OS News

Before I clicked I thought you were talking about the website named OSNews. I'm glad it isn't ;-)

Since we have a thread for it now...

Public Release of MorphOS 3.10

The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the immediate availability of MorphOS 3.10, which represents one of the biggest updates in its history yet. This brand new version introduces support for AmigaOne X5000 systems as well as A-EON X5000 mainboards, and it greatly expands the general hardware compatibility by adding numerous new drivers for graphics cards, scanners, network cards, SATA controllers, and USB audio devices.

Furthermore, MorphOS 3.10 brings Flow Studio, which is an integrated development environment that offers features such as a built-in source level debugger and seamless MorphOS shell access.

In addition to many bug fixes and general performance improvements, MorphOS 3.10 also provides varied user interface and usability improvements. This release includes modern themes, new fonts, and support for vector graphics, such as SVG icons, as well as time zones via Coordinated Universal Time.

graphic_skins_threeten.png


For a more extensive overview of the included changes, please read our release notes.

 
redrumloa said:
Since we have a thread for it now...

Public Release of MorphOS 3.10
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I downloaded this and burnt an install CD for my Peg 1 but haven't been able to justify the cost of registering it yet and felt mildly miffed that Sam owners get a discount but Peg 1 owners don't. 49 Euros I might have stretched to but 79 Euros seems just a wee bit extravagant. (I bought AOS 4.1 but it was only £40-ish.)

I did have a quick play around though and it looks to be a huge improvement on my MOS 1.4.2 install (which I only got working again very recently). :D
 
Robert said:
I downloaded this and burnt an install CD for my Peg 1 but haven't been able to justify the cost of registering it yet and felt mildly miffed that Sam owners get a discount but Peg 1 owners don't. 49 Euros I might have stretched to but 79 Euros seems just a wee bit extravagant. (I bought AOS 4.1 but it was only £40-ish.)

I did have a quick play around though and it looks to be a huge improvement on my MOS 1.4.2 install (which I only got working again very recently). :D
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I can't speak as to why they would reduce Sam460 but not Peg1, I can only speculate. I'd guess it has to do with the fact they went through all the trouble of porting, and almost zero OS4 users bothered registering. The MorphOS team has not disclosed numbers only to say the numbers are insignificant. I guess also the fact OS4 is not available for Peg1, so MorphOS is the only option.

Your Peg1 is generally a much faster platform than a Sam460. Not including the little Efika, the Sam boards are easily the slowest option for MorphOS. Heck, in some benchmarks an Amiga 4000 with CyberstormPPC is comparable to Sam460.

Have you considered cheap PPC Mac hardware? A couple weeks back I got a PowerMac G5 2.3Ghz (last air cooled model) with ATI Radeon 9650 and loaded with everything needed for $30. After registering this box too, I am literally at only $130 on a computer that is faster than an AmigaOne X5000 with OS4 for about 1/15th the cost. It's my 2nd current MorphOS system, the other is a G5 2.7 that was nearly as cheap.
 
redrumloa said:
Have you considered cheap PPC Mac hardware?
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I had one of the previous releases installed on my old iBook (again unregistered, so slowed after 30 minutes) but I used it so rarely that I ended up giving it away to a local computer repairs store a few weeks back.
So when it comes to buying new hardware, I don't use MorphOS enough to justify it.

I might have gone for the OS if it was under fifty quid but spending any more than that on something I'd probably use for about half an hour every few months seems a bit silly.
 
Robert said:
So when it comes to buying new hardware, I don't use MorphOS enough to justify it.
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Even if you removed buying from the equation... I don't even use it enough to justify giving it a space to be set up. The unfortunate truth I keep coming back to is that there is literally nothing it does better, faster, or easier than the gaming PC sitting on my office table (which is also a pretty decent workstation, since I started tuning for stability sometime in the past decade, or so). There just isn't any time I'd reach for AmigaOS or MorphOS as the right tool to use for a particular job. There isn't really anything to it but nostalgia. And honestly, somewhere along the way, through all the scams, swindles, vaporware, bickering, arguing, and general bullshit, I lost a decent bit of my nostalgia for AmigaOS and it's descendants.

