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I am a new user from outside Amiga Community. I do not believe in "Everything Must Be Unix".

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A small come-back is possible, if MorphOS is introduced into an emerging market where there are no other computers.

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Yes, you are certainly correct, and most people's response to trying out MorphOS on the Raspberry Pi, will be to open and close a few directories, start a few applications and one or two games, that will probably come bundled with MorphOS, just like the few apps and games which come with our current PPC versions of MorphOS. Then they will uninstall it and never think about it again, but even if most former Amiga users who try MorphOS have the same reaction, some few will decide they like what they see, and become more interested, then decide to learn more and join us. Some may return to being active users in our community, and a few will become active programmers of MorphOS software.

The point is numbers! If we are ever able to get a good port of the x64 version of MorphOS on the Raspberry Pi 3 (or later models), our chances of increasing the MorphOS user base, and number of active programmers creating new, and porting existing software to MorphOS, instantly goes way up, due to the shear number of current and future Raspberry Pi owners (future owners that will buy a RPi between now and however long it takes to finish the x64 version of MorphOS, plus more time it would take to complete a working port of the x64 version to the Raspberry Pi). Even if we only see 1/10th of one percent of those Pi owners become MorphOS users and only a dozen new MorphOS programmers, 1/10th of millions of Pi owners equals more new users than we probably have existing MorphOS users now, and maybe a number of new MorphOS programmers equal to 33% to 50% of the existing number of active MorphOS programmers.

Getting 1,000th of one percent, to 100th of one percent, of the existing Raspberry Pi owners/users would still be a significant boost to our user base, and getting even just 10 to 20 new active programmers of MorphOS software could also make a significant difference, specially for the x64& RPi versions, which will have less software to run, in the early years after its release. Depending on the talent level of those few new programmers, and how productive they are at creating new, or porting existing, software to/for MorphOS x64 & ARM (Raspberry Pi), we could actually see an increase in the speed of creating new native software for MorphOS, just because we might have more active programmers.

Having a pre-packaged collection of software for the x64 (and possible future RPi) version(s) of MorphOS, like the Chrysalis collection with installer, will be even more important and useful in retaining new users, when/if we target non-AmigaOS/MorphOS users/programmers, like the Raspberry Pi community.

As pointed out, the Raspberry Pi community probably has a higher percentage of potential programmers & computer tinkerers, which would be more likely to take a closer look at MorphOS, and therefore a higher chance of them becoming new MorphOS users & programmers. Its more than just a numbers game, that makes the Raspberry Pi such an attractive target platform. Its the type of users & programmers who are buying Raspberry Pi boards.

[ Edited by amigadave 04.08.2016 - 13:31 ]

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I believe thinking that any kind of "come-back" for any part of the Amiga community, including the MorphOS portion, is self delusion. Either that, or your definition of what a "come-back" is equal to, is very different than my definition of a come-back. I think you must be very young, or very naive, or both, when you think MorphOS has any chance to become a competitor to Windows, MacOSX, or Linux (include any other free OS in this group as well), in any area where computers are not already used by most people (such as Africa, the topic of another thread). Your point of view appears to be very different than mine (and I would argue most other members on this forum site), when it comes to what is possible, or even probable, for the future of MorphOS, or any other Amiga inspired platform. I don't mean this to be a harsh criticism of you as a person, or your intelligence, just a simple fact that I believe you see things differently than most of the rest of us, and we disagree on what we each think is possible.

For me, a come-back means a return to a time when the Amiga still had a chance to compete with Windows & MacOS, and a return of companies choosing to create ports of their software for any of the Amiga inspired platforms, and I just don't think that will ever be possible again. The only software companies that are likely to support our community, will be companies with 1 to 10 employees, working for free, or for a percentage of any possible future sales profits, not real software creation companies, as we know them today.

Anything less than that (such as simply an increase of the user base, or return of several hundred to a couple thousand former Amiga users), does not fit my definition of an Amiga "come-back".

