AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release

David Doyle writes "Hyperion Entertainment and the Amiga OS 4.0 development team announced on Amigaworld.net that after nearly 30 months of painstaking development the Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release has gone gold and will be sent to the duplication plant on Monday, April 19, 2004. The Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release consists of a current snapshot of AmigaOS 4.0 for the AmigaOne platform with a straightforward HTML installation guide in English, German, French and Italian as well as the Amiga OS 4.0 SDK. The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content. Full announcement and Amiga OS4 SDK feature list."

Comments

Good timing

[flewp]

Phew, just in time. I've been seeing reports that BSD is officially dead, so it's a good thing AmigaOS is here to fill the void.

Re:Good timing

[Squareball]

*whew* First Apple now BSD. At least I will have an OS to run on my PPC in the future ;)

Re:Good timing

[mdwh2]

AFACT, this is the first bit of non-vaporware out of the Amiga world in about 10 years.

As long as you ignore the OSs AmigaOS 3.5, AmigaOS 3.9 and MorphOS; the OS/emulator Amithlon; the PPC motherboards Pegasos and Pegasos II, yep there's been none at all.

How many failed Amiga Resurrection Projects have there been? 6 or so?

Who cares how many failed ones there have been - it's the non-vaporware ones that are important. There were plenty of delays (Copeland? Rhapsody?) before Apple finally moved to OS X. Anyone can make a vapor announcement, I don't see why the fact that various PC companies were hopeless with doing anything with the Amiga should detract from what other people manage to do.

Re:Good timing

[Squareball]

Ya know thinking about it, are there any VM type programs I can run on my mac.. that DON'T emulate x86? On Windows and Linux I can run VMWare which gives me a virtual machine to install another OS on but on the Mac I don't know of any that will give me a virtual PPC machine to install say YDL or even Amiga on. Other than installing Linux and running MoL that is (which I don't want to do). Any one know of any?

Re:Good timing

[Simonics Zsolt]

MorphOS, Pegasos and PegasosII are NOT Amiga Inc. Products, they are the competitor of AmigaOne and OS4.

Re:Good timing

[mdwh2]

I know, though the original poster said "Amiga world", and wasn't just talking of Amiga Inc.

30 months...

[Kid Zero]

that's better than Microsoft is managing right now. :)

Now

[ArchieBunker]

all they need is hardware to run it on. Seriously who sells a motherboard capable of running AmigaOS and what are the advantages?

Re:Now

[bsharitt]

Seriously who sells a motherboard capable of running AmigaOS

Amiga Inc.

Re:Now

[mdwh2]

The AmigaOne has been selling for over a year now IIRC.

Re:Now

[Seehund]

Nope. Amiga, Inc. sells trademark licences. Well, they were trying at least, until it was announced during a lawsuit that they had transferrred the AmigaOS + "Amiga"(TM) rights to something they call "KMOS, Inc."

Since there won't be any more Amigas, AmigaOS will run on old Amigas (with old PPC expansion boards) and third party hardware. The first hardware to be supported are the Teron CX (discontinued), Teron PX and Teron Mini motherboards designed by Mai Logic.

Amiga, Inc. got "consultation" from the UK computer shop Eyetech to decide that we should still have to pretend that there is "Amiga hardware". I.e. in order for AmigaOS to run on (be ported to) a piece of hardware, that hardware must be sold on a separated "Amiga market" by a distributor with a licence from Amiga, Inc. AmigaOS will not be available for sale, except as in a bundle with licensed hardware (and later on for those ancient PPC-equipped Amigas).

Only Eyetech have been granted such a license, and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE", "AmigaOne PX", and "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.

Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.

Re:Now

[Quobobo]

Agreed, what a waste. If I could, say, run this on an old PPC Mac, I might buy a copy out of curiosity. I have no interest in buying expensive, underpowered new equipment for a hobby OS though, and it seems like Amiga Inc. dug the grave for AmigaOS.

Re:Now

[Seehund]

Yes, the Amiga is dead, and in 2004 it's good riddance (but the old workhorses will be kept running until their capacitors explode, thank you very much).

Amiga (as in what Amiga Inc like to refer to themselves as) could finally be even formally and legally dead now for all we know, and nobody cares.

But AmigaOS 4 has a chance to not be stillborn, if only the powers that be would quit pretending that there's a valid reason for "Amiga hardware" in this day and age.

Re:Now

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

There is a need for hardware, even if they can't fill that need, or go bankrupt trying to.

Without hardware, they're just a trademark (and marginal OS software) company, of which there have been multitudes, all now dead, or at least out of those businesses.

The real trouble is, that for a 3rd platform to be at all viable, it would have had to have mostly continuously been available and evolving. With a what, decade long gap there, what's the point?

The OS has little in common with its namesake, the hardware even less. Hell, if they had even just included an amiga-compatible floppy controller on these mainboards, able to read the old media (if for no other reason than shits and giggles), they could have at least claimed some kind of heritage with real amigas, albeit a token one. But they didn't. And there sure as hell isn't a ZorroII slot on the thing.

Now, before all you zealots start ragging me about wanting obselete hardware, I don't. A new amiga shouldn't be using recovered 680x0's. There should be PCI slots, and hdb15 video ports, not abominable db23s. No quadrature mouses, give me standard USB. (But also sell a USB keyboard with Amiga "A" keys, and not make me use one with windows keycaps) But c'mon, a single ZorroII slot inline with the PCI? The bridge logic would fit in a single, cheap FPGA. Hell, just for one generation, so there could be some kind of continuity. Or like I said earlier, even just a floppy controller.

The new "AmigaOne" is no different than any PPC sbc, nor any cheaper. Some Amiga fanatics would buy Amiga-branded toilets, if McEwen sold them, and would tell everyone theyre the best computer in the world. Just slapping their legal trademark on the damn things doesn't make it an amiga in any true sense of what the computers used to be.

Re:Now

[mdwh2]

The OS has little in common with its namesake

Backwards compatibility, source code compatibility, based on the same source code I believe, runs Workbench, similar look-and-feel, yep little in common. Meanwhile, "MacOS" and "Windows" are names which have got used for two and three entirely different OSs respectively (well, in Windows' case, I don't think the original Windows series even counts as an OS in itself, more of a GUI for DOS?), but no one complains.

But c'mon, a single ZorroII slot inline with the PCI? The bridge logic would fit in a single, cheap FPGA. Hell, just for one generation, so there could be some kind of continuity. Or like I said earlier, even just a floppy controller.

Do I get a Nubus slot with my Mac? And I can't find the ISA slot on my PC.

I don't understand what you mean by "just for one generation", when obviously the Zorro Amigas have already appeared for at least one generation. If you mean one generation running OS4, then grab a Zorro A4000 with PPC and run OS4 on that.

Given how dated many Amiga Zorro cards are, I imagine it would be cheaper to buy brand new PCI card replacements (I mean what are we talking about, 20 quid for a graphics card?) than to pay the increased cost for a motherboard that has a Zorro slot.

As for a floppy controller, get a Catweasel. I don't see why, in an age when for years many computers haven't had a floppy at all, when even on Amigas Amiga-formatted disks have rarely used for years (I gave up on Amiga-formatted floppies about '95-'96, and only rarely used PC-formatted floppies after that), why should everyone have to pay the increased cost to include it as standard?

Some Amiga fanatics would buy Amiga-branded toilets

Maybe they would, but most people are just glad to save development time and their money by doing away with ancient hardware.

Re:Now

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Do I get a Nubus slot with my Mac? And I can't find the ISA slot on my PC.

No, but you did get those things. There were a few PPC macs with nubus, and PCs had 1 or 2 token slots on up until just a few years ago. Never having had the equivalent on this "new amiga", I hesitate to call it an amiga at all.

than to pay the increased cost for a motherboard that has a Zorro slot.

Given the geometries of standard motherboards, they have the board space to do it already. The chip cost would be truly minimal (think $1 per unit on an already outrageous price, they're not trying to shave that last dime off the retail to get it below the $5 mark). Design time? Well, maybe that is a cost, given how little credit they deserve... 30 months for an OS that might not have been so cool even in 1996?

Maybe they would, but most people are just glad to save development time and their money by doing away with ancient hardware.


Haha. Sorry, again, time has moved on. Being an OS company (or rather a trademark company farming out the minimal OS work you're doing) is no longer anything special. Especially when you are touting a "computer" that was only ever really cool for its hardware to begin with. Now they want to come up with some marginal PPC mainboard, and be done with it? No thanks. It's worse than that, they want to give us some marginal OS, for x86... a very crowded market, of many high-powered and free operating systems. I mean, you do get the impression that they want to drop the idea of amiga hardware entirely, but they don't want anyone to notice?

Besides, if someone wants to save time and money, they should buy a PC, running Windows XP if they are a loser, or an even cheaper power OS like BSD or linux. People even considering running this OS, are not the "I just need a cheap computer that works" crowd. I wonder why some don't realize McEwen is just taking advantage of their nostalgia.

Re:Now

[furballphat]

Woah! Talk about high quality modern components at low low prices! Only 80 for 256MB SDRAM! Is that a Radeon 700 I spy for only 40? Incredible! A motherboard and 800Mhz processor for a bargain 550! Any lower and these prices would be illegal!

Re:Now

[mdwh2]

No, but you did get those things. There were a few PPC macs with nubus, and PCs had 1 or 2 token slots on up until just a few years ago. Never having had the equivalent on this "new amiga", I hesitate to call it an amiga at all.

But they had them on the old Amigas! I could declare ISA-less PCs as "new PCs", and equally complain that they've yet to release a generation of "new PCs" with ISA slots. They were selling Zorro based A4000s for years.

Design time? Well, maybe that is a cost

Yes, exactly. If they were going to sell millions, then the cost would be negliable, but with a few thousand at most, I imagine that including Zorro slots would cost a lot. Remember how much more expensive the Zorro-based Amigas were (even compared to an A500/1200 that was upgraded with CPU etc), or how much the Zorro add ons for the A1200 were?

Being an OS company (or rather a trademark company farming out the minimal OS work you're doing) is no longer anything special. Especially when you are touting a "computer" that was only ever really cool for its hardware to begin with. Now they want to come up with some marginal PPC mainboard, and be done with it?

Hang on - if you're saying that they need to sell some interesting hardware instead of being just an OS company, then that's one argument (and bearing in mind that they're tying the OS to the AmigaOnes and not being an OS company, I think this point isn't relevant anyway), but I don't see how including *ancient legacy* hardware is going to attract people to the platform.

Besides, if someone wants to save time and money, they should buy a PC, running Windows XP if they are a loser, or an even cheaper power OS like BSD or linux. People even considering running this OS, are not the "I just need a cheap computer that works" crowd.

