Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2096 from 2003/2/24
From: po-RNO
Quote:
Minuous wrote:
>MorphOS is also binary compatible with old Amiga software. You can run system friendly programs (as well as system components like libraries, devices, classes etc) like native ones on it.
That's stretching the truth; compatibility is actually quite poor even without custom chip access. Eg. most programs need various alternations to work around badly-coded API implementations. And of course the API being incomplete and only supporting old OS3.1 doesn't help either.
I think it's a valid and very needed point to tell, when doing a brief description what MorphOS is. It separates it from skinned Linux distros and AROS for example. Many outsiders don't seem to understand that.
It's an another issue how well the goal is reached, people have different opinions about that. In my opinion compatibility is good enough. I'm quite impressed how I can have mixed system software, how 68k libraries, commodities, utils, tcp/ip stacks etc do work, they saved MorphOS in early years. And there are things still without native alternatives, like arexx for example.
MorphOS would never have been this usable and got this much users without the compatibility layer. Of course it isn't totally perfect and many (badly coded?) games and old bigger apps have issues, but it's just great that most of the small apps and commands just work when you throw them in. I think it has been important that 68k programs like most CD burners, gfx apps, word processors, spreadsheets, music players and internet software have been working just fine in early years. You haven't got native alternatives until just recently.
Now when MorphOS has matured enough, you can start thinking about switching the compatibility to modern features in future, but when talking about history up to today, compatibility is a very important point to mention.