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Agreed, given monopolistic market structures with no competition, MorphOS may have a chance

Too bad those type of underdeveloped restrictive markets are both hard to find and hard to access for a reason. I am not sure the development team is interested to relocate to North Korea.

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RiscOS's real advantage on the Pi is that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people worldwide are still using educational and scientific software that requires RiscOS and has no direct replacement. Until the Pi (and Beagle, etc), that meant using an Acorn Archimedes manufactured in the late 80s or early 90s and somehow keeping it alive and connected to modern peripherals. The Pi is an almost direct replacement.

I doubt its inclusion on Noobs gained it any more usershare - it is a fairly basic, cooperative multitasking OS with possibly less hardware support than MorphOS. It is also less friendly to new users than MorphOS is.

So again it comes down to software. People use an OS because they need specific software, not because they enjoy using any particular OS.

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From experience, especially inside the Amiga community, the more people deny they need to use Unix the more they make their OS resemble Unix.

Linux was a huge draw for Amiga developers in the late 90s. A lot of them tried to work backwards and port the things they liked from Linux into AmigaOS, but quickly found that it was a lot easier simply to move the stuff they liked from AmigaOS into Linux.

Once more MorphOS capable of being independent of Amiga and Linux / Unix. I am here to support Quark Microkernel and not to follow the crowd.

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Africa can be an alternative. Few computers exist as Internet currently is cost prohibitive. ($1,000.00 USD per month) By the time MorphOS has new hardware architecture(s) and software it could be around the same time that new market appears. Perhaps they might buy a low cost MorphOS computer. Or perhaps not. Or perhaps they are like me and yearn for a computer that is solid.

Also, is MorphOS abandoning Quark Microkernel and becoming Linux / Unix? I kindly request you do not abandon your own efforts.

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Citation?

Africans predominantly experience the internet via smartphones and even feature phones, not computers, which is in fact somewhat similar to the usage patterns of younger people in Northern America.

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The market in Africa already exists and it has been served by established players like Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, etc. for years.

The entire continent is a bit more developed than you appear to believe it is.

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I had assumed that nationwide deployment of Internet is only about 12 African nations, and was also curious about Satellite.

These are probably not residential options:

http://www.groundcontrol.com/Africa_Satellite_Internet.htm
Unlimited: $1,125 in monthly service fees, not including installation.

http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm
Ku-Band: Unlimited and Quota
Price from 250 &euro up to 4 000 &euro/month
C-Band: Unlimited
Price from 650 USD up to 12 000 USD/month

http://ts2.space/en/Satellite-Broadband-in-Africa
These plans vary. Some may cost more because perhaps they are remote areas.
Lower cost: 492kbps $40,00/ month
Higher cost: YahClick 1 Mbps $99 /month
YahClick 5 Mbps $699,00/ month
YahClick 7 Mbps $799,00/ month
YahClick 10 Mbps $899,00/ month

...

On the other hand, mobile device rate plans (If I interpreted it Correctly) they can cost $10.00 USD or less per month. (?!)

http://www.mtnonline.com/data-plan
http://www.mtnonline.com/products-services/internet-services/blackberry

> that meant using an Acorn Archimedes manufactured in the late 80s or early 90s

What about the Iyonix PC (2002-2008, RISC OS 5) or the A9home (2006-2012(?), RISC OS 4)?

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7675&start=602

ARM looks to have a healthy future since Apple and Google continue to push the envelope with it.

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Don't you think that the reason Linux was a "huge draw for Amiga developers in the late 90's", was more because it was free/open source, and because of the extreme dislike of both Microsoft/Windows and Apple/MacOS, by most Amiga users/programmers, instead of a preference of the way Linux works, how it is structured, or what software was available with a Linux port of it? The reason Amiga developers tried to change Linux to be more like AmigaOS, is positive evidence that the Amiga users and programmers prefer how AmigaOS works and is structured, instead of how Linux and Unix, work and are structured.

