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To get an idea of what the Amiga community thinks of this, look here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6305&start=0

It's a 400MHz PPC Limebook as per: http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=34459&forum=33&start=140&viewmode=flat&order=0#634010

At AmiWest 2006, Carl Sassenrath said that he regularly gets calls from lawyers for just that reason.

Yep. Hardware is currently the big problem. Contracts are in place so that a company named Hyperion is doing the actual programming and everything to make the OS4 product. Amiga Inc. has ultimate control over what hardware it is licensed to run on. Somewhere in there they have a lot of resistance to making it run on x86, so no general PC motherboards.

People don't want to port it to Mac PPC hardware, giving the reasoning that there is no register-level documentation available for some things, which makes it difficult to properly support and keep their commercial, proprietary OS product running well. (How is that Apple designed chip intended to work, what are the register and field definitions, etc) Sure, some people have obviously figured some of that out because Linux and BSD work on it to some degree, but this is a proprietary OS and they don't want to deal with the same reverse-engineering, disassembly and debugging process, and they don't want to deal with the issue of combining GPL source code with their proprietary stuff. There is an effort to try and discover and collect as much information as possible about Mac hardware at amigamac.wikispaces.com to make some attempt to fill in that hole. I'd really love to run OS4 on a laptop, and I like my iBook G4 a lot, and there doesn't seem to be any other possible way to get a PowerPC in a laptop shape.

There are a couple boards from Genesi that were/are pretty good hardware, the Pegasos and Efika. Pegasos is now out of production, and Efika is built for low-power-consumption embedded things and does not have a case that it fits into, and apparently can only operate one IDE device at a time (not HD and CDROM at the same time) on its single PATA port. Plus, a number of efforts to get a license from Amiga Inc. allowing OS4 to be ported to any Genesi product have failed to get a genuine response from Amiga Inc.

There's also been a number of other attempts to get an OS4 license with the intention of making a new PowerPC board design. Most of these that are known publically are also known to have not got a good response to their license inquiries to Amiga Inc. Amy05 and Panda from Troika http://www.troikang.com/index.html and a couple designs from ACK http://safir.amigaos.se/article_ack_eng.html and a G4 board that I can't find more than IRC logs about at http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=3097 and continued at http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=3112 which have been announced but not a great deal has been seen about these, and a number of Amiga fans have chosen to believe they are not likely to be completed and sold with OS4. I hope those naysayers turn out to be wrong in the end, but only time will tell.

But there is currently one hope, that was announced by Amiga Inc even. The Samantha project is also a low-power-consumption device, but comes in a standard Mini-ITX format, and is said to have a license to run OS4. http://www.sam440.com/eng/index.html

Yes, the hardware situation has been a huge headache for Amiga fans for some time, as Eyetech's AmigaOne board ceased production a year or two ago. Unfortunately they ended up using a northbridge with some problems, and the fabless designer makign it seems to have gone kaput. Most who have tried to offer a solution have been totally ignored by Amiga Inc. It almost seems that Amiga Inc. specifically does not want to make any money with "their product", considering that a handful of people have said publically that they tried contacting Amiga's designated technology licensing email address only to be completely ignored. (And how many people do Slashdot readers believe would genuinely try to get an OS4 license?) You don'

Yep. Hardware is currently the big problem. Contracts are in place so that a company named Hyperion is doing the actual programming and everything to make the OS4 product. Amiga Inc. has ultimate control over what hardware it is licensed to run on. Somewhere in there they have a lot of resistance to making it run on x86, so no general PC motherboards.