Well the point is that people pay extra to get something they like. Okay, I'll concede that it's possible that some people prefer Zorro cards to PCI equivalents in the same way people prefer Amigas in general to alternatives .. however I can't say I've ever noticed such people in the Amiga community. Is there a particular Zorro card you are thinking of, or is it something about Zorro in general? Originally you were suggesting Zorro was needed for backwards-compatibility, rather than it being something special in itself.

Re:Now

[mdwh2]

The motherboard may be pricey (that's going to be the way with new platforms that are only selling in the thousands at most), but if you don't like the prices of the other hardware, buy the motherboard alone and get the rest elsewhere. Unlike Apple, you have that choice.

Re:Now

[curne]

That's why we need this ported to x86 hardware right now!

[Bitchslap] Ow...!

Re:Now

[torpor]

the thing that amuses me, is that there seems to be some sort of 'need' to 'keep up with the joneses' in the hardware world.

why does the amiga -need- PCI slots? certainly, its still a computer, and still capable of being programmed to do some wild and wonderful things.

the amiga story highlights just how hyper-neurotic the computer industry is, about 'always putting new tech forward', when really ... -any- computer is still a computer.

imagine if the amiga community just did its own hardware, from scratch, without much due regard for the "PC Market", and then spent a few years refining the software for that hardware?

one thing you can say about the windows world, is that it has been dancing on a spinning wheel of intense jumps in hardware capabilities, yet the software is, generally, still all crap.

Re:Now

[Trilobyte]

Bravo.

The only thing I think these new computers have got going for themselves is that the OS is probably really, REALLY fast.

Re:Now

[Trilobyte]

I think that the Pegasos with MorphOS is pretty similar to the Amiga community designing its own hardware with software. The MorphOS was running on original Amigas with PPCs before this whole AmigaONE thing was even invented...

But really, the CLOSEST thing to a new computer from scratch with software coming from the Amiga community has got to be the C=ONE, with backing from individual Computers. though it's meant to emulate [not like SOFTWARE emulate, but like DICTIONARY emulate] a C64.

individual Computers have consistently been some of the most ingenious hardware designers on ANY platform ... but who choose [have chosen] to use the Amiga as their basis for most projects over the past decade...

Re:Now

[Mike Bouma]

Although that the AmigaOne-XE is currently relative expensive compared to PC hardware, this is mainly due relatively low expected volume sales as the AmigaOne-XE board is mainly targeted at the current Amiga communnity of powerusers and developers. Therefor sales aren't expected to reach more than a few thousand. There are significant development costs for designing the hardware and well as the software which comes with it (such as the 30 months of hard work for AmigaOS4).

Also any hardware company can negotiate a license for AmigaOS4 (however currently PPC only) and offer an Amiga branded product. The classic Amiga market has been moving to standard mainstream hardware for more than a decade now and so this process seems to be just a natural continuation of this.

There are hardware offerings in the pipeline designed by Eyetech and Mai Logic which will be targeted at larger markets, opening up the possibility of cheaper solutions. First up is the MicroA1 which is a Mini-ITX (17cm - 17cm!) form factor board and is already being demonstrated running Linux and AmigaOS4.

The AmigaOne-XE and AmigaOS4 Developer pre-release is already an excellent product for developers to start developing for AmigaOS4. As a development platform the current AmigaOne-XE solution is relatively cheap (especially compared to Mai's Teron evaluation boards, the boards Seehund likes to rave about as being so "cheap" (also coming without an AmigaOS4 license).

The new Amiga platform is already gaining widespread coverage. Yesterday AmigaOS4 was the highlight of a German TV show (3SAT/ZDF) demonstrating the product. You can download the show from here or go here for more information.

Re:Now

[torpor]

i looked at the C=ONE, but couldn't find any decent software that really rocked my socks about the hardware. maybe you know of some bleeding edge stuff?

Re:Now

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

But they had them on the old Amigas! I could declare ISA-less PCs as "new PCs", and equally complain that they've yet to release a generation of "new PCs" with ISA slots. They were selling Zorro based A4000s for years.

And don't you see the gap in continuity here? I can't even tell you the last mac with nubus, or the last dell with ISA.... it blended from one to the next. With the 10 year gap in hardware, and the last ZorroII machine on the other side of that gap, no "blending" is going on here.

And ZorroII is only the most extreme, most expensive way to get that. Hell, something as simple as building an alternative form factor for the AmigaOne, so it fit snugly in a A2000 (A4000 maybe) case (call it the upgrade logic board) might do the trick. The compatible floppy controller might be another way to do that. I'm sure other people could think of even better ideas.

But worst of all... the new Amiga should have been the Amiga 5000. WTF with this "One" ?

Re:Now

[mdwh2]

But worst of all... the new Amiga should have been the Amiga 5000. WTF with this "One" ?

I think "AmigaOne" is a bit of a cheesy name.. but I can see why they didn't go with Amiga 5000. To me, that suggests just an evolution of A4000, what Commodore might have released in 95-96 had they not gone bust; a machine with PPC.. and 880k floppy and Zorro slots..

I think that's the point here - whilst they could release a machine that picks up where the A4000 left off, you've got to face that it's 2004, and the number of people interested in such a machine would be even less. Also it would be redundant - whilst there may have been a 7 year gap (1995-2002) between official machine releases (although note that A4000s and Zorro A1200Ts have been sold up until quite recently), Amigans have been upgrading their machines with plenty of add ons that have become available, such as PPC and PCI cards. Instead, Amiga have gone for reasonably up to date hardware, not wasting money on legacy hardware, and still maintaining a great deal of continuity with the old Amigas.

The compatible floppy controller might be another way to do that.

Then you can have that - slip a Catweasel into the AmigaOne, and all is well.

Re:Now

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The Catweasel is nice, even somewhat fits the bill. Hell, they could even license the design, and sell it as such (or incorporate it into the A1 mlb's). But instead, they let another opportunity slip, and the 3rd party guys are picking up the pieces. Just seems lame.

As for the name, maybe A5000 is wrong. But they could still have kept the scheme... A10000 (A10K) anyone? Something other than the one they chose.

Re:Now

[Trilobyte]

it's hobbyist hardware. i'm not sure there's any kind of great software available for it yet. it's really just meant as a platform that people can program themselves and make into any kind of computer they please.

i guess from the get-go it's going to have built-in software to act like a c64, but in essence it could be programmed low-level (and re-flashed?) to run any OS designed for it. it gives the coder all the basic interfaces (framebuffer, keyboard, mouse, etc) but doesn't lock him/her down in what he/she does with it.

and, afaik, it's not out in main production yet (they just got the boot firmware completed ... after heavy engineering... i think most everything else is done?)

More on AmigaOs4...

[Andreas(R)]

Here's more info in AmigaOS4, features, screenshots, etc. Looking forward to this!

Re:More on AmigaOs4...

[starphish]

It's beautiful and elegant......just like CDE. The square edges, the dark grey windows, non anti-aliased fonts. Mac users will be switching in droves.

Re:More on AmigaOs4...

[hattig]

Sadly those are quite old screenshots, although the fonts are anti-aliased in them.

The current look is a lot better and professional. Clean but not ugly, and it doesn't distract you like some other operating systems.

Anyway, rounded edges are *so* 2001.

Re:More on AmigaOs4...

[Anonymous Coward]

hot damn, it's ugly. I'm having linux-8-years-ago flashbacks.

Re:More on AmigaOs4...

[Bingo Foo]

and it doesn't distract you like some other operating systems.

You mean distract you with things like applications?

Re:More on AmigaOs4...

[suso]

It's like Agent Smith once said: "Millions of people living out their lives... Oblivious."

What is this?

[-tji]

Can someone explain to an Amiga outsider what this is?

I am familiar with the old Amiga, and all the cool things it could do long before anyone else. I had a couple friends that swore they were the greatest thing ever, but I never really used one (I was an Apple ][e user). There are frequent announcements about new Amiga stuff... but in today's computing world, I'm not sure what that means.

- Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?
- Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?
- It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?

- What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a standalone OS, and runs on the powerpc platform. As it is today, it will only run on the new AmigaONE or a classic amiga with a powerpc accelrator.

Re:What is this?

[metlin]

Here are the answers to most of your questions.

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a PowerPC native port of AmigaOS.

It's a standalone OS, which runs on the new AmigaOne motherboards and is currently being worked on, to work with the older dual CPU (68k&PPC) add-on cards by phase5. (One of which, I have in my Amiga 1200)

The whole of AmigaOS and Exec (kernel) have basically been overhauled and modernised and given memory protection (which will work with new OS4 native programs that make use of it) and can be turned off for OS3.x compatibility. Not to mention a new file system, virtual memory and everything else a modern OS should have. (without needing a shutdown procedure)

68k programs are emulated via a JIT emulation system, to be fully integrated into the OS itself, so "classic" retargettable programs such as Wordworth, Final Writer etc all work without problems, at super-fast speeds :)

As for a reason for it to exist, AmigaOS is an OS of such efficient nature, I've been using it for years on this "old" hardware of mine. If it's fast on a 25mhz 68040, what do you think it's like on an 800mhz G4? That's just one reason...it does what you want it to do, and it runs circles around anything else I've used.

http://os.amiga.com for more info and features. And the url provided in the topic too, of course :)

AmigaOS4 is going to rock :D

Re:What is this?

[rampant mac]

"Can someone explain to an Amiga outsider what this is?"

Think computing... circa 1987.

:)

(YES! I own an Amiga... No flames please.)

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a hard time reading?

Feature lists are nice, but what is on the actual CD counts.

The list is what they *would like* to have in the final version.

JIT is not in this *pre-release*.

Oh, and calling "write protecting code" for "memory protection" is misleading at best. It is very far from what people in general consider as memory protection.

Re:What is this?

[Seehund]

- Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?

Standalone. It's a direct update to AmigaOS 3.x.

- Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?

It's for PowerPC. It's initial target are the current Teron series by Mai Logic (a.k.a. "AmigaOnes" when sold with a new trademark licence by the only distributor that AmigaOS4 users are allowed to buy their hardware from).

See this post and this introduction for more info (and opinion).

It will also be available for old Amiga 3000/4000 computers if they've got Cyberstorm PPC accelerator boards.

- It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?

Yes. It will have a JIT 68k-emulator integrated too (think of when the Macs and MacOS went 68k to PPC). Most system friendly software is said to run fine. If your old software bangs the metal (depends on Amiga hardware) it's not likely to run, however.

- What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?

