Now that MorphOS2.4 has been released, we have a unique opportunity to take advantage of this widely available, most powerful MOS computer to date and reasonably priced hardware option.

My question is both for the MorphOS Development Team and for all members of this site. What can all of us do to promote MorphOS to new potential users and developers? I do not want this opportunity to pass by without some effort being made to grow our user and developer base, so please post your ideas in this thread and hopefully we can make some of them happen and make a difference in the number of people that will see and try MOS2.4, and from that effort we will grow our user base by a few more than we would have if we had done nothing.

I'll start by suggesting something I am going to work on that should hopefully help MOS newbies. My idea is, since my programming skills are not up to par with taking on more ambitious efforts yet, but I do possess some logical thinking and scripting experience, I am going to begin writing installer scripts for various apps and programs that currently have other libraries, or files needed to work properly on MOS, that are not part of the basic MOS installation process.

Another idea I have already stated elsewhere on these forums is that I will try to visit at least one or more Amiga, Mac, or Linux website each day and write some kind of promotional message, or news item for MOS2.4 running on the MacMini and some of it's current capabilities. Additional YouTube videos could qualify for this type of promotion.

So please put your thinking caps on and express your best ideas that will help increase the number of users and developers of MorphOS. We must grow or this OS and group of users and developers will not survive very long. I believe that we have the potential and a good opportunity to grow a little over the next few months. What do you think?

I've been posting on several of the mac forums I visit.

Next thing is enjoy it.

I have white-blue Nokia 5530 and I tried to find a suitable non-black theme for it. There are too many themes in Windows/Mac OS styles... Do you understand me? ;)

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Great! Please continue to do so as often as you can, even if that is only once a week it will make a difference.

@kickstart,

Yes, by all means enjoy v2.4 and being able to run MOS on the MacMini, but let us not just sit back and enjoy this important step in MOS history, let us all step forward and make an effort to promote it to others in some way, shape, or form, so that we will actually make a difference in the long run. Too often the users in the Amiga and MorphOS community have sat back and complained about what was happening, and done nothing to alter the course of what COULD be. Let us all do some small thing to promote MOS2.4 and have that effort make a positive impact and difference in how our computing experience will be in the future.

@mobydick,

I think I understand what you are trying to say, but to be sure I will ask this question. Are you saying that you think too many of the themes that are currently available for MorphOS resemble those found in Windows and Mac systems and that we should have several unique themes created just for MorphOS? Perhaps such a unique appearance could give MorphOS more of a personality of it's own that would better catch the attention of new potential users and developers.

I have also posted on mac forums and put up screenshots.

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What kind of responses have you seen to your postings and screen shots so far? Are you getting abuse, or curiosity, or both? Keep up the good work, as persistence will pay off over time. What other ideas do any of you have that we as members here can do to promote MorphOS2.4 and what do you think the MorphOS Dev Team could be doing, or should be doing to better promote MOS2.4?

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Does this mean that a MorphOS inspired theme should be created as well?

I tried to read with an inverse logic....
there are too many themes in Windows/MacOs styles....
there are too low themes in MorphOS styles....
Correct?!?

We need decent picture gallery accessible on the web.

Plus the usual posting on all possible forums.
EDIT* Special focus on Mac and Linux PPC forums.

Plus some dedicated machine... dunno if something like rdp works under MoprhOS but that'd be really cool if anyone could log in remotely to a machine as a guest and try it out. MOSTeam should provide one connected to the net IMAO.

Plus we need posting OS reviews to practically any OS review site.

But before we do anything, we really need strategic marketing materials, let us learn from the Apple's success (which is mostly achieved by that).

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2009/10/27 12:32 ]

Dave,

Thanks for posting this - not only will working on community-driven promotion help bring on new users/devs - it will also help enhance the community that we already have with Morphos.

I personally, though not a Morphos expert and quite frankly a novice, would like to get some solid guide(s) to Morphos 2.x together. Really a reimplementation of The Peg book and the guide that Korni did ( http://korni.ovh.org ) both very good but an update would probably be best. I think a marriage of the two, that also includes promotion and screenshots of Morphos applications as well as tutorials on how to do basic stuff: How to listen to mp3, play videos, edit pics, skins,etc.

I will <cough> probably need help <cough> unless our new users can wait until 2012 however. PM me if interested.

