Genesi was very kind to send us in a fully featured Pegasos-based computer with MorphOS and Debian pre-installed. Here is our review with a number of screenshots of the supported OSes. Update: That machine has now being donated to the Computer History Museum in the Bay Area.
Pegasos: An Interesting & Sexy New Platform
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I hope they are gonna redesign the UI for better readability. Like Linux, it seems to suffer the “Too much useless options on screen at same time syndrome.”
I can’t wait for a sign of life from Amiga Inc.
Wow congrats, I wish I had the money to buy one. In case someone needs installationhelp.
http://www.morphos-news.de/beta2help/
I was following the MorphOS and Pegasos stuff for quite a couple of months now and it may seriously become an alternative to the existing Amiga. Different company and name but who cares
…a little to busy for my liking…
Fantastic OS! The Pegasos is even anticipating a NATIVE BEOS port SHWEET!
While reading the review I hit the part about memory protection. It wasn’t really clear but I had the impression that you were refering to old AmigaOS applications crashing. This is indeed the case because you can’t memory protect old AmigaOS applications which run in the A-Box modus. Many old applications (including normal System apps) from time to time make direct hardwarecalls e.g. banging the hardware or do some nasty stuff by directly accessing the memory instead allocating and freeing it. This it leads to the conclusion to cause crashes. New specially MorphOS API supporting applications should not have this issues (theoretically).
Regarding the Mime handling this is not true for the old AmigaOS (and MorphOS wants to be equally so I assume it to understand that too) .. well the old AmigaOS deals with mimes perfectly and I tend to say that the old AmigaOS was one of the first Operating Systems around that deals with Mimes. E.g. when clicking on a html file that it opens the file in a html browser, or when clicking on a bmp, iff, jpeg etc. that it opens it in their desired viewers. Same for AmigaGuide and other stuff.
I am a bit rusty what Amiga depends because I left the plattform around 1996 but most of the MIME stuff is dealt in ENV: or ENVARC: dir and you need apply a suitable icon to your app.
The mixture of GadTools and MUI is indeed outdated and a big point that I would cirticise too because it doesn’t fit into nowadays needs anymore and doesn’t look quite coherent and professional. This indeed requires a lot of work simply immitating an OS that hasn’t been updated for nearly 10 years isn’t any serious improvement. AOS3.5 and 3.9 are only simple hacks and no real solutions, only made in a hurry to satisfy the needs of their customers, partially filled with Aminet stuff which could have been leeched there for free.
I think that the whole concepts of GadTools and MUI needs to be rethought and improved drastically e.g. coherent Toolbars, Coherent UI’s, Coherent Menus etc. I know that going new ways may break the philosophy of the Amiga look&feel but after 10 years this is really required to get people back to that system.
Well I could write more but I think that Eugenia pretty much described the same for that point.
But all in all the MorphOS team did a quite cool job with that project and created a good foundation to work on and I’m quite sure that on the long term they present a pretty usable and good system.
By the way there are a lot of MorphOS ports done from older known Amiga programs and new games you may like to read more on http://ann.lu about their announcements or throw an eye on aminet or related pages.
“(scaling up to a Dual PowerPC G4 MPC 7450)” is a bit incorrect.
The official information now says: “600 MHz PowerPC G3 750 CXe, scaling up to a PowerPC G4 MPC 7450”
The dual G4 will most likely be made available for peg2 motherboard.
Hi Eugenia, we appreciate the review and find your comments on the mark. We even appreciate your advice and agree with it. What we have to do now is make sure that the market perceives us correctly. We have made a big step to do that here: http://www.pegasosppc.com .
We are clearly interested in the involvement of as many alternative operating systems as possible coming to the platform — have a look at the “Operating System” page. Anyone reading this can email us directly if they have an interest and the qualifications to do so. We often provide a Pegasos upfront at no cost to developers that can help us advance in this regard. If the port/effort is successful the machine is free. We can even fund development if we can be convinced the results are essential to the direction Eugenia has indicated.
Recently, Google released some stats here: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html . Our market is *exactly* as Eugenia has suggested: “(the) Pegasos is the geek’s ultimate platform and geeks like cool stuff.” If only 3% of the market is accessing Google with MacOS and 1% some flavor of Linux, the PPC has some room to run and SO DO WE. For now, we are not ready for the mass market. We are looking for people that understand computers and who want to do unique and productive things with them. We are in touch with scientists, hobbyists, developers and users and have a small, but extremely dedicated user base all over the world. We started with the Amiga Community, because it offered applications and a development community we could work with and WORK THEY HAVE! 😀 This was the “genesis” of the effort. The future is CLEARLY directed at the growing demand for something new and different. “Value” is the word we intend to emphasize. Here in Europe, Governments are switching to Linux (for example: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58764,00.html which lead to this too http://www.nowee.org/pegasos/index.html . Even Linux is not really ready for “Prime Time” (the mass consumer market) so in the meanwhile we have the opportunity to continue to march ahead step by step and do our best to get the smartest computer users in the world working with us.
…and, one more note…the “M” in MorphOS is for mobility! Check out that footprint — that is “next.” 😉
Sincerely,
Raquel and Bill
[email protected]
.. yes regarding to BBRV there are not much chances for the G4 on Peg1 at least not with the ArticiaS bugs ..
http://www.flyingmice.com/cgi-bin/squidcgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/85760…
Here the Moonbuggy entry from BBRV (for the other readers of this article/review).
> While reading the review I hit the part about memory protection. It wasn’t really clear but I had the impression that you were refering to old AmigaOS applications crashing.
You understood wrong. *MorphOS* was crashing when running some Amiga programs. This shouldn’t be happening. When I try to load a Linux binary under BeOS or under Windows, I just get an error message telling me that this is not an executable OR that this or that library is missing. But in no case the OS should crash as it happens with MorphOS very regularly.