What's the compelling reason for any OS besides Windows to exist? ;)
Sadly Amiga Inc/Eyetech have killed any chances for AmigaOS4 by throwing a definitive and unnecessary stumbling block as their "Amiga hardware market" invention on the race track, but that's just a business decision that's easily revoked with a stroke of a pen. It has to be.

Re:What is this?

[Bingo Foo]

No kidding. As a former Amiga owner, and a former rabid Amiga fan, I can say that the new Amiga OS is the successor to the old Amiga in trademark only. What made Amiga cool in 1985-1990 was the hardware. Let me repeat, the hardware. What about the ease of programming? Again, that came from the hardware. It did have a color GUI desktop before macintosh, yes, and that was cool. Nobody, though, chose Amiga for any reason that can not be satisfied by other hardware/software combinations today.

The only analogue I can think of that would show what Amiga would be in today's market is some hybrid of the Playstation 2 graphics and sound with a Mac OS desktop and Cocoa programming.

Re:What is this?

[nickos]

Sadly, both the old Amigas hardware and software are woefully out of date (I'm an old Amiga coder, and I know what I'm talking about). The hardware was amazing and the OS was great too (efficient but no memory protection), and hardware and software were very well integrated (Amiga screens for instance). Unfortunately, the Amiga hardware side of things, while brilliant for CLUT based 2D was very poor at 3D stuff (because 8 bit planar graphics require that a pixel be updated 8 times (once per plane) rather than just once on a "chunky" system). The OS was very fast and efficient (fast pre-emptive multitasking on a 7-Mhz A1000 in the mid eighties!) and had some features like datatypes, but prone to crashing becuase without memory protection a badly behaved program could scribble all over memory.

The new "Amiga" stuff is really just the old OS ported (allbeit slightly improved) to (non-CHRP) PPC machines.

That said, most of the hardcore Amiga coders have moved to Linux and their coding mentality lives on in their Linux projects.

Re:What is this?

[mdwh2]

I don't think it follows that just because a platform's strengths changes means that it has nothing in common - clearly the OS has lots in common with the old OS, even if the hardware it runs on is no longer special.

Hell, by the early 90's (as you suggest yourself), the Amiga had lost its hardware advantage over the competition. People pointed this out, but I don't remember them saying things like "this A1200, it's not an Amiga".

The strengths from an OS point of view were evident from the start (eg, being a 32-bit multitasking OS with combined GUI and shell, running in only 256k of RAM), they were just overshadowed by the other (ie, hardware) advantages.

It did have a color GUI desktop before macintosh, yes, and that was cool. Nobody, though, chose Amiga for any reason that can not be satisfied by other hardware/software combinations today.

Well this applies to other platforms too. Mac was before Windows and Amiga with a GUI, but other platforms quickly caught up. I bet that any reason people bought those early Macs are things which can now be done on other platforms.

The only analogue I can think of that would show what Amiga would be in today's market is some hybrid of the Playstation 2 graphics and sound with a Mac OS desktop and Cocoa programming.

Better graphics would be great, but I'd rather stick with AmigaOS desktop and Amiga programming, thanks ;)

Re:What is this?

[mdwh2]

(non-CHRP) PPC machines.

Out of interest - is there much in the way of CHRP PPC machines? And are they better or cheaper than the AmigaOne?

I mean, yeah, I agree it would be better to have an OS running on as many machines as possible - but it doesn't seem like a standardised set of PPC machines are plentifully available, does it?

Re:What is this?

[nickos]

I'm sure there're slashdotters out there who know more, but I know that IBM and Motorola make (expensive) machines. The latest Apples may be CHRP compliant, but I seem to remember there being problems over their use of specific ROMS (of course it's not in Apple's interests to be CHRP compliant).

Personally I'm all for non-x86 platforms (which I think fundamentally suck), but I'm not sure that PowerPC is the way to go. ColdFire chips are an almost M68k compatible RISC chip (nice for old-school assembley coders), and if you don't care about nice assembley, the ARM series is even better.

It seems to me that if all you want to do is run open source stuff and don't mind compiling from source, you can choose your hardware purely on the merits of that hw platform.

Re:What is this?

[amigabill]

>What is the compelling reason for this to exist?

What is the compelling reason for Linux to exist? With 90-some% of computer users running Windows, why should they care about anything not Windows?

Comparable answers exist to your same question regarding AmigaOS, MorphOS, QNX, BSD, MacOS, etc. Not everyone likes vanilla (Windows). Not everyone that doesn't like vanilla likes chocolate (Linux) either. Some prefer eggnog flavor, butter pecan, or whatever.

Myself, I simply do not like Windows, so I'm looking for a different flavor that suits me. I've tried Linux, but I've found it unsuitable to me as it's currently still a bit too much of a hacker thing, and I'm looking for something easier to install and use, but I do intend to eventually get a Linux/MythTV PVR box running, but I've fought with that for over a year now, and Linux isntall/config has ben by far the largest obstacle dur to driver issues, cryptic configuration methods, and lack of "for dummies" style documentation, and I'm just not interested in fihgting with stuff just to get it to run. If it suits you, that's great, but I'm on to a different flavor. MacOS didn't suit me in the past, though I haven't seen OS X which I hear is a large improvement. *BSD I basically put in a similar category as Linux, though my NetBSD exoerience (on Amiga hardware no less!) a number of years ago, though that may be better too now. MorphOS may be similar to Amiga in some ways, and it may be very good, I don't know, but I don't like certain individuals involved with producing it. Kindof like boycotting Velveeta because I'm mad at the president of Kraft foods as a comparison example, but (disclaimer) I don't actually have any problems with Kraft or their execs, I don't know anything about them (/disclaimer).

AmigaOS years ago I found quite to my liking. It's been sortof a specialty flavor that's been hard but no timpossible to find, long forgotten by many but found in certain specialist shops for those who know where to look.

Basically the compelling reason for it to exist is that some people want it to, just like some people want Linux to exist. And just like the masses not understanding why you bother with Linux when Windows is so popular, most of the slashdot/Linux crowd doesn't understand why someone would use something different yet again. If the fact that neither Windows NOR Linux is suitable for me in particular,just like Windows may not be suitable for you in particular, then there is no explaining anything about this.

Some people want it, and some people think it's worth doing. What other reason is there for anything to exist?

Re:What is this?

[amix]

That you own an Amiga dated ca. 1987 does not mean, that Amiga is "think computing ca. 1987". AmigaOS got really serious areound 1990 with v2.04 or even v2.1. And it got even better with v3.x. You're talking 1.3 I guess. You used it for gaming. I guess. No, this is not a flame, just a guess.

Re:What is this?

[amix]

Can't find any of that spirit on Linux.

Re:What is this?

[nickos]

Enlightenment and WindowLab are two projects that spring to mind. There are many more.

Re:What is this?

[amix]

I know, that the creator of Enlightment is an ex-Amiga user. However, I see nowhere the Amiga spirit in Enlightment. And regarding WindwLab (which I don't know, only checked the link you gave), all I see is a similar window-behavior to that of Intuition. However, I would not call this 'spirit'.

Re:What is this?

[nickos]

It's difficult to define 'spirit'.

I would say that Enlightment is far more Amigery than KDE and GNOME which are very Windows-like in their approaches.

WindowLab on the other hand has obviously been influenced by Intuition, but also does some stuff that I've never seen before. Innovation is a characteristic of the Amiga 'spirit' wouldn't you say.

If you're thinking of 'spirit' like in the demo scene, remember that Linux is not a hardware platform :(

Re:What is this?

[amix]

Innovation is a characteristic of the Amiga 'spirit' wouldn't you say.

Yes, I'd say :) You are right in this regard.

And you are also right saying, that it is difficult to define 'spirit'. I tend to say: The body, wherein the spirit resides, defines it. Of course, this is vague.

For me Amiga spirit is not so much the looks. It is the ease of use, doing things very lightwieght and mostly: non-monolithic. I am not talking kernel but application here. Strong messaging and inter-applicatopn-programming, is Amiga-spirit IMO. Even more Amiga-spirit is the possibility for the user to do complex things easily. Something neither Linux nor Windows do offer.

If you're thinking of 'spirit' like in the demo scene, remember that Linux is not a hardware platform :(

Absolutely not. I am not so much into Amiga-hardware. I am into the OS and the applications.

Some examples:

• Desktop symbols represent their actual value. They are not a virtual representation. On KDE (also Windows) when I drop a shortcut icon onto the text-editor all that gets pasted into is the URI of the linked document. As text ! Lol! On Amiga I lay my hand on the real thing. Still I am protected from doing mistakes by accident with the real thing.
• Ram Disk is Amiga spirit. Not to dearch to the disk, but to a virtual RAM disk.
• Application scriptin using ONE interface (here: ARexx) not many. Try to combine Konqueror and Emacs. Difficult to impossible. However, combining DirectoryOpus and CygnusED is a breeze on AmigaOS.
• Devices. Mount TCP:, MEM:, AUDIO: and so on. Very spiritual. On the other OS it needs to be done "virtual". Again, Amiga is being virtuos.

  You might call these features, of course, and not spirit. Well, right. It's difficult. But the spritit lies somewhere there within. As spirits tend do do. ;-)

Re:Slashdotted already

[JaxWeb]

Woah, ignore me before, it suddenly worked again! I got it! Best post it here, eh?:

"Leuven, Belgium - April 16, 2004. Hyperion Entertainment and the Amiga OS 4.0 development team are extremely pleased and relieved to announce that after nearly 30 months of painstaking development the Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release has gone gold and will be sent to the duplication plant on Monday, April 19, 2004.

The Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release consists of a current snapshot of AmigaOS 4.0 for the AmigaOne platform with a straightforward HTML installation guide in English, German, French and Italian as well as the Amiga OS 4.0 SDK.

The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content.

The SDK comprises the following material:

* Complete Installer for easy and painless installation;
* GNU C Compiler 2.95.3;
* GNU C Compiler 3.4.0 RC 1;
* vbcc 0.8f;
* GNU GDB Source-Level Debugger;
* System Includes V 50;
* System Autodocs V 50;
* PDF Documentation on GNU C compilers and GNU Debugger;
* PDF Guide "Project Migration to AmigaOS 4.0";
* Example programs with source (among others: Reaction, expansion library, Roadshow, FFS2);
* Newlib.library (experimential, shared C library);
* CLIB2 source code.

Users will be able to register their copy at a soon-to-be-launched portal site which will offer Amiga OS 4.0 related content for download.

Hyperion Entertainment and the AmigaOS 4.0 development and beta-testing teams wish to thank all of you for your patience.

Amiga OS 4.0 (c) 2004 Hyperion Entertainment, developed under license from KMOS, Inc. All rights reserved. "Amiga" and associated trademarks are registered trademarks of Amiga, Inc."

That's nice, but...