I occasionally enjoy tinkering with old hardware, but there's not really anything too interesting about those pathetic old PowerMacs or strangely repurposed, poorly designed embedded boards.
 
ilwrath said:
The unfortunate truth I keep coming back to is that there is literally nothing it does better, faster, or easier than the gaming PC sitting on my office table (which is also a pretty decent workstation, since I started tuning for stability sometime in the past decade, or so). There just isn't any time I'd reach for AmigaOS or MorphOS as the right tool to use for a particular job.
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No, nor I.

There isn't really anything to it but nostalgia.
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Yes and this makes up the majority of my reason for keeping the old machines.
There's an element of "comfort-blanket" to it for some reason; just sitting in front of my Peg or A1 and tinkering about is strangely enjoyable in a way that using my "real" computer never is. I even caught myself smiling whilst mucking about in OS4 the other week. I suppose you could argue that makes me some sort of deviant and one for the watching. :p
 
Robert said:
I had one of the previous releases installed on my old iBook (again unregistered, so slowed after 30 minutes) but I used it so rarely that I ended up giving it away to a local computer repairs store a few weeks back.
So when it comes to buying new hardware, I don't use MorphOS enough to justify it.

I might have gone for the OS if it was under fifty quid but spending any more than that on something I'd probably use for about half an hour every few months seems a bit silly.
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I don't blame you or ilwrath for lacking the desire to really engage in NG Amiga-like solutions. The likelihood of them keeping pace with the mainstream died about a decade ago. I never saw the OS4 camp ever having a chance, but early on I had hope for the MorphOS camp and a little in the AROS camp. Without rehashing all the history, we all know for many years it is nothing more than a hobby. I will give MorphOS props though for moving to PPC Mac as a stopgap before moving on to X86-64. Over the last ~10 years I've fairly consistently used G4 and G5 setups. Around 5 years back I was using a PowerMac with MorphOS as my main every day computer. Around that time the browser OWB just worked, with almost everything. I could do online banking, watch streaming videos, do social media, whatever. It was competent enough with it's specs, and it was strangely satisfying to be able to use an Amiga-derived OS as a primary computer. Then about 3 years back the browser situation started lagging. The big 3 evils of Youtube, Google and Fakebook, all started routinely braking everything. About the same time the developer Fab started slowing down development to focus on family. Browser issues in the mid 2010s really harms things. The browser version number didn't change in this latest release, but the problems are mostly fixed with an *. Youtube log-in and streaming works, Facebook works too. Most everything works, but the default setting makes these sites think it's a mobile phone so the experience is a step down. Spoofing as another browser usually works, but formatting is compromised. Nowadays MorphOS on a PowerMac is purely a hobbyist novelty no different than my C64, C128, Tandy 1000HX, Apple IIe, Xerox 820 etc etc. I'm a hobbyist, so I will hobby ;-)

I will address ilwrath's "pathetic old PowerMacs" comment. I would not call them pathetic any more than I would call an Amiga 4000T "pathetic". They were very well built computers in their day. The Pmac G5 I just got for $30 is probably worth more than that just in scrap aluminum. The thing is a beast. G4s and G5 were competitive in their day against Intel. Their time is gone as desktop processors, but are no more pathetic than the old 6502 series.

Now the ridiculously priced dedicated boutique hardware for OS4 I would label as pathetic. Mainly I say that because of the pricing structure from top to bottom. You can drop $2k+ on an X5000 that is slower than a G5, but then you will constantly get charged for mundane things like drivers. The cost Robert is not happy about for a MorphOS license, is roughly the same cost video card drivers cost on OS4 (outside the main OS). I don't like insulting people, I really don't, but I question the sanity of the hardcore "name followers".
 
