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 computer

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

(OS). It is a mixed proprietary and

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

OS produced for the

Pegasos Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three Peripheral Component Interconnect, PCI slots, one Accelerated Graphics Port, AGP slot, two Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 & 10/100), USB, ...

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– IBM ...

(PPC) processor based computer, 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, embe ...

development boards that use the

Genesi 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 cons ...

firmware, including the

Efika Efika is a line of power efficient ARM architecture and Power ISA based computers manufactured by Genesi. In Esperanto ''efika'' means "efficacious, effective, or efficient". EfikaPPC The EfikaPPC, sometimes also referred to as EFIKA 5200B, was ...

and

mobileGT The mobileGT name refers to both a computing platform and an alliance of vendors in the navigation, infotainment and telematics industries. It focuses on automotive, industrial and consumer electronics based on PowerPC and Power ISA processors. Th ...

. Since MorphOS 2.4, Apple's

Mac mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. , it is positioned between the consumer all-in-one iMac and the professional Mac Studio and Mac Pro as one of four current Mac deskto ...

G4 is supported as well, and with the release of MorphOS 2.5 and MorphOS 2.6 the

eMac The eMac (short for education Mac) is a discontinued all-in-one Macintosh desktop computer that was produced and designed by Apple Computer Released in 2002, it was originally aimed at the education market, but was later made available as a ...

and

Power Mac G4 The Power Mac G4 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2004 as part of the Power Macintosh line. Built around the PowerPC G4 series of microprocessors, the Power Mac G4 was marketed b ...

models are respectively supported. The release of MorphOS 3.2 added limited support for

Power Mac G5 The Power Mac G5 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 2003 to 2006 as part of the Power Mac series. When introduced, it was the most powerful computer in Apple's Macintosh lineup, and ...

. 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 nuclei. All common ...

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, such as the

Ambient desktop 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 Magel ...

Characteristics and versions

Developed for PowerPC

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

s (CPUs) from Freescale and IBM 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 complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and ...

(68k, MC680x0) applications via proprietary task-based emulation, and most AmigaOS PPC applications via API wrappers. It is application programming interface (API) compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 and has a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

(GUI) based on

Magic User Interface The Magic User Interface (MUI in short) is an object-oriented system by Stefan Stuntz to generate and maintain graphical user interfaces. With the aid of a preferences program, the user of an application has the ability to customize the system ac ...

(MUI). Besides the Pegasos version of MorphOS, there is a version for Amiga computers equipped with PowerUP accelerator cards produced by

Phase5 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. Notab ...

. 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

, 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 (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

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

Components

ABox

ABox In computer science, the terms TBox and ABox are used to describe two different types of statements in knowledge bases. TBox statements are the "terminology component", and describe a domain of interest by defining classes and properties as a dom ...

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 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 b ...

formats of Amiga PPC executables. ABox is based in part on

AROS Research Operating System AROS Research Operating System (AROS, pronounced "AR-OS") 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. , ports are available f ...

. ABox includes

Trance JIT In computing, Quark is an operating system kernel used in MorphOS. It is a microkernel designed to run fully virtualized computers, called ''boxes'' (see sandbox). , only one ''box'' is available, the ''ABox'', that lets users run extant A ...

code translator for

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

native Amiga applications.

Other

* AHI – audio interface: 6.7 *

Ambient Ambient or Ambiance or Ambience may refer to: Music and sound * Ambience (sound recording), also known as atmospheres or backgrounds * Ambient music, a genre of music that puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere * ''Ambient'' (album), by Moby * ...

– 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 Directory Opus (or "DOpus" as its users tend to call it) is a file manager program, originally written for the Amiga computer system in the early to mid-1990s. Commercial development on the version for the Amiga ceased in 1997. Directory Opus is s ...

5 * CyberGraphX – graphics interface originally developed for Amiga computers: 5.1 *

– primary

(GUI) toolkit: 4.2 *

Poseidon Poseidon (; grc-gre, Ποσειδῶν) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a ch ...

– the Amiga USB stack developed by Chris Hodges *

TurboPrint TurboPrint is a closed source printer driver system for Linux, AmigaOS and MorphOS. It supports a number of printers that don't yet have a free driver, and fuller printer functionality on some printer models. In recent versions, it integrates wit ...

– the printing system * TinyGL –

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

implementation and Warp3D compatibility is featured via

Rendering Acceleration Virtual Engine QuickDraw 3D, or QD3D for short, is a 3D graphics API developed by Apple Inc. (then Apple Computer, Inc.) starting in 1995, originally for their Macintosh computers, but delivered as a cross-platform system. QD3D was separated into two layer ...

(RAVE) low-level API: V 51 *

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

MorphOS 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 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 develope ...

software written for PowerUP accelerator cards. The largest repository is

Aminet Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pa ...

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

Bundled applications

MorphOS is delivered with several

desktop application A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various comp ...

s in the form of

pre-installed software Pre-installed software (also known as bundled software) is software already installed and licensed on a computer or smartphone bought from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).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 very ...

is not supported. * Only

Radeon Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tec ...

cards have support;

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

cards are not supported.

Amiga

Amiga 1200 The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...

with

Blizzard PPC 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 ...

accelerator card *

Amiga 3000 The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved graphics rendering, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000 ...

with CyberStorm PPC accelerator card *

Amiga 4000 The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models: the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030. ...

with CyberStorm PPC accelerator card

Apple

G4 *

PowerBook G4 The PowerBook G4 is a series of notebook computers manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple Computer between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line of notebooks. The PowerBook G4 runs on the RISC-based PowerPC G4 processor, designed by th ...

(except for 12" aluminum models) *

iBook G4 iBook is a line of laptop computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted entry-level, consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end ...

Power Mac G4 Cube The Power Mac G4 Cube is a Macintosh personal computer sold by Apple Computer, Inc. between July 2000 and 2001. Designed by Jonathan Ive, the Cube was conceived by Apple chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Jobs, who held an interest in a powerf ...

iMac G5 The iMac G5 is an all-in-one personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from August 2004 to March 2006. It is the final iMac to use a PowerPC processor, making it the last model that could natively run Mac OS ...

(only model A1145 – G5 2.1 20" (iSight))

Genesi/bPlan GmbH

5200B *

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. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Po ...

X5000 mainboard

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 "

". 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 ty ...

(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

interface was released under

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

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''. 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

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...

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.

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 set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

stack ("Netstack") and a Web browser, Sputnik or

Origyn Web Browser Origyn Web Browser (OWB) is a discontinued web browser that was synchronized with WebKit and sponsored by the technology company Pleyo. OWB provides a meta-port to an abstract platform with the aim of making porting to embedded or lightweight sy ...

. 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 developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the ...

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