I just rediscovered MorphOS and was delighted to see that Mac Mini G4 is now supported. I burned the installation CD and I am getting a used Mac Mini G4 from a friend tomorrow. Can't wait to try MorphOS over the weekend! I read carefully most of the pages on this site and many interesting topics on this forum. I especially liked the 2.4 review and, after reading it and watching the video clips, I was sold.

It's hard to imagine right now that a MorphOS machine can replace my main home computer but I am curious how far it can get. I see that many of you are using MorphOS as your primary machine. I guess that's great but I am not sure if I will be able to replicate all the functionality I need. Also, laptop (PowerBook) support would be great (I saw the thread where it's announced for the future release). For now, I consider this as an experiment.

Anyway, here is what I am mostly doing on my machine and I already found some software which can help me but I am curious if any of you have additional hints/tips etc...

So I am simply listing the apps I see in my OS X dock, I guess they pretty much depict what I am doing with my machine 99% of the time. I am also appending some stuff which I occasionally do. This could also be used as a wish-list or feature request list for some of these apps, again I haven't tried anything yet but I am so excited about this that I am writing this now, maybe some of these things will be obvious after I install the OS over the weekend and start really playing with it! Also, this is an interesting mental exercise -- I think this is exactly what someone who is evaluating a switch from some other OS to MorphOS going to ponder about. So this is also me thinking out loud while looking at the downloadable software...

1. Safari: I guess OWB is the one to go with. Is there support for all modern technologies and plugins? I saw that YouTube videos are watched in some funky way in the review (is that some plugin?). I guess SSL must be supported? How about flash and other stuff? Most likely no Java applet support (since no JVM for OS?) I guess one has to try surfing the favorite websites and see for oneself...
2. Mail: it seems that YAM is the email client to use, I guess it will be ok...
3. Skype: heh, I guess it's unrealistic to expect this one anytime soon... there are several IRC clients though.
4. Address Book: PolyOrga? Does it support import of contacts? Is it integrated with Mail app?
5. iCal: PolyOrga?
6. iTunes: well, it's hard to expect any interaction with Apple devices but surely there is a multimedia player of some sort with ability to maintain a library of music and video files? AmiNetRadio?
7. iPhoto: ShowGirls? PTPDigCam?
8. Text editor: this one is covered I think
9. Console: covered
10. Printing to a remote printer (IP printing): any developments here?
11. Scanner: I have an old USB scanner, works on my Mac but it's ancient... probably lost cause on MorphOS for now
12. WiFi: I understand WiFi on Mac Mini is not supported for now, so I guess I will have to pull out an ethernet cable
13. Media player: I see an MPlayer port, that's a great player!
14. Retro players: I see SID is supported and also some other players for Amiga formats, it will be fun to try this
15. Emulators: lots of interesting stuff here as well, can't wait to try

I think it would be useful for this site to have a "translation table" web page for Windows, OS X and Linux users so they can see which favorite app for their OS is covered by the comparable app on MorphOS. (Something similar to what Apple did for "switch to mac" campaign.) That would clarify lots of things for people who just look to run their stuff and are not technically savvy or don't have (or won't invest) time to explore (especially if they have to decide whether to pay ?150).

I also saw "MorphOS compatible software"? Is that software written for Amiga but in a clean way (i.e. using API and not the direct hardware access) so it can be run "natively" under MorphOS? I see more than 1300 apps there but a reference to much more on AmiNet. It will be interesting to try some of this out! How does one know if an Amiga program can be run on MorphOS? Do you just try and if it works -- works?

Will probably have more impressions and questions after I try the real thing, wish me a warm welcome and luck for now :)

welcome to morphos. You seem to have all the basics covered. For scanning there is scandal mentioned 3 articles down on the main page.

Welcome to the wonderful world of MorphOS!
You will have a great time using MorphOS.
Its realy fast on the Mac mini, it just screems!

mihaliod

Welcome to Morphos Community. Glad to hear you are getting it for your mac mini... here is a couple of answers:

1. Well OWB is based on WebKit which is along same dev paths as Safari iirc...
Javascript is well supported as is SSL built in. They are working on flash support afaik...