[rqqrtnb]

...where are the machines for me to run it on?
I'm not making fun of anyone here, and I seriously would like to know; I've always been hearing about Amiga this and Amiga that here on Slashdot every once in a while, and doing a little sniffing around on the web there appears to be a pretty active Amiga community. Also, they're still developing the operating system, so there still must be Amigas, right? Right?

Well, that's what I was hoping, but after doing some heavy searching on google I haven't been able to turn up a single machine. All of the suspect web sites like Amiga's corporate site and other places don't give any information other than "Contact your local Amiga dealer." Great. Where am I supposed to find one of those? After a little searching about that, nothing good really came up. Most of the sites I found either a) didn't exist anymore or b) didn't really have any Amiga stuff.

Okay, maybe I am just looking in all of the wrong places, but if somebody could point me out to some good resources then that would be great; I always love to try different and unusual systems, and I'm really interested in this AmigaOS. I just don't have anything to run it on.

Re:That's nice, but...

[erikharrison]

I won't get into the full history of the Amiga hardware platform, a clever frankenstein of processors. The old Amiga was a 68k platform primarily, the "new" Amiga runs on a PowerPC platform called the AmigaOne. For those who care, the OS was ported using the same technique that Apple used to port the MacOS from 68k to PPC, using a 68k emulator for as yet unported code.

Full text

[delta407]

I managed to get a mirror of the SDK feature list before it went under:

Selected module does not exist!

Fascinating project, if I may say so myself. :-)

Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[JessLeah]

"The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content."

Well, that's great. So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or they can run their wonderful old Amiga graphics manipulation apps... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or .... well, you get the point.

This is going to really really upset the old-school Amiga fans. For all intents and purposes, it isn't AmigaOS at all!

It is as if the Linux kernel received no updates at all for ten years after 2.8 was finished... then suddenly, wow, "Linux 3.0" was announced! But it said that it wouldn't run old apps compiled under Linux 2.x-- oh, but it "would make it trivial to port apps originally coded for Linux 2.x". By which time, of course, none of said source code would even be in general circulation...

How the heck can they call this "AmigaOS" if it has essentially ZERO backwards-compatibility with previous AmigaOSes? Jesus. This is worse than those non-commercial/FOSS efforts to create a "new AmigaOS". I could have sworn one of them can at least run old AmigaOS apps, if only in emulation...

The LEAST they could have done was provide a "Classic AmigaOS layer", like what Apple did with Mac OS X to allow it to run "Classic" (pre-X) Mac OS apps...

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you did some research, then you would discover that os4 includes emulation layer, which will let you run old 68k apps without any problems.. Old games that hit the old amiga custom chipset, will not run without an emulator though..

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[CAIMLAS]

The linux scenario is somewhat different, because at least the source code would likely be available. Maybe. 10 years is a fairly long time; I'd suspect that quite a few projects would be lost due to developers losing data, etc.

Btw, such a "phase out" of support for 2.x applications would likely be unacceptable -now-, let alone in 10 years. That's an MS approach to software - phase out the old software's support so we can sell more.

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[JessLeah]

That would be, what, 90% of them? :P

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[erikharrison]

There was some talk of a drop in PCI card which had the old chips on it. This has since proven to be an unworkable solution, mostly because the whole OS 4/AmigaOne enterprise has got about as much cash as my 8 year old sister now that she's lost some teeth.

A more workable, and highly likely solutions, is the integration of AmigaForever into a point release of OS 4. I've heard some talk that this is in the works.

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[mdwh2]

That would be, what, 90% of them?

Yes, it would be 90% of old games, but I don't think the main purpose is to run 10+ year old games when you could more cheaply run an emulator on any machine, or pick up an A500 out the trash ;)

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[BESTouff]

So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them.

No they can't. Even if they had access to source, all games were written in assembly and directly hit the hardware (the famous blitter and copper), most of them didn't even use the filesystem and had a custom trackloader on-disk. Even if the AmigaOS was quite good, directly programming the Amiga hardware was a joy and was really the preferred way of coding. Aaah, those were the days ...

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[mdwh2]

You can still run games on it I presume, just not the 10 year old ones..

Not that I'm claiming it's going to be particularly good for games of course - it's hard to tell what niches it might reach into at such an early stage. The point is though that it appears to be more than capable of running the vast majority of Amiga software that would presumably be of primary interest to Amiga users who didn't leave the platform 10 years ago or more.

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[Sloppy]

It depends on what you mean by "old." The 80s games, yes. But by the mid 1990s, the Amiga chipset was so far behind commodity components, that a lot of Amiga users had beefed up their machines with graphics cards, sound cards, etc. I'd guess that nearly all Amiga software in the last ten years, uses the OS so that it can take advantage retargeted graphics, etc.

By 1996 just about 100% of my game purchases were stuff that went through the OS instead of directly hitting the hardware. Who wants to play a game on my A3000's ECS when I had a CV64 (and later, a Picasso IV)? Not me.

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[amigabill]

Uhm... There is compatibility built in. I don't see this part mentioned on Hyperion's press release, but that's what has been happening. There's a 68K CPU interpreter there already, and they're workign on building in a JIT 68K CPU emulator. "System friendly" applications/games/etc. will work via this CPU emulator via an API bridge. Things that weren't system friendly and banged on hardware directly? The UAE classic Amiga emulator that emulates the complete chipset has a version ported to OS4, so there's really not that much support missing for old games or apps that can't/won't be ported to OS4 API/PPC native. Will this API thing be perfect? Probably not, but you Linux guys seem relatively happy with the percentage of Windows apps are supported by Wine, so you better not complain. ;) I haven't seen any specifics on emulation/wrapper success or failure, and I don't have the hardware to try it myself yet, but I will soon as I'm going to order a machine for it this next week. Fortunately for me, most of the stuff I still use on my "classic" Amiga has already planned OS4 native porting.

Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans?

[vortexau]

> For all intents and purposes, it isn't AmigaOS at all!
? ? ? Please explain the basis for your strange belief!

> It is as if the Linux kernel received no updates at all for ten years after 2.8 was finished... then suddenly . . .
You seem to be unaware that THREE versions of the AmigaOS were released since CBM folded? I'm still using OS3.5 on my A2000!

> How the heck can they call this "AmigaOS" if it has essentially ZERO backwards-compatibility with previous AmigaOSes?
How MANY times can you place YOUR foot in your mouth? Why don't you go any read the compatibility list for existing apps - I intend to migrate a SCSI Hard Drive of existing apps to facilitate installation!

> The LEAST they could have done was provide a "Classic AmigaOS layer", like what Apple did with Mac OS X to allow
> it to run "Classic" (pre-X) Mac OS apps...
Such as the JIT? Already been done.
.

Jesus Christ!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to program professionally on the Amiga. I was part of the original Video Toaster team at Newtek back in the day. That was a decade ago!!!!For god's sake just die!!

Evil Man

Re:Jesus Christ!

[Ziviyr]

Amiga will die after BSD does. ;-)

I'm still angry...

[Ziviyr]

...at how they didn't deal with a bug in OS3.5 that froze my Amiga semi-daily (but occasionally three times a day) for the last year that I used my Amiga.

And how they ignored it as a problem, and how the update that should have had the fix mainly appeared to contain christmasy animgifs.

Re:I'm still angry...

[Ziviyr]

"Does it run on Linux?" :-)

Amiga's 'Sixth Sense'

[Simonetta]

Remember the movie 'The Sixth Sense'?

Aren't the dead always the last to realize that they're actually dead?

Do Amiga users ever find it, well,... strange that sometimes people in a crowd will walk right up to them and then right through them?

Or are they too busy thinking up new features for the next operating system?

Who uses Amigas?

[shrykk]

Serious question from someone for whom Amigas were games machines as a kid.

Who uses amigas nowadays? People nostalgically playing old games? Is it kick-ass for music or something?

Is AmigaOS designed for modern hardware, and can you do everything with it that you can with other systems?

I see there are a few similar questioning posts. Everyone seems to be like, "Oh, cool, but why..?"

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[lvdrproject]

Yes, i second (or third or fourth or fifth) this question. I really don't see the point in releasing this at all. Maybe if it was on x86 or Mac, there'd be at least some use in it for playing around or something (similar to BeOS for some people), but i can't really fathom why somebody would go out and buy an entirely new computer just to play around on what seems like a rather out-of-date operating system. :/

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[mdwh2]

I'd need to buy an entirely new computer just to play around with a Mac..

I can certainly see your point that an x86 release would have its advantages (I'd certainly buy it, if only to play around with, but I'm not going to buy a new computer). But MacOS X clearly falls into the proprietry-platform category too.

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[lvdrproject]

Yeah, but Macs are (whatever else you may think about them) useful. When you buy a Mac, you can at least expect to have a bunch of developers working for it and have a whole bunch of relevant, modern applications/technologies ported to it. What's the Amiga good for, though? You can do basic Web-browsing, play a few simple games, maybe play MP3s? You're going to buy a whole new computer, one that doesn't have a whole lot of a chance of being widely supported at all, just for that? :/

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[mdwh2]

That you think Macs are useful has nothing to do with the fact that I'd need to buy a new machine to run one. Your comment "Maybe if it was on x86 or Mac" suggests that Mac hardware is sufficiently plentiful - it isn't (sure, it might be more plentiful than AmigaOnes, and it'd certainly be useful to pick up a cheap Mac to run OS4 on, but I'd still need to buy a new machine, and that'd still put me off getting OS4).

If you're now switching your argument to saying that Apple can afford to go for a non-mainstream proprietry platform because Macs are inherently useful, that they are "useful" is your opinion. There seem to be plenty of people who view OS X has something interesting to play around with, but it's nothing they couldn't do on Windows (or Linux, whatever) - this is often cited as a reason by the people who argue for porting OS X to x86. These people certainly wouldn't buy a whole new machine for it.

You can't arbitrarily divide OSs up into "only useful for playing around with", and "useful"; that distinction will depend on the person. With MacOS, there are people who find them useful, and there are people who would just like to play about with them. The same is true of AmigaOS (yes, despite what the "no one cares" trolls here seem to think, there are people who still like to use Amigas).

Both Apple and Amiga have, rightly or wrongly, made the decision to cut out those who would buy the OS to play around with, but wouldn't buy a whole new machine.

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

My Amiga 500 makes a wonderful space-filler in the closet. Much more effecient than a C64, the box is at least twice as big..

