This article may be confusing or unclear to readers.(August 2020) |
Developer | The MorphOS Development Team |
---|---|
Written in | C, C++, Objective-C++, Pascal, Python, Perl, Amiga E, Ruby, Lua |
OS family | AmigaOS-like |
Working state | Current |
Source model | Closed source (with open source [1] components) |
Initial release | 0.1 / August 1, 2000 |
Latest release | 3.18 / May 13, 2023 |
Available in | 19 languages |
Platforms | Pegasos, some models of Amiga, Efika, Mac Mini G4, eMac, Power Mac G4, PowerBook G4, iBook G4, Power Mac G5, SAM 460, AmigaOne X5000 |
Kernel type | Micro/pico [2] |
Default user interface | Ambient |
License | Proprietary with GNU GPL Ambient user interface |
Official website | www |
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the Efika and mobileGT. Since MorphOS 2.4, Apple's Mac mini G4 is supported as well, and with the release of MorphOS 2.5 and MorphOS 2.6 the eMac and Power Mac G4 models are respectively supported. The release of MorphOS 3.2 added limited support for Power Mac G5. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop.
Developed for PowerPC CPUs from Freescale and IBM, it also supports the original AmigaOS Motorola 68000 series (68k, MC680x0) applications via proprietary task-based emulation, and most AmigaOS PPC applications via API wrappers. It is API compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 and has a GUI based on the Magic User Interface (MUI).
Besides the Pegasos version of MorphOS, there is a version for Amiga computers equipped with PowerUP accelerator cards produced by Phase5. This version is free, as is registration. If unregistered, it slows down after each two-hour session. PowerUP MorphOS was most recently updated on 23 February 2006; however, it does not exceed the feature set or advancement of the Pegasos release. [3] [4]
A version of MorphOS for the Efika, a very small mainboard based on the ultra-low-power MPC5200B processor from Freescale, has been shown at exhibitions and user gatherings in Germany. [5] Current (since 2.0) release of MorphOS supports the Efika.
ABox is an emulation sandbox featuring a PPC native AmigaOS API clone that is binary compatible with both 68k Amiga applications and both PowerUP and WarpOS formats of Amiga PPC executables. ABox is based in part on AROS Research Operating System. ABox includes Trance JIT code translator for 68k native Amiga applications.
MorphOS can run any system friendly Amiga software written for 68k processors. Also it is possible to use 68k libraries or datatypes on PPC applications and vice versa. It also provides compatibility layer for PowerUP and WarpUP software written for PowerUP accelerator cards. The largest repository is Aminet with over 75,000 packages online with packages from all Amiga flavors including music, sound, and artwork. MorphOS-only software repositories are hosted at MorphOS software, MorphOS files and MorphOS Storage.
MorphOS is delivered with several desktop applications in the form of pre-installed software.
The project began in 1999, based on the Quark microkernel. [7] The earliest versions of MorphOS ran only via PPC accelerator cards on the Amiga computers, and required portions of AmigaOS to fully function. [8] A collaborative effort between the companies bPlan (of which the lead MorphOS developer is a partner) and Thendic-France in 2002 resulted in the first regular, non-prototype production of bPlan-engineered Pegasos computers capable of running MorphOS or Linux. [9] [10] Thendic-France had financial problems and folded; however, the collaboration continued under the new banner of "Genesi". [11] [12] A busy promotional year followed in 2003, with appearances at conventions and exhibitions in several places around the world, including the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. [13]
After some bitter disagreements within the MorphOS development team in 2003 and 2004, culminating with accusations by a MorphOS developer that he and others had not been paid, [14] the Ambient desktop interface was released under GPL [15] and is now actively developed by the Ambient development team. Subject to GPL rules, Ambient continues to be included in the commercial MorphOS product. An alternative MorphOS desktop system is Scalos. [16]
On April 1, 2008, the MorphOS team announced that MorphOS 2.0 would be released within Q2/2008. This promise was only kept by a few seconds, with the release of MorphOS 2.0 occurring on June 30, 2008 23:59 CET. MorphOS 3.11 is commercially available at a price of €79 per machine (€49 for the Efika PPC or Sam460 boards). A fully functional demo of MorphOS is available, but without a keyfile, its speed is decreased significantly after 30 minutes of use per session; rebooting the system allows for another 30 minutes of use.