10. Printing: read the threads here on mz about it you can print very high quality with postscript printers and there are many older ink jets supported..

13. Mplayer is awesome on morphos and has G4 altivec support.

8. Text editor built in and others available.

2. Email YAM and Simple Mail are good choices.

12. Wifi afaik there is some wifi support using Prism drivers?? search MZ forums

sorry they arent in order :)

Thanks!

Yeah, I noticed Scandal, we'll see if it works with my scanner. Incidentally, the driver for this Scanner (ancient Cannon Lide 25, eBay value $1 but works fine!) is the only PowerPC process on my Intel Mac. Fortunately, I installed Rosetta during Snow Leopard upgrade so it still works...

I checked more stuff just now. The list is:

1. MorphOS 2.4 installation CD (already burnt and ready)
2. Mac Mini G4 (getting it tomorrow)
3. USB mouse (found a basic Logitech 2-button + scroll wheel one; it must work I guess)
4. USB keyboard (the only one I have is a wireless one which is not supported and, interestingly enough, not all Apple USB keyboards seem to be supported according to this site, so I will bring 2 models from the office tomorrow just in case (an older "classic" one and a newer "slim" one; at the worst case, a simple mini USB keyboard can be bought for $17 at the nearby Fry's)
5. Monitor (won't shell out money for a separate monitor yet... will use my 23" Apple Cinema HD display for now and see how it behaves... most likely will buy something cheap (19" <$150) if it turns out that I need a dedicated monitor for this machine
6. Ethernet cable (will bring one from the office tomorrow)

Will report how it goes...

Ok sounds cool. Makes sure you register it though to support development and allow full usage..

@magnetic: thanks for the additional hints and information. Regarding printing, I was thinking in the terms of printing on a remote printer via IP protocol, not to the printer attached to the USB port. Right now, I have a router which has a printer server functionality, my printer is connected to the router and all my Macs print there remotely. I guess this will become obvious once I install MorphOS and open the System Preferences -> Printing or whatever the equivalent is...

Yes, the plan is to register it of course.

Unless I get hugely disappointed with it for some reason in which case I will file bugs and request features until I am satisfied.

Then, I will register!

10: try http://www.geit.de/stupid/NetPrinter.lha

Was suprised I didn't find it on the 2.4 ISO, seems my memory gets faulty.

/me does memtest Kronos intensive

6: Geit is also working on something (must remember to check for a new beta sometimes )

Thanks Kronos, I will keep that on mind when I start playing with printing.

You can actually find NetPrinter on MorphOS 2.4 ISO (it sits in "Contrubutions" drawer).

Verifying...
Kronos memory is ok!

> Was suprised I didn't find it on the 2.4 ISO

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6777&forum=3&start=20#69541


Edit: koszer beat me :-)

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf on 2010/1/8 8:45 ]

> . Safari: I guess OWB is the one to go with. Is there support for all modern technologies
> and plugins?

No.

> I saw that YouTube videos are watched in some funky way in the review (is that
> some plugin?).

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6756&forum=3#69092

> How about flash and other stuff?

For flash see above.

> Most likely no Java applet support (since no JVM for OS?)

Right.

> I think it would be useful for this site to have a "translation table" web page for Windows,
> OS X and Linux users so they can see which favorite app for their OS is covered by the
> comparable app on MorphOS.

For Windows users:

http://amigaga.chez-alice.fr/pubamiga/transfertwinami.htm

Table contents might neither be complete, comprehensive nor recent ;-)

> I also saw "MorphOS compatible software"? Is that software written for Amiga but
> in a clean way (i.e. using API and not the direct hardware access) so it can be run
> "natively" under MorphOS?

These 1300+ listed programs include both MorphOS compatible AmigaOS software and real MorphOS native software.

> How does one know if an Amiga program can be run on MorphOS? Do you just try and if
> it works -- works?

Yes, except that you can exclude programs that rely on presence of OCS/ECS/AGA chipset beforehand.

