Quote:

@boot_wb,

Just for entertainment, what is your estimate of how long it would take the MorphOS Dev. Team to complete support for the G5 PowerMac's, after they are finished with MorphOS3.0 for the G4 PowerBook?

Let's make it simpler and assume that the MorphOS Dev. Team has completed MorphOS3.1, or even 3.2 and all work on any of the devices contained within the G4 PowerBook's has all been completed, so no other work would be slowing them down from concentrating only on porting MorphOS3.x to the G5 PowerMac (no work on G5 iMac's yet).

My previous message sort of implied that I thought it would take them about 1 to 2 years to finish MorphOS3.0 and to complete the first release of any version of MorphOS which would support any of the G5 PowerMac's.

It is my opinion that the work to port to the G4 PowerBook and to implement any sort of wireless networking for MorphOS3.0, is probably much harder and more time consuming, than the work that will be required to port MorphOS to any G5 PowerMac. I could be completely wrong, because I don't really know anything about the differences, between G4 and G5 processors and how those differences will effect porting of MorphOS. The only other parts of the port that could slow it down and be time consuming, in my opinion, are the SATA controller and the power control & fan management (also liquid cooling pump control in the high end models) for keeping these high heat producing G5 CPU's from over-heating.

Other than those few devices, and probably a new Ethernet port to support, I don't see as many new things to work on, as there were when they started working on the G4 PowerBook, such as its CardBus/PCMCIA slot, new Radeon Mobility chip, battery charging/shut down/sleep, features, and many more.

If the team can finish MorphOS3.0 within the next 2 to 4 months (which I think is reasonable, considering that they thought they would be able to release it before the end of last year, and it is now two months later than that), I think it might take another 6 months to finish the rest of the features that the Dev. Team wants to support on the G4 PowerBook's. Then they should be free to start working on something new, like G5 PowerMac support (I hope).

Assuming all of the above, my guesstimate of how long it might take the MorphOS Dev. Team to complete a first release of a G5 supporting version of MorphOS, would be approx. 10 to 16 months after all work on the G4 PowerBook has stopped.

That gives me the impression that it might be possible for the MorphOS Dev. Team to complete support for an initial G5 support release of MorphOS by the end of 2013 (plus or minus 3 to 4 months.

Of course this is all wishful thinking on my part and I have no knowledge about anything that is happening within the MorphOS Dev. Team.

[ Edited by amigadave 05.03.2012 - 16:25 ]