• Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    takemehomegrandma
    Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:


    ironfist wrote:
    Eeeh.. If MorphOS should abandon PowerPC
    for anything it should be x86!

    Porting it to another dead-end architecture
    would just prolong its misery..

    MorphOS needs high volume, and ARM won't
    help you with that. Just because it's ported so
    some random ARM netbook, doesn't make it
    run on mobile phones!

    Cellular phones require expensive secret GSM/UMTS/
    whatever technology which the MorphOS Team will
    never get their hands on..


    Stick with PowerPC or port it to x86 if you want
    it to have a chance in future. Everything else is
    IMO completely pointless. Really.


    IMHO x86 makes sense in a desktop context, but MorphOS can't compete on the desktop market; the OS lacks many important features, and on top of that it lacks 100% of the applications.

    MorphOS is a low footprint, extremely lean OS that can really do magic to the user experience on cheap, low performance hardware. This is where MorphOS can shine, this is where it can make sense. This is the strengths one could capitalize on!

    One of the things I like with PPC architecture is that it scales from very low performance SoC designs up to quite decent performance "desktop" CPU's. The same MorphOS can happily run on a $15 "G2" CPU @ 400MHz as well as a Pegasos2 or Mac G4 @ 1.5GHz. We "Amiga Nerds" likes the *power*, since we are using MorphOS as a desktop OS, while the low power chips (like the 5121e) is what could make sense for MorphOS in a commercial context. The PPC offers it all.

    However, it looks like the future of PPC isn't too bright anymore, so eventually MorphOS will have to jump somewhere else. Unfortunately, the ARM doesn't scale as high, and the x86 doesn't scale as low. Commercially, I can see how MorphOS potentially could make sense on the ARM architecture, but ARM driven netbooks and other kind of devices may not be what a MorphOS *desktop* user is dreaming about, because the lack of raw power? The x86 offers the power but it doesn't fit in the ARM marketplace, and commercially I can't see how MorphOS could possibly compete on the desktop market.

    So if MorphOS would jump to a different architecture, and if the ambitions are above forever being merely a hobby project, then I would vote for ARM.
    MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)
    MorphOS NG will be AROS done right! :-)
  • »18.03.09 - 11:29
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