MUI 4.0-2015R4 for AmigaOS4/PPC and AmigaOS3/m68k released

[eliyahu]

via muidev.de...

The MUI for AmigaOS development team is proud to announce the immediate release of version 4.0-2015R4 of the Magic User Interface for AmigaOS4/PPC and AmigaOS3/m68k.

Please find the release archives in our download section.

Like all former releases a keyfile is required to enable all available settings. Old keyfiles from MUI 3.8 can be used without any restriction.

Please note that MUI4 for AmigaOS3/m68k is definitely targeted at powerful systems with a fast CPU and a fast graphic board. Although it is still possible to run this release on a real 68k machine an emulation like WinUAE is very highly recommended. Also colormapped screens with 256 colors at most are still supported, but MUI4 makes heavy use of fancy truecolor images and effects which cannot be provided on colormapped screens with the full range of possibilities.

[trekiej]

Thanks for the post.

[AmiDelf]

This MUI4 for 68k is quite silly, because most of Amiga users have 68030 Amiga. 68060 Amigas are so expensive its not even funny. Vampire 600 V2 card might help here, but for AGA owners there is still no solution.

MUI 3.8 works very nicely on my A1200 68030 50MHz with 64MB RAM. MUI4 just tilts the machine and is so unstable its really painful. MUI4 on MorphOS is however fast.

Tried to run Ibrowse 2.4 with MUI4 on my A1200. Ibrowse gave only IBrowseNetwork System errors and AmIRC thought the stacksize is too low when its more than 32000. Everything is ok with maxtransfer on my SFS partitions et.

I dont get how MUI 3.8 can run fine, while MUI4 struggles so much? Sorry for beeing negative here, but the goal should not be to say WinUAE is minimal requirements.

[OlafS3]

This MUI4 for 68k is quite silly, because most of Amiga users have 68030 Amiga. 68060 Amigas are so expensive its not even funny. Vampire 600 V2 card might help here, but for AGA owners there is still no solution.

MUI 3.8 works very nicely on my A1200 68030 50MHz with 64MB RAM. MUI4 just tilts the machine and is so unstable its really painful. MUI4 on MorphOS is however fast.

Tried to run Ibrowse 2.4 with MUI4 on my A1200. Ibrowse gave only IBrowseNetwork System errors and AmIRC thought the stacksize is too low when its more than 32000. Everything is ok with maxtransfer on my SFS partitions et.

I dont get how MUI 3.8 can run fine, while MUI4 struggles so much? Sorry for beeing negative here, but the goal should not be to say WinUAE is minimal requirements.

On Aros Vision i have no interest to integrate MUI4 because there is no software needing it. Even worse at least one MUI-Application (Wildfire) do not recognize it and not works. So it is completely useless to me. Perhaps it looks better but for me it is more important that all applications work.

[eliyahu]

On Aros Vision i have no interest to integrate MUI4 because there is no software needing it. Even worse at least one MUI-Application (Wildfire) do not recognize it and not works. So it is completely useless to me. Perhaps it looks better but for me it is more important that all applications work.

can you go ahead and report the wildfire issue to the team? they're always looking for feedback.

-- eliyahu

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I dont get how MUI 3.8 can run fine, while MUI4 struggles so much? Sorry for beeing negative here, but the goal should not be to say WinUAE is minimal requirements.

It would be nice if they'd taken MUI3.8 and built on it, incrementally,  made small updates and modernizations, and checked and maintained  backward compatibility with the older version as they went.  I mean, I'm no software developer, but that's what I would've done.

I don't think this was the case, here.  If I understand correctly MUI4 for classic systems / 68k was a backport of the MOS version, which was done by a completely different team from the original developers?

Have yet to see a single post from anyone running MUI4 on a classic system "without issue".  Of course would like to be proven wrong, and hope they keep up development - "maybe it'll work someday" - but just glad they remembered to include the disclaimer "Yes, this says it's for 68k/classic.  No, it probably won't work on your 68k/classic system".  LOL.  

[OlafS3]

It would be nice if they'd taken MUI3.8 and built on it, incrementally,  made small updates and modernizations, and checked and maintained  backward compatibility with the older version as they went.  I mean, I'm no software developer, but that's what I would've done.

I don't think this was the case, here.  If I understand correctly MUI4 for classic systems / 68k was a backport of the MOS version, which was done by a completely different team from the original developers?

Have yet to see a single post from anyone running MUI4 on a classic system "without issue".  Of course would like to be proven wrong, and hope they keep up development - "maybe it'll work someday" - but just glad they remembered to include the disclaimer "Yes, this says it's for 68k/classic.  No, it probably won't work on your 68k/classic system".  LOL.  

