A small but important note: the presentation was about 3.x, not 3.0 in particular.

@Fab

Quote:

Fab wrote: A small but important note: the presentation was about 3.x, not 3.0 in particular.

Nevertheless impressive stuff! Looking forward to 3.0 and still looking for a nice 15" powerbook.

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@HenryCase

Ok, I'll give it a shot... not a 100% accurate translation but you'll get the main ideas.

"Et Apres" slide:
- Make Morphos portable (64 bits), integration in a VM for dev and test.
- Architecture choice : X64 ? , ARM ?
- Compatibility PPC and 68K ?

Speech:
For now, we concentrate on the few Apple models that are available. So: Powerbook and potentially Power Mac G5, we'll see if it's worth to support them or not.
Once we're done with that, we'll look into an architecture change, either X64 or ARM, whatever is interesting when we get there, which should take a few years.
Meanwhile, we get into the 64 bit compatibility to prepare the ground.
We will make it run in a virtual machine, a bit like AROS. That's for development [...] so that we can start working on it without having a machine available yet.
So yes indeed, within a few years, we will change the architecture.

The problem related to this (change of architecture) is that the PPC & 68K compatibility will likely be lost.
It may be reintroduced later by writing emulators for these 2 processors.
But it will require time... and will it be really interesting since most of the applications are now native and we have control over them ? It remains to be seen.

Morphos 3 will be free for users already registered and upgrading.
Those who buy a powerbook will have to buy a license for it.
Also, there will be a change in the pricing.
Older machines like Powermac, Mac Mini and Pegasos will see a little reduction in the license price... a little less.

Question, in the audience, about ameliorating the QBox (I couldn't hear the whole question)
Reply :
The QBox is a recent kernel that can, in theory, support SMP, Memory protection, and other modern concepts. The problem is that AmigaOS, due to its API, does not allow to implement these concepts. Any application requiring memory protection would not be compatible, because the architecture of AmigaOS relies on sharing memory access.
Any application can access another application's memory (space)....

The QBox is the kernel and the Abox, which is what allows to run all what we see here, is only a process in Morphos.
The QBox is something wider that we haven't had time to develop since all the efforts have been directed toward the compatibility with AmigaOS and the applications running inside it (the ABox).
Will we have the ressources to develop the QBox more than what it is now?
We'll see... When the time comes for the architecture change, it's possible we look into it seriously. Right now, for the support of G4 and G5, it's not necessary.
On the long run...we'll see...
--------------

So, this is it. Again, it's not a word for word translation. I took a few shortcuts and sometimes a few words were hard to catch with all the noise around.


Pour les frenchies, n'hesitez pas a rectifier si necessaire !

@Chock
Thank you so much! I knew I'd missed quite a bit of interesting information, and even if the translation isn't 100% accurate, it seems close enough to get the gist of what the future plans for MorphOS are. All of which sound promising.

Last edited by HenryCase on 13-Nov-2011 at 11:54 PM.

@Chock

Thanks for translating (my French to too poor to understand a lot).
Seems on the long run my potential future outlook as written on http://via.i-networx.de/q86.htm seems to be not too unlikely - given enough development resources will be available.
Anyway nearer future looks pretty nice. A price reduction for the non powerbook machines (let me guess 99 EUR) is welcome, too. Albeit I personally will probably get a Powerbook license only as I have two other licenses already and currently don't see any need for more than three 3.x machines (but you'll never know).

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@Chock

Thanks for the translation. Can anyone tell me who was giving the speech, which MorphOS Dev. Team member was it, or was it someone outside the Team, but reading information provided by the MorphOS Dev. Team?

I don't see any mention of when MorphOS might be able to use more than one CPU, or more than one Core, on a dual core CPU. I don't expect it will happen before they do an architecture change and give up on some of the Amiga API compatibility, so maybe they can include it if/when they move to ARM or x86 hardware support.

Very nice to see the MorphOS Development Team providing some information about the future direction of MorphOS and the features that will be included in, or added shortly after MorphOS3.0. It has been a while since they spoke about their future direction and plans.

I am sure there are many here that can remember not too many years ago when the choices and availability of PPC hardware for MorphOS and OS4 was very bleak. This has changed a great deal for the better over the last couple of years.

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@amigadave

Quote:

Can anyone tell me who was giving the speech

It was Fab.

@Fab

Impressive!

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As i understand, the change to ARM would be the better solution - because of the RISC-Based architecture... (like PPC)

Or it's not like that?

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@Chock

Unless MOS team is changing the vocabulary, quark is the kernel and qbox is the "native" environment for it's applications, while ABox is only meant for AmigaOS SW. So... ABox is to be sandboxed after 3.0 and MOS team will start to work with the true MOS, porting OS components from ABox to QBox. GREAT!
MOS that runs it's apps "natively" in QBox is like the pipedream of AOS5.

IMHO, MOS team should have started the Q development already ten years ago and leave AmigaOS compatibility & ABox to Hyperion to play with. But I guess thay needed to show how good AOS4 they would/could have done...


And ... perhaps MOS team knows better, but so far it seems to me that PPC is ok for desktop if the OS can do SMP.

... + now it seems almost 100% sure that MOS will not run on any new PPC HW.



UPDATE: as it seems my post can look a bit negative ...

1) I've waited the QBox development to start for ten years. Originally I was very disappointed that everything runs in ABox. So, it's great development that the start of QBox work is in the horizon.

