Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2795 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:
minator wrote:
The problem isn't so much the processor architecture, it's the platform.
You need hardware that's available, that you can get up and running on, and will be around for a while.
For desktop and laptops thats mostly x86.
There are some Arm laptops, they're not as powerful as PC laptops yet but they are improving rapidly. The first gen Windows 10 laptops used tablet processors but the next get will have proper laptop processors.
Arm has now announced a high end processor (the snappily titled Neoverse N1) but that's really for servers so I don't expect you'll see them in laptops, but who knows.
However, computing isn't just about desktops or laptops these days. There's computers of one sort of another in all sorts of form factors for all sorts of prices.
There's lots of little machines around these days like the Android TV boxes which are probably rather more powerful than your G5s by now.
Then there's the Raspberry Pi, they've sold 25 MILLION of those things! I think they'll be around for a while and they're really cheap.
There's platforms available for x86 and Arm so it really comes down to what is desired, do you just want new faster machines for the existing user base or do you want to grow the user base. I expect Raspberry Pi would be a better choice for growing the user base as you'l have lots of young people happy to experiment.
Finally a useful reply!
I had been thinking "either or", for the most part, instead of making the next generation of MorphOS cross platform with a simple recompile. Different drivers would still be needed, but I'm pretty sure that the MorphOS Dev. Team will create an OS that is much more flexible than the constraints we have been tied down with, by starting out with AmigaOS3.1 API compatibility.
Your comment about Android (ARM) TV boxes that are probably more powerful than our current G5s by now, and the 25 million Raspberry Pi boards sold (for a price of $35 or less), is the part of the argument that I'm trying to stress. I would like to see MorphOS grow into something widely used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people (edit: and to do that we need cheap, widely available hardware), but that is probably NOT what the MorphOS Dev. Team members are aiming for, or really want, which is too bad. I think that most team members rather want just a better OS for their personal use, that will have the basics of software written for it by a few friends and maybe a few more interested alternative OS programmers. Without strong growth and a much larger user base, we will never get all the software we need or want for the next generation of MorphOS, unless the team can also invent a translation layer (or something) that will allow the NG MorphOS to also run Linux software (or Windows software for that matter).
I think we all want the next generation of MorphOS to have an Amiga-like structure (just like our current MorphOS) and appearance, but also want a full library of useful software and games, with an up to date web browser. If the NG MorphOS starts out with almost zero software to run natively, and it can only run old Amiga 68k software through emulation, it will have a very difficult time gaining a user base, or programmers willing to create new software for it.
[ Edited by amigadave 03.03.2019 - 09:12 ]MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