> I guess this will become obvious once I install MorphOS and open the
> System Preferences -> Printing or whatever the equivalent is...

Once you installed NetPrinter from contributions it's Prefs -> System -> NetPrinter

> 12. Wifi afaik there is some wifi support using Prism drivers??

Mac mini WiFi doesn't use Prism chipset.

1. OWB if you want compatibility, IBrowse if you want feel the real speed and can accept lots of incompatibility ;) For youtube (and for some other video sites) I use getVideo script from Aminet. It plays videos through mplayer and it's lot faster than with any embedded plugin. For flash there's separate plugin nowadays, but it doesn't work well with youtube for example. SSL is supported. Java isn't supported, but in my opinion it doesn't harm much. Javascript works of course.

2. YAM is good and another good option is SimpleMail, which isn't that simple anymore... lots of options there and supports secure protocols, imap etc.

3. Nope, Skype is too closed. MorphOS version of AmIRC is good if you have the keyfile for it, but otherwise WookieChat is a nice option for IRC. Or if you use shell somewhere, Irssi etc work well with ssh too.

4. I haven't used this kind of apps ever, so can't say for sure. Maybe Vaporware's Contact Manager from Amiga still works? It integrated contact informations, addresses etc with several apps like irc, email, web, etc. Or take a look for that PolyOrga :)

5. Same as 4, I'm not using :) But besides PolyOrga, April is simple a calendar (which you see on desktops) and you can add some notes to days etc.

6. I guess mplayer is the only app which can do both, videos and music. It has simple playlist functionality too. ANR has more extensive library functions for music files and it's ok all around music player with support for many formats. I personally hate iTunes style libraries and bloat programs and I like to use dedicated player for each purpose. I use MPlayer for videos and AMPlifier for music. And my library is my HD's filesystem where I keep files organized and drag&drop to player whatever I want to listen at that moment.

7. PTPDigiCam is only used to import files from the camera. MorphOS should handle that itself too nowadays, but my camera works as mass storage device, so I haven't tested it yet. ShowGirls is great image processing and viewing tool. It loads preview images really fast from the usb camera for example.

8. MorphOS includes a simple text editor, but other popular ones are CED (there's ppc version too) and GoldED (included as MorphED on SDK). Lots of freeware options in aminet etc too.

10. There's many options for it. NetPrinter is included on MorphOS cd and couple of other options in Aminet. I've been using lpr.device on both old Amigas and new MorphOS computers. If printer/server works as PS printer, it helps in some situations.

11. Ancient might be better for drivers issues ;) But I only have experience with old SCSI scanners on Amiga...

12. Or use external access point next to mini to convert wired connection to wireless.

13. MPlayer is great! And MorphOS port is better than MPlayer on many other platforms :) There's VLC port too, but it isn't as mature as MPlayer.

14. I guess UADE and ANR are the best for this...

15. VICE (except the latest version?) works really fine. DOSBox ok too... and then E-UAE & others...

And yes, compatible software means exaclty that. Some Amiga programs work perferctly on MorphOS, some partly and some won't work at all. Depending how cleanly or OS friendly they were written. Mostly you just have to test if it works or not. If it doesn't then you can try to find out if you're missing some external library or something else it requires (Snoopium helps here) or if there's some config which breaks compatibility (defaults to AGA screen for example) etc. You can forget programs which clearly use original chipsets only... like old games and demos where you can't select screenmode etc. But if there's RTG and AHI support, it's likely to work. And most utilities using OS screens shoud work too.

Good luck and take your time to go through the options and learn features :) No system will fit perfectly for everyone as default, but if you give it time and find suitable settings for you, it will reward :)

@mihailod

1. Regarding the Flash plugin, it exists, but it's not the official Adobe's plugin. It's based on an opensource reimplementation (swfdec, "similar" to gnash if you know it better). So it suffers from many incompatibilities with "recent" Flash 9 and 10 content. The speed is also not really great, but neither is the official Flash plugin on Mac mini G4, anyway. :)

Most Flash ads play perfectly, though. :)

Thank you very much! I am at the office and busy but will read all the messages you posted since last night carefully once I am free.