2) If the R&D resources would have spent separately (hyperion handling the 3.x api and MOS doing the NG api (SMP,MP,etc) we might have pretty awesome OS today (the true AOS5).

3) I like PPC over the x86. PPC is not dead yet. I just wish we do the SMP & 64 bit thing on multicore PPCs before giving up on PPC.

Anyway, nice for MOS overall, even though it did not go myway.

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@Birbo

Quote:

Birbo wrote: As i understand, the change to ARM would be the better solution - because of the RISC-Based architecture... (like PPC) Or it's not like that?

No, it's not like that. 68k = CISC, PPC = RISC ... no one cares !

But the byte ordering is important, 68k and PPC have the same byte ordering and some ARMs have it too. If you want to have compatibillity to 68k systems you need the same byte ordering. Without this you can have 68k programs only in a closed UAE like box.

UAE might have a high compatibillity for programs accessing the chips directly, but it doesn't allow 68k programms the usage of PPC libraries or vice versa.

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I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

I guess big/little endian wouldn't matter if we were moving away from current A/Box to QBox since we would lose compatibility anyway. The only reason it matters is for keeping some compatibility with antic software...

Last edited by Leo on 14-Nov-2011 at 10:24 AM.

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Quote:

So yes indeed, within a few years, we will change the architecture.

That right step for sure. Just no need to fear to change amigaos api radically after that, to have MP and all the stuff, and after 5 years morphos can be one more intersting OS which will have future. Not many is remember all those ancient 68k apps, while everyone already use native ones, so should be not really problematic to change radically apis.

Last edited by kas1e on 14-Nov-2011 at 10:49 AM.
Last edited by kas1e on 14-Nov-2011 at 10:26 AM.

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Quote:

Quote: So yes indeed, within a few years, we will change the architecture. That right step for sure.

Question is: why "within a few years" ? They keep on repeating it will take a long time. So why wait another few years ?

Last edited by Leo on 14-Nov-2011 at 10:27 AM.

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@Leo

Quote:

Question is: why "within a few years" ? They keep on repeating it will take a long time. So why waiting another few years ?

Dunno. As for me, all of features-work should be just frozen right now, and everything going to the new architecture right now, without any kind of waiting. But its closed source os, and all up to the team, not to the users :) Dunno why ever bother with all that macintoshes, if the plans already to change architecture. Wasting of time (years) to something which noone will use after that (because they will use x86 of course, if mos will be on it).

Last edited by kas1e on 14-Nov-2011 at 10:33 AM.

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@kas1e

You can write portable code without the need of switching architecture right now. Just like you can write code for AROS m68k/ARM/x86 that compiles and runs without problems on x86-64.

I prefer having support for G5 and then switching architecture. Writting and improving a few drivers for G5 will be mostly related to drivers and wouldn't take much resources as long as the code is written in a portable way.

I still find interesting to run old m68k software, others may not, those can run AROS right now.

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@Crumb

Quote:

I still find interesting to run old m68k software,

you can run it via uae, and on fast cpu that will have no problems at all. Just saying "i need 68k support" its mean that your prefered os will never evolve to something modern, which can attract new users and devs.

Quote:

others may not, those can run AROS right now.

As i see, on AROS there is ppls who want 68k support the same, through, i also found it as stop-factor for progress.

Anyway, soon or later 68k support will dropped and in os4, and on morphos and everything will be sandboxed (via uae or dunno how). If of course time and resources will allow that :)

Last edited by kas1e on 14-Nov-2011 at 11:00 AM.

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@kas1e

We have different viewpoints: I don't find any problem finding suitable hardware to run MorphOS and being able to run m68k software is a nice plus for me. Since you are an OS4 user perhaps you think there's lack of hardware on MOS just like on OS4 but you can find nice powermacs at 1.25Ghz for less than 90€ so I'm not worried at all.

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@Crumb

Quote:

Since you are an OS4 user perhaps you think there's lack of hardware on MOS just like on OS4

I looks like someone who not know situation with morphos HW ?:) And i currently on AROS, so there is no problems with HW.

I just talking that support of 68k and worring about it like something "must to have absolutly", its something which stop progress. Yes, can be good pluse, yes, nice to have for someone, but what is more necessary its have powerfull os with MP and stuff, and on fast HW. By fast hw i not mean 1ghz or 1.25, or 1.5ghz, i mean 3ghz, very cheap and new hw, and so on. There is P-UAE after all, which can be integrated normally. so everything will works, and for system will be even easy to detect "if that 68k - run over uae".

Anyway, good that mos-team already have plans to swith to it, just a bit sad that it will take a lot of time.

Last edited by kas1e on 14-Nov-2011 at 11:18 AM.

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@kas1e

Quote:

Anyway, soon or later 68k support will dropped and in os4, and on morphos and everything will be sandboxed (via uae or dunno how). If of course time and resources will allow that :)

I wouldn't call sandboxing "dropping". MacOS X did something like that for MacOS9 support, and when they eventually dropped the sandbox, THAT was the "drop".

Although I don't know if there's any reason on OS4/MorphOS to drop the sandbox. OSX can do it, as there are enough people to "rewrite everything" to new OS. When that was mostly done, they could drop the legacy.

Last edited by Jupp3 on 14-Nov-2011 at 12:09 PM.