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[lvdrproject]

No, i can't arbitrarily do so, but that's not what i did. On the one hand, you've got a system -- the Amiga -- that has like zero market share, that only has a handful of developers, that has no major software (that i know of...?), that's produced by a relatively small company, and that has pretty obscure hardware. On the other, you've got Apple, who have a considerably larger market share (although not anywhere near as large as Microsoft's), who have loads of developers working for them, who have tons of major software (Photoshop, Internet Explorer, Office, Firefox, Flash...), who are a pretty large company, and who have hardware which is becoming increasingly more compatible with x86 stuff.

I guess i didn't really mean to say that the Amiga isn't useful, but rather that it's difficult to expect your Amiga to stay relevant to anything for any length of time anywhere near that which your Apple will. In other words, it would be a less risky bet to suggest that your Amiga will be out-of-date and non-upgradable in a few years than it would to suggest the same of your Apple. ... Does that make sense? Heh.

Re:Who uses Amigas?

[amigabill]

I do. I use it for all my email. It's something to tinker with and create things for and do some programming. I do image editing with it. I haven't fired up a game on it for quite a long time now. What does your Linux box do that makes it so special compared to Windows, and why don't you just use Windows instead because more people do that than use Linux?? You may think Linux is so cool and stuff, but why bother?? It's basically the same question as you and other Slashdot people always ask from Amiga users.

Modern hardware? I'm involved with the company writing drivers for Radeon cards... It is a PowerPC OS so won't run on the latest Athlon or P4 machines though.

duplication

[selderrr]

you mean, to all 5 users ?

seriously, isn't a hardcopy a bit ridic here ? They barely sell a copy, so better not waste cash on duplication and offer a download instead.

Re:duplication

[mdwh2]

1314 people joined the "Amiga club" which costs $50, which suggests that the idea that barely anyone is interested in the OS belongs in fantasyland.

If they were worried about no one buying it, don't you think that the duplication cost is going to be rather insignificant compared to years of development costs?

Re:duplication

[Bishop]

The only people in fantasyland are the 1314 that joined the Amiga club.

Re:duplication

[mdwh2]

If they're in fantasyland (and I agree that they probably are), then that proves my very point. If they're willing to spend that money on just a little Amiga-related thing, then it's likely there'll be more people willing to buy OS4.

The only way to defend the original claim (that so few people are interested it wouldn't be worth sending to the duplicators) would be to argue that there was something of great value in this club (and hence, the members weren't in fantasyland), which wouldn't exist in OS4.

Amiga

[Moderation abuser]

It rocked as a games platform and for video editing. 15 years ago.

http://computermuseum.50megs.com/images/collecti on /commodore-amiga-500_small.jpg

Today?

Re:Amiga

[Frogbert]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the creater of altavistas babel fish.

Re:Amiga

[daniel1]

I like you too.

let it lie!

[polyp2000]

I was an Amiga fanatic for many many years; It is/was an amazing operating system. The way it handles multitasking was something else. It was with reluctancy that i bought my first PC with windows. I always hated windows there were so many things that AmigaOS did better simple things like formatting a disk or the way it handled screens. I've been using linux for many years now. Im glad to be using a decent operating system again.

I would love to see AmigaOS succeed in the marketplace again like it once did. But even this new release visually looks very poor and dated. In all honesty they should just open up the source instead of flogging a dead horse. AmigaOS will always live on as a hobbyist OS things like AROS WinUAE and whatever else will see to this. But I really dont think a proprietary OS stands a chance in this world any more. I really cant see Amiga succeeding with their wildest dreams using the closed business model.

Amiga OS still has a warm place in many peoples hearts but not this way. The kindest thing to do is open up the source to the community.

Dont get me wrong though, I wish them all the luck; prove me wrong please do. But id rather see it go the way BeOS did!

nick ...

Re:let it lie!

[Flamingcheeze]

I agree, polyp. I always look back at my Amiga days as some of the most satisfying computing in my life. I also recall my sadness when I had to retire the old girl in favor of the far-inferior Windows OS, simply because "that's what the world uses."

As I recall, a lot of the efficiency of the OS had to do with its shared architecture, which used several chips to do the work that Apple and PC computers did with the single CPU. I don't see how that kind of efficiency could translate into our modern architectures. (Although, with graphics and sound cards, there is a parallel... but Amiga had cool stuff like a sub-system for I/O.)

Anyway, I agree that we should let the once-mighty Amiga OS remain a great memory, instead of tarnishing its legend with clumsy-looking updates that will always lag behind as a closed-source model.

Re:let it lie!

[jbrandon]

The BeOS source was purchased by Palm; it's still closed.

Re:let it lie!

[amigabill]

>In all honesty they should just open up the source
>instead of flogging a dead horse.

You slashdot guys are always saying this, it's dead, jsut open source it. Why open source it? What are you open source guys actually going to do with it? Would you ever actually look at it or use it for anything? If not, then why go around with your record skipping on this phrase?? Open source it, open source it, open source it.... But there'
s never a reason why or description of how this would be useful or a good thing to do or would be worth doing to the current owners...

Please, an honest question... WHY, do you or anyone else here want it open sourced?? What would you use the source for? Do you plan to add any parts to Linux or BSD or any other OS project? Which ones? Why use pieces of what Slashdotters consider to be a dead OS in whatever project you're thinking about? Really, how does open sourcing it do any good to the people that have paid money to own it? Or to you, or to me, or to anyone?

Re:let it lie!

[polyp2000]

Amiga OS still has a community, Like i said in my comment I dont think that a new OS or an old one that has take god knows how many years to get a version upgrade, and "looks" dated before it is even released, is going to survive in todays market place. The competition is just too fierce. You are up against Microsoft after all. I will be the first to admit that AmigaOS was you guessed it, ... The OS. A great one at that.

The reason that I beleive that it would be a good thing to open source the operating system is that it would almost certainly give it a new lease of life. There are a lot of linux /bsd people working in open source that still have a fondness for the aging beast. By allowing the community many of which still love AmigaOS to take an active hand in continuing the development seems to me to be a much better idea. In reality after AmigaOS have taken so long to release an OS update, joe sixpack is going to take one look at those screenshots and see something not hugely a great deal better than the previous versions. It doesnt exactly instill confidence does it. How long is it going to be before the next version is released?

If AmigaOS were to open up the source I would imagine that, although there might be parts used for other projects etc. I would imagine that as a community we could develop the operating system further and bring it right up to date. Take a look at the AROS project if you dont beleive there are people with the time dedication and desire to have the operating system available. Amiga OS maybe dead or dying , however you look at it that does not however mean that there are ideas in the OS that are groundbreaking. I'd love to see any OS ; Linux / Win32 / MacOS, handle multitasking as well as AmigaOS did. To AmigaOS who own the rights and source code etc; they can turn things around. Its quite simple. You use a service model just like Red Hat and the other numerous Linux companies do. The other advantage is that by opening up the source you are inherently telling people well if AmigaINC go tits up your still going to be able to use, update and modify your OS because you have the source code. Thats a good thing for take-up and also a good thing for users.

In short there are many valid reasons to open source. I only touched on a couple of them. In my mind i'd like to see it happen not least because i'd like to see that cherished os blossom once again.

nick ...

Re:let it lie!

[T-Ranger]

I think he means die a gracefull death.

Re:Gone gold?

[lvdrproject]

No, 'gold' in the software world means that it's ready to be shipped. When a beta or something 'goes gold', it's reached its final production version and is ready to be sold to the masses.

Something along those lines, anyway.

WOW!

[Om242]

And you guys thought that Mac gaming was behind the times! Sheesh!

Re:WOW!

[DarkSarin]

Although to tell the truth its not too bad. I've seen much worse under linux (twm anybody).

The real problem is usability. I think it would be a nightmare.

Re:WOW!

[amix]

> The real problem is usability. I think it would be a nightmare.

Why would you think this ?

I use AmigaOS, Linux and WinXP.

AmigaOS has the best usability of them all.

If you drag&drop a desktop-shortcut on Linux (and Windows also I remember) to your text-editor the file-path where the link is pointing to gets inserted. Not so on Amiga. Amiga would put the contents of the text-file into your editor. And, honestly, when you drag&drop the representation of a text-file into your editor, what do you expect normally ? The text of the document or 'file://~/Documents/thisdoc.txt" ?

On AmigaOS most applications (all major and many smaller) as well as the desktop are interconnectable by a single scripting-language, that runs as a demon (it's a REXX interpreter). There is no higher usability than interconnected tasks/applications. At least this is how I experienced it.

When I download an archive on Linux and want to handle it with the mouse, this is what happens:

I open the download dir, which is symbolized on the desktop.
Then I take the file with the mouse and either double-click it (and wait until the arch-handler has started), select another dialog, tell it where to extract it to (and enter the path manually). After that I browse to the archive, read the README, check it out and then do whatever I want.
Or I drag it to anothter palce and have to select if I want to symlink, copy or move it.

On Amiga I double-click my downloads dir on the desktop. I select the file with the mouse and drag it to the symbol of the RAM-Disk. It immediatly gets extracted to the Ram-Disk. No disk-access, no clutter. I even do not need to erase it by hand, since all I do is to select a popup: 'Clean Ram-Disk'. This is no standard, it's a little five-liner I have written.

On the desktop, in the filemanager, in the editor, in every application, I am able to define menus, mouse-actions, toolbars the way I want. I can expand application's functionality.

Yes, like emacs or gimp. But much more easily. Since I do not need to learn a zillion languages. All I need to know as a user or programmer for this is ARexx.

Amiga is the most friendly OS to the user I have ever used. And I used MacOS (not X, though), Win3.1, Win9x, WinXP, Linux, BeOS.

Multimedia

[Moderation abuser]

For it's time it was *years* ahead of the competition for multimedia type work. Full gui built in, video, audio, games etc.

Re:Multimedia

[Seehund]

The original Amiga was, but this is all new hardware.

No, it's an all new (well, updated and ported to PPC) operating system we're talking about. There is no new Amiga.

But, what about the new hardware? Does it have capabilities as advanced when compared to PC hardware today? I doubt it.

The only motherboard that's sold under an "Amiga licence" today is basically a series of PC motherboards of ca 1999 standard, but with a PowerPC CPU. PC133 SDRAM, VIA 82C686B southbridge (think KT133 era), "almost-2x" AGP, 933 MHz G4 as the fastest option. All for a measly $800. No, it's really supposed to be *two* zeroes.

using really cool Atari ST programs

[Simonetta]

It may be a little off-topic, but I just discovered a seriously cool Atari ST program.
Atari ST is was a 'cousin' computer popular at the same time (about 15 years ago) as the original Amiga.
It is a powerful sys-ex voice editor for an obscure but magically powerful tone module music synthesizer that I found on Ebay for peanuts.
It only runs through an advanced emulator program that allows old but useful programs for the Atari ST to be run on modern PCs. It's the STeem emulator. Kudos to the people who got it to actually work and have been able to keep the Atari ST programs alive long after the platform has been forgotten.