If all Amiga users and programmers thought the way you seem to think, we would not be here and the AmigaOS/AROS/MorphOS users and programmers would have all switched to Unix/Linux long ago, instead of sustaining what remains of our community, and the constant creation of new hardware and software, as well as continuing work to improve the 3 OS derivatives of the original 68k Classic AmigaOS. Sure, some former Amiga users and programmers did leave our community, and switched to using and developing for Linux, Unix, Windows, or MacOSX, but not the few thousands that still remain. I also see little to zero resemblance between our current AmigaOS4.x, AROS, or MorphOS, when compared to any Unix, or Linux distributions.

[ Edited by amigadave 14.08.2016 - 14:18 ]

> some former Amiga users and programmers did leave our community

I'd say the vast majority did.

Playing around with the RPi is great fun. It reminds me of the early days where I was just exploring computers.

I've been doing some Python on it. I bought it with a bunch of electronic parts and have got a ultrasonic sensor measuring distances. I followed an online tutorial which involved plugging in a few components and half a page of code.

The support for this sort of tinkering is very good, it was really easy to get it up and running.

Getting more involved meant finding out about the Linux audio system/s and bridging them and generally installing lots of stuff. If you're lucky it'll have an ugly 1990s style UI. If you're not, it's back to the command line and man pages.
So, it's fun but you have to put up with Linux and it's quirks.


It's much more fun than I expected and building stuff is really quite easy. They've got very good support for this in the built-in Python.

BTW They're more popular than I expected. They had sold 8 million by the time the RPi 3 shipped and they sold half a million of those in a 1 month!

ARM is bi-endian so compatibility would be easier.

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"Half a million" sold in one month! Even if half of those were sold to organizations and/or resellers who add other items in an attempt to make more of a profit on volume sales, that would still leave probably more than 250,000 individual users buying RPi3 boards for tinkering with, as potential new users for MorphOS, "IF" there were ever a port of MorphOS for x64 to the Raspberry Pi, or a hosted version could run on top of Linux.

That is a very large number, so even 1/10th, or 1/20th of one percent of that number would be a significant increase to the MorphOS community, many of the new users would already be programmers, or users interested in learning how to program.

As the MorphOS Dev. Team gets closer to completing the port to x64 architecture, I'll wonder if it would be relatively easy for them to create a hosted on Linux version of the existing PPC version of MorphOS, like AEROS is for AROS. Giving away a Linux hosted version of MorphOS3.9 would be a great way to generate interest in the new x64 version of MorphOS, just weeks before it was ready to be released. That of course would depend on how difficult it is to duplicate what the AROS developers have done to make AEROS. I assume that AEROS uses the ARM version of AROS, but that might not be correct, if AROS is running in a VM on top of Linux. I should find out more about how AEROS works, before writing any more about this idea.

It would be nice if the MorphOS Dev. Team could do two things with the release of MorphOS for x64.

1. Find a way to run Linux/Windows/MacOSX/Android/Amiga 68k/MorphOS PPC, etc. software, via emulation or VM, on top of the new MorphOS for x64, so there would be lots of software that could be run from day one of its release. As others have correctly pointed out, a new OS is worthless if there is nothing to run on top of it.

2. If the release of MorphOS for x64 meets my suggestion above in #1, so it has hundreds or thousands of software titles that can be run from day one of its release, then it would be great if the MorphOS Dev. Team could get lots of free advertising of MorphOS for x64, by reviews, interviews of team members, and history articles describing the path MorphOS has taken to get to this point. Getting lots of IT reporters and publications interested enough to write about the new port of MorphOS to x64 won't be easy, and getting a favorable review might be even more difficult, depending on who is doing the review, and if they remember the Amiga fondly, or instead have a mocking attitude, because they are a Linux/Windows/MacOSX fanboy, and enjoy poking fun at anything related to the Amiga, when they have the opportunity.

It would be great though, if our community, and the MorphOS Dev. Team specifically, made the most of this opportunity. MorphOS is only going to be ported to the x64 architecture once, so lets make the most of this opportunity, as a chance to gain more users and programmers for our platform of choice.