>Regarding the Mime handling this is not true for the old AmigaOS
Well, I have .txt files here, and .jpg files and .avi files here, and while there are apps installed in the system that can handle these VERY COMMON file formats, the OS doesn’t load anything neither I get an “open with” menu (it just loads a shell with an error message and that disturbs me a lot). I didn’t like this unorganization of the OS.
Also, an .lha a-la winzip application is needed (using the shell is working fine, but it could be made easier).
Eugenia:
> You understood wrong. *MorphOS* was crashing when running > some Amiga programs.
It’s a temporary solution. Currently, everything is running in the A/Box (which has no memory protection). But MOS does have memory protection. As the A/Box is temporarily the only “visible” thing, if something brings the A/Box down, MOS will get unusable. This is a transitional move. 1st) the amiga compatible (but 100% rewritten) environment = A/Box 2nd) the new Q/Box apis, without some remaining limitations of the amigaOS, but be still amiga-like of course, and able to use old apps through the A/box (like OSX)
>Regarding the Mime handling this is not true for the old AmigaOS
Ambient is in MorphOS 1.3 quite weak and will hopefully get better soon. Ambient is a Workbench replacement (= filemanager), written from scratch. It will get very powerful later (à la Dopus Magellan) but for the time being it’s advised to use the Shell, and/or another WB replacement (scalos, dopus magellan, or even the original wb).
Please keep in mind this is just the first step of a completely new platform, not aimed at the mass market yet !
The purpose is to make it ready for a wider audience for the release of the Pegasos 2 in september (MorphOS 1.6 if
releases are regular)
One last thing : an amigaOS background would be nice to understand more the current state of MorphOS. (to understand : what is MUI ? how does it work etc ?)
Btw: there are already anti aliased fonts in MOS1.3.
Hello Eugenia,
Well the fact that MorphOS was crashing when you used some Amiga programs and programs that use “old” AmigaOS 3.x APIs, is explained by the fact that they run inside the A-Box.
Inside the A-Box, the memory is not protected as applications using AmigaOS 3.x APIs need a shared memory environment to run which avoid memory protection.
In fact when a program crash, that crash the A-Box application, but for now it’s not possible to simply kill and restart the A-Box application.
But of course the MorphOS Team have already thought of a fully memory protected environment named Q-Box. In fact in the future this will become the default environnement (when it’ll be enough complete for that) and the A-Box will just be there for running old apps using AmigaOS 3.x APIs (a bit like Classic in OS X).
For more information on how MorphOS works, I invite you to read the “MorphOS in details” document by Nicholas Blachford:
http://www.blachford.info/morphos/morphos_in_detail.pdf
Regards
“I presume that one of the ways MorphOS manages to boot in less than 5 seconds is by not initializing the hardware during boot-up.”
Errm, no. That is not true I am afraid.
For more information on how MorphOS works, I invite you to read the “MorphOS in details” document by Nicholas Blachford:
You won’t have much luck reading it there, try here:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/files/morphos_in_detail.pdf
>You understood wrong. *MorphOS* was crashing when running
>some Amiga programs.
Well, that’s only half of the truth. In fact the complete A-
Box crashes, but the quark kernel (and therefore MorphOS)
still work. The only problem is that you would have to
restart the whole A-BOX because the display drivers, etc.
are currently running in A-BOX. However these will later be
moved into Q-Box, so that in fact you can then simply
restart the whole A-Box which then doesn’t “feel” like the
whole OS has been crashed.
But these are just minor technical details.
IMHO this is a really great review for thios new
alternative platform.
BTW: Those of you who don’t like the UI (and want to provide the best UI ever!), think they can
contribute software or have lots of other nice ideas about moving the platform ahead, please contact Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco ([email protected]) directly. Every contribution is very welcome.
Best Regards
David Scheibler
I just hope Eugenia’s report will have more impact than my remarks over the MorphOS development…
(Good report Eugenia !)
Leo.
Those window management buttons are really too small. Not many use those ancient 1024×768 legacy screenmodes today =P
it’s skinnable, don’t worry itix
I do not want to ruin your day, but running MAC OS X on that board with Mac-On-Linux does violate Apples licence. So that should not be a reason to buy this thing …. :-))
FYI the native package management in darwin is not fink it’s Darwin ports http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/darwinports/. I’m not sure that fink would run on a pure Darwin system.
Ludovic
—
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid
I dont see the point of a non-offical Amiga-ish OS. Why not develop an original system. Old Amiga games and software can run in emulator for Windows anyways.
I have fond memories of the AmigaOS, and still have an Amiga machine in the corner which I use occasionally. If a new real Amiga does come along (I read some months ago) I would be interested.
PS why so ugly big icons?
Huffle Puff: That depends on what country you live in. I Sweden it is perfectly legal to run MacOS X on any computer you like.
Hi Ludovic, we would be delighted to work with the OpenDarwin Team! Who should we contact?
Hi Harvey, when there is an AmigaOS for PPC we will be very happy to support an Official AmigaOS, just as we support Amiga Research OS, http://www.aros.org , OpenBeOS, http://www.openbeos.org , and NewOS, http://newos.sourceforge.net/ . Travis Geiselbrech of NewOS has had a Pegasos for a few weeks and we are hoping to have a 64 bit kernel coming from this work soon. With IBM’s PPC plans this could prove to be another compelling reason to attract new developers to the platform. On the Linux side, we have a Debian Pegasos Development team lead by Sven Luther <[email protected]> and all the distros mentioned on the “Operating System” page at http://www.pegasosppc.com have had or have a Pegasos now.
Sincerely,
Raquel and Bill
Genesi
“Well, I have .txt files here, and .jpg files and .avi files here, and while there are apps installed in the system that can handle these VERY COMMON file formats, the OS doesn’t load anything neither I get an “open with” menu (it just loads a shell with an error message and that disturbs me a lot). I didn’t like this unorganization of the OS.
Also, an .lha a-la winzip application is needed (using the shell is working fine, but it could be made easier).”