BTW I just got the Mini this very moment! It's 1.42GHZ, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD. Do i need to upgrade RAM? No additional details, a friend just brought it in and sold it cheaply to me!

Important question: Is there anything I need to do in OS X before I wipe it out? No dual boot for me! I am going with MorphOS alone on this one! I know about the muting of the Apple Chime sound, anything else?

512 MB RAM are fine with MorphOS. Usually on my mini not more than 300MB RAM are in use. Of course more RAM doesn't hurt, but the benefit is rather marginal.
To my knowledge there is nothing more to prepare on the OS X side. Just drop in the MorphOS CD and boot off.

512M RAM is just fine, no need to upgrade usually. But 1.42GHz models have only 32MB of graphics mem, so you might need to remember that when trying different settings. If you are using big resolution screens, then it might be needed to turn of the enhanced display (MorphOS preferences -> Screens) for Ambient and other screens. Or try to use it on Ambient screen but with less buffers (MorphOS preferences -> DisplayEngine). If you run out of graphics mem you notice it when there's shorts pauses or glitches in operation when it swaps gfx mem to ram. You have to find compromize between the resolutions/depths/enhanced display modes to fit in your needs.

I don't think there's anything to do on OSX side but that volume mute if you want to get rid of the startup sound.

I think I am going to boot into OS X just once to save the system profile, just to have it handy someplace (as OS X sees it, not sure if there is equivalent in MorphOS and how elaborate it is).

I also discovered that my Mini has a WiFi Airport Card inside, I hope MorphOS will start supporting that soon (that's actually my main objection for now even before I tried anything else because my home network is completely organized for WiFi, this cable I have to haul will be an annoyance).

Other than that, I guess I am ready to start installing MorphOS... I hope some time late afternoon/early evening...

P.S. Still haven't read all the messages (I am still at the office), but I skimmed through them and I see lots of interesting stuff. I might have more detailed questions later and then, of course, once I start using the OS itself... It's cool I generated this much traffic and interest without actually using the product at all! It shows that the community is healthy and welcoming

once you become comfortable with it, d/ling running multiple programs owb, pages, mplayer ect, you may opt for the 1gig, but yea you'll be fine for now

@ Andreas_Wolf:

> For Windows users:
> http://amigaga.chez-alice.fr/pubamiga/transfertwinami.htm
> Table contents might neither be complete, comprehensive nor recent

I see. It's a good start. Is there any incentive of updating it, enhancing it with Mac OS X and Linux and bringing it over to this site in a cleaner form? I can contribute on the Mac OS X part I guess once I dig into this.

> Once you installed NetPrinter from contributions it's Prefs -> System -> NetPrinter

Yep, great, thanks, this will be one of the first things I am going to try.

> Mac mini WiFi doesn't use Prism chipset.

OK, so no luck so far. I hope in the future.

@ jPV:

Hey, first of all, thanks for a great review of MorphOS, great article. Then, thank you for a very comprehensive reply, I will just quote couple of things:

> If printer/server works as PS printer, it helps in some situations.

I *think* it does, not sure, good hint.

> Or use external access point next to mini to convert wired connection to wireless.

Yep, this might be finally a good reason for me to get an AirpotExpress.

> MPlayer is great! And MorphOS port is better than MPlayer on many other platforms :)
> There's VLC port too, but it isn't as mature as MPlayer.

Glad to hear that. I used MPlayer on OS X but recently switched to VLC which is, in my opinion, better now (at least on OS X). I am glad I will be using it again.

> If it doesn't then you can try to find out if you're missing some
> external library or something else it requires (Snoopium helps here)
> or if there's some config which breaks compatibility
> (defaults to AGA screen for example) etc.

Good hints. Thanks.

> 512M RAM is just fine, no need to upgrade usually.
> But 1.42GHz models have only 32MB of graphics mem,
> so you might need to remember that when trying different settings.

Yes, I noticed that in your article as well. I wanted to get the 64MB one on eBay originally because of that, but this Mini was too good of an offer to refuse so I hope it won't be a big deal?

