As a Hypothetical... (Deciding between AOS4 and MorphOS)

[Insidious611]

Were I to suddenly get enough money to afford a tricked out A4000 system complete with PPC accelerator, which I would dearly love to do someday, my biggest question would be on operating systems to run.
 
On one end, I am of course going to run AmigaOS 3.9 on at least one partition because thats what its built for and all that, and because thats kind of the reason I want an Amiga in the first place, that and the games.
 
On the other, I'd also want to run a somewhat modern OS so that I can use my Amiga for work and for general entertainment use. Thats where it gets sticky.
 
You see, my choices there would be either AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS, from what I can gather.
 
Well, originally, I looked into AmigaOS 4. Now, being on an x86 platform I can't really test either operating system so I can only go by impressions given from reading forum posts or documentation or wikipedia or etc. My original reason for looking into AmigaOS 4 was actually the fact that someone had ported MegaZeux, a program I've been involved with in terms of its community for years, to AmigaOS 4 out of the blue. This brought the OS to my attention and made me think "Wow, if someone just picks up such a niche program and decides to port it, there must be some merit in the system"
 
I looked into it, and looked into it... The biggest problem for me was the fact that apparently for the longest time there wasn't a modern web browser for it! I mean, gee man, you're positioning this as a modern operating system and you don't realize that 98% of anyone's modern computing is done over HTTP? Then someone made a version of OWB for it, and that quickly became very modern and useful indeed... And then it came down to implementing HTML5's

[SACC-guy]

Easy. Get them all. That's the real fun of amiga...change it any way you like.

Choose wisely,
m

[Framiga]

triple boot AmigaOS3.9-AmigaOS4.1 and MorphOS 1.4.5 would be your option E but after reading your option C,

"C. I have a moderately busy life and, unless it is REALLY important, can rarely afford to run around chasing fixes to things over hundreds of different forums."

i'm not that sure anymore! :-)

consider also that the current MorphOS 1.4.5 for classic is outdated. You will need to update to MUI4 and some others latest components as well.

in few words .... you will need some tweaks and free time.

[efrenmgp]

Hello

Morphos is free (AFAIK) for classic systems with PPC acceletators (as the machine you are planning to use), the new versions cost money but they only work on PPC-only hardware (Efika, Pegasos, PPC Macs...), so maybe the Morphos option is not exactly what you are thinking since the version you can use is (again, AFAIK) no longer supported.

Regards,
Efren

[Insidious611]

Just figured that one out. I need to go fix the wikipedia article about MorphOS to make that more clear now, because that certainly confused me. MorphOS 1.4.5 still looks attractive though as apparently from what I've seen you can run OWB 1.9 (which has the features I need) on it as long as you update with a MUI snapshot from 2007-ish? So that may end up being the best idea.

Triple booting had come to mind but to be frank if I spend that much money on A4000 hardware I'm probably going to end up skimping out on something and its likely going to be hard drive space.

Apparently the powerup MorphOS slows down after 2 hours until you register, but I can't tell if "registering" is meant in the sense of just tell them "Hey, I'm a user", or actual payment. Either way, I don't really mind.

[commodorejohn]

Insid? Holy crap, man, I didn't know you were a member here...

[Insidious611]

Funny, pretty sure you replied to one of my threads earlier about purchasing an A1200.

Hi John. Small world.

EDIT: Tangentially related question. QEMU can emulate a Pegasos. Would that allow me to test the latest version of MorphOS for myself, however slowly, or is the Pegasos emulation in it too poor?

[Crumb]

If you like classics get an 1200 with an accelerator. Individual Computers 030/42Mhz are new and are perfect to enjoy classics (WB, WHDLoad games, some demos...). If you really want to play latest 060 demos and you don't mind paying up a lot for an old accelerator you should get a Blizzard1260. But that's not usually the case, many people is fine running demos on WinUAE*or playing the videos.

Buying an A4000T and upgrading an A4000T to be able to run OS4/MorphOS*will be quite expensive and will be just a toy because it won't provide a "modern" experience.

