|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.07.2011 - 19:50 ]

> CherryPal and Acube do

...and Fixstars.

If MorphOS goes ARM and does not run m68k-apps anymore, I might as well use AROS... it would make my hobby 150 euro cheaper, for doing more or less the same.

So in other words I'm not going to use it if does not have "Trance for ARM" or whatever emulates the 68k in MorphOS unless it has a very decent uae port with a JIT.

Quote:

Lovely it would be. But perhaps it's no easy task.

Quote:

Matt, it looks like you are bashing the kind of things that now get in your new bussiness direction.
You were an strong advocate of PowerPC technology just a couple of months ago (if not less). Now, you publicly disregard it. I think this is a clear case of low professionalism... But, if I think it better, it looks like HIGH professionalism, precisely.
Anyway, that's how business goes. But I feel PowerPC is a good technology, only badly handled by its very owners...
Hey! Just like the Amiga was!

Have you counted the number of times you've heard "please make a 8610 computer"? Well, 99% of them were because of YOUR own comments!
Now, this technology is completely forgotten. It might be very good but, if its no longer developed, it could be "300% better" (it isn't) than any existing techology today, but will be completely uninteresting in just some months.

Quote:

This is an interesting point. I'm sure that the Team has thought about it before. Such a crowd of geniuses think a lot! I've asked it already many times, and didn't get a satisfactory answer: Why, technically, does MorphOS have to be PowerPC?

Quote:

Like I said before, a really distinct operating system. I'd like to see how much flavour does PowerPC make in MorphOS recipe.

Quote:

Personally, I wouldn't advocate a *migration* at this point (I'm still looking forward to the PPC Mac Mini port ) but perhaps a *fork*?

An eventual ARM fork would of course have to have all applications natively (re)compiled for that architecture (which will result in a similar app count as AROS initially), and because of that it wouldn't be the same for an "Amiga nerd" as the current MorphOS *PPC* is, but it could perhaps prove to become a way forward, *post PPC*...?

(And BTW, please keep various strange UAE discussions out )

I have MorphOS because it's amigacompatible ... most of us, if not all have it because of that.

I don't mind the fact that MorphOS migrates to another architecture, but 68k compatibility is half the fun for me, so I would find it disappointing when it's gone.

Quote:

I think everyone here feels pretty much the same as you about that (including myself), and that's why I said *fork*!

That is a sweet netbook. You can even stick in to your fridge . . .

Unfortunately it doesn't come with a cool OS . .

But I still think its

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.

Quote:

I was thinking a MorphOS port to ARM *could* have some point, because ARM runs in beg endian mode, too. This would help to integrate a 68k emulation just like under ppc MorphOS. But as it seems the big endian mode of the ARM is not perfect (but I haven't read too much about that). The "native mode" of ARM is little endian.
And if ARM doesn't offer the full benefit of the big endianess, then I do not see much of a point in porting MorphOS to ARM, *then* a port to x86 would make pretty much more sense (x86 will continue to be the main cpu architecture for teh foreseeable time).
Well, next is the Mac mini port. We'll see what comes afterwards.

Addition to my earlier post why a MrphOS port to ARM *could* still make some sense.
As it seems ARM is entereing the netbook market this year. For ARM there is virtually only Linux available. And as we all more or less know Linux suxx (well, some ppl may disagree, but we all may agree that many ppl think that Linux suxx some serious donkey balls). Those ppl may be in some demand of another OS. Windows will proabalbly enter the ARM netbook market, too (once there is a serious market). but w/o the advantage to have all those x86 apps around. So, the biggest benfit of Windows will be void there.
Thus, on this "new" architecture there might be a relatively high share of ppl who may be open for an alternative OS. Question would be: Would they get satisfied by a MorphOS ARM? I am undecided. I think MorphOS is better than many ppl say, but it surely has its weaknesses.
If I would be a gambler I'd probably propagate a fork to ARM. But lucky me, I am not the one to decide .

@ Zylesea

Quote:

More importantly, you are not one of the developers who would have to develop and maintain all these forks

On a more serious note, it does not take a psychic to predict that most desktop computers will be sold with more than 4GB of system memory in the not-too-distant future. If I had my own OS and anticipated a labor-intense and time-consuming port to a different processor architecture, 32BIT ARM chips would seem like a rather backwards choice to me.

Quote:
Well, the Amiga has been moving backward since a decade anyway... The contrary would be surprising...

The OS is also moving backward, with compatibility (ie: past) in mind, not with the future in mind. In that case 32BIT ARM seems like a perfectly good choice... And Amiga applications don't need that much RAM anyway, right ?

