Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, MorphOS achieved a MAJOR milestone today.

A MAJOR IT COMPANY HAS AGREED TO RESELL MorphOS!

(__add lots of dancing bananas here__)

OK, now what to sell!??!!?!?!

If you could run MorphOS on PearPC and just take a test ride of MorphOS, what would you think as users would be the best thing to "show-off?"

Please post your feedback here.

Congratulations to the MorphOS Team! Now, everyone will discover what John Dvorak was talking about...

R&B

BBRV - this sounds great and is will be a good step towards getting some visibility of Morphos.

When running MorphOS hosted under PearPC is this going to be transparent to the end user? (the fact that PearPC is underneath) The last thing we need to have is a very ugly startup procedure.

Given that PearPC is a PowerPC emulator running on top of X86 processors, you should ensure that performance isn't hampered "too" much. Obviously there is going to be some penality. I'd imagine that porting MorphOS to X86 or evening changing the JIT emulator to support X86 would take way to much work. (And would start to look like Amilthon)

What version of Morphos is being distributed? I would hope that what ever version would be as complete as possible. You would need to have a tcp stack integrated (morphos 1.5) to show off any networking capibility in the system.

As a side effect of this potential release, any version that worked under PearPC "should" work under MOL and on Mac hardware. Given that PearPC is able to boot OSX.

Just my initial thoughts......

(roll on Morphos1.5 I say!)

Cheers

Francois

Hi BBRV and team - great news! Well, personally I'd like to see pearPC mature a bit more....at least to get Mac OS running it is still a bit difficult last time I checked. But sure, PearPC runs on X86, so an Amithlon like solution would be cool :)

I'd personally love to see MorphOS run on Mac Hardware, or natively on X86 (and not requiring PearPC)...but then again I don't want to kill Pegasos hardware sales...so, maybe perhaps a Pegasos 3 with G5 cpu eventually? :) If you are even planning that ;)

NONONO never port MorphOs to x86 that would ensue little to no sales of teh PPC boards, as the x86 boards would be cheaper among other things. nativly on mac hardware is bad too thatt why qnx doesnt have an "official" verion of the qnx rtos on mac......but i would agree we should do this when 1.5 is released and no sooner. and pearpc should mature a little more mabey geneso could help the developers or pearpc and get MOS working on it well.......a peg 3 would be good eventualy but i would wait till IBM moves the G5 chips to the POWER5 archatecture...this will be a much bigger speed increase and a better cooling solution........

as for showing off MOS, from screen shots i have seem just the looks alone would be a good selling point, and the boot time is increadibly from what i hear and have seen in the videos ( but the boot time with pearpc will be slower)........we need a tcp stack integrated as fprowse has mentioned. showing compadibility woth old amiga apps would be good as well.....well thats all i can think of for now...

P.S. BBRV, i am guesing you read my post about MOS on PearPC hu?

Hi Raquel & Bill - that indeed sounds great! Congratulations!

Although I'm of course curious to hear the company's name...

First two quick notes:

You should supply some sort of a measure for comparison, i.e. "this process which took X seconds under the emulation you're currently using does just need Y seconds running natively on a 1 GHz Pegasois II/G4".

At the very least include videos showing e.g. the quick boot process or launching Voyager on a G4 (browser is ready the very next moment after double-clicking its icon). Since one of the most annoying things regarding Windows is no doubt the long time you have to wait until the OS or applications are ready to use.

[If you have still two, three monthes until that prime time, I'd pay David and/or Oliver some few thousand Euros (What is this compared to MorphOS going to be sold by a big IT company?!) to bring Voyager more up to date - you know it is a must to be able to access more than just Amiga websites; people need to do home banking, et cetera. - Of course you won't impress a Firefox-user, etc., but the average Internet Explorer- and Outlook Express-user you can show a browser (Voyager) and e-mail program (Microdot2) which is immune against Microsoft-related worms, et cetera.]