This all works in AmigaOS 3.9 – the various types of file show up with appropriate icons. Click on the icon and the player or unarchiver runs. So it should not be too hard to add it to MorphOS.
Thanks Eugenia – fascinating!!
What is up with the puke color combinations and lousy GUI widget designs in both these MorphOS and all the Amiga 4 screen shots? I know, Amiga fans now start out every discussion here by claiming continuously that this will change but I doubt it.
Get rid of the background textures and the puke-greyish colors. Blech! Why do they insist on these colors anyway? Are Europeans that into crappy dull colors and too many textures? Jezus!
Vic
Had you got OSX installed, mean pre-installed ?
What about the EULA, if so ?
Had you installed OSX bougth by osnews.com ?
Had they installed for OSX for your test box ?
>Here in Europe, Governments are switching to Linux (for example: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58764,00.html which lead to this too http://www.nowee.org/pegasos/index.html . Even Linux is not really ready for “Prime Time” (the mass consumer market) so in the meanwhile we have the opportunity to continue to march ahead step by step and do our best to get the smartest computer users in the world working with us.
Oh ? eWeek compares OSX and SuSE 8.2 as equal to the desktop. if so, OSX is not ready for the desktop ?
Linux is already there for the desktop, since years now.
Never installed SuSE, RedHat or Mandrake last time, hadn’t you ?
they have office pakages, running keyboards, very good tcp/ip stacks, and no need to reboot and wait.
krgds,
frank
>What is up with the puke color combinations and lousy GUI >widget designs in both these MorphOS and all the Amiga 4 >screen shots
Actually those colors can be changed at any time. What you see on screenshots is not a finished GUI. For example none of current skins use the possibility to use alpha channel for window border buttons. Also the size of buttons is adjusted to fit small window borders – BUT you can make borders bigger and use much bigger images if you wish.
MOS-GUI is fully skinable… check http://www.morphzone.org for more screenshots.
Look/feeling and functionality only depends on user skills. It’s not another big distribution which needs a lot of harddiskspace and memory… you’ll be not feeded with more food than you can eat. My system installation (core os components and tools) only needs 16 MB. And that’s very kewl!
Hi “frank” …we are running OSX and Safari nearly everyday from a PowerBook G4. We have another laptop running XP. We also have various developers running MacOS 9.x and OSX on Pegasos machines all over the world. They have made a choice to do that. We have tried all the Linux distros mentioned on the Pegasos and have YDL installed on this machine too. We try to keep up with what is happening.
According to the Google stats referenced above Microsoft dominates the OS market with 90+%. We all know that. We think that one day, when a hardware, OS and application package ALL-IN-ONE arrives with everything *they* can offer and more we can start discussing “prime time.” That is just our opinion. We think as long as you do not have the FREEDOM and flexibility to manipulate all the pieces you will not have a solution on its way to “prime time.” Hopefully, that explains our position better…;-)
We think we are on our way to launching the first Computer Revolution of the 21st century. 😀 Freedom, value, and flexibility (forward compatibility and scalability) are the key words we think about. Mobility is next. Imagine 90+% of the worlds smart OS people thinking about what they can do LEGALLY with a Pegasos based on a PPC (and with corporate/community support!). We are hoping we can trigger some innovation and maybe a quantum leap or two…;-)
Sincerely,
Raquel and Bill
What is up with the puke color combinations and lousy GUI widget designs in both these MorphOS and all the Amiga 4 screen shots? I know, Amiga fans now start out every discussion here by claiming continuously that this will change but I doubt it.
It’s the MUI colorscheme, this was from an era when the only afordable monitor was a CBM 1084, basically a 14″ TV
with a 50Hz refreshrate, by not using very bright colors
it was usuable at the time, today with TFT’s it looks dull
(it did look dull before but that was on purpose. 🙂
You can change it, (the default colors are a bit harder)
I’m sure that when morphos matures a bit more there will be
some more colour themes available.
You can’t use your own bitmaps for gadgets such as arrows, buttons,… Pre-defined gadgets were designed for 8/16 colour GUI with grey colors: that’s why GUI looks so ugly and unprofessional…
As long as it isn’t fixed, the GUI can’t use Themes for the whole GUI, it can only use theme for standard window gadgets… which leads to the incoherent GUI Eugenia described in her review.
Maybe MorphOS 1.4 will (finally) add full theme support ?
Leo.
Hello Eugenia : }
Indeed, the attributes of the Pegasos as a platform is that already several OSes have been ported to it – and many more are in process! This was considered very attractive to the Phoenix Developer Consortium, as we have tried to find a way to leverage a larger talent pool of alternative-platform developers but always there have been collisions between the platform’s owners making collaboration or cooperative mindsets tough to come by.
When Phoenix saw what the Genesi roadmap was like for multiple OSes and spinoffs of the original Pegasos I design we felt that perhaps we had found a solution for our problems with platform owners, and we liked what we saw for the hardware future. With Pegasos II coming soon, and Eclipsis for tailored delivery devices, with Satellite TV and settop boxes… we feel that regardless of OS there are opportunities for developers of many OS preferences to do something on an alternative platform that has financial legs, and coincidentally a fledgling OS called MorphOS as well.
MorphOS is progressing rapidly in its ability to provide AmigaOS backwards compatibility transparently, and is designed for the future to provide – as you said – some really cool geek space. Anyone who appreciates an extremely fast and responsive, small footprint OS can easily design applications for desktop or OEM tailored platforms NOW!
So for the Phoenix Developer Consortium, Genesi seems to be the ideal partner: someone who appreciates the use of many OSes, allowing projects to come from many community mindsets, with room for innovation, entrepeneurship, and initiative. I would invite any interested developers with interest in any alternative OS to email me (see Phoenix website linked above) to get involved!