Some users don't care if our community grows, as they seem to regard it as an exclusive club of some kind. They don't realize how this mentality reduces the chances for more software to be written for, or ported to, the MorphOS platform. We need more users and more programmers, to ensure we will continue to have a future for MorphOS.

[ Edited by amigadave 27.08.2016 - 14:45 ]

> ARM is bi-endian so compatibility would be easier.

There are different kinds of bi-endianness:

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7675&start=522

Another opinion:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40193&forum=2&start=100#761084

If a new Morphos is created. It will not be compatible with actual softwares whitout recompilating all programs. Because it will not be 64bit only but also whith memory protection and smp. So it will be binary uncompatible. Only émulation will provide Old softwares.

> new Morphos [...] will not be compatible with actual softwares whitout
> recompilating all programs. [...] it will be binary uncompatible.

There's also endian-dependency on source code level in software that is not written in an endian-agnostic way. See WebKit's JavaScriptCore for instance. This may be the case for the source code of certain AmigaOS/MorphOS legacy software as well.

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Nice idea, would be most welcome, but wouldnt some G4 QUEMU book with Pegasos firmware be enough?

However, they have mixed "two bags" here

a) AROS Vision - which is Linux or Windows hosted AROS, slower but usable
b) AEROS, which is Debian and AROS Crossover, a native crossbreed OS.

I have used AEROS, its essentially spartan looking fast Linux that has built in AROS support and apps
as well as JanusUAE. Its great as Linux and as AROS, because it uses Linux drivers to surpass
AROS driver limitations.

AEROS exists for ARM and x86 and there are plans for PPC version limited by PPC Debian and PPC AROS.

So AEROS way of MorphOS would be crossbreeding with Linux kernel and drivers, while maintaining e.g.
Ambient loook and feel.

> AROS Vision [...] is Linux or Windows hosted AROS

AROS Vision is an m68k-native AROS distribution.

> AEROS, which is Debian and AROS Crossover, a native crossbreed OS.

AEROS is Debian-hosted AROS Broadway distribution.

> AEROS [...] uses Linux drivers to surpass AROS driver limitations.

Yes, that's because it is Linux-hosted AROS.

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As usual, one cannot argue against such guru as you.

Beside semantics and AROS distros (Vision being 68k and Broadway x86), AEROS feels more native and faster in real use and can run ... well, many apps includings WINE supported M$.
I am not sure about this also, but I believe AROS apps are most x86, then backported 68k and only few PPC ported, so in my book can ran most of AROS apps natively.

Its a win win solution, and is kind of "good comeback" - Amiga and fast Linux together.
Take it from user

That is also an "NG" option.

@vox,

It was actually me who you quoted, not minuous, or minator, or who ever you put in your posting. I am not advocating that MorphOS for x64 use AEROS, only that they complete MorphOS for x64 in a way that allows us users to run Android, Linux, Windows, and/or MacOSX/iOS software as seamlessly as possible. If that means starting up a VM, and booting the alternative OS inside that VM, that will be good enough.

My point was only that we need some software to run when MorphOS for x64 is first released, as I imagine that native ports for the x64 version of MorphOS will probably be few in number at first. Hopefully, the MorphOS Dev. Team will have great tools for us to port software to the x64 version of MorphOS, from day one, after it's release, but it will still take some time to build up a library of software titles that are created from scratch, or ported from other platforms, for this new (and hopefully revolutionary, or at least evolutionary) version of MorphOS for x64.

I am not nearly as concerned about how they accomplish allowing us to run more software from the beginning, as I am concerned that having too little software to run, will harm the first impression of MorphOS for x64.

As I wrote earlier, this switch to the x64 architecture will only occur once, so I am hoping for the best circumstances, to allow for greatest success in gaining new users/programmers. Which has always been my highest concern and hope for MorphOS. More users/programmers, means more software to run, and more chance of long term continuation of development of MorphOS.