I am no expert for MUI history so someone else can correct me if I am wrong. How everyone knows was and is MUI the software from Stefan Stuntz who later became part of the MorphOS team and MUI became integral part of MorphOS (the desktop is based on it). Stefan Stuntz developed 3.9 and the first version of 4, later that development was taken over by others. As far as I know is Stefan Stuntz not actively developing anymore (most of the time travelling around) but of course I do not know that just guessing. So version 4 was done by the same developer. The devs from AmigaOS camp got access to 3.9 code (lately it was indicated that they even had access to early 4 code) and were allowed to take a snapshot of that. So code of todays MorphOS MUI4 has nothing (or at least not much) to do with "MUI4" on AmigaOS because the devs there only got the snapshot and had later no access anymore and try to add MorphOS MUI4 features.

[OlafS3]

can you go ahead and report the wildfire issue to the team? they're always looking for feedback.

-- eliyahu

I will...

[wawrzon]

as i understand this mui4 makes use of aiss. if the imagery is too heavy for amiga hardware, how about a low color iff option?

[AmiDelf]

What I learn now is that this new MUI4 version for 68k/PPC is incompatible with MUI4 version which is for MorphOS. How silly is this? Yes, OWB for AmigaOS 4 needed MUI4 maybe, but then this starts a new fight that no one wants to have in Amiga community.

Jens of this MUI4 version should never ever get support. Also that they legitimate the whole thing by releasing MUI4 68k? MorphOS had MUI4 for many years now that works nicely. If Jens MUI4 and MorphOS MUI4 is incompatible its just silly. People programming 68k Amiga apps should use MUI 3.8 still.

Please stop this nonesense Jens! This is not community friendly thing to do!

[Iggy]

I am no expert for MUI history so someone else can correct me if I am wrong. How everyone knows was and is MUI the software from Stefan Stuntz who later became part of the MorphOS team and MUI became integral part of MorphOS (the desktop is based on it). Stefan Stuntz developed 3.9 and the first version of 4, later that development was taken over by others. As far as I know is Stefan Stuntz not actively developing anymore (most of the time travelling around) but of course I do not know that just guessing. So version 4 was done by the same developer. The devs from AmigaOS camp got access to 3.9 code (lately it was indicated that they even had access to early 4 code) and were allowed to take a snapshot of that. So code of todays MorphOS MUI4 has nothing (or at least not much) to do with "MUI4" on AmigaOS because the devs there only got the snapshot and had later no access anymore and try to add MorphOS MUI4 features.

Good summary, Olaf.
MUI4 for AmigaOS has been created by parties other than those that worked on 3.9 and 4.0.
What sources they had access to is somewhat speculative, but as they can't use the MorphOS version calling it MUI4 is somewhat deceptive.

[Acill]

Even the 68k version of 3.9 causes all kinds of issues on a real Amiga. I have a CSPPC/060 and it didnt run correctly. Cost me hours of attempting to get it stable with the only result in a new install of OS3.9 and putting back MUI 3.8 again.

I dont think this is intended for real Amiga machines. Its more geared at Amikit and UAE systems. Sadly WinUAE has caught up and in just about all cases now is faster than the real thing with better resources.

[OlafS3]

Even the 68k version of 3.9 causes all kinds of issues on a real Amiga. I have a CSPPC/060 and it didnt run correctly. Cost me hours of attempting to get it stable with the only result in a new install of OS3.9 and putting back MUI 3.8 again.

I dont think this is intended for real Amiga machines. Its more geared at Amikit and UAE systems. Sadly WinUAE has caught up and in just about all cases now is faster than the real thing with better resources.

@Iggy

thanks

@Thread

I would say it this way... for MorphOS optical improvements make a lot of sense because you have enough resources and the desktop is based on it. On AmigaOS it is not used for that but propably they have the motivation to compete with MorphOS. For 68k it is (besides for someone using Scalos) only a GUI toolkit for applications, considering the problems it causes (how many people have already reported) and that there is no application needing it, it makes not that much sense. On slower hardware the high requirements are another problem. And even when you would have faster hardware (Vampire 2) why artifically slowing it down without real benefits. My personal view on that.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

considering the problems it causes (how many people have already reported) and that there is no application needing it, it makes not that much sense.

It causes confusion, that's the frustrating part.  People come along who might be new to the scene, or just coming back after decades, and they won't know about all these reported problems.  They'll just go into Google and search out "the latest version of MUI", and then get stuck with this mess.  I'm just kvetching, not really sure what to do about this other then comment annoyingly in as many threads as possible, LOL.  

On a side note, I noticed the registration page for MUI is still active.  I tried to register it a year or so back, not because I expected anything, but just because I felt like it was the right thing to do (after using "copies" of the program all through the '90s).  Didn't get any response to my payment, but a "thank you" email at least, would've been nice.  

[zylesea]

the registration page for MUI[/URL] is still active.  I tried to register it a year or so back, not because I expected anything, but just because I felt like it was the right thing to do (after using "copies" of the program all through the '90s).  Didn't get any response to my payment, but a "thank you" email at least, would've been nice.  

Stunzi is travelling the world with his mountainbike most of the time and blogging about that. He was cycling South-America from spring 2014 to early 2015 and a bit later was off again to Italy for a while. I guess he just had no time to respond.  
Stunzi's website: http://www.alpenzorro.de - quite a freak (in a definitely positive manner)