As far as pricing: expect this to be realistic as next-gen Pegasos II begins to ship sometime this summer or fall, and to be responsive to decreased manufacturing costs as higher volume kicks in. It may have been an early adopter and developer small volume unit with the first generation, but the intention is to be not only attractive from a geek toy standpoint, but to also make inroads for alternative computing : }
So, does it mean : its not legally to run OSX on a PegasosPPC ?
Again, had osnews.com recieved a testbox with a pre-installed Debian GNU/Linux in addition an pre-installed MOL and OSX ?
If not, I’m interessted to hear something about the install process from OSNews.com.
Did you know, that the Gartner estimate a marketshare for Linux on the desktop something above 5 % ?
Apple holds just something above 3%.
It depends to the study you choose. google is a searchengine….
So, away from MS people had made their choice.
To take your word, MorphOS is much more far away from the Desktop as Linux today is.
Take Linux as a chance for the pegasos, and I knew that Genesi will do that 😉
And thats great !
But, please, let it be to publish statements like : linux is not ready for the Desktop or”Prime Time”. You should know it better if you use YDL (especially 3.0), Mandrake 9.1PPC Edition, SuSE Linux 7.3 PPC Edition, Gentoo, Debian.
The other way round would be : MorphOS is not ready for the use of a keyboard… MorphOS is an OS without an Networkstack for the internet. Its a connectionloss maschine.
Linux is on the Destop. Linux is growing on the desktop. Linux (ask SuSE Linux AG for the study) holds more marketshare on the Desktop as Apple does today.
Linux can be used as a multi.media.box (SuSE 8.2 comes, for example, with MainActor, this something that compete with Apples iMovie), a.s.o.
So, don’t replay this old MS – Song : Even Linux is not really ready for “Prime Time” . It is.
rgds,
Frank
Having recently spent three days surrounded by IT managers @ CeBIT Australia 2003, we found ourselves inundated with requests for more information on the Pegasos 2 and the future direction in which it was heading. The future certainly looks bright in Australia. It’s also nice to be involved with a platform that seeks Freedom of choice of OS as fundamental.
I believe this is because the platform hails from Europe and hence has diversity at its core, unlike US derived solutions. Roll on September and the Pegasos 2.
Hey Frank!
We are in violent agreement!
😉
Hi Scott, great! 😀
R&B
Having to register with all sorts of personal information to view Pegasus pricing is not a good business decision.
Many online businesses lose over 50% of their potential customers by asking for too much information upfront.
New Products
Parse error: parse error in /home/virtual/site19/fst/var/www/html/store/includes/modules/products_ new.php on line 35
Having a working website would also help business.
It seems you are copying the Amiga Inc strategy of vaporware. At the very least, “paper launch”.
From the Australian Pegasos website:
“Pegasos II will ship around September 2003”
No wonder the main website craps out when the store is used. There is nothing to buy for at least FOUR MONTHS. I hope you wouldn’t have taken my money and made me wait for months and months without telling me of the massive delays…
Thank you for noticing that, it was fixed about two microseconds after your comment :o)
I should also mention that we are currently completely sold out of Pegasos motherboards, with some ~600 total in the community. In March Genesi offered an amazing deal through Phoenix Developers’ Consortium whereby members were able to obtain motherboards for $299, some $200 off the original price. This was a special once-off deal to help seed the developer community, to help pave way for the Pegasos II to have an even greater range of software and add-ons at its launch time.
The future looks bright, see you in September 🙂
Damien, Web Developer for Genesi Sarl.
Hi Michael, we think you might have missed out on some earlier details that might not have been available to you. We sold our last Pegasos I machines to Phoenix Developers for $299 last month. We are working on a few things now, including:
1. G4 upgrade
2. Something we call the SuperBundle for all our Pegasos I users.
3. The Pegasos II
We are not trying to sell anything now. We are to busy working on the items above. Pegasos I customers will be able to swap out their machines for the Pegasos II with the G4 CPU card for 200 Euros. The Pegasos II with the G4 CPU card will sell for $499 through the Internet. The G3 version for less. We will also have a ONE version of the configured Pegasos for sale online for $699. Our Resellers will offer additional configurations.
Best regards, and hope to hear from you in September…;-)
R&B
> running MAC OS X on that board with Mac-On-Linux does violate Apples licence.
nonsense. If you have a legal MacOSX copy, you are of course allowed to run it on the computer of your choice.
Here in Germany the conditions of producers, called “Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen” (AGB) cannot overrule the law.
I have to correct myself:-/
the producers’ conditions
>Here in Germany the conditions of producers,
>called “Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen” (AGB) cannot
>overrule the law.
Well the only problem here is, that this has nothing todo
with AGB. In fact it is a valid contract. But only if you
agree to this contract. And if there is only the
possibility to use the software you have bought legally
from your dealer (buying it via internet from Apple might
be different!) if you agree to licence contract by pressing
one button and no other possibility to sue the software
then the pressing of the button “I agree” does not
automatically mean that you have actually agreed to the
contract in legal terms.
But this odes not mean that just because there is an EULA
means that this is in no case a valid contract. It can be
one/can get one, but it must not become one.
— The reply —
> You can’t use your own bitmaps for gadgets such as
> arrows, buttons,… Pre-defined gadgets were designed for > 8/16 colour GUI with grey colors: that’s why GUI looks so > ugly and unprofessional…
You can change them now, in MorphOS 1.3. I myself have made a little skull which I use as the close button on all my windows. And even the default GUI looks a lot better than Windows boring grey/black buttons.
Since this is still a beta of the OS, there are of course some parts missing, like a GUI for setting the buttons/a theme, but it’s still quite easy to change colours and button manually. All you need is a gfx-prgram and then copy your little images to the skin drawer.
— Just some thoughts —
I have only used my Pegasos with MorphOS for a few weeks but I completely exchanged my old amiga 4000 for it the first day. The speed just blows me away. I mean, I have used my old Amiga 4000 with the system running on a mere 50MHz 060 (with a 233MHz PPC 604e for the “heavy apps”) and I thought it outperformed my Athlon XP with Windows/Linux anytime.