The cheapest option to try out MorphOS is downloading the ISO and trying it out on some G4 Radeon equipped Mac. Any G4 Mac Mini will do. G4 Powermacs are cheap too. Latest powerbook G4 model is also a very good option if you need/prefer a laptop. The MorphOS*ISO*you download is the complete OS and allows you to do everything you need (you can install it, you can run it from the cd...). If you like it you can register your machine from MorphOS register tool and a key will be sent to the email you provide once you perform the payment (111Euro right now although older machines like powermacs, peg1, efikas will probably be cheaper after MorphOS 3.0 is released. You pay through paypal). If you don't want to register your machine a requester will popup when you have an uptime of 30minutes and the system will slow down until next reboot.

If you want to try out OS4 you could also get a Pegasos2 machine since it's both cheaper and faster than newer machines and also allows you to run MorphOS too.

My advice: get an A1200 with a 030 accelerator and the latest Powerbook g4/1.67Ghz (or a Mac Mini) with MorphOS.

[Rodomoc]

My 2 cents... Go ahead and get that PPC accelerated classic Amiga and run 3.9 and/or 4.1(classic).
 
As for MorphOS, it seems a better experience to just get required MAC hardware and run their latest release. The grapevine indicates a new 3.0 version coming out in the near future. If it is like any of their other post 2.0 updates, I'm sure you wouldn't be disappointed.

[zylesea]

MorphOS for Cyberstorm and Blizzard ppc cards cannot be registered anymore. The demo though is still available and fully functional except that 2 hours after each boot up it slows down dramatically.
If you get an A4000 w/ ppc card there are of course chances that it comes with a MorphOS key. Then the istallation of a 1.4.5 partition makes pretty sense. But generally the Cyberstorms are just too weak for today's demand. Your mentioning of the HTML5 support by OWB is right - but this requires some serious computing power.
Youtube for example needs something like a G3/600 to work reliable. To have the real fun a G4 ~1GHz is the kit you want to have. Luckily some of the matching hardware is pretty cheap (Powermac G4, eMac or Mac mini). But that hardware doesn't run OS3.x then....
Eventually a matter of taste.

If you want o read some more about MorphOS I can point you to http://via.i-networx.de/mid.htm - I put a few documents about MorphOS on that page.

[Jose]

Get a Pegasus II, it will run circles around any classic accelerated Amiga and it runs both MOS and AOS4. For classic stuff keep your A1200 or A4000 and upgrade them as needed for games/demos, though 060 for demos will be quite expensive.

[Iggy]

Get a Pegasus II, it will run circles around any classic accelerated Amiga and it runs both MOS and AOS4. For classic stuff keep your A1200 or A4000 and upgrade them as needed for games/demos, though 060 for demos will be quite expensive.

That's a valid opinion.
Further, if you do want to run an NG Os on your PPC equipped Amiga, I'd recommend AOS4.
MorphOS for those machines is no longer being developed.

And a Mac makes a better MorphOS machine anyway. It cheaper and much faster.

[vox]

 
A. Professionally, I'm a programmer, specializing in python.
B. Entertainment-wise, I enjoy watching online video and playing games both old and modern.
C. I have a moderately busy life and, unless it is REALLY important, can rarely afford to run around chasing fixes to things over hundreds of different forums.
 
So, your thoughts?

Best is to take both.

Sadly, currently only PPC expanded A1200/4000 alows up to MOS 1.x and OS 4.1  if heavily expanded, and Pegasos 2.

Would love to see them as one!

[Ancalimon]

As far as I know, Morphos is not supported or developed for classic PPC Amigas. I remember trying it back in the day, it was fast but incomplete.

[Crumb]

As far as I know, Morphos is not supported or developed for classic PPC Amigas. I remember trying it back in the day, it was fast but incomplete.

If you add MUI4 and updated Ambient it becomes much nicer. Anyway a mac ppc is a much better choice. You can buy a ppc mac+morphos license with the money you save not buying a ppc accelerator.