> as it seems the big endian mode of the ARM is not perfect (but I
> haven't read too much about that).

Search for "true big endian" (as opposed to just "big endian") and "true little endian" (as opposed to just "little endian").

@ Andreas Wolf

Yes, I think i got it now. ARM chips are able to load and process big endian data, while addressing und such stuff are always little endian. I gues it is pretty useless for MorphOS (in the regard to yield a transparent 68k emu as with ppc).
We're on ppc, we're doomed. Well, doomed, but havig fun, I'd say

Quote:

That's the spirit!

Quote:

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.

Well, what if a MorphOS ARM fork would simply cut the ties to the 68k legacy altogether and start with a clean slate? Could you really reach a good enough emulation speed on a chip with such low performance anyway?

BTW (speaking of restarting with clean slates), Anubis is going ARM:

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/03/anubis-on-aura-on-arm.html

> Anubis is going ARM

Yes, already known for 1.5 months:

"That same package is ready for the i.MX515 [...] The Anubis Dev team also wants to develop their system for this platform."
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/02/amigaos-morphs-to-pegasos.html

"Michal Schultz [sic!] has proposed to port [...] Anubus [sic!] to our new i.MX515 based hardware"
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/02/communities-build-volume.html

http://projects.powerdeveloper.org/project/imx515/736

:-)

@ takemehomegrandma

Quote:

You have been repeating this for quite some time. However, running a successful business is in most cases not at all about "beating" your competition but rather finding your niche.


Quote:

In simple terms, developing a piece of software as a business requires you to generate sufficient revenue to cover all costs and preferably still have enough left to build up cash reserves for weak periods or emergency expenses.

That is all you have to do.

Let us assume that you focus your expenses on what is really important. No private jets. No first-class flights from the US to Europe and back. No fancy sports cars. No expensive offices. No redundant lawsuits.

How many sales do you need in order to turn your hobby into a profession? 100 million units? 1 million units? 100.000 units?

You can do with a lot less, actually. For the sake of this discussion, let us assume your software product is an operating system that includes a suite of every-day applications and runs on fairly common hardware. If you manage to sell a mere 2.000 units per year at $100 each, you generate 200.000 USD in revenue. At an admittedly modest average income of 3.000 USD per month, this is sufficient to pay 5 full-time developers or 10 part-time developers at half the salary or a combination of these. At the end, you would still have $20.000 left to pay other expenses or to save up.

Now, there is no need to pick apart small details of my example which is obviously very simple and abstract .The point I am trying to make is that you can in fact run a sustainable business with comparably small sales volumes as long as you can keep them at a constant level thanks to continuous product innovation.


Quote:

What we do know for a fact right now is that there are at the very least hundreds of people in the world who are willing to spend half a thousand dollars and more in order to buy custom hardware and a keyfile for the single purpose of being able to run MorphOS and compatible applications.

Would it be possible to raise sales numbers if the supported desktop hardware was more widely available, possibly cheaper and overall had a better price-performance ratio? Well, nobody can say for sure.

However, this - purely hypothetical - scenario sure sounds considerably more realistic than any vague dreams about large OEM deals for low-performance hardware (with cut-throat pricing, thus tiny margins for system software), embedded usage, and so on.

While having grand visions can be sometimes fruitful, ignoring your existing custumer base is almost always stupid.

Quote:

Hopefully the Mac mini will soon provide us with a case study whether a more widely avaiable hardware with better price/performance ratio will yield to more sales or not.

Not bene: Yes, the Mac mini is also quite niche and not new, but at least I guess we (or to be more precise: the MorphOS-Team) will get an idea how market demand for MorphOS for easily availabile and not overpriced hardwrare will be.

Quote:

Indeed. But how would you define a plausible niche for MorphOS on the commercial x86 desktop market?

takemehomegrandma:
Which Netbooks are most likely to survive
and thrive? Standardized x86-based or
customized ARM-based?

I know what I think.. At least the x86-based
can run Windows and Ubuntu, which makes
it even more appealing to many users.

Quote:

You mean "standardized" x86-based or "standardized" ARM-based (and I don't see any real standards as of yet BTW)? And I am not *only* talking about netbooks BTW, ARM is being used in many other types of devices as well where MorphOS could make a difference. Much of the ARM market is far out of reach for the x86, but maybe that will change further down the road. I agree about the Windows part though; the Windows trade mark and familiar GUI alone is a great competitive advantage...