MorphOS superior.

PPS. Regarding hardware: It's commonly agreed that the Pegasos II is the best and cheapest PPC hardware available, having excellent GNU/Linux (debian, gentoo, others) support aswell.

[Piru]

@vic20owner

Could you suggest a shop selling Pegasos hardware at a reasonable price? I'm a little leary of Amiga shops at the moment..they have all let me down.

I don't know where you're located, but at least GGS-Data in sweden is extremely reliable and they have excellent service. You should probably ask for customer experiences at MorphZone, which shop have they used and what was the service like.

There is a free version of MorphOs (yes?) so that's one expense out of the way if I go ahead and buy the hardware.

Yes, MorphOS is free for the Pegasos hardware.