People don't want to port it to Mac PPC hardware, giving the reasoning that there is no register-level documentation available for some things, which makes it difficult to properly support and keep their commercial, proprietary OS product running well. (How is that Apple designed chip intended to work, what are the register and field definitions, etc) Sure, some people have obviously figured some of that out because Linux and BSD work on it to some degree, but this is a proprietary OS and they don't want to deal with the same reverse-engineering, disassembly and debugging process, and they don't want to deal with the issue of combining GPL source code with their proprietary stuff. There is an effort to try and discover and collect as much information as possible about Mac hardware at amigamac.wikispaces.com to make some attempt to fill in that hole. I'd really love to run OS4 on a laptop, and I like my iBook G4 a lot, and there doesn't seem to be any other possible way to get a PowerPC in a laptop shape.

There are a couple boards from Genesi that were/are pretty good hardware, the Pegasos and Efika. Pegasos is now out of production, and Efika is built for low-power-consumption embedded things and does not have a case that it fits into, and apparently can only operate one IDE device at a time (not HD and CDROM at the same time) on its single PATA port. Plus, a number of efforts to get a license from Amiga Inc. allowing OS4 to be ported to any Genesi product have failed to get a genuine response from Amiga Inc.

There's also been a number of other attempts to get an OS4 license with the intention of making a new PowerPC board design. Most of these that are known publically are also known to have not got a good response to their license inquiries to Amiga Inc. Amy05 and Panda from Troika http://www.troikang.com/index.html and a couple designs from ACK http://safir.amigaos.se/article_ack_eng.html and a G4 board that I can't find more than IRC logs about at http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=3097 and continued at http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=3112 which have been announced but not a great deal has been seen about these, and a number of Amiga fans have chosen to believe they are not likely to be completed and sold with OS4. I hope those naysayers turn out to be wrong in the end, but only time will tell.

But there is currently one hope, that was announced by Amiga Inc even. The Samantha project is also a low-power-consumption device, but comes in a standard Mini-ITX format, and is said to have a license to run OS4. http://www.sam440.com/eng/index.html

Yes, the hardware situation has been a huge headache for Amiga fans for some time, as Eyetech's AmigaOne board ceased production a year or two ago. Unfortunately they ended up using a northbridge with some problems, and the fabless designer makign it seems to have gone kaput. Most who have tried to offer a solution have been totally ignored by Amiga Inc. It almost seems that Amiga Inc. specifically does not want to make any money with "their product", considering that a handful of people have said publically that they tried contacting Amiga's designated technology licensing email address only to be completely ignored. (And how many people do Slashdot readers believe would genuinely try to get an OS4 license?) You don'

One of the other points about Amiga icons apart from their animation and arbitrary size that several other posts have mentioned, was that people produced themed icon sets in the 80s and 90s, mainly because the default out-of-box theme was, uh, functional at best (it was designed to be clear on a crappy TV, though).

MagicWB was probably the most popular in the Amiga european heyday of the early 90s and widely imitated by third parties. Yeah, it looks kinda crappy now. But boy could it piss off a PC/AtariST/Mac owner back in the day (NeXT users presumably went "meh", not that cognitive dissonance would let them ever admit an amiga 1/10th the price of a NeXT box could hold a candle to their machines)

The later 90s NewIcons set was more about function than prettiness (they expanded icon images to a 256-color palette), but the "newicons style" (colorful isometric, think old KDE only drawn by artists with talent :-) ) had the most clearly distinguishable icons and wasn't bad looking anyway, and it was designed for long term use, not just initial wow factor. Countless icons were 2-style, with MagicWB native images and NewIcons style images embedded in the .info files (which stored icons for the associated applicats) where only OSes with newicons patches could see them.

NewIcons could still hold their own against some iconsets I see today, anyway, especially in the clarity stakes.

Exoticons were NewIcons popular with gamers for obvious reasons when you see the screenshot...

GlowIcons were a NewIcons set and characteristic style third-parties imitated that appeared in the sunset of Amiga era.

