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If it does run now, why wouldn't it be released to end users ?
Sorry for the waste of time & space.
Ask Ralph.
If someone can convince Ralph that there is a sustainable market there will be a release. Some hundred units won't be enough.
No need to convince him of anything.
There most certainly is a sustainable market. He knows that.
It just doesn't have any Amiga users in it.
Imagine if you will.. train station ticket machines (and the scoreboard schedules), seatback entertainment on planes, GPS navigation, infotainment devices at museums or zoos (there is a precedent on using the CD32 here
, there are hundreds of possibilities, and anything which requires a high performance operating system which can extract the most bang out of the least clock cycles, with a relative focus on graphics performance and responsiveness perhaps, can run MorphOS.
As an example, Linux takes up too many resources for something like this. If you check most train stations they are running MS-DOS with some application on top. MS-DOS takes up very little resources in comparison (640k is enough for anybody, remember) to a booted Linux kernel where the kernel binary alone is around 3MB. As Linux, X.org, toolkits like Qt and GTK progress, it is bloating up. It simply isn't suitable for the lower end anymore. Embedded devices with 64MB of flash ROM were laughed at 5 years ago when Microsoft said that was the minimum for a board to run Windows CE. iPaq, Jornada, even the new Palms, are monsters of flash usage. Now to get a Linux booting on the same system, you need the same amount. Who is laughing now?
MorphOS fits on a 33MB ISO. If you take out the stuff nobody really needs for essential system usage (MOSSYS:Libs/vorbisfile.library is 1.2MB, things lik gtlayout, ixemul, the 8MB of fonts, 68k emulator) you have a very small concise system which can still run a full desktop. Remove the desktop and run a fullscreen app... you have a very very efficient operating system which can boot out of 2MB of flash memory, load less than 8MB of files from disk or other storage, and barely use much more.
Needs tweaking for the specific application, of course.
Show me a Linux kernel in 2MB, with 8MB of support files that can boot a fully usable graphical desktop. I am sure it can be done (DirectFB perhaps) but it isn't so easy as on MorphOS; I've done it just by deleting files and killing off the script lines that run them.