But now I really know what outperform means =) This system is really fast and efficient. Just to show my “PC-friends” how fast it boots is a real trip
I’m really happy I finally have a machine and a system to show people what computing should all be about.
Anders, OnyxSoft
Well, I’m very glad to hear the good news on selling the first batch of Pegasos boards and the upcoming products.
And I wouldn’t really call the store “fixed”. The potential new customer fills out a form thinking something is for sale only to find:
“There are currently no products.”
You may want to cut and paste what you told me into what the store says. Alternatively, you may want to be more clear up front that the current run of product has indeed sold out and that September is the anticipated arrival date of the new product.
The new G4 board for $499 seems like a good product and I’ll check up in a couple months to see what is happening with it.
Best.
I have just altered the store site to go to the index page rather than the login form. There you will see a comment that the Pegasos is currently out of stock.
Damien McKenna, Web Developer for Genesi Sarl.
The other way round would be : MorphOS is not ready for the use of a keyboard… MorphOS is an OS without an Networkstack for the internet. Its a connectionloss maschine.
Since when is a TCP/IP stack a part of an OS, really?
Well, actually, there has been a new TCP/IP stack in development for quite a while now, by Olaf Bartel, one of the Amiga senior developers. However, due to licencing issues, with this stack being used both by AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS, the Roadshow stack can’t be delivered for MorphOS until it is delivered for AmigaOS 4, whenever that ships.
A sad state, but the stack is at least something to look forward to, being based on newer BSD sources (it’s a virus!) than AmiTCP or Miami.
Linux is on the Destop. Linux is growing on the desktop. Linux (ask SuSE Linux AG for the study) holds more marketshare on the Desktop as Apple does today.
Linux can be used as a multi.media.box (SuSE 8.2 comes, for example, with MainActor, this something that compete with Apples iMovie), a.s.o.
Interestingly, I ran MainActor on my Amiga almost ten years ago. 😉
Nice review — it’s rare to see one that seems to be balanced, showing good points and bad points without playing up one or the other. Thanks.
To contact the opendarwin,
there’s a few way :
on IRC #opendarwin on irc.freenode.net.
On the mailings list, I’de say Hackers would be the list.
And finally you could contact [email protected].
Ludovic
—
http://www.bebox.nu
Great review!
I believe that thermal and noise issues are becoming a big liability for x86. When computers are one box sitting in the corner humming, used only once every couple of days, it’s one thing. But when people like you and me want to make our own set top boxes, or mount something under a cabinet in the kitchen with one of those neat fold down touch screen LCD’s and have music, recipies, etc stream to it, we need moderate amounts of CPU power and we don’t need no stinkin fans!
I work in the embedded world, and many of the products are SoC, MIPS-based for ultra low end, and ARM7 / StrongARM / XScale going up, but in my opinion, none of them scale as well up or down compared to PPC. I mean, just look at the sheer amount of ppc variant chips out there, for just about every purpose. And scales to MP too.
I had a point in here somewhere. When most companies use these boards, they typically throw a bunch of hardcore driver hackers at it and hack the shit out of a couple reference boards. They then bootstrap whatever RTOS they’re using. How much of a pain in the ass this can be should not be underestimated. One bad race condition in an ISR buried deep in a 3rd party closed driver can cause a fault once every 300,000,000 times executing.
So what I’m trying to say here is that it’d be cool also if these folks decided to scale down to even lower power and smaller boards, perhaps with built-in 802.11 and put up things on their site like “so you’re a geek and want to create a silent, low power, wireless mp3 / ogg / video etc client in your kitchen. This board comes pre-loaded with linux and good documentation, boots from a compact flash.” I’d probably buy 5 of those right now. Like I said, they’re probably available from elsewhere, but are targeted at companies that already have a team of platform engineers. SoC-style systems are cheap to make (translating to decent margins), these guys could probably make some decent money.
> Two glaring omissions are […]´and a text editor.
There are millions of text editors on Aminet, I would be quite surprised if (m)any of those would have problems with MorphOS. Besides, a text editor named morphed will soon be included.
>There are millions of text editors on Aminet
The two I tried (yes, from Aminet) locked up the machine. I don’t have the time to endlessly download, un-lha, try, crash, reboot. Such trivial applications should be coming with the OS.
Hi Michael,
you can check the links to the retailers for pricing – some
still have Pegasos boards which can be bought alone or configured
as a complete system with the OS pre-installed.
I have read that Morphos uses or is derived form AROS. Is that true?
@Michael
We won’t accept money till we have more boards to ship coming
imminently. While yes, this means a 3-4 month dead period, we feel
that is the best option.
@anonymous
Some code was shared between the MorphOS team and the AROS team,
correct. But claiming MorphOS is based on AROS is a discredit to both
groups. They have quite different aims, with MorphOS being binary
compatable while AROS is geared to being API compatable.
@Eugena
Download CygnusED from morphos.net. The included elf file is a
fully functioning text editor, but it does lack Cygnus’s advanced
options.
Very interesting review Eugenia!
Hope that you got the test machine for free, because after a great review like this your are really worth it! 😉
Well my credit card felt a little warm after reading the review.
It’ll be nice to see, sit and play with a G4 Pegasos at Amiwest.
One thing I REALLY can appreciate is a TOTALLY QUIET machine – no line voltage hums, fans, whining hard drives that are akin to the Chinese water torture.
This alone would be a MAJOR reason at least for me.
Forget about the speed, plethora of OS to use and install, and all the rest! (big grin).
I see a Pegasos in my future in about 9 weeks.
> There are millions of text editors on Aminet
I have tried most of them there and not many work even on my A1200. And whenever I find usable text editor from Aminet it is shareware. Duh.