@ Fab:

> The speed is also not really great, but neither is the official
> Flash plugin on Mac mini G4, anyway. :)

He he, good point.

> Most Flash ads play perfectly, though. :)

:)

Thanks to all others who replied.

One general question: how about improving the (currently pretty ascetic IMHO) Library->FAQ part of this site with some of the questions and answers from here? There will be more once I start playing with OS, maybe it would be nice for future MorphOS newbies to have this all in the FAQ? I would not mind contributing if needed.

I am still in the office, the next time I write here I promise it will be after installing the MorphOS

by mihailod on 2010/1/8 18:44:41
Ty for your kind reply on Amigacsene.

One of my great joys was to bring friends to snow skiing.
Their first day on the slopes was as exciting to me as to them ;)
My thoughts are of you flying with your new 'wings"
Welcome to MorphOS

Here are first impressions without much editing, just raw feelings and experiences:

0. Surprisingly, it was not obvious to me at all how to burn a bootable ISO disk in OS X. I never burnt an ISO disk before on Mac and made two mistakes here. Right Click -> Burn on OS X just burns a disk with the ISO file on it. Mount and File -> Burn burns the disk with the content but it's not bootable. Only Disk Utility knows how to burn it properly. Maybe I lived under a rock but I am not ashamed to admit that it took me three attempts to do it properly. Most inexperienced users will probably make the same mistake and some of them might not even find the way out. This instruction could have helped users like me if posted on the main site but it's almost like an OS X issue.

OK, MorphOS has booted and it's nice... Amiga on steroids?

1. Keyboard settings need to be testable right in the panel where you are adjusting them (milliseconds are meaningless -- one has to feel it)

2. Progress bar while installing could be better and should tell you estimated remaining time or number of files (right now it just counts to some undefined number). OK, I see now up in the window it says 169GB needed so one can conclude that when counter reaches 169something it's done. No need to go to number of bytes, this is just scaring users, use percentage or minutes.

3. Time and date need to be automatically updated from the internet once the connection is established, why do I need to go to the Clock settings and adjust this manually? I only need to pick the time zone (hmm I guess this actually worked since I only needed to adjust the clock (because of the time zone) and nothing else).

4. Ugh, window redrawing has an ugly flicker. They also don't remember the last position and size.

5. CD spinning is annoying, why is it doing that? I ejected it and tried an app and I am teleported back in the Amiga days: "please insert volume blah into any drive"! So, how can i copy everything on the disk so i am not bothered by this? It should copy everything by default, every major OS does that and also HDD space is plenty these days, we are not on floppies anymore.

6. The slim Apple keyboard does not work. Trying the classic one -- OK it was spectacularly detected ;) and it works.

7. Half an hour passed by so quickly and I am prompted to register. I guess I need to reboot now although everything appears working except the message won't go away. (Wow, shutdown is instant :) ).

I also tried several apps, I guess there is a way to report some findings back to the developers of those apps, will dig around.

I must say that it actually looks pretty polished and I like the atmosphere. I am just trying to make it even better, I hope this won't be taken as nitpicking but as an honest effort to help to improve things.

So, three immediate questions:

A) How do I transfer everything from CD to HDD so I don't have to have the system CD in the drive all the time?

B) I found how to report bugs. Good. Is that the proper way to report other stuff as well? Like things I think they are missing features or just don't work as expected (which can be arguable, I know), for example things I wrote about in this post?

C) Is there a way to look into the MorphOS bug database so I don't file duplicates?

The CD should autostart into the "Bienvenue" window from which you could start IWizard, but that all explained here .

But maybe it's just that you need to eject your CD before rebooting ..

4. What resolution are you running ? 32MB VRAM might be a bit on the small side with a GFX-features turned on.

5. Well, you started from CD, so everything is read from CD. Windows remembering their sizes can be done by snapshotting them (found in the context-menu). Offcourse of rather limited use while on a read-only medium ;)

7. Most apps have "About"-menu-entry which will give you the authors name, if not it can most likely be found in the documentation found in the prog's directory.

B) Missing features and such ? Well complain on the mailing list, or right here.