MorphOS is an

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

-like

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

designed for Power and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

based computers. The core, based on the

Quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nucleus, atomic nuclei ...

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, such as the Ambient desktop. The project began in 1999 and it was produced for the Pegasos computer, as well as PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of

Freescale Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embedde ...

development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the Efika and mobileGT. Since then MorphOS has been ported to Apple's

Mac mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of the company's four current Mac (computer), Mac desktop computers, positioned ...

, eMac, Power Mac G4 and limited support for Power Mac G5. It is binary compatible with software written for Motorola 68k-based

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

computers.

History

The project began in 1999, based on the

. The earliest versions of MorphOS ran only via PPC accelerator cards on the Amiga computers, and required portions of

to fully function. 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. Thendic-France had financial problems and folded; however, the collaboration continued under the new banner of " Genesi". 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 (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

(CES) in Las Vegas. 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, the Ambient desktop interface was released under GPL 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''.

Characteristics and versions

Developed for PowerPC CPUs from

and

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, it also supports the original

Motorola 68000 series The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit computing, 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and ...

(68k, MC680x0) applications via proprietary task-based emulation, and most AmigaOS PPC applications via API wrappers. It is

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

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. 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 Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Current (since 2.0) release of MorphOS supports the Efika.

Software

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 a
MorphOS softwareMorphOS files
an
MorphOS Storage
MorphOS is delivered with several desktop applications in the form of pre-installed software.

Components

ABox

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.

Other

* AHI – audio interface: 6.7 * Ambient – the default MorphOS desktop, inspired by

Workbench A workbench is a sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewellers benches to the huge benches used by ...

and Directory Opus 5 * CyberGraphX – graphics interface originally developed for Amiga computers: 5.1 * Magic User Interface – primary

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) toolkit: 4.2 *

Poseidon Poseidon (; ) is one of the twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cit ...

– the Amiga USB stack developed by Chris Hodges * TurboPrint – the printing system * TinyGL –

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

implementation and Warp3D compatibility is featured via Rendering Acceleration Virtual Engine (RAVE) low-level API: V 51 *

– manages the low level systems and hosts the A/Box currently Amiga3dapi

Ambient

Ambient is the built-in MUI-based

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

for MorphOS, the development was started in 2001 by David Gerber. Its main goals were that it should be fully asynchronous, simple and fast. Ambient remotely resembles

and Directory Opus Magellan trying to mix the best of both worlds.

Features

Ambient does not strictly follow the Amiga Workbench interface paradigm but there are still many similarities: while programs are called tools, program attributes are called tooltypes, data files are projects and directories are drawers. * support for

ARexx ARexx is a Rexx interpreter for Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard Rexx. An ARexx script can communicate with software that implements an ''ARexx port''. An Amiga application can ...

scripting language * default

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

library for hundreds of fileformats * fully asynchronous,

multi-threaded In computer architecture, multithreading is the ability of a central processing unit (CPU) (or a single core in a multi-core processor) to provide multiple threads of execution. Overview The multithreading paradigm has become more popular a ...

design * fast asynchronous file I/O functions and file notifications * support for PNG and other

icon formats * built-in icon, workbench and wbstart libraries * built-in applications like

disk formatting Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk, memory card or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new f ...

and commodities manager * panels which are used as program launchers Ambient is localised for various languages and while it is an intrinsic part of MorphOS, it is also available separately. There are various visual effects in Ambient that take advantage of hardware accelerated visual effects within MorphOS.

Desktop icons

The native icon format in Ambient is PNG, but there is built-in support for other Amiga icon formats. Ambient introduced a special icon format called DataType Icons where the icon is simply any image file renamed to include the ''.info'' extension. Those icons are read using the Amiga DataType system.

Development status

In 2005, David Gerber released Ambient source code under GPL and it is now developed by the Ambient development team.

Supported hardware

* Max. 1.72 GB RAM;

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...

is not supported. * Only Radeon cards have support;

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

cards are not supported.

Amiga

* Amiga 1200 with Blizzard PPC accelerator card *

Amiga 3000 The Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000 and its upgraded model Amiga 2500 with more processing speed, improved graphics, and a new revision of the operating sys ...

with CyberStorm PPC accelerator card * Amiga 4000 with CyberStorm PPC accelerator card

Apple

G4 * eMac * Power Mac G4 * PowerBook G4 (except for 12" aluminum models) * iBook G4 * Power Mac G5 * Power Mac G4 Cube * iMac G5 (only model A1145 – G5 2.1 20" (iSight))

Genesi/bPlan GmbH

* Efika 5200B * Pegasos I G3, II G3/G4

ACube

ACube Systems Srl ACube Systems Srl is a company that started in January 2007 from the synergy of the Italian companies Alternative Holding Group Srl, Soft3 and Virtual Works. The three companies have been engaged in the areas of sale, distribution and engineering ...

company and their Sam460 series mainboards

A-Eon Technology

AmigaOne 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. Unlike the original Amiga computers which used Motorola 68k processors, the AmigaOne ...

X5000 mainboard

Version history

Release history of 0.x/1.x series

Release history of 2.x/3.x series

MorphOS 2 includes a native

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

stack ("Netstack") and a Web browser, Sputnik or Origyn Web Browser. Sputnik was begun under a user community bounty system 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 WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

is also based. Sputnik is no longer being developed and was removed from later MorphOS 2 releases. Tcps

References

External links

*
Aminet Amiga/MorphOS software repositoryMorphZoneSupported ComputersMorphOS Software DatabaseMorphOS software repositoryMorphOS: The Lightning OSObligement
– Magazine about AmigaOS and MorphOS
www.warmup-asso.org
– Portal dedicated to MorphOS users
MorphOS Storage
– MorphOS Software Storage {{DEFAULTSORT:Morphos 2000 software Amiga software *MorphOS software Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media PowerPC operating systems Microkernel-based operating systems Microkernels