Eugenia: Blacks Editor is my personal favorite for MorphOS and AmigaOS. It is on Aminet but you need two archives (BlacksEditor.lha and BedUpg_Pack1.lha) 🙁
Well written review – I really hope OSNews will do an article on AmigaOS4 and the AmigaOne once it’s available also…
Or even a review of Debian on the AmigaOne right now – I was quite surprised by the performance comments for Debian and MacOnLinux on the Pegasos since it runs like a dream on my AmigaOne which is really not too dissimilar hardware-wise. (800MHz G3 currently, getting an 800MHz G4 soon)
>You can change them now, in MorphOS 1.3. I myself have made a little skull which I use as the close button on all my windows. And even the default GUI looks a lot better than Windows boring grey/black buttons.
You can have any bitmap as Window gadgets and Window ONLY: you cannot use your own MUI gadgets… nor GadTools gadgets.
The only thing you can do to try hidding those ugly primitive gadgets (see the arrows for example !
), is to use a 24bit background… But you cannot use the Shape you want…
Please stop saying you can use your own theme,… you CANNOT: I wish you could but unfortunately it is still not possible.
Maybe in MorphOS 1.4/+…
Leo.
> I really hope OSNews will do an article on AmigaOS4 and the AmigaOne once it’s available also…
If Amiga, Inc. are willing to send us the hardware and software needed — as Genesi, Apple, SGI, Sun etc have done in the past for us and other tech magazines –, we will gladly write the review.
I think many of the issues Eugenia has are related to the fact that
most people involved in the project so far have an Amiga background
and can easily solve many of the problems she mentions (TCP stack,
editor, mimetypes etc) by just copying some Amiga stuff (some of which
have MorphOS ports already). But of course, this is not so easy if
you’ve *not* been using an Amiga for the last few years, so the
remarks are perfectly justified (and quite constructive).
When it comes to user interface.. well I guess people have different
taste. I think Windows is horrible in this respect, MacosX is ok, but
personally I like tiny buttons and UI components because they give me
more workspace (and because I’m good at aiming ;-). So I hope we’ll
see several included skins, some which satisfy the people who want a
“large” UI, some which give you a very compact UI.
> You can have any bitmap as Window gadgets and Window ONLY:
> you cannot use your own MUI gadgets… nor GadTools gadgets.
It depends… here I’ve replaced some gadgets by Windows alike sets. But true, you cant freely define shape of gadgets or create custom frames. Something like WinXP buttons are not possible to do. Maybe annoying but IMO not priority issue.
So, is it possible to lower the cost a little and not give us MorphOS?
I’ll level with you: I don’t care about MorphOS, Amiga, or any of that stuff. I do care about Linux and having the option of using MacOS X. Decently-priced PPC hardware would really make my day. So, any plans?
-Erwos
What the hell is a “nemnant”?
@iggy
Since when is a TCP/IP stack a part of an OS, really?
Well a lot has happened in the computer world since the last version of AmigaOS (3.1) shipped nine years ago (1994).
Every OS comes with an IP stack now.
Still playing with your Amiga is like driving a Model-T ford.
@Erwos
I’d note, the current planned price of the G4 Pegasos II is $599 so I
understand, with the G3 costing even less. This is, of course,
introductory pricing, so I cannot say if this will change in the
future.
@gfx
I would compare it more to a CJ-4 Jeep, rough and rumble ready, but
not much for creature comforts yet. Give us a little time to turn it
into the Grand Cherokee luxury-wagon. 8)
I think the reviewer was a bit hard on MorphOS and didn’t consider that it is something of a special case to run binaries originally written for another processor. No-one has ever done that before, not like this. MorphOS runs these 68K programs native, which sounds like an oxymoron until you consider the nature of the old Amiga OS on which MorphOS is modeled. On the Amiga programs were executed through libraries and function calls, which have been recreated in PPC code for MorphOS (there is necessarily a limited amount of emulation at the core of the execution, but MorphOS is not an emulator).
The net effect of this is that the 68K programs run at incredible speed that could never be matched by any emulator on remotely comparable hardware (maybe a 4 gHz Pentium 4 could run UAE and beat MorphOS, I don’t know, I would like to see it). Or in some cases they don’t run at all, and yes, certain programs crash MorphOS. So don’t run them! It reminds me of the joke where the guy goes to see the doctor “hey Doc, every time I do <insert dumb action> it hurts like crazy” and the doctor says “well, stop doing that!”
I can understand where a brand new MorphOS user might put in a CD of Amiga programs and be frustrated because several of them won’t run. Maybe this happened to Eugenia. There needs to be a shakeout period where the user gets the hang of things and realizes the sorts of old software that won’t run and makes more use of the new software from the developers Genesi is nurturing.
Heheheheh… I kinda liked the new tip: (IF replying, type “RE:” and paste the subject of the comment you are replying to)
Now to stay on topic, I also think that the default grey-ish colors of the desktop are ugly, but as long as one can change the colors scheme, I can live with that. The consistence with different widgets needs some works too.
But I loved those big 3D icons… Maybe they have some guidelines for designing those icons because they look nice and very consistent.
MorphOS seems very close to deliver something that I could use every day. I didn’t seen any IM client nor a newsreader. Put that and some gnutella client or something like that and I’m sold…. 🙂
Unfortunately, here in Brazil, PPC hardware is almost impossible to find except for Apple’s ones, which are sold in specialized retailers and are quite expensive. But if Pegasos boards arise around here, I’d definately buy one!
Cheers,
DeadFish Man
I think the reviewer was a bit hard on MorphOS and didn’t consider that it is something of a special case to run binaries originally written for another processor. No-one has ever done that before, not like this.
Except when Apple made the transition from 68K to PPC.
Or in some cases they don’t run at all, and yes, certain programs crash MorphOS. So don’t run them! It reminds me of the joke where the guy goes to see the doctor “hey Doc, every time I do <insert dumb action> it hurts like crazy” and the doctor says “well, stop doing that!”