Version | Release date | Notes |
---|---|---|
0.1 | August 1, 2000 | Amiga |
0.2 | October 17, 2000 | Amiga |
0.4 | February 14, 2001 | 3rd Release [17] |
0.5 | May 1, 2001 | Amiga |
0.8 | August 2001 | Amiga, Pegasos I |
0.9 | 2002 | beta [18] |
1.0 | 14 October 2002 | Pegasos I |
1.1 | December 13, 2002 | Pegasos I |
1.2 | February 9, 2003 | Pegasos I |
1.3 | March 27, 2003 | Pegasos I |
1.4 | August 7, 2003 | Pegasos I |
1.4.4 | March 28, 2005 | Pegasos I/II |
1.4.5 | April 30, 2005 | Pegasos I/II |
1.4.5 | August 25, 2005 | Amiga [19] |
Version | Release date | Notes |
---|---|---|
2.0 | June 30, 2008 | Added support for Efika 5200B platform; native TCP/IP stack, an updated Sputnik release, AltiVec support, alpha compositing 3D layers for the graphical user interface, new USB components (including USB 2.0 support), new screenblankers, and Reggae, a new, modular, streaming multimedia framework [20] |
2.1 | September 6, 2008 | Support for the Efika's audio [21] |
2.2 | December 20, 2008 | TrueCrypt-compatible disk encryption suite [22] |
2.3 | August 6, 2009 | Origyn Web Browser as the default browser, read only HFS+ file system support [23] |
2.4 | October 12, 2009 | Added support for Mac mini G4; write support for Mac HFS disks, new charsets.library to provide better multilingual application support [24] |
2.5 | June 4, 2010 | Added support for eMac G4; drivers for SiI3x1x based 2-port Serial ATA PCI cards [25] |
2.6 | October 10, 2010 | Added support for Power Mac G4; 2D drivers for Rage 128 Pro graphics cards; Released at precisely 10.10.10 10:10 [26] |
2.7 | December 2, 2010 | Improving support for Power Mac G4 platforms [27] |
3.0 | June 8, 2012 | Added support for PowerBook G4; performance improvements [28] |
3.1 | July 8, 2012 | Bug-fix release [29] |
3.2 | May 27, 2013 | Added support for further PowerBook G4 models, iBook G4 and Power Mac G5 model A1047; 3D drivers for Radeon R300 based cards, wireless networking via Atheros chipset, major overhaul of TCP/IP stack ("NetStack") – improving networking performance [30] |
3.3 | September 18, 2013 | Fixes support for some iBook G4 models [31] |
3.4 | December 14, 2013 | Improved R300 3D and G5 video playback performance, support for non-native display resolutions on various PowerBook models [32] |
3.5 | February 15, 2014 | Support for PowerMac7,2 Power Mac G5 models [33] |
3.6 | June 27, 2014 | Broadcom Wi-Fi support, AMD R400 support, SMBFS file system, VNC server and a Synergy client [34] |
3.7 | August 3, 2014 | Bug-fix release [35] |
3.8 | May 15, 2015 | Support for Sam 460 series of mainboards; basic drivers for Radeon HD series graphics cards, 4K displays in native resolution [36] |
3.9 | June 19, 2015 | Bug-fix release [37] |
3.10 | March 25, 2018 | Extended hardware support (AmigaOne X5000 mainboard; new SATA controllers, network controllers, scanners and graphics cards), Flow Studio IDE with built-in debugger, support for time zones, new fonts, new themes, vector graphics, including SVG icons, overall bug fixes and performance improvements [38] |
3.11 | July 6, 2018 | Bug-fix release [39] |
3.12 | October 2, 2019 | Dual monitor support for select hardware, improved thermal management for select hardware, new FireWire stack, support for more printers and scanners, upgraded Odyssey browser with HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3 and spell checking support, substantial upgrades and new features to Flow Studio IDE, UTF-8 support in MUI, ObjFW runtime with Automatic Reference Counting [40] |
3.13 | February 7, 2020 | Bug-fix release [41] |
3.14 | October 4, 2020 | Kernel improvements for threading, improved TCP/IP network stack threading support, improved unix emulation layer, Magic User Interface improvements, improved ObjectiveC framework, improved translations for various languages, updated open source components for various libraries and classes, numerous bug fixes. Introduces ScoutNG system monitoring application [42] |
3.15 | December 31, 2020 | Bug-fix release [43] |
3.16 | March 9, 2022 | Added notification system and email client, replaced Odyssey web browser with Wayfarer web browser, added new application switcher. Improvements for Synergy client, added shared openSSL 3 library. Includes hundreds of bug fixes [44] |
3.17 | May 1, 2022 | Bug-fix release [45] |
3.18 | May 13, 2023 | New features: Scriptable Hex/RAM/Disk editor, ArchiveIt archiver/unarchiver application, better cooling information display via Thermals application, Samba2/3 support, including integration with Ambient desktop. Extensive improvements to Radeon drivers and improvements to Realtek 8168 driver support. Issues in USB support for CyrusPlus 5040 systems has been corrected. Many system components and libraries have been bugfixed and improved, including MUI, Netstack and Filesysbox. [46] |
MorphOS 2 includes a native TCP/IP stack ("Netstack") and a Web browser, Sputnik or Origyn Web Browser. [47] Sputnik was begun under a user community bounty system [48] that also resulted in MOSNet, a free, separate TCP/IP stack for MorphOS 1 users. Sputnik is a port of the KHTML rendering engine, on which WebKit is also based. Sputnik is no longer being developed and was removed from later MorphOS 2 releases.