Robert said:
There's an element of "comfort-blanket" to it for some reason; just sitting in front of my Peg or A1 and tinkering about is strangely enjoyable in a way that using my "real" computer never is. I even caught myself smiling whilst mucking about in OS4 the other week. I suppose you could argue that makes me some sort of deviant and one for the watching. :p
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Nope. I totally get it. I still found myself doing that multiple times, 10 years ago, or so. Last few times, not so much. I think I'm well and truly out of the spell. The last time I put everything away was over 5 years ago, now. Can't say I've had any urge to touch them, since. The only thing that might change my mind is the oddball chance they become worth enough to make it worthwhile to clean up and sell. That's the only real reason I haven't just dumped them for cheap to someone.
 
redrumloa said:
I will address ilwrath's "pathetic old PowerMacs" comment. I would not call them pathetic any more than I would call an Amiga 4000T "pathetic". They were very well built computers in their day. The Pmac G5 I just got for $30 is probably worth more than that just in scrap aluminum. The thing is a beast. G4s and G5 were competitive in their day against Intel. Their time is gone as desktop processors, but are no more pathetic than the old 6502 series.
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That's kind of a rosy memory. The G4 and G5 were barely competitive with anything current from Intel at the time they came out. And they were passed up and left in the dust pretty soon afterward. They look good compared to a Pentium 1, but they were barely on par with the P2/P3, and came out well into that part of the lifecycle. In fact, the first G4 Mac and the P3 came out on nearly the same day. The P4 and subsequent Core Duo series stomped the living daylights out of them, to the point that Apple had absolutely no choice but to either move or just admit total defeat in the desktop market.

I do find it interesting that Apple is wanting to go back to a non-Intel CPU for the next set of Macs, though. From the look of it, they're basically admitting that they won't have any performance, but that Apple fans don't need any performance, anyhow. I'm curious how that strategy will work for them.
 
redrumloa said:
Put away original Commodore Amigas? You did remove the batteries I hope?
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Those were removed 2 decades ago. :D (And I sold my big-box Amigas about 8 years ago, now.) I've just got a nice 1200 and one of those NOS refurb A500's you were selling back in the day, still NOS.
 
ilwrath said:
That's kind of a rosy memory. The G4 and G5 were barely competitive with anything current from Intel at the time they came out. And they were passed up and left in the dust pretty soon afterward. They look good compared to a Pentium 1, but they were barely on par with the P2/P3, and came out well into that part of the lifecycle. In fact, the first G4 Mac and the P3 came out on nearly the same day. The P4 and subsequent Core Duo series stomped the living daylights out of them, to the point that Apple had absolutely no choice but to either move or just admit total defeat in the desktop market.
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I don't fully agree with your assessment. There was a bit of an overlap of G4 and G5 generations at Apple and you really don't tough the G5. The G5 were waaaay overpriced, aka anything Apple, and they were power hogs, but they were competent to the point Apple were making claims the G5 were the fastest option on the market.
 
ilwrath said:
Those were removed 2 decades ago. :D (And I sold my big-box Amigas about 8 years ago, now.) I've just got a nice 1200 and one of those NOS refurb A500's you were selling back in the day, still NOS.
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You could sell that NOS A500 on eBay now and probably get $2,000. Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I kept a few.

-Edit-
If you ever take that NOS system out to sell, you may want to bench it first. Sitting in storage these old systems can have connection issues on the socketed chips. Reseating them will fix everything.
 
I forgot about this thread.

Public Release of MorphOS 3.11

The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the immediate availability of MorphOS 3.11. In addition to performance, stability and security improvements, this new version also features the first more substantial update of the Odyssey web browser in a while, which improves the rendering of and general compatibility with modern websites in several ways, as well as a more refined version of the recently introduced Flow Studio, our official integrated development environment. For a more extensive overview of the changes included in MorphOS 3.11, please read our release notes.
 
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