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I've been getting positive response to my post, up to them getting it and finding it will be 150 euro to get the full version, and so far from what I've seen none have gone beyond the demo because of that. Who knows thought, maybe they will pass it on and some older AMiga users will start to come back.

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 15.05.2011 - 09:26 ]

@amigadave

:)) Good idea, but...

@CountRaven, Jambalah

Yes, that's right.

@amigadave

Another useful task, IMHO, would be to update Fulvio "DoctorMorbius_FP" Peruggi's excellent article MorphOS - The Lightning OS.

It's still about MorphOS 1.4, thus some serious work would have to be invested. I'd join there, as far as my very little spare time permits, but there would have to be others, too, who, unlike me, are actively using MorphOS on a regular basis.

I confirm what Senex said: upgrading that article is a serious work, but simpler than starting a new one from scratch.

Unfortunately I had very few spare time in the last year, and I will have even less spare time in the next years (I manage the didactic activities of 120 physics professors and researchers: see here).

One year ago I asked guruman and Daff for help, but they had too few spare time like me. This is a common problem for many of us: either a new job for young people, or a more important rank for older people like me. The result is always the same: less spare time available.

Anyway MorphOS: The Lightning OS is a beautiful project and it will be a pity if it should stop. Please see the article as a collective work that anyone sufficiently skilled can join to give his contribution.

I think that there is only one condition that must be absolutely satisfied if we want to create an acceptable upgrade: a coordination manager must be chosen before any work starts (but I am sorry, I have no time even for this task).

[ Edited by DoctorMorbius_FP on 2009/10/27 23:46 ]

Senex and DoctorMorbius -

I fully agree - this would be something in along the lines of what I was referring to in my previous post. I would be willing to apply my time, with the help of others in working on this. Anyone with me?

I really wanted to be able to update (but considering what has happened in the meantime - read: MorphOS 2.x - it would have been more a rewrite) the article before the release of MorphOS for Mac Mini, but the problem, as DoctorMorbius_FP pointed out, is the lack of free time, and the fact that the team was faster than I expected. the latter is not necessarily a bad thing, though. I would still like to help.

But I'd like to hear something also from the team: the last "semiofficial" thing I read was http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/165712.shtml , I wouldn't like to go against the team decisions...

Kind regards,
Andrea

First of all, the MOSTeam has to act more professional!
Since MOS 2.0 MOS has become a commercial product, there has to be more professional behavior on the developer?s side.
This includes attractive pricing like discount for multiple licences, student versions etc. to attract more users and a more active PR. Investors and 3rd party developers have to know, what is going on and what are visions and perspectives of the project to decide if it is worthwile supporting...
Therefore, a contact person, like Velcro_SP proposed, is urgently needed. Moreover, such a person also should integrate and organize the "Wild MOS-Bunch" and promote the great OS!
I am shure it is possible to find such a person, but I am not shure, if the devs would like the idea to submit themselves to be "structured" in their proceedings...


[ Edited by BurnTwice on 2009/10/28 1:10 ]

I updated the German "MorphOS im Detail" to V2.4. But this work is quite old in general and I wanted to write soemthing new anyway. But yet I have't foud teh time... Anyway it is some text to read and probably better than nothing. Maybe I wil do a complete new work a bit later on.
http://via.i-networx.de/docs/mid-German-2.4.pdf is te current version of tis outdated work.

Oh - and I kind of demoed MorphOS today to three young ladies. They had to work with the system and ten asked me whether it is "the new windows"? I kind of said no... Doubt they will log on to ebay immediately and go lurking for a Mac mini. But they had no prob to work with MorphOS. I think this shows that MorphOS is not too strange in general.

@ BurnTwice

I think Andre Siegel is some kind of official spokeperson. And I guess he knows a bit about PR.

[ Edited by Zylesea on 2009/10/28 1:32 ]

@ Zylesea

Exactly!
That is why MOS has to be made more known to the public outside the community.
When there are more users, the probability to see more apps and features of the OS will be higher...

Thanks for all the positive and constructive responses. There are some very good ideas contained above (or below, depending on how you have your settings). I have sent a message to one of the members of the MOSTeam who is fairly active on some of the forums, and I have asked him who is the MOS Public Relations Officer and volunteered some of my time to help in any way with promotion of MOS online and here in the USA. I also asked if there is no PR Officer, why not and volunteered to accept such a position, but would prefer to work as an assistant to such person, and perhaps be their representative in the USA, or Western half of the USA. I have some free time that I can devote to such activities and a better than average command of the English language, capable of writing and/or proof reading press releases and short tutorials, reviews, etc. I would also prefer to present official news and reports, rather than opinions and rumors, or third hand accounts of what someone said.