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.
PowerPC is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture–based processors.
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the Teron series of PowerPC POP mainboards. In September 2009, Hyperion Entertainment secured an exclusive licence for the AmigaOne name and subsequently new AmigaOne computers were released by A-Eon Technology and Acube Systems.
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports, USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire. Like the PowerPC Macintosh counterparts, it boots via Open Firmware.
PowerPC G4 is a designation formerly used by Apple and Eyetech to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola. Motorola and Freescale's proper name of this family of processors is PowerPC 74xx.
Ambient is a MUI-based desktop environment for MorphOS. Its development was started in 2001 by David Gerber. Its main goals were that it should be fully asynchronous, simple and fast. Ambient remotely resembles Workbench and Directory Opus Magellan trying to mix the best of both worlds.
Phase5 Digital Products is a defunct German computer hardware manufacturer that developed third-party hardware primarily for the Amiga platform. Their most popular products included CPU upgrade boards, SCSI controllers and graphics cards.
The Open Desktop Workstation, also referred to as ODW is a PowerPC based computer, by San Antonio-based Genesi. The ODW has an interchangeable CPU card allowing for a wide range of PowerPC microprocessors from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor.
The Amiga is a family of home computers that were designed and sold by the Amiga Corporation from 1985 to 1994.
The Amiga computer can be used to emulate several other computer platforms, including legacy platforms such as the Commodore 64, and its contemporary rivals such as the IBM PC and the Macintosh.
AmigaOS is the proprietary native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. Since its introduction with the launch of the Amiga 1000 in 1985, there have been four major versions and several minor revisions of the operating system.
Microprocessors belonging to the PowerPC/Power ISA architecture family have been used in numerous applications.
AmigaOS 4 is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner. "The Final Update" was released on 24 December 2006 after five years of development by the Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment under license from Amiga, Inc. for AmigaOne registered users.
Genesi is an international group of technology and consulting companies in the United States, Mexico and Germany. It is most widely known for designing and manufacturing ARM architecture and Power ISA-based computing devices. The Genesi Group consists of Genesi USA Inc., Genesi Americas LLC, Genesi Europe UG, Red Efika, bPlan GmbH and the affiliated non-profit organization Power2People.
Efika is a line of power efficient ARM architecture and Power ISA based computers manufactured by Genesi.
AROS Research Operating System is a free and open-source multi media centric implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 application programming interface (API). Designed to be portable and flexible. As of 2021, ports are available for personal computers (PCs) based on x86 and PowerPC, in native and hosted flavors, with other architectures in development. In a show of full circle development, AROS has been ported to the Motorola 68000 series (m68k) based Amiga 1200, and there is also an ARM port for the Raspberry Pi series.
Hunk is the executable file format of tools and programs of the Amiga Operating System based on Motorola 68000 CPU and other processors of the same family. The file format was originally defined by MetaComCo. as part of TRIPOS, which formed the basis for AmigaDOS. This kind of executable got its name from the fact that the software programmed on Amiga is divided in its internal structure into many pieces called hunks, in which every portion could contain either code or data.
WarpOS is a multitasking kernel for the PowerPC (PPC) architecture central processing unit (CPU) developed by Haage & Partner for the Amiga computer platform in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It runs on PowerUP accelerator boards developed by phase5 which contains both a Motorola 68000 series CPU and a PowerPC CPU with shared address space. WarpOS runs alongside the 68k-based AmigaOS, which can use the PowerPC as a coprocessor. Despite its name, it is not an operating system (OS), but a kernel; it supplies a limited set of functions similar to those in AmigaOS for using the PowerPC. When released, its original name was WarpUP, but was changed to reflect its greater feature set, and possibly to avoid comparison with its competitor, PowerUP.
Sam460ex is a line of modular motherboards produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl. The machine was released in October 2010 and can run AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, or Debian GNU/Linux.
PowerUP boards were dual-processor accelerator boards designed by Phase5 Digital Products for Amiga computers. They had two different processors, a Motorola 68000 series (68k) and a PowerPC, working in parallel, sharing the complete address space of the Amiga computer system.