But see, that’s why that is a joke. Because that’s terrible advice that a doctor (or any professional) should never give.
MorphOS looks super-cool (the tech/concept, not the GUI) and I really hope that they get enough marketplace success to be able to continue the amazing work. But right now, it does look a little rough. Definitely for people who’s hobby is esoteric computing, but not necessarily for people who need to use it as a tool to get work done.
Ok, as several people have pointed out, MorphOS on the Pegasos1, is really for developers, and die-hard Amiga users. We have the knowledge to set it up and have it running well, so it’s as usable as Linux and XP (well, near enough
.
We’ll be installing apps that we know are system friendly- my hit-to-miss ratio on apps is very high here!
Now, as Eugenia and others have pointed out, this is rather useless for mainstream users! So what Genesi is working on for the Pegasos2 release, (and for Peg1 users), is a CD SuperBundle full of 3rd-party apps with installers, that we know work well. And as well as shareware/freeware, there’ll be full and cut-down commercial applications, like Image Processors etc!
And to the non-consistant GUIs, the problem here, is the older apps- all MUI apps look very consistent, and the GUI for customising them is identical (and very flexible as well). MUI apps all use the same default GUI setup, which can then be customised fully for each app. IMO MUI apps have a far more consistant GUI than Windows apps.
It would be nice if all apps were MUI, but that’s just not possible at this stage- it’s something that we are working towards.
And for the record- MOS is very responsive- IMO, the only other OS that matches it is QNX!
-Ants
Thank you for posting your review. You raised some valid and not so valid points. IMHO I dont think the reviewer spent enought time with the OS. Also, it must be noted that the current version of MOS is a developer release only. Its always nice to get an external from the Amiga world viewpoint. I have written a very large (12 typed pages) review of Peg/MOS which will be posted with launch of our wesbite. It should be interested and OS News might be interested to see it. This will give more scope to the GEnesi project and offer some insights..
stay tuned
magnetic systems inc.
nyc
> The net effect of this is that the 68K programs run at incredible speed that could never be matched by any emulator on remotely comparable hardware (maybe a 4 gHz Pentium 4 could run UAE and beat MorphOS, I don’t know, I would like to see it).
Are you kidding? Have you tried WinUAE (or Amithlon) on even a moderate PC (like my Athlon 1.3)?
The icons in the stable version are SO MUCH BETTER than the
the fake-glassy looking ones in the beta (i.e. linked to in the article).
The ones in the beta look like cheap knock-offs of the wanna-be osx icons made for linux+kde, which I am so sick of those
The icons in the current morphos as reviewed are soooOOO much better looking! They look like they are designed by DaVinci himself :p
Plea to MorphOS developers: Please, please *PLEASE* do NOT make the o.s. look like a 5 year old’s toy with an entirely glass icon scheme.
They need to look professional and original, not like an attempt to mimic what apple computer does. (I do like OSX icons, but not everaldo new kde icons – sorry).
> I think the reviewer was a bit hard on MorphOS and didn’t > consider that it is something of a special case to run
> binaries originally written for another processor. No-one > has ever done that before, not like this.
As somebody already pointed out… UM… Classic MacOS!!! MacOS 7.1.x ran on both PPC and 68k hardware. A large chunk of the PPC side was still 68k software that was run on an emulated 68040 and looked to the OS as if it was being run natively. MacOS 8.0 (that is after the 7.1 series, all the way to the 7.6 Series, a number of years and revisions) was the *first* full native PPC MacOS. Even now, all MacOS up to (afaik) 9 will run 68k software as if it was native. Certainly my Mac (when it’s not running BeOS) will run 68k software (almost all, not just some) and I can’t tell if it’s native or emulated.
DruggedBunny: WinUAE *is* slow compared to MorphOS. Remember UAE must emulate the Kickstart ROM code but MorphOS provides all AOS functions in native PPC. This makes quite difference.
“If Amiga, Inc. are willing to send us the hardware and software needed — as Genesi, Apple, SGI, Sun etc have done in the past for us and other tech magazines –, we will gladly write the review.
”
It is Eyetech Ltd, not Amiga Inc who sell the AmigaOne and would supply a review copy in a few months time when the OS is ready. They use Amiga IP and brand name under license from and in cooperation with Amiga Inc.
MorphOS runs these 68K programs native…
I don’t understand this statement. MorphOS runs 68K code as 68K code?
I don’t think substituting library function calls with PPC code is the same as running 68K programs native. How does MorphOS handle non-library code? There is after all some non-library code in every non-trivial Amiga program.
“There is after all some non-library code in every non-trivial
Amiga program.”
The non-library code is handled by a 68K cpu emulation. The
emulation in MorphOS1.3 as included with the demonstration
machine runs a 68060 emulation. Newer development and
beta versions of MorphOS feature a JIT 68k recompiling emulator
called “Trance” that runs 68K code at about 75% of the native
PPC cpu speed by translating 68K code directly to PPC
instructions. The current combination of 68k emulation and
native PPC library calls is quick and responsive. Also most
68K apps can be re-compiled with little or no changes to take
full advantage of the PPC and use native code throughout.
I ported a few of my games to MorphOS and the required
effort was small and worthwhile. It’s an interesting
system, Development is in motion and MorphOS will see
many improvements soon. Having a platform where each
person has the possibility of running their own alternative
OS(es) of choice is welcomed.
For many that may be some flavour of Linux and for many
others that may be MorphOS, AROS, BeOS, NetBSD or another.
<quote>
>Here in Germany the conditions of producers,
>called “Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen” (AGB) cannot
>overrule the law.
Well the only problem here is, that this has nothing todo
with AGB. In fact it is a valid contract. But only if you
agree to this contract. And if there is only the
possibility to use the software you have bought legally
from your dealer (buying it via internet from Apple might
be different!) if you agree to licence contract by pressing
one button and no other possibility to sue the software
then the pressing of the button “I agree” does not
automatically mean that you have actually agreed to the
contract in legal terms.
