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Dreamcast270mhz wrote:
Bottom line: If MOS becomes x86, I'm leaving
So if MorphOS 3.0 would introduce x86 support (or ARM support, which is also an option), you would quit using the PPC version of it?
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because it would become, overtime, just another OS, with nothing special to it any longer, for x86, Linux and UNIX win hands down.
...which isn't any dfferent from PPC, if it is the merits of *nix that you want and need and *not* those of MorphOS. But the same PPC limitations then applies - PPC hardware (like Pegasos, PPC Mac's, and even more so the Sam and X1000) has a lousy bang for the buck ratio compared to x86, they are more obscure and difficult to get a hold of, etc.
I could have bought your Point of View had you been a low level SW developer specialized on writing ASM in PPC, or HW developer or such. But if you like most (all?) of us here is mainly interested in *the merits of MorphOS*, i.e. it's features, performance, price for a system etc, then your POV doesn't compute. The merits of MorphOS
*does not change* with the underlying ISA. The OS is all the same! But with better cost for a system, much better performance (performance that could also allow new features and applications), and a safer future.
It's not the ISA of the CPU that makes *an OS* special, it's the specs and merits of the OS itself! No regular user cares about CPU's and ISA's anyway, you don't look at the CPU, you don't think of it, you don't notice it (except when you gets annoyed and curse it because you can't play those 1080p x264 streams). it's the merits of the OS that is important. Those merits would still be there, but with a far better bang for the buck ratio, and it would make the OS accessible for the broad general public out there.
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I'm buying an x1000 within a year of its release,
Good for you then.
IMHO this would be a prime example though, that you are *NOT* interested in the merits of the OS (like the best possible Amiga NG experience, with best specs, features, Amiga compatibility, and bang for the buck), but only *instruction sets of CPU's* (!!!). Well that, and that you despise money...
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for me, my current PPC line has been my greatest investment,
I don't regret buying my Pegasos computers either. And I recently bought a Mac Mini G4. I have had a great time with MorphOS.
But I didn't buy them because they were PPC. I bought them because that was the best and only option to run MorphOS. Could I run MorphOS on better and more powerful and competent HW that's also cheap and easily available, then I would go for the better option. Sorry, but PPC lose there...
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all of my x86 boxes were crap
Then don't buy crap HW, it's as simple as that! Read some tests, go for premium brands and tried solutions.
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Go tell to the MOS devs about making a switch, I have neither the willingness nor the power to assist you, or go make a blog and post there, I'm tired of this x86 switch spam
I don't think anyone has to tell them anything, I think they are perfectly aware of the HW situation and the pros/cons with PPC vs. x86.
Here are some scattered MorphOS Team comments on the subject (some of them from this very thread):
About choosing PPC as target architecture in the first place: "if we would have known back then what we know today, we would have chosen differently"
In a response to the comment "I only regret that again we have an annoucement about old hardware", a developer said: "Fair enough, but don't whine if it ain't a PowerPC based box ;)"
In a response to the comment "Due to lack of another new PPC-based hardware, I can make the only conclusion: this is the end of MorphOS :(", a developer said: "IMHO Apple hardware is the only target that makes sense for
PowerPC MorphOS at the moment." (and no, the emphasis was not put there by me, but by the dev)
In a response to the comment "Were MorphOS to be rewritten in X86 machine code, program code compiled for MorphOS would have to be specific to MorphOS", a developer said: "First, assembler code is rarely used for the PowerPC-compatible versions of MorphOS." (Note: insinuating that PPC versions isn't the only ones)
All this is highly speculative from my side of course. But for all we know, someone could very well have been working on a non-PPC version of MorphOS for a long time already...
MorphOS is Amiga
done right! MorphOS NG will be AROS
done right!