Is there any powerful emulator that allows Amiga programs to run on modern PCs?

Re:using really cool Atari ST programs

[hattig]

Yes, WinUAE and Fellow are Amiga emulators for the PC (and Linux).

Or you can get everything legally from Cloanto Software for $60 or so, in the new Amiga Forever 6.0 software package that includes lots of software, the latest 68k OS version (3.9), and so on.

Re:using really cool Atari ST programs

[Stween]

If you're interested in Atari emulation, you might be interested in looking at Aranym (Atari running on any machine).

They include a Live CD that boots a Linux distro and automatically runs aranym, which I've yet to burn and test :)

Re:Confused, Perflexed, Flumoxxed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't know what Amiga is but according to this slashdot parody it has something to do with linux...

serious question...

[GooberToo]

...and this is not a troll.

But why would anyone waste their time on AmigaOS these days? Ya, it was way cool when Apple II's roamed the earth and whatnot....but why does anyone really care about it now?

Did I miss the boat? Help me understand why anyone cares about this, let alone why it qualifies as /. worthy? How many people even mess with that platform? I assume all three of you are happy. Seriously, anyone have any idea how many people still use Amigas? Hundreds? Thousands????? If it's not at least tens of thousands, I can't imagine this is really /. worthy.

Can someone help me understand why this platform is still getting development effort? Please!

Re:serious question...

[mdwh2]

Well it's not like they're rereleasing Workbench 1.3.

It's about as meaningful as saying "DOS was cool, but it's had its day" in response to a new version of Windows :/

I assume all three of you are happy.

You said this wasn't a troll?

If it's not at least tens of thousands, I can't imagine this is really /. worthy.

The number of remaining active users must be at least 1000s (judging by the number of "Amiga club" members, for example). I doubt it's 10s of 1,000s - but the number of people who aren't users, but are interested (such as myself) would be a lot higher, and this is surely the more relevant number.

It's not clear to me that say, BeOS (which gets front page Slashdot coverage), still has more active users than the Amiga. Occasionally new operating systems (eg, AtheOS, SkyOS) get mentioned on Slashdot, and I can't believe that they have more users too.

Can someone help me understand why this platform is still getting development effort?

Well, Hyperion are either mad, or they think there's money to be had. Amiga Inc got $65700 just by charging membership for the aforementioned Amiga club.

Re:serious question...

[tftp]

Well, Hyperion are either mad, or they think there's money to be had. Amiga Inc got $65700 just by charging membership for the aforementioned Amiga club.

Here you have it. The business model of Hyperion is now obvious - cater to retro crowd who likes to pay for old memories :-)

Seriously, though, this release (as well as the OS *and* the hardware) seems to be utterly useless because it does not solve any problem that would be solved by other, more efficient and more convenient, means. Aside from the "old memories" stuff, of course - collectors buy even worse things.

Re:serious question...

[mdwh2]

Seriously, though, this release (as well as the OS *and* the hardware) seems to be utterly useless because it does not solve any problem that would be solved by other, more efficient and more convenient, means.

I'm sorry, did someone switch our economic system from the capitalist system where companies produce based on what people want and are willing to pay for, to some communist style system where a central authority decides what it thinks are the most efficient and convenient ways for people to do things, when I wasn't looking? ;)

If you're worried that OS4 is redundant, then there's an awful lot of redundancy in the capitalist world. Why bother with more than one OS at all?

And I think you're jumping to conclusions by assuming that people are only interested out of pure nostalgia - judging from my time on Amiga forums, this doesn't seem to be the case. Even if the only reason someone uses it is because it's what they have already invested money in, and is what they are used to using, that's not nostalgia, and using it is more efficient and convenient for them.

I still do development on AmigaOS under WinUAE, but it's because I enjoy it, and prefer it in many ways to alternatives, not because I get nostalgic about it (if it was nostalgia, I'd be firing up AMOSPro, or better still, getting stuck into Spectrum BASIC..)

Re:serious question...

[Sloppy]

But why would anyone waste their time on AmigaOS these days?

Other platforms have pragmatic advantages, but AmigaOS still kicks ass when it comes to beauty and performance. (If you don't understand beauty or why it's important, I can't explain it to you. Just go back to sleep.)

As for performance, I think hardware advances have mostly made this unimportant, but there are some people who disagree, I guess.

If it's not at least tens of thousands, I can't imagine this is really /. worthy.

Do you really ever expect anyone to take you seriously again, the next time you say "this is not a troll"? Think about just how amazingly stupid and arrogant what you just said is.

Here, I'll just remind you. Everybody, GooberToo said:

If it's not at least tens of thousands, I can't imagine this is really /. worthy.

You ignorant, arrogant asshole.

Can someone help me understand why this platform is still getting development effort? Please!

Now that's a serious question. Amateur development wouldn't surprise me at all, but apparently someone thinks they're going to make some money on this, and that's baffling to me.

Re:serious question...

[amigabill]

>Help me understand why anyone cares about this, let
>alone why it qualifies as /. worthy?

While it may not matter to you, it is somewhat nerdy type news, and isn't that what Slashdot is all about? Personally I wish people would stop posting Amiga news items to Slashdot, as it's obviusly not welcome here, and we're obviously an outcast group of nerds looking for news if we are interested in it. The comments in response to any Amiga post make that abundantly clear.

Some people care or it wouldn't have been developed at all. The guys spending the development money would have chosen not to, if there were zero people interested. If you and other Slashdot/Linux users do not count yourselves as part of that group, well, apparently the developers don't seem to consider that to be a serious problem.

I don't like Linux because it's harder to get running than I'd like. I don't go around wondering why Linus and friends bother to continue wasting their time developing such a thing. It's what they want, it's what you want, and that's cool. Why are people that are interested in something different than you are scorned so?

Re:serious question...

[13Echo]

No. You're not unwelcome. I would *love* to get into the Amiga OS again, simply because I liked some aspects of the OS that I used 10 years ago. But seriously. It's not realistic today. It might be if I could run the OS on hardware that I already have in my home, but otherwise - it's not realistic.

Re:serious question...

[deimtee]

Oh wow, I still have Amos basic on the shelf!
I even bought the compiler.
Amos was flaky, but very fast.

Re:serious question...

[GooberToo]

You said this wasn't a troll?

It's called sarcasm. It means, I have a hard time picturing more than a very small number of people actually using this. Thusly, the rest of the paragraph, which you did not quote. Humor can be had without it being considered a troll.

Interesting. Thanks.

Re:serious question...

[GooberToo]

Not really. I think the "troll meter" is squarely pointing at you.

It doesn't exactly take many brain cells to understand why such a question was asked. In other words, pretty much everyone that reads /. already knows about Amigas and undying plight. Just the same, if only a thousand readers, out of millions, give a crap about the platform, one has to wonder why it's on /. This isn't rocket science Mr. Troll.

Reading the rest of your post, it's obvious that either you are a troll or an absolute moron. Either way, get a life and grow up.

Re:serious question...

[GooberToo]

That's a far response. Unlike a troll that did post, your comments are actually welcome. The fact that they made sense is all the better.

I guess in response, I can only say that I don't consider comparing it to Linux to be the same thing. Linux's plight was/is to offer an alternate, yet free, Unix implementation. AmigoOS? A gateway to the past? Seriously, I don't think comparing the two works very well. Right off the bat, I have a hard time imagining AmigaOS ever reaching any type of critical mass again. As a result, I have a hard time imagining it ever being anything more than a retro-niche OS.

Since you did bring the comparision of Linux into this mix, I'll move forward in the following statement. Linux has a future. Does AmigaOS? Not that I can see. From a generalized perspective, we already have:

Hobbiest & Technical users: Linux/Unix/BSD/Hurd/QNX
Simplistic users: Mac
Mainstream users: Win
Retro???: AmigaOS???

I can't imagine there being much longevity in such a niche. As a result, I guess my point was, those that already have a serious interest in the project, probably don't need /. to point them at the project.

Thanks for sharing your insight.

Re:serious question...

[GooberToo]

Opps...that was supposed to say, "that's a fair response".

Thanks again.

Re:serious question...

[GooberToo]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Just the same, does it make sense to use it today? Compared to low-cost modern technology, does it still justify its use today?

I hate to say it, but what has it done for me lately? ;)

Shows how much you lot know

[jerg_smiler]

Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.

Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. They realsed OS 3.9 a few years ago, this time it was actually them (OS 3.5 was written by somebody else). They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units (cellphones for those Americans).

Amiga OS 4.0 is designed to run on a new computer, called the AmigaOne. This is a new motherboard designed by the UK company Eyetech, to which you can attach your A1200 motherboard for running older programs natviely, should you want to. Yes, that's right - the A1200 motherboard becomes the AmigaOne's daughterboard.

The computer is based on the PPC architecture, I believe with G3 or G4 processors. There have been add-ons for the A1200 motherboard which add G3 processors for a while now, but these were expensive and pointless.

As for software and games, there are several developers still producing software and many excellent games too (a recent one which springs to mind is Nightlong, a very graphics heavy point-and-click adventure, like Broken Sword 3).
Many of these use the PPC CPUs available for the Amiga, and also many ofthe graphics cards too.

The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[Anonymous Coward]

'Amiga' OS3.5 and OS3.9 were BOTH done by Haage and Partner of Germany. OS4 is being done of Hyperion Entertainment of Belgium. Amiga Inc. haven't written a single line of code themselves. In fact, all OS4 has in common with the original Amiga is a brand name.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[portnux]

The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight

Kind of reminds me of that knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The one that keeps taunting the King even as his limbs are being hacked off. Yeah, Amiga won't die. :P Pity they didn't do something interesting 15 years ago when it might have mattered. I really liked my 2000. :(

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[mdwh2]

Well, how much Amiga Inc have had a hand in this, I don't know or care, but saying that OS4 has nothing in coming with the original Amiga other than the brand name is false.

It has backwards compatibility. There will be a reasonable level of source compatibility (ie, recompiling programs to be native). The OS appears to look and work in a similar enough fashion. IIRC, it may be possible to run this on some of those original Amigas.

If that's not enough for you, then fine, but I presume you agree that MacOS X has nothing in common with the original Mac, and Windows XP has nothing in common with the original Windows, other than the brand names.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[Seehund]

Wrong, on as good as every point.

Amiga Inc. (not "Amiga", that's a dead computer platform) have had nothing to do with developing AmigaOS 3.5/9. Thank Haage & Partner instead.

"AmigaOne" is not a new computer. It's a trademark owned and used by one distributor (Eyetech) to sell Mai Logic's Teron series motherboards. They've been trying to sell these for two years now (but the Teron CX model first appeared in 2001, later a.k.a. "AmigaOne SE").