I know that most people do not have as much free time as myself, but I would ask each of you reading this to look at the ideas already suggested, or come up with your own, and do something, anything, even if it is only a five minute per day, or 30 minutes per weekend, reading and replying to questions from MOS newbies. Every little bit helps promote our community and makes MOS a more attractive alternative OS, or entertaining hobby OS.

I will look at working with others to update Dr Mobius "Lightning OS" article and keep it current.

The success of MOS is directly proportional to the number of users and developers we can attract to it.

On a related note; do not be too quick to criticize the MOSTeam for not doing more promotion of the MOS2.4 release. It is quite likely that they have not done so outside the Amiga/Morph communities because they wish to further test and improve the operation of 2.4 on the MacMini before promoting it to outside criticism, as a premature press release could back-fire and do more harm than good, if the reviews from outsiders were overtly harsh and critical, which is entirely possible, as MOS2.4 does not fully implement all parts of the MacMini, and it has already been pointed out that there may be more work needed on the ethernet connection speed.

Thanks again for all the positive responses and please keep them coming. Also, ask yourself what can you do to contribute. What ever action you can take, no matter how small, will be an addition to success in the future.

Okay, seems the official MTLOS-Update-Team starts forming... :-)

Debaser, guruman, amigadave and myself for a start - anyone else volunteering? ;-)

Although I didn't come back to Andr? at Moo yet (definite lack of time currently to read everything), I did read his comment, understand it (although not completely sharing the team's view at this, since the momentum of "also supporting Mac now" has been there just once, but I do and have to accept it of course) - but don't think the team will mind us to update and promote an article like MTLOS. Since it will neither reach that many Mac users as a broader news-coverage of the 2.4 release could have achieved, nor is it anything officially related to the team (at least if we neglect Christian's screenshot and Frank's proof-reading <g>), thus it can't fall back onto them. (I.e. if some Mac users become curious due to the article, install it and consider it a piece of shit, it would be a difference if that promotion originated from the developers themselves or just some fanboys.)

I guess instead of all of us starting to wildly write some pieces of text right now and probably do some stuff twice even, we should - as suggested by DoctorMorbius_FP - coordinate first which parts of the text we want to update and who of us would be suited best to address which of them.

Some suggestions I've also got already from Murmel and Sprocki at Pegasosforum.de - since, like guruman, I also planned to get the text updated until the 2.4 release, but that had been just a couple of days before it actually happened already, too. Maybe we could start a first (quite general) list here, extending and changing it here in this thread. (First I considered to take this stuff to e-mail instead, but if we discuss it here in the public, possibly further people may join us or give one-time-tips at least.)

1) Updating the existing screenshots where applicable
2) Add OWB
3) Possibly extended coverage of MPlayer and Blender/Python
4) TCP/IP stack and text editor added meanwhile (FAQ)
5) Efika, Mac mini
6) Commercial OS but free demo version
7) Further bits and pieces from the changelogs 1.4 -> 2.4
8) Less emphasis on the QBox
9) ...

Maybe we can collect some further stuff here for now. At least from my side, serious work on it can start at the weekend only, definitely not before (like Fulvio I'm into research, teaching and coordination, although, luckily, way not that large style as he is).

Since I guess that you three are by far more regular users of MorphOS than myself (well, that's easy to achieve I've to admit), it would be perfectly fine for me to take care of most of the actual writing and the assembly of your texts and screenshots if you want, but what we will definitely need from you, i.e. from your everyday MorphOS experience, is the information about what to add to MTLOS, why we should mention that, what is that much noteworthy about these components, etc. - and ideally also screenshots, since I've mainly just the pure default installation of the OS. But if you at least point me to the interesting applications and games, I could install them as well of course and make the screenshots myself if necessary (unless it's commercial software).

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Same here too. 150 may be cheap for amiga standards, i didnt mind paying it. its much cheaper alltogether then something we ever had, but convincing my mac friends to get them over the point then just installing the os, is rather hard.
Hope a few will do it anyway