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MorphOS 3.12 released, (silent) support for PCIe PMacG5 and iSight iMac added

Bug-Creator

Bug-Creator

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May 30, 2011
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Public Release of MorphOS 3.12

The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.12. This new version introduces brand new dual-monitor capabilities to various Powerbook laptops as well as G5 desktop systems, and features improved thermal management, fan control and dynamic CPU frequency switching, which provide increased energy efficiency and reduced noise levels. Additionally, the Helios Firewire stack has been fully integrated into the core OS and we added support for hundreds of modern printers and scanners.
Furthermore, the Odyssey web browser has been upgraded and now utilizes newer and more modern components for handling connections, encryption, spell-checking, and low-level drawing operations. Plus, it features a redesigned and more adaptive user interface.
In addition, our official integrated development environment Flow Studio has been substantially updated and extended yet again bringing numerous usability and LUA scripting enhancements, full support for Hollywood, and code sensing as well as function listing abilities for many additional languages.
Developers will also appreciate the inclusion of a new MUI text rendering engine that is capable of rendering Unicode text. This feature is currently enabled in selected applications and in all ObjC applications. Thanks to the addition of the new ObjFW runtime, it is now also possible to write native ObjC applications that utilize Automatic Reference Counting (ARC).
Moreover, MorphOS now offers a rewritten spellchecker that is based on Hunspell and libvoikko cores and uses UTF-8. Spell-checking is now supported in all of MUI's string input gadgets, Flow Studio and Odyssey.
For a more comprehensive explanation of these changes and a list of additional features, such as the ability to mute the boot chime on Mac computers from within MorphOS, please read our release notes.
We strongly urge new users to carefully read our installation and troubleshooting guides before they attempt to install MorphOS for the first time. Existing users can upgrade via the familiar procedure but are encouraged to read the guides as well. MorphOS 3.12 is available for download in our files section.
 
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It means the stack is available early in the booting process right to the point where it might be possible to boot from FW (haven't tested, no FW-HD at hand). As to supported devices/protocols, there seems to be no change.
 
Bug-Creator said:
It means the stack is available early in the booting process right to the point where it might be possible to boot from FW (haven't tested, no FW-HD at hand). As to supported devices/protocols, there seems to be no change.
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I'll be testing that later as my target Powerbook has a broken optical drive so only way to boot is from my FW optical drive.
 
very interesting :)

I wonder if more modern ATI/AMD Radeon cards will work in a PCIe G5 with MorphOS

given that MorphOS supports modern ATI/AMD cards on other PCIe based platforms

I may have to drag out the G5 Quad and test soon :)
 
I must say, I enjoy the OS. I've never worked on an Amiga, but like the speed of the MorphOS.

I just wish they didn't charge so much for the OS. I think it's expensive for a hobby OS if I'm being honest.
 
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Tried this on my G5. Worked great (mac mini g4 too). I was stoked, and ready to finally buy, until i opened OWB. I thought it'd finally be updated, but nope. It's still horribly outdated. It scores a lowly 360 on html5test.com, cant render github, or half the pages i frequent properly. :(

Oh well. Guess i'll wait another few years, as without a semi-capable browser it's just not something i'd spend money on.
 
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Bug-Creator said:
It means the stack is available early in the booting process right to the point where it might be possible to boot from FW (haven't tested, no FW-HD at hand). As to supported devices/protocols, there seems to be no change.
Click to expand...
Support for FW devices and protocols is a deal-breaker, especially if the developers are charging for the software.

Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully future versions will remedy this issue.
 
I was initially impressed - great GUI (once you customise it) great playback in MPlayer and OWB playing Youtube very efficiently with it's built in scripts...but I can't even get a screenshot - no video will show up in the image plus the system crashes frequently and I mean a hard crash where only the power button is the fix. @Bug-Creator is there a way to screen grab video?
 
I don't mind the license really. I mean you can test the live cd to make sure everything works before commiting to that machine. IF the machine dies, they still let you transfer to another machine (granted you can prove old machine died). I like everything else about it (i had amiga systems back in the day), but the state of the browser is a huge turnoff.

Cheers
 
z970mp said:
I lost interest when I discovered you have to pay for it.
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Don’t you know? The key to keeping an aging platform alive, is to create a half baked, atrociously proprietary OS, then charge an exorbitant amount of money for it that no one will be willing to pay. Duh. I wonder how many licenses these guys have actually sold lol.
 
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sparty411 said:
Don’t you know? The key to keeping an aging platform alive, is to create a half baked, atrociously proprietary OS, then charge an exorbitant amount of money for it that no one will be willing to pay. Duh. I wonder how many licenses these guys have actually sold lol.
Click to expand...

Whilst I agree their licensing model is restrictive and entry price little high I disagree in other respects - you're looking at a team of developers who've fashioned an OS for PPC from scratch - no doubt there will be bugs to iron out in this new release but what you have is an OS that installs in minutes - no hunting around in Terminal to get wireless, sound, right click etc working. It's light on memory and very fast - yes, it is a niche interest but it is an OS specifically made for these computers unlike Linux.
 
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If 79€ qualify as

sparty411 said:
exorbitant amount of money
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I really wonder how you ever came into possession of the HW to run it 😉

As to the numbers sold, KeyFile for my iMac is No 4310 (almost a year ago). Now this will include plenty of dead numbers (user never followed through with payment, replacement for broken HW) and free keys issued to the developer or betatesters.

Also my key bought for the Pegasos2 in summer 2008 (MorphOS2.0) is still valid for 3.12.

@Dronecatcher

Are you trying to do a ScreenShot (as in a picture) ? Grabber is in Utilities and available as screenbar-plugin.

"ScreenRecorder" is available on Aminet but beware that playing back a full screen grab might be an issue and you'd have to either reencode it with a lighter codec or only record smaller parts of the screen.

@TheShortTimer

Helios (FW) does for sure support masstorage (booting from CD/DVD adds other issues), as for other protocols again no idea whats in there (never used it) or what might be missing.
 
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Bug-Creator said:
Are you trying to do a ScreenShot (as in a picture) ? Grabber is in Utilities and available as screenbar-plugin.
Click to expand...

Yes, using grabber loaded as menubar module - that's how I captured my screenshot above - I don't want to screen recorder (ie make a video) - just wanted a screenshot image of youtube and/or mplayer.
 
That Youtube video is played in overlay, something that has gone out of fashion with modern gfx cards but is essential for getting any video performance out of an R3xx (or smaller).

Those aren't part of the screen bitmap and hence won't be captured.

There might be a way around it but that would be on the long list of things I never needed.....
 
Bug-Creator said:
That Youtube video is played in overlay, something that has gone out of fashion with modern gfx cards but is essential for getting any video performance out of an R3xx (or smaller).

Those aren't part of the screen bitmap and hence won't be captured.

There might be a way around it but that would be on the long list of things I never needed.....
Click to expand...

It happens in MPlayer too (and I've experienced it in Linux in the past.) Surely, there's a solution - have I imagined seeing MorphOS screenshots of video in the past?
 
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