Hey Zippy Zapp,
I've been running MorphOS on both a Mac Mini G4 (1.25 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32MB VRAM, and 120GB SSD) and an iBook G4 (12", 1.33 GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 40GB HDD) for a few months now, and I've got to say that the experience on both has been very satisfactory! On my Mac Mini, MorphOS is
significantly faster than Mac OS X ever was; hell, it even trounces Linux in terms of speed! Programs load very quickly, the system is quite stable (except for badly behaving apps that can cause issues), and ever since I've replaced the old hard drive in it with an SSD, it's even faster. Boot times on the Mini take about 2 seconds or so from logo to Ambient desktop! MorphOS really does bring out the power of Apple's hardware!
As for the requirements of MorphOS, any Mac with a decent G4 CPU and a Radeon video card should work. Keep in mind that Nvidia graphics chips are not supported, so any models that have one built in are off the list. MorphOS has a very wide selection of native apps available, and can also run system-friendly Amiga m68k apps (i.e. nothing that bangs on the custom hardware). The main drawback is that it's still commercial software, and until it's registered, you can only run it for half an hour at any given time before performance slows to a crawl. However, resetting your system will give you another half hour.
I'm pretty happy overall with MorphOS and will certainly register both machines with it. The upcoming release of MorphOS 3.10 will also be supporting the new Amiga X machines, as well as the Tabor board, meaning that anyone who wants to either dual-boot AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS together, or run one or the other, will have a chance to do so!
intric8 wrote:
I mean, at that stage, what are all of the variations out there?
MorphOS - PPC based
Amiga OS 4.1 - also PPC based?
Icaros
AROS
Others?
My knowledge of AmigaOS 4.1 is limited, as I don't run it, but I do want to get a copy and try it out in FS-UAE in the near future.
Icaros is a distribution of AROS. I've used Icaros in both virtual machines via VirtualBox, as well as on bare metal hardware. While AROS is fast, stable, and solid, I've not had too much luck with getting some hardware to work 100% the way I want it to. My testbed system for Icaros is an old IBM ThinkPad T40, which Icaros seems to be very happy with for the most part, but I've had some pretty lousy luck getting accelerated graphics working on it. However, VESA graphics are still pretty fast in Icaros, but I would like to get to use the built-in Radeon chip's acceleration for some games!
Additionally, there is also a distribution of AROS called AROS-Vision, which is available for m68k Amigas and Amiga emulators. It's meant to be a full drop-in replacement for AmigaOS, even including its own Kickstart ROMs. However, I've had nothing but bad luck with AROS-Vision: everything I try to do seems to break the system some way. Rexx didn't work for me, and even changing icons on files using DOpus5 causes it to go haywire and crash. Maybe I'm just not doing something right? AmigaOS 3.9 has been solid as hell for me.