"AmigaOne" once was the name of a project for a new Amiga, managed by Eyetech but designed by Escena (Eyetech does not design hardware). This is the motherboard you're talking about that was supposed to take your A1200 as an expansion card, not the "new" Terons. It failed to even reach functional prototyping stage.

The Amiga has been dead for a decade and nobody is planning to bring it back. Now the question is if AmigaOS will be killed off as well.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[mdwh2]

Uh, Apple was always done by Apple. Windows was always done by Microsoft.

You missed where I said "how much Amiga Inc have had a hand in this, I don't know or care". I disagree that OS4 not being made by the same company means that it has nothing in common with another product.

Do you think that exactly the same people worked at Apple and Microsoft during those times? And which same company did Linux?

The original Amiga was done by Commodore.

The original Amiga was *not* done by Commodore, but by Hi-Toro. By your logic, every Amiga after the A1000 had nothing to do with the original Amiga.

Amiga Inc. today are simply a bankrupt brandholder who do nothing but skim licence fees from the hardware and software they allow to be called 'Amiga'. So then yes, the new 'Amiga' has nothing to do with the real Amiga.

Even if your claims were true, your conclusion is a non-sequitor.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[mdwh2]

I think you're arguing about Amiga Inc, and I'm arguing about OS4.

I couldn't care less about Amiga Inc, and yes I agree they've done quite a lot of damage.

But that doesn't mean that OS4 isn't anything to do with the original AmigaOS, just because Amiga Inc aren't anything to do with Commodore. Anyway, OS4 is being done by Hyperion, so the anti-Amiga Inc stuff is irrelevant.

I'd say MorphOS and AROS have a lot of things in common with the original AmigaOS, but these clearly don't have even the trademarks or source code in common.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[gronnsak]

Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.

Yeah riiiight.

Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. They realsed OS 3.9 a few years ago, this time it was actually them (OS 3.5 was written by somebody else).

So was OS 3.9, Amiga Inc. hasn't released anything of value. Oh, and two incremental updates of an OS in 10 years is not continuing development.

They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units (cellphones for those Americans).

DE is based on TAO Intent which Amiga Inc. did not develop. DE doesn't even run on AmigaOS AFAIK.

Amiga OS 4.0 is designed to run on a new computer, called the AmigaOne. This is a new motherboard designed by the UK company Eyetech, to which you can attach your A1200 motherboard for running older programs natviely, should you want to. Yes, that's right - the A1200 motherboard becomes the AmigaOne's daughterboard.

All of this is false. MAI designed the board, *not* Eyetech. You can't attach your A1200 motherboard, that was an old scrapped design which
didn't even reach beta status. When the old design didn't work out they rebranded MAI Teron PPC boards AmigaOne and sold them instead.

The computer is based on the PPC architecture, I believe with G3 or G4 processors.

1999 called, it wants it's processors back.

There have been add-ons for the A1200 motherboard which add G3 processors for a while now,

These were launched ca. 1997 and were based off PPC 603 (604 for the A4000). I think you meant G2.

but these were expensive and pointless.

You don't say...

As for software and games, there are several developers still producing software and many excellent games too (a recent one which springs to mind is Nightlong, a very graphics heavy point-and-click adventure, like Broken Sword 3).

1998 called too, it wants it's game back.
http://www.trecision.com/videogames/index.h tml

Many of these use the PPC CPUs available for the Amiga, and also many ofthe graphics cards too.

Yep, the Permedia2/Voodoo3 coupled with a 604e just can't be beat when it comes to running the greatest games of 1998.

The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight.

But I've got a +4 dagger against zombies and I will defeat it.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[POds]

I think what the poster was trying to get as it that AmigaOS and its hardware isnt as bad as people have been making out. It's not the latest and greatest, but for heaven sakes, its a hobby OS. Although it is still used in certain industries, such as QLD public transport system and it other areas.

Everyone knows that AmigaOS wont over take linux or windows, at least not in the short term, but it can hold its own. It does have a user base, it does have updated hardware and software, and it does have a pretty good developer base.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[Fweeky]

Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.

Um, maybe not you but I'm sure it would surprise pretty much everyone else. The BSD world isn't small, it's just a lot less rabid ;)

Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. .. They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units.

With a handful of developers and next to no investment I'm not surprised it's been so long. As for mobiles, can you quote models and such?

Amiga OS 4.0 is designed to run on a new computer, called the AmigaOne. This is a new motherboard designed by the UK company Eyetech, to which you can attach your A1200 motherboard for running older programs natviely, should you want to. Yes, that's right - the A1200 motherboard becomes the AmigaOne's daughterboard.

Ugh, I think you just described the biggest hack in the whole of human existance. And I thought PPC accelerators were bad (although to be fair I did buy one of those ;)

The computer is based on the PPC architecture, I believe with G3 or G4 processors. There have been add-ons for the A1200 motherboard which add G3 processors for a while now, but these were expensive and pointless.

The original accelerators were based on what you'd probably call G2's, unless you're talking about some newer ones I'm unaware ever made it out of vapourland.

My A1200 has a 603e PPC which over the course of it's life mostly did RC5. A brief look at MorphOS impressed me quite a bit, but after how Amiga and H&P and such treated it, well, Amiga can bite me.

As for software and games, there are several developers still producing software and many excellent games too (a recent one which springs to mind is Nightlong, a very graphics heavy point-and-click adventure, like Broken Sword 3).

Wow, *several*! The independent developers on the IRC channels I hang out in probably outnumber the devteams of them all put together :o

Don't get me wrong; I love my Amiga - it helped make me who I am today (ok, so maybe I should hate it, but nm ;), and if I had a compelling use for it I'd quite happily bring it back to life. But, with three PC's running WinXP, Debian Linux and FreeBSD just in my room, well.. I only have so many monitor inputs and power outlets :)

Of course, there's always WinUAE...

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[kubrick]

They hold back the Amiga, cripple its hardware, and limit the options of its software.

They sound like a suitable successor to Commodore (well, the management side, anyway).

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[eclectro]

Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them.

Boy, that truly is a scary thought.

Re:Shows how much you lot know

[jerg_smiler]

OK, I was wrong about a lot of things - I haven't really been keeping up with the Amiga market for a few years. When I stopped taking that much interest, Eyetech were still shouting about this AmigaOne which you could attach to your A1200. I'd kept tabs every so often, but I didn't know this was scrapped.
I did know that Amiga DE is developed by TAO, I remember this from reading AmigaActive a few years ago (when I could get it!). I didn't know that Amiga Inc. was only started in 1999. Nightlong was released in 2000, just before OS 3.9. A more recent game is Earth 2041, which was released May 2001. There is still a very active games market for the Amiga (and they look like very good games too!), or at least there was two years ago.
Also, what's the point in producing this new hardware and OS if there's no-one around to buy it?
Surely this is good evidence for a market?

Re:Source Code Theft?

[hattig]

Anyone thinking of moderating the parent troll up please be aware that Hyperion have a good relationship with the FSF, have done plenty of work with GPLd software before and have always complied with it 100%.

In addition, their modifications to GCC are already submitted to the main branch and will be included in the next release candidate.

Hardly "GPL Infringement", more like making full use of a resource in a legal and honourable manner, much in the same way that Apple use GCC as well.

ram disk

[broothal]

It's true that Amiga once ruled the earth. But today, it has long been surpassed. Except for one thing. Back in the amiga days I mounted a piece of RAM as a disk, using it for temporary downloads etc. I have yet to see a ramdisk for win32 that works just as seemless.

Re:ram disk

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, how about:

http://www.superspeed.com/ramdisk.html

Re:ram disk

[coldmist]

Here is one I use.

I use it with my HTPC to cache a few files that my LCD driver wants to read 30 times a second, so instead of hitting the physical disk, I just set up a 32MB drive 'L', and have a perl script dump data to that.

It works great!

Gah

[talornin]

As many people hav already posted! For gods sake! Die! I loved the Amiga, I still have my old A4000 somewhere, but its been many years since I realised that Amiga is long dead. Maybe AmigaOS would stand a chanse if they made it Open source and gave it away/sold it cheap, possibly also if they made it run on x86, (or does it?) but who on earth will pay the rather stiff price for an AmigaOne motherboard these days? Other than extreme Amiga fanatics.. Stop beating this dead horse!!

To me

[Joe Tie.]

It's more an issue of potential. There's a large number of people who want to get away from windows, but bawk at either the price and undeservidly negitive reputation from the pre osx days of the mac. And who find linux a bit too geek oriented and would only use it if a lot of the choice (ie window managers) were removed from the equasion. Amiga still has some name recognition going for it, and with everything else combined and some good ports of popular open source software it might, just might, be a good consideration for that kind of user. At least if some setups come out at a pricerange more along the lines of an x86 setup than a mac.

Re:To me

[GooberToo]

First, let me say thanks for taking the time to respond. So, "thanks!"

So your argument is that you think AmigaOS has a future? Beyond that of mere geekdom and minimal hobbiest interest? Accordingly, in your opinion, it has a grand future, the general population is interested in hearing of its advances? Forgive me for placing words into your mouth. I'm just trying to follow the logic. Please feel free to correct me as needed.

Do you have any logic, beyond best wishes, to suppose that AmigaOS has any real future? What's the logic to support such a notion? Admittedly, I don't see such a grand vision in AmigaOS' future.

This is not to say that I have ill wishes for the project. I don't. I just have trouble seeing any real future for the project, beyond that of minimal hobbiest interest.

Re:NEW BUSINESS MODEL

[mdwh2]

Yeah, because obviously the number of people who would spend $50 on receiving a few news updates is a good indicator (as opposed to just a lower bound) of the number of people who would spend money to buy an operating system.

How come Eyetech, who developed and sell the hardware, haven't gone bust?

to moderate or to reply??? that is the question...

[3seas]

... answered by this post being made.

The Amiga OS has well earned its stigma of being in troubled waters. Even the company where the original creators came to create the AmigaOS had money problems that caused them to seel it to commodore, who went bankrupt and sold to ESCOM, who went bankrupt and it was sold to Gateway, who couldn't figure out what to do with it so that sold everything except the Amiga Patents to former Gateway marketeers, who sold a bunch of t-shirts and never delivered and were evicted from their building..... who has now stated they sold the AmigaOS to KMOS after in a lawsuit against them they owned it at a time they did not....

The scamming is deep and the troubled waters as well....

For the proprietary AmigaOS to make a comeback it will have to overcome the extreamly long running stigma of its troubled waters..... and since i8t didn'yt come easy or over nite, neither shall its removal of this stigma curse.

