How dead is the AMiGA OS this time?

[countzero]

conspiracy theory :

now that genesi has lost interest in pegasos, maybe hyperion can get rights to the platform and and port os4 and resume production ? after all it's a known and working system. and it's has better specs than the current os4 candidates as far as I know ?

[Piru]

@countzero

Well, the theory is flawed: There are no rights to "get", Pegasos II designs are free for everyone.

[keropi]

IMHO, a low cost mobo like the EFIKA is the only way to promote an alternative OS, be it MOS or AOS4. I hope MOS team decides to support Efika...

[countzero]

so all the better for the os4 camp ? well this is just brain gymnastics, of course I'm not serious and I know it won't happen. But is there anything that stops the 'red camp' from adopting peg2 and manufacture this board ? (aside from the lack of hardware manufactuing capability) they could even sell it to morphos users.

[JKD]

countzero wrote:
so all the better for the os4 camp ? well this is just brain gymnastics, of course I'm not serious and I know it won't happen. But is there anything that stops the 'red camp' from adopting peg2 and manufacture this board ? (aside from the lack of hardware manufactuing capability) they could even sell it to morphos users.

Given that it hasn't happened all the years Pegasos was actually in production I suggest there's a slim to none chance of it happening now.

I'm only guessing that the reason Genesi/bplan dropped the product is that it was non-trivial to make it RoHS compliant and quickly bring it up-to-date spec wise with the markets currently on the radar.

[Waccoon]

Could we please stop worrying about hardware and start focusing on functionality?

Thanks.

[humppa]

Could we please stop worrying about hardware and start focusing on functionality?

Ok, so what functionality does non-existing hardware have for us? How can we improve the functionality of the OS without hardware?   :-P

[Agafaster]

gdanko wrote:

I'm sorry but I can't see how this is relevant. MorphOS will run on any hardware the we decide to add support for, Genesi or other.

But until we see something people will be skeptics. Mac G4 would be a perfect platform to support. Linux can port to the G4 Macs, no reason MorphOS cannot.

no reason, other than linux being freeware, and both Morphos and OS4 arent. they would need to do it official like, which would mean approaching Apple.... you can work the rest out!

[Piru]

@Agafaster

no reason, other than linux being freeware, and both Morphos and OS4 arent. they would need to do it official like, which would mean approaching Apple.... you can work the rest out!

Why would anyone need to contact Apple?

[Agafaster]

cos they own the hardware, no matter how 'obsolete', and the rights to decide who runs what OS on it. Linux is effectively hacked onto the Macs, and not all are supported.
to do it properly, IIRC, would require hardware documentation ?  please feel free to correct me if I'm talking bo!!ocks...

as a side note, I would be interested to play with Morphos on my A1. or would I have to rename it Teron first ? ;-)

[Piru]

@Agafaster

cos they own the hardware, no matter how 'obsolete', and the rights to decide who runs what OS on it.

No, they do not have the right to block any OS running on their hardware, and they don't even try. They DO try to block Mac OS X running on non-apple hardware, however (and years ago Apple stopped mac clone business).

to do it properly, IIRC, would require hardware documentation ?

You can use open source operating system implementation as a reference. Many components (such as graphics cards) are the same as on PC, anyway, so they're no problem. Some hardware might not have any drivers at all, though (wireless networking hw drivers for example).

as a side note, I would be interested to play with Morphos on my A1

MorphOS requires working cache coherency (just to mention one reason why you won't see MOS on A1).

[shoggoth]

I'll probably get beaten up for this but...

... live free or die. Open source is the only way for oddball platforms to survive in the long run. Commersial operating systems needs a market, open source doesn't, it just need great ideas and devoted coders.

-- Peter

[TheMagicM]

Well, at least we own our OS, and don't need to worry about licensing issues.

yet the collective "you" "we" wont support other hardware "officially".  Myself, a person looking from the outside in, all I see is a bunch of coders that think they are 1337.  

In the beginning you'all had high hopes of MOS.  The Genesi deal didnt work out.  You guys didnt release any new version of MOS until some counter or whatever reached 0.  (you said yourself its not about the money)  Never happend nor is it going to.  BBRV, in his own way tries to make amends (at least thats what it looked like to me) to sell MOS on Freescale's site.  Everything is there for "you" "we" to make money yet you'all dont need the money..

"Hey you'd better not promote our product without our permission!"  "We dont care to be known"  (heavy on the sarcasm..)

So keep working on MOS for your own little clique of programmers..release whatever "internal betas" with whatever features because even support for your OS is dying.  

If the rumors are true that the Pegasos board (the original) will not be made anymore, then thats great news.  Smartest thing BBRV has ever done.  Why?  Because it will force MOS to conform to new hardware.  Support new hardware or end up getting de-supported yourself.

Sorry about the rant Amiga fans.  I'm just tired of collective NOBODYS jerking users around.


-Alex

[gdanko]

Piru wrote:
@Agafaster

no reason, other than linux being freeware, and both Morphos and OS4 arent. they would need to do it official like, which would mean approaching Apple.... you can work the rest out!

Why would anyone need to contact Apple?

I think Hyperion babbled about not being able to port to G4 Macs because Apple has the design locked down so they cannot get documentation or some such. This is a load of crap since Yellowdog and Debian and Gentoo exist for Macs.

[the_leander]

gdanko wrote:

Piru wrote:
@Agafaster

no reason, other than linux being freeware, and both Morphos and OS4 arent. they would need to do it official like, which would mean approaching Apple.... you can work the rest out!

Why would anyone need to contact Apple?

I think Hyperion babbled about not being able to port to G4 Macs because Apple has the design locked down so they cannot get documentation or some such. This is a load of crap since Yellowdog and Debian and Gentoo exist for Macs.

It's not as clear cut as that, remember BeOS was also unable to run on any mac hardware post iMac due to the same reasons.

Yes it is possible to work around it as linux has done. But, it takes time and resource that Niether Be Inc had or Hyperion has.

But beyond that for a moment. What would be the point in porting to yet another dead end platform?

PPC Macs are no longer produced, indeed the only folk producing anything that could conceivably be considered a PPC desktop system are IBM and Genesi (as and when their new dual G5 board is released) and they are both more geared to the high end workstation market then the joe public consumer grade desktop system.

If AOS isn't ported to a platform that has a reasonable lifespan, then it's game over.

I'm sorry, but as it stands, outside of being ported to something like the GPx2 or x86 mainstream, AOS with the current encarnation is it for the platform. Same goes for MOS realistically.

[sdyates]

Well, I have ebayed a few amigas with hopes to buy OS4.0, but with no news out of Amiwest, I have bought a Mac instead

I still have several Amigas, but like many, I am not expecting much. I hate that we are being relegated to a hobbiest group rather than an alternative OS that it should be.