Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:ASiegel wrote:
@ amigadave
Quote:
X64 cannot be scaled down to something that can be sold for only $35, but still provide enough speed and power to run MorphOS.
Firstly, as KennyR pointed out, the ARM hardware you can buy for 35 USD is not currently fast enough to properly run MorphOS and a truly modern web browser either.
Secondly, the 35 USD price is a bit of a mirage. If you plan to compare apples to apples, you need to list the price of a complete Rasperry Pi 3 system that includes a power supply, decent-looking case, and Wi-Fi. The prices for complete kits on the Amazon USA website tend to be closer to 80 USD. You can buy x86-64-based mini PCs with 4GB of memory (vs. 1GB offered by the Pi 3) and a fanless quad-core processor for around 100 USD, which clearly provide far superior performance.
Fair points, I guess I am looking further forward, rather than what is available right now. The next iteration of the Raspberry Pi is said to include WiFi, as well as being considerably faster. I was not aware that running any web browser was a "painful" experience on the current versions of the "Pi", but seeing how well MorphOS runs on something as weak as the Efika 5200b, if it only had more RAM, I assumed that MorphOS would run fine on the Raspberry Pi 2 and above.
Getting, and keeping up to date, a modern web browser for MorphOS appears to be something that will always be a difficult challenge for a community as small as ours, no matter what hardware we are running on. The main point of my argument for supporting the AArch64, is that it appears that it is growing faster, has cheaper prices at levels of performance that should be more than adequate to run a lightweight OS like MorphOS, and Android, or iOS don't seem to be as dominant as Windows is on x64, so it might be easier to sway new users to MorphOS on ARM devices, than it will be to gain new users on x64.
We desperately need new users and programmers, if MorphOS is going to grow and survive, specially since we will no doubt lose some users who will not follow the MorphOS Dev. Team to the x64 architecture, because they do not want to leave the Amiga compatibility behind and switch to emulation for running their old Amiga 68k software. I think that we have a better chance for getting new users and programmers by supporting AArch64 and the next Raspberry Pi, than we do by supporting only one or two models of an x64 laptop and desktop.
Raspberry Pi owners are more likely to try out MorphOS, than people who will need to buy (or who already own) a specific laptop or desktop computer, which they can more easily run Windows, and all of it available software and games, or Linux, which is free, and will have infinitely more software than MorphOS NG when it is released.
It is a matter of who the Dev. Team targets as potential new users and programmers, or just trying to satisfy themselves, and the few hundred users we currently have.
MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