If there are any cool and meanwhile free "classic" games which did not have hit the custom hardware, i.e. are running on the Pegasos, include them. Some simple Jump&Run stuff, Galaga, Tetris-like stuff, etc. Since although the possible customers you are aiming at won't be from the current Amiga market, they anyway will ask for available software for this OS. So it's reassuring if you can point to Aminet. Furthermore several of them will remember such games (if on Amiga, Atari, C64 or whereever) from their youth and like to play such stuff again (in contrast to the current 3D ego shooters). And third: their wifes, girl-friends, daughters often prefer such stuff like Jump & Run, Tetris, Solitaire.

In any case include some skins and point towards the conficurability of the system settings and MUI - i.e. make them interacting with the OS itself as well to get to know the look & feel, the ease and intuitiveness to use it.

[ Edited by Senex on 2004/7/20 7:06 ]

@ Raquel & Bill

Just to be sure: as indicated already by "test ride", the PearPC stuff ist just meant for demonstration purposes, right? I.e. that company is not actually considering to sell this as a solution to x86 users?

Regarding the configurability of the system settings, I'd point for example to Poseidon - I consider its options for USB joystick and keyboard settings quite impressing.

Furthermore I'd include a demo version of Papyrus. Of course it might be not that impressive yet (I guess currently there's just the word processor ready?), but no doubt the people trying MorphOS will ask for some office stuff.

The already mentioned idea of including AmiNetRadio and access to the x86 harddisk I support, too.

This is wonderful news. We'll keep this topic sticky for a while, share the good news and such.

[edit: wanted to clarify, it's the reselling agreement that is exciting. I always find excitement in places to put the platform.]

[ Edited by Targhan on 2004/7/22 3:09 ]

hi bbrv!
please be very careful demonstrating morphos on an emulation!
the most important "pro" is in fact the high responsiveness of morphos, the immediate reactions and the overall speed of the operating system.
unfortunately, those things can not be demonstrated on an emulation without severe loss of speed. i have heard that pear pc is about 40times slower than a real mac with comparable processor power. under this condition, morphos will definitely look very ugly and lack its typical responsiveness. . .

so please avoid doing this. do always use a real pegII whenever possible!

btw:
pagestream should not be left out in a demo. . .

kind regards

Quote:

That is the question

It sounds great, I have only 3 questions (No one expected the spanish inquisition )

a., What's the name of the company?
b., Will they resell Pegasos/MorphOS combo (as everyone with a Pegasos has MorphOS), or standalone MorphOS?
c., If it will be standalone MorphOS then it means it will be V1.5 and that it's ready?
d., What will be the price of it and where can I get my hands on that?

(Yes, that was 4 - thus the inquisition )

As to the PearPC issue - the question is, will the emulation will be fast enough to show off the real power of MorphOS? (the incredible speed compared to today's Operating Systems)

Honest, i do not like the idea to see MorphOS running on PearPC (or any other kind of emulation).

That would burn down everything I was working for. I hope that part just was some marketing gag which I just do not understand

regards,
tokai

Great news! Congratulations to you and the MorphOS team.
So MorphOS will be labelled an allround PowerPC operating system in the future?

You all know what average users expect:

1. Atleast lite (or demo) of Papyrus (with .doc support)
2. Browser (this one is tough), maybe Senex's idea is good ? Wasn't new Voyager layout engine written with css in mind ? Ofcourse TCP/IP needs to be there.
3. Good music player (ANR)
4. MPlayer
5. Simple, but effective filemanager
6. SDK

Few table games, ftp client/server and other misc apps won't hurt.
I think that bootable cd on x86 with pearpc and on mac won't hurt.

@ BBRV

Congrats! But just as the other here I doubt that MOS on PearPC is too impressive. Show it on MacHW. It's wide enough spread to show and it contains a real PPC with all those nice 32 registers which are necessary to run MOS in a decent speed.

Anyway good to hear that MOS will roll on!

I agree, demonstrating MorphOS running inside PearPC is a bad idea, the greatest thing about MorphOS is its speed, and that would be completely lost then.

About the "What to present"-thing.. Hm, just take a look at ClubByte's MorphOS-videos. They are really nice and show many applications of different types, also giving a very nice view at MorphOS' speed. I think the apps shown in these videos could also been shown in such a presentation.