</quote>
Hmm, it can well be that some provisions of a contract are void according to the local law. For example, the clause of MS Windows EULA that prohibits reinstalling preinstalled OS on another computer is void here in Russia. It all depends though of what the actual EULA says about such cases, that is, whether contradiction of some requirements of the contract to the local law means you can’t make such a contract at all (but this can contradict to the law, too
.
>Newer development and
beta versions of MorphOS feature a JIT 68k recompiling emulator called “Trance” that runs 68K code at about 75% of the native PPC cpu speed by translating 68K code directly to PPC instructions.
I guess you meant at “up to 75% of the native PPC cpu speed” ?
It seems tha
>Newer development and
beta versions of MorphOS feature a JIT 68k recompiling emulator called “Trance” that runs 68K code at about 75% of the native PPC cpu speed by translating 68K code directly to PPC instructions.
I guess you meant at “up to 75% of the native PPC cpu speed” ?
It seems that most people who bought a Pegasos don’t have access to these “Beta” versions: so what version do they have ? “Alpha” ?
Leo.
@Kelly Samuel
The non-library code is handled by a 68K cpu emulation.
Thank you. I thought it was odd to claim “native”.
I ported a few of my games to MorphOS and the required
effort was small and worthwhile. It’s an interesting
system, Development is in motion and MorphOS will see
many improvements soon.
It does look cool, at least to run Linux. Wish I could afford it. 🙂
Having a platform where each person has the possibility of running their own alternative OS(es) of choice is welcomed
Um, I’ve seen a lot of those claims, but doesn’t Intel architecture let you do that?
“doesn’t Intel architecture let you do that?”
I would have to say no, not really. The Pegasos features an
open firmware system that lets multiple operating systems
co-exist on the same machine rather than trying to deal with
things like the MBR and PC bios that honestly don’t complement
other OSes well in my opinion. I found it about 10 times better
to setup and install both MorphOS and Linux on this system from
scratch. MicroSoft and PC manufacturers honestly do not make PCs
to run anything other than Windows. They may be aware of the
existence of Linux and other operating systems but the majority
will not “lift a finger” to actually support them or move them
forward in the marketplace. The PC industry as a whole doesn’t
seem to understand the users that want to actually learn something
about their computers and maybe even do some more advanced things
with them…
@Jack Perry
> Thank you. I thought it was odd to claim “native”.
Yeah, I see you had trouble with that. I did explain what I meant: “MorphOS runs these 68K programs native, which sounds like an oxymoron until you consider the nature of the old Amiga OS on which MorphOS is modeled. On the Amiga programs were executed through libraries and function calls, which have been recreated in PPC code for MorphOS (there is necessarily a limited amount of emulation at the core of the execution, but MorphOS is not an emulator).”
So when you thank Kelly for saying “the non-library code is handled by a 68K cpu emulation,” that is what I was saying about the limited emulation at the core of the execution. But I guess what Kelly said was clearer to you.
@wibble (75)
> As somebody already pointed out… UM… Classic MacOS!!!
Yeah, I looked up a Mac history page to see about how much they relied on emulation and it turned out quite a bit, and it worked really well. They did make the transition to PPC by running an emulation box and MorphOS does the same. Weren’t there some differences though, like the rewriting of the function calls and libraries?
The biggest difference I was thinking of really, but didn’t say, was the evolutionary development of what became MorphOS. The people behind it first wrote the code to drive the PPC-accelerators for classic Amiga (did 68K Mac have PPC-accelerator cards?), and then they made the transition completely. So it is a bit like the proposition where you change out all the parts in a car in stages. In the end is it still the same car…
Yes, there were PPC accelerators for 68k Macs, both by Apple and others.
>DruggedBunny: WinUAE *is* slow compared to MorphOS. >Remember UAE must emulate the Kickstart ROM code but >MorphOS provides all AOS functions in native PPC. This >makes quite difference.
Well, post some benchmarks in regards to WinUAE-JIT vs MorphOS within the context of running 68K legacy applications (e.g. 68k Quake I (software render), 68K LAME and ‘etc’). With X86 world, brute force processor power solution is available.
>I would have to say no, not really. The Pegasos features
>an open firmware system that lets multiple operating
>systems co-exist on the same machine rather than trying
>to deal with things like the MBR and PC bios that
>honestly don’t complement other OSes well in my opinion.
I didn’t recall in mucking around with my X86’s BIOS when I installed Red Hat Linux 9.0 or even with Mandrake 9.0.
MBR fiddling is relatively minor when using the modern X86 Linux distros.
>MicroSoft and PC manufacturers honestly do not make PCs
>to run anything other than Windows
Did you forget Walmart X86 PCs?
RValencia said
> Well, post some benchmarks in regards to WinUAE-JIT vs
> MorphOS within the context of running 68K legacy
> applications (e.g. 68k Quake I (software render), 68K LAME > and ‘etc’). With X86 world, brute force processor power
> solution is available.
People are interested in this but no-one has put it together yet. It’s an interesting question of whether “brute force processor power” as you call it of the latest X86 can just do a complete UAE emulation and surpass the performance of MorphOS running on a relatively modest PPC machine consuming about a tenth of the wattage (I did check that fraction: according to benchtest.com a Pentium 4 at 3.06 GHz consumes 99 watts. The processor in Pegasos consumes less that a tenth of that).
I guess at some point the answer will be yes, if not the 3 GHz X86 of today, then the 6 GHz of 2 years from now. This doesn’t seem like a very good way to do things to me, though. Better to have a classy, “sexy” (as Eugenia says) machine.
The UI theme looks amateurish, like someone was testing out 3d rendering on a cheap renderer, with little knowledge of design (was it designed by a programmer i wonder?) I sure hope someone comes up with a good theme for it.
I do give the platform as a whole credit for launching, its nice to see something a little different. (if a G3/G4 architecture can be counted as different).