Amiga Allies With Red Hat

Mike Bouma writes "Amiga and Red Hat are working together to provide the foundation for exciting games and consumer content for the desktop, set-top-box, game console, and handheld market. This announcement follows monts after the disclosure of Amiga`s relationship with the Corel Corporation. The Amiga SDK can now also be bought at Redhat.com. Also take a look at this review which includes benchmark comparisons of the Java performance of the Amiga SDK running hosted on Redhat 6.1 and native Linux Java implementations."

Comments

The scoop

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, this is not the story. The story is here at amiga_articles.

In an nutshell, the new Amiga OS based on the Taos java vm does work, but Amiga could care less about its users and their target is embedded devices and set-top boxes, not desktop apps and games that might run on a home computer. As most of you know, the initial SDK selling for $100 runs on top of RedHat linux, and you can develop many types of apps with it, but, the licensing for such applications includes this:

AS SET FORTH IN SECTION 3 OF YOUR LICENSE AGREEMENT, IF YOU DISTRIBUTE ANY SOFTWARE CREATED USING THE AMIGA SOFTWARE, YOU MUST PAY AMIGA A QUARTERLY ROYALTY. YOU ARE ALSO REQUIRED TO PROVIDE AMIGA A REPORT OF YOUR DISTRIBUTION AND THE RIGHT TO AUDIT YOUR RECORDS. To review details relating to these obligations, including the royalty rate you are obligated to pay, you may click the "Previous" button below to review the License Agreement again.

No point in reading much further into the license or taking the time to try out the SDK. If you ordered one, ask for your money back. It is a complete waste of your time.

Further, the Taos vm does not include memory protection, which makes it no better than the old Amiga for desktop apps but might be acceptable for appliances which consist of an os and just one app where if the app crashes the system is unusable anyway.

Squid is quite pessimistic though he has posted here tonight in to put a more positive spin on things.

I say fuck 'em. If you are an old Amigoid as I am then transfer those creative energies to Linux. There are plenty of good, free SDK's for developing games and more are in the works. Of course Amiga is allying with RedHat because RedHat is very interested in the internet appliance market. But this does not mean that RedHat has any plans whatsoever to incude an Amiga OS or addon with its Linux disto. Redhat has no sch plans.

The spirit of the old Amiga lives on in Linux even though the name is not the same. You might also be interested to know that Amiga Inc. is vigorously prosecuting anyone who uses the Amiga logo (in its various forms) on a website but I feel they have no right to the trademark. A trademark is more than a name, and they cannot claim to own what a user community has a much more valid claim to by imparting value to the mark. Amiga Inc. has done nothing to honor and respect their trademark, but has instead insisted on once again screwing the community with hype, false promises and licensing that makes development of software by small operators and enthusiasts next to impossible.

What happens when you kernel oops/panic?

[danish]

Would anyone else find it incredibly hilarious to have a Linux box with a flashing red "GURU MEDITATION" box?

Dear my! What are those things coming out of her nose?
Spaceballs!

quick test: 'wc -buzzwords'

[TheInternet]

"Amiga and Red Hat are working together to provide the foundation for exciting games and consumer content for the desktop, set-top-box, game console, and handheld market."

In case anyone's wondering, this sentence is 35% buzzwords (9 buzzwords, 26 words total).

- Scott

------
Scott Stevenson

IBM 1.1.8 24 bit: n/a

[barracg8]

The most surprising result was not the Amiga one, but the IBM one.

• The problem with the Logic test under IBM jvm is that it is too big, and the numbers are off screen.[about the 1.1.8 VM]

The logic test is designed to test the VM's ability to spot redundant loops of code & optomize them away. The 1.2.2 VM has an okay score but by the sound of this, it is a lot worse at this kind of optomization than the JIT in 1.1.8. That sucks.

A look at the breakdown of the test results shows the Amiga kicking ass at the image test, and especially the string test, but not showing too well elsewhere. That's a shame.

In the second set of tests, IBM gives it a thorough beating, everywhere except for the image test: 7000 to 3300 overall :-(

I wish them all the best, but methinks the 'blazing fast Java' claim is really a little premature.

cheers,
G

This story renders slashdot obsolete

[hatless]

Let's see. Linux, Red Hat, Amiga, a gaming SDK, Corel, Java and vaporware. All in one item.

The only way to make it more ridiculous would be to somehow connect it to Pete Townshend and the next Star Wars movie.

Re:why redhat??

[DrPsycho]

RedHat has the visibility and penetrance into the consumer market that Amiga craves. Realize also that we're talking about the Amiga SDK => Software Development Kit. It's a package which gives a very bare-bones look at how the new AmigaOS is going to function, to give developers a heads-up as far as what kind of environment they'll have to work with as far as creating new apps and porting over old ones. For the development phase, the "AmigaOS" will be hosted by Linux... but that's for development. It will be hostable on multiple platforms, and even as a stand-alone OS by the time it's ready for release (insert your share of "New Amiga Real Soon Now" jokes here). To extend the analogy, they're running their ferrari with the VW engine until their own engine is ready to be dropped in. :^)

In short, if you're going to host with Linux, and want some serious impact on the general public, there are plenty of distributions to choose from. Some are better choices than others, and the ubiquitous distro-flame-wars are proof of that. Why not go corporate... go well established... go RedHat. I'm sure RedHat has plenty more going for it than just slick PR, while your opinions of the actual distribution may vary.

--- [DrPsycho] Coping with reality since 1975.