NewIcons and GlowIcons inspired clean, elegant default look of later niche-market AmigaOS releases in the zombie-living-death of Amiga era.

i used to own an a1200. it still feels more responsive than any computer that i've had since. you can get groovy snapshots and news at http://amigaworld.net/

AmigaOS 4.0 is in public beta. Read http://www.amigaworld.net/

There will be no "more modern" AmigaOS. Several months ago Amiga, Inc. sold off its AmigaOS rights to its investor Itech, which in turn sold them to a newly created corporation called KMOS. KMOS does not stand for anything. Its only "product" is AmigaOS. It is incorporated in Delaware, which is a notorious tax and regulation shelter.

Now, there are three things you could believe:
1. That Itech dumped the Amiga IP on a dummy corporation in order to protect its Amiga, Inc. investments from ongoing lawsuits, similar to the Novell/Canopy shuffles. (most likely)
2. Alternatively, that KMOS CEO (and seemingly sole employee) Garry Hare is really serious about moving AmigaOS into the cellphone market. (a little bit likely)
3. Or else, against all likelihood and the public statements of its CEO, that KMOS's primary goal is to get a new, working AmigaOS up and running.

If you believe the last one then I'd like to interest you in some Florida real estate that I'm selling through my own Delaware corporation. Face it, AmigaOS is finally dead this time. Move on to AROS or something, or just stop deluding yourself entirely and move to Mac or Linux or XP.

"Troll"? Who the hell screwed up and let Mike Bouma have moderator points?

Information about where to find the actual announcement at its original source + information about the nature of the shithole that is linked to in the story = "Informative"

Dear Mr Fuckwit,

> He is known around the Amiga users as a bit of a nut.

I smell a petty and unimaginative attempt at character assasination. Kinda cute, and I'm sure that the mouthbreathers over at amigawhirled.nut are mighty impressed, but put more effort in it next time and you might give a slightly less retarded impression here in the outside world.

"Amiga users" does not equal the deluded freaks who frequent the corporate cultist electronic shrine that 'Seehund' and pretty much all other Amiga users with a pair of functional eyes and a brain obviously dismiss as a sad joke and an embarrassment to the Amiga community at large.

Why, Fleecy Moss' dick of course. SLUUURP!

More information can be found in this post.

Where can I buy one?

Amazingly enough: here, here, or here

seems some things just never die

(and no I'm not still using one myself as my main machine, but you did ask...)

Dead as a doornail. IIRC it began around the time of Milestone 9 or something, and nothing was ever released in public.

Besides, why do you ask on Slashdot?
Try a more specific site like ANN.lu or amiga.org.

(Or if you want to be fed with lies and hear everything's A-OK and you should send more money to "Amiga, Inc." in order to "support the community", then head over to AmigaIncOtherworldly.nuts)

I may be alittle bias, but i may not since i dont use Amiga's, but i did.

I did find it a little strange that the Amiga 1000 didnt make it into the 10 initially, how could someone over look this?

That machine was head and sholders above anything for its time and we can thank it today because it brought multimedia to us. It WAS the first multimieda computer, although it was mainly for games, the machine came with a powerful operating system that even today i still inuse by thousands of people. Thats no joke!

Check out the fan sites such as Amiga.org and AmigaWorld.net.

This was a computer made by love and upon opening the case and looking inside, you can see the signitures of each person that made the computer. Maybe not everyone, but certainly the more well known or more involved ones.

This is what google has to say about the Amiga A1000

"Yes, I know all about the Via 686B chipset, and there is a version of UBoot that makes it work 100% properly. Too bad the Pegasos needs a hardware fix for what should have been a simple driver fix..."

Pegasos has no Via 686B.

That software fix might fix the AmigaONE's 686B spurious interrupt problem, but it does not fix the fundamental flaw in the Articia chipset.

The Articia problem is not fixed and will continue to surface with AmigaONE. There are reports of this, even after the software patch.

A thread discussing this matter has magically disappeared from amigaworld.net

"This is NOT FUD"

It's not?

The last couple of months AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special 'AmigaOS4 Tour events' around the world on classic systems equiped with PPC boards. At various events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France, Denmark, etc. The Tour will also go DonwUnder.

Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
Swiss 'AmigaOS4 on Tour' presentation in Basel (29-Jul-2003)

At the Italian Pianeta 2003 fair AmigaOS4 was demonstrated on AmigaOne hardware for the first time! More screenshots of AmigaOS4 can be found here at the AmigaWorld.net community portal.

Hyperion will also be present at the upcoming Benelux Amiga Show which is planned for the 4th and 4th of October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I plan to be there as well. :-)

The last couple of months AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special 'AmigaOS4 Tour events' around the world on classic systems equiped with PPC boards. At various events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France, Denmark, etc. The Tour will also go DonwUnder.

Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
Swiss 'AmigaOS4 on Tour' presentation in Basel (29-Jul-2003)

At the Italian Pianeta 2003 fair AmigaOS4 was demonstrated on AmigaOne hardware for the first time! More screenshots of AmigaOS4 can be found here at the AmigaWorld.net community portal.

Hyperion will also be present at the upcoming Benelux Amiga Show which is planned for the 4th and 4th of October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I plan to be there as well. :-)

The last couple of months AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special 'AmigaOS4 Tour events' around the world on classic systems equiped with PPC boards. At various events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France, Denmark, etc. The Tour will also go DonwUnder.

Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
Swiss 'AmigaOS4 on Tour' presentation in Basel (29-Jul-2003)

At the Italian Pianeta 2003 fair AmigaOS4 was demonstrated on AmigaOne hardware for the first time! More screenshots of AmigaOS4 can be found here at the AmigaWorld.net community portal.

Hyperion will also be present at the upcoming Benelux Amiga Show which is planned for the 4th and 4th of October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I plan to be there as well. :-)

The last couple of months AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special 'AmigaOS4 Tour events' around the world on classic systems equiped with PPC boards. At various events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France, Denmark, etc. The Tour will also go DonwUnder.

Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
Swiss 'AmigaOS4 on Tour' presentation in Basel (29-Jul-2003)

At the Italian Pianeta 2003 fair AmigaOS4 was demonstrated on AmigaOne hardware for the first time! More screenshots of AmigaOS4 can be found here at the AmigaWorld.net community portal.

Hyperion will also be present at the upcoming Benelux Amiga Show which is planned for the 4th and 4th of October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I plan to be there as well. :-)

There seems to be some confusion with regard to which OSes/solutions this effort is directed at. Currently there are 4 main 68k Amiga compatible solutions DiscreetFX would like to see supported. For two first one listed below PPC native versions would be preferable:

1) AmigaOS4

This is the official new AmigaOS developed for classic Amigas upgraded with PPC accelerators and new AmigaOne computers which are being sold with G3 and G4 processors.

Some of the latest but still unfinished screenshots of AmigaOS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=560
AmigaOne motherboards can already be bought in combination with Linux at the following dealers (AmigaOS4 will be delivered for free as soon as it is finished): http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/dealers.php

With MOL MacOS X can also already be used with this system (as well as with the Peg below):

http://www.anythingamiga.com/XEPics/x2.jpg.html

2) MorphOS

Its ABOX environment is a re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. The re-implemted Exec kernel is hosted on top of a Quark microkernel. The OS is fast and responsive and currently runs with G3 Pegasos motherboards. Interested people will have to wait for the Pegasos II, which is planned for release in September. An interesting review can be found at OSNews:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3589

3) AROS

An open source project intended as a multi-platform re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. Most of the development takes place on x86 computers. Much of the source code was used for MorphOS. http://www.aros.org/

4) UAE, Amithlon and other 68 AmigaOS emulators

AmigaOS XL: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=604
Amiga Forever: http://cloanto.com/amiga/forever/

No this wasn't me. I never post anonymously.

But anyhow I would agree that the original news submission is quite misleading as currently G4 powered AmigaOne-XE boards are also available. For Alan's take on TerraSoft and information on new AmigaOne boards have a look at Alan's presentation.