AmigaOS updated in 2025 for some reason

Hyperion ships another patch, which is nice

Belgian software house Hyperion Entertainment has released Update 3 for AmigaOS 3.2, the version of the classic operating system it launched in 2021. The update targets Amigas with 680x0 processors, including systems enhanced with PiStorm accelerator boards.

AmigaOS 3.2.3 is more colorful and much higher-resolution than it has been

The schedule is irregular, but you can't fault Hyperion's commitment to updating its version of the OS, given that the previous release, AmigaOS 3.1, was in 1994 (1993 for the CD32). It brought version 3.1 back to life in 2016, and that was followed by version 3.2 in May 2021. Since then, the company published version 3.2.1 in December 2021, and then version 3.2.2 in March 2023, as we covered at the time.

The release is also good news especially given more troubling developments at Hyperion. The company's largest shareholder, Ben Hermans BV, went bankrupt, after which the company announced new ownership (the "CVBA" on the end of its name stands for Coöperatieve Vennootschap Met Beperkte Aansprakelijkheid, a limited liability cooperative).

Haage & Partner's AmigaOS 3.9 running inside Amiga Forever – a little more colorful than in the old days

We reported on the sale of the AmigaOS source code way back in 2004. That led to Hyperion's other OS product, AmigaOS 4, which targets Amigas with PowerPC processors, such as the Amiga X1000 that The Reg covered in 2010, or the X5000. Both are from A-EON Technology, and as head honcho Trevor Dickinson's latest blog post puts it: "For us Amiga enthusiasts, 2025 is a milestone year — the 40th anniversary of the Amiga's creation."

A-EON's machines aren't the only PowerPC-based Amiga-compatibles. There were also the Pegasos, Pegasos II and Efika 5200B from Genesi, which ran a third-party AmigaOS-compatible OS called MorphOS. MorphOS is still around, and its latest version, 3.19, came out in January. As well as Genesi kit, MorphOS also supports the AmigaOne 500 and Amiga X5000, plus several models of G4 and G5 Apple PowerMac (The Reg FOSS desk has an older version on a Mac mini G4).

AROS 1.2 for 68K, also in Amiga Forever. Not identical, but certainly very familiar

From the perspective of 2025, it looks like the Amiga world backed the wrong RISC-y horse with PowerPC. In hindsight, we wish they'd opted for Arm hardware instead. A Raspberry Pi 400 running an Arm-native Amiga-compatible OS would be great fun. For now, the next best thing for mass-market hardware is the AROS Research Operating System. This mainly targets x86 PC compatibles, although there's also a version for classic Amiga kit. There is a work-in-progress Arm port, but the current version works best hosted under Arm Linux. ®