[ Edited by micronuke on 2004/7/20 12:31 ]

IMHO it would be better if the news was that a major IT company has
agreed to resell Pegasos together with MorphOS.

@bbrv:

>OK, now what to sell!??!!?!?!

An interesting question.


@zacman:

Maybe they are going to sell it through QVC like Yellowtab Zeta...

[ Edited by tarbos on 2004/7/20 13:43 ]

>A MAJOR IT COMPANY HAS AGREED TO RESELL MorphOS!

Today, MorphOS can only be purchased with a Pegasos Computer: what do you mean by "Resell MorphOS" ?
Will this company resell MorphOS with its own PPC products (if so, what products ?) ? As the only OS or with other OS as well ? (would be better if MorphOS was the only OS...)

Now if I was showing MorphOS to people who don't know the Amiga, I wouldn't show V or Papyrus as they have probably seen far better software on Windows or Linux... But some of the specific features of MorphOS:

.Multiple screens and how fast you can switch between them,... (different resolutions,...)

.MUI: and how you can have a specific look for any app (and even a different one for different sessions of the same app): just click on the menu->mui settings icon, change something, use/save and here we are !

.USB: you run Mame without a pad plugged... *without* leaving mame, you insert the pad and it works instantly. No need to relaunch the app...

.Plug'n'play video cards ;) First run the Pegasos with a Voodoo... Then power off it, insert a Radeon and... magic, it works ;) no need to install anything or go through XFree86Config... (Showing that the right 3D driver is also automaticaly selected/used would be a plus...)

.Show localisation system and how it is integrated into the OS (almost every big app makes use of it)

.Show how you can make use of ARexx to communicate between applications

.A nice Madwizards Demo ;)

.You could also show how easy it is to make a bootable CD: burn your sys: partition and here we are ! ;)

.And to forget to explain that all fits in around 30Mo ! ;)

.... There are so many things to show: why get stuck with V and Papyrus ?!

NOTE: if you're planning to show MorphOS through PearPC (or maybe make a special distribution for PearPC ?), you can forget a lot of things which would be impossible or too slow (3D, ...)

Regards,
Leo.

>Maybe they are going to sell it through QVC like Yellowtab Zeta...

Have I told you that HSE24 is only 5 minutes away from here?

Morphers:

I think you guys dont understand the real marketplace. In order to get a new Operating System such as MorphOS out there these are the kind of things that need to be done. If people get a chance to try MOS and like it they may then want the real thing!

@ BBRV

I think the real attraction of MOS is its near realtime speed and that will probably be lost in the emu. However, things such as AminetRadio, ImageFX, Show Girls (pic viewer), AmIRC, and more would be nice to show as they are good (or better) alternatives to what is out there..

magnetic

lol ... just a really bad idea came up my mind

Smart Terminal + MorphOS ?

I'm not interested in supporting MorphOS on emulation. If I wanted to support an Amiga-like OS emulated on x86, I'd support UAE.

KennyR

Please see my previous post. MOS needs market penetration, without this its just a few geeks like us using it

magnetic

@magnetic:

I don't see the point why you have to slow down morphos to the max possible slowness and use that for marketing? It's will not do any good, just harm. Please explain me, how it could improve sales of a MorphOS/Pegasos combination?

I don't get that in any way. But feel free to explain it to me. Maybe I'll understand it then, atm. I don't.

regards,
tokai


Make a very good and highquality divx movie (directly from tvout of radeon and in dvd quality) to show speed, responisveness, possibilities and application variety. This whould make a MUCH better advertisment for the platform than to provide a (in some way) 'basterized' version which runs slowly emulated on another system.


(sorry for my hard words, but i really do not like this idea)

Just as I said, if you wanna show MOS on non Peg HW show it on Apple HW. It's commonly enough spread to show MOS for a broad audience. No speed penalty. On x86 it's close to nonsense. What's Laire's oppinion to show his ppc baby on x86?

Tokai

You have a point. However, my point is its about market Awareness. Maybe these people will take a look at MOS if its running on PearPc..

magnetic