However, there is www.aros.org which is well along the way to cloning the AmigaOS 3.1 as FOSS software, where it is inherently without the need for those who have caused AmigaOS troubled waters..

I really hope this post is found to be informative/interesting as it the reality of the scope of AmigaOS history.

Would you buy a car or brand name that had such a questionable history of continuing at a consumer respectable level?

Companies which still use Amigas?

[BobWeiner]

Who is this release targetted towards? Are there still companies using Amigas for production quality work?

Re:AmigaOS

[POLAX]

Amiga? You mean like that old thing I used to play "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" the original computer game on?!? 15 years ago?!? Seriously - what's the deal with Amiga? Why is there even a post on slashdot about this? (Better yet why did I click the link?) Then again I've heard some rant that DOS was the best OS(?) ever...maybe it can get together with AmigaOS and OS/2 to form a sort of wash-up band that travels the world performing parlour tricks...

What Is The Purpose of Having Amigas Anymore?

[John_Booty]

When Amigas were in their heyday, they had a lot of stuff that nobody else had- a lightning fast graphics blitter chip, a modern OS, and video capability. There were quite a few areas where they were demonstrably and clearly lightyears (or Lightwaves ;-P) ahead of everybody else at the time.

Totally the opposite now, though. Other computers have had all that stuff for at least ten years. So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now? Is there anything that the AmigaOS does better than other OSs?

I'm not trolling; I just don't see the selling point to these things. More OS and hardware choices are always a Good Thing, and I'd love to see the rise of cheap PowerPC motherboards. But either I'm absolutely failing to comprehend the selling points of the new AmigaOS, or there simply aren't any. I would like somebody to prove me wrong and point some out, I really would!

Re:What Is The Purpose of Having Amigas Anymore?

[R3]

"So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now?"
I dunno, choice, maybe?
Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings?
As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.
In a car analogy, why would anybody want to drive anything but /*insert your favorite car here*/?

Re:What Is The Purpose of Having Amigas Anymore?

[John_Booty]

I dunno, choice, maybe? Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings? As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be choice - I'd love to see more choices on the market, as well as cheap PowerPC hardware, like I said. But it's also a marketplace reality that you need to do *something* better than others in order to stand out, and for the life of me I can't figure out what on Earth Amiga supposedly does better in 2004.

Windows - Market share, lots of apps, retail presense, game support Macs/OSX - Sleek and sexy, superior OS, killer apps for certain markets such as Final Cut Linux - Open source community, corporate support from IBM, etc AmigaOS - ???

I'm not saying that it shouldn't exist... I'm asking what's the appeal?

Get one here:

[imbezol]

EyeTech

Shame Eyetech is the monopoly hardware supplier

[SW6]

Because I had to issue this claim in the County Court against Eyetech when they shipped me a DOA board and were particularly reluctant to refund my money. I got my judgement against Eyetech with a cheque following shortly thereafter.

IMO, AOS 4.0 is dead if the only way to run it is to deal with that company. Perhaps others have had better experiences, but for obvious reasons, I'm unable to recommend them at all.

Re:Shame Eyetech is the monopoly hardware supplier

[downix]

Thankfully there is the Pegasos running MorphOS still out there.

Re:Shame Eyetech is the monopoly hardware supplier

[downix]

Then buy from dealers such as Computer City and Vesalia, who pick theirs up from bPlan directly.

As for my boss, she's in the other room wondering why I'm not getting the ice cream for her as I said I would and instead typing on Slashdot.

Amiga Forever v6

[Twinbee]

Not quite as newsworthy, but I thought it might be worth mentioning that Cloanto recently released the latest version of the 'Amiga Forever' package (version 6), priced at $60. In a nutshell, it emulates the 'classic' Amigas on standard PC hardware (particularly Windows, but also Mac OS X and GNU/Linux), and also provides the latest Amiga OS3.9 software.

For those who are at all interested in the Amiga, it's well worth a look:
http://www.amigaforever.com
http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1082056810&ca tegory=news&start=1&24

In other news...

[Chordonblue]

Vanilla Ice's Greatest Hits should be on the shelves shortly. Man, I've been waiting for that one!

Ice, Ice, Baby!

Re:In other news...

[Lars T.]

Too late.

Mac-on-Linux-on-Mac

[brion]

Not at the moment that I know of, but MoL is apparently being ported to Mac OS X. (This comes up on the mailing list from time to time.)

Re:Mac-on-Linux-on-Mac

[crackshoe]

I've run Mac-on-linux on top of OS X, because it runs hella better than classic mode. its still got a few warts, but its still great.

Re:NEW BUSINESS MODEL

[mdwh2]

No idea - 1500-2000 is a reasonable guess, I'd agree. Certainly more than enough that it's worthwhile sending to the duplicators;) Whether it's worthwhile to have spent all this time developing it is another matter.

It would be interesting to know how many AmigaOnes have already been sold, or how many Pegasoses running MorphOS have been sold, as that would give us some idea. At least, Genesi have yet to go bust, though it would be interesting to know whether they are making or losing money on their platform.

stop and think for a second...

[amigan940]

This is not a troll. Feel free to mod me down if you wish, but I feel my Amiga Inferiority Complex kicking in.

When I see people say that nobody uses the Amiga and that it's way behind it's times, I cringe. What if I made the same argument about Linux? (once again, this is not a troll; I use Linux every day, and think it is a fine OS). Linux doesn't have as many users as Windows. Linux doesn't have graphics in the kernel, where, IMHO, they belong. Linux doesn't have a dynamic ram disk like the Amiga did. Linux doesn't (usually) allow you to simply flip the switch when you feel like powering down. I realize the Amiga also has some disadvantages compared to any modern UNIX, such as memory protection. Each platform has it's weaknesses and strengths.
Also, when I see posts that say Amiga/Hyperion should open sourcc AmigaOS, my blood really starts to boil. The Amiga/Hyperion/Commodore developers have done alot of work over the years, and for them to simply release all their code at once seems illogical at best. OTOH, Linux/BSD/<favorite OSS project here> started out as an OSS project, and was built up as an OSS project.
--Just a proud A2000 owner's views

Amiga

[daniel1]

Too poor my Amiga 500 crashed at the try for updating to newer AmigaOS version.

Seehund, you troll you

[csirac]

Seehund,

I know you don't like the "exclusive hardware" concept and that is fair enough, but you've told a few lies in this post that counts as going so far as trolling.

1. Only Eyetech have been granted such a license
Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license. It's a support and anti-piracy measure; if you don't like that, then fine. Hyperion/Amiga, Inc. have stated repeatedly that there is no reason why a 3rd party PPC mfg. cannot apply for an OEM AmigaOS4 license. Some have said that piracy killed the Amiga (I at least think it contributed significantly), do you not think a small developer like Hyperion can justly ask for some restrictions on the use of their software which they can only hope in their wildest dreams to at least break even on non-labour costs?

2. and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE",
The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.

3. "AmigaOne PX"
There is no such thing, perhaps you mean the AmigaOne XE, a G4 PPC based motherboard that sells for $829 USD at the American store I just linked?

This is a lot cheaper than the $3,900 quoted on mai's Teron CX page, isn't it? How do you get "60% more" out of that! An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!

4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public

5. Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.

Yeah, right. You know very well the complicated politics behind the Pegasos support. You know very well that Bill Buck (Genesi/Thendic "relations") is not the easiest person in the world to do business with, especially when he doesn't like the idea of going to effort to license an OS on his own platform that competes with his own baby?

And about the macs, that IS debatable, but I think you have over-simplified the situation there too.

Re:Seehund, you troll you

[Seehund]

Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license.

Which, if it were true, would serve as yet another excellent illustration of how retarded the compulsory licensing idea is. But it's not true. There's been one more (w00t!) interested distributor. Bigger, better, cheaper, more competent than Eyetech. They suddenly stopped getting replies from AInc. Ask "T_Bone" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

It's a support and anti-piracy measure ...

Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "support" excuses for a compulsory hardware licensing/bundling/dongling scheme are pure nonsense.

The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.

Yes, it's discontinued, as I said. Did you have an objection to something here?

"AmigaOne PX"

Sorry, that was a typo. Not a lie. Yes OF COURSE I meant "XE".

An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!

No. Perpetuating that ridiculous claim used to be the job of Eyetech, but not even they are trying to make people believe this any longer. I suggest you don't start doing it instead.

A Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" is 80% cheaper than a complete evaluation/developer's kit with participation in Mai's developer program, and that includes a Teron motherboard, which is what you linked to.

If you don't plan on designing hardware applications using Mai Logic chips, then a Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" ($800) is 60% more expensive than a Teron motherboard sold normally ($500).

4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public

Yes, the Teron Mini/"Micro A1" (which is not targeted exclusively at any embedded market more than any other mini-ITX motherboard) is not available to the public. Duh - It's not yet in production, and I haven't heard from Mai that the design is even finalised yet.

5. No need to confirm my arguments with more examples, it's already been done. :) Yes, one hardware vendor would like to see Amiga Inc dead and they already have an OS of their own. Most hardware vendors don't give a $h1t about Amiga Inc (if anybody would know who they are), and AInc's licence "offer" would only be laughed at.

Thus, to get an increasing hardware base for AmigaOS, the compulsory nature of the licencing scheme must be taken out behind the barn and shot.

AmigaOS must be made for and SOLD for the hardware that people want or already own, regardless of whether the vendors of that hardware are interested in playing "Amiga". If someone would like to sell AmigaOS bundled with hardware, sure, sell licences for that, but don't make this the only way AmigaOS can be sold, and the only way there could be more hardware for AmigaOS.

As it is today, only a subset of the pathetic and decreasing current AmigaOS userbase would become AmigaOS4 users/customers. If this indeed is the plan, the whole project would be pointless.

Re:Seehund, you troll you

[csirac]

Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "support" excuses for a compulsory hardware licensing/bundling/dongling scheme are pure nonsense.

And I would tend to agree with you. But you really seem to think AInc or Hyperion are secretly gaining from forcing a dongle-ROM requirement on motherboards, in some way other than an anti-piracy attempt!! How on earth is the dongle-ROM thing anything BUT an anti-piracy measure?

So it is this basic fact, that I think we disagree. You think they have something to gain other than ant-piracy with the dongle-ROM, and you think whatever gain that is, is being made in bad faith. Who exactly is the one that would suddenly stop making the "big bucks" other than Eyetech, who has no say over the donglised AmigaOS issue, and is certainly not the only possible exclusive teron distributor for the OEM licensing program?!

You also make Eyetech out to be some evil, bad, incompetent deceptive company, but you forget all the effort that went into the original AmigaOne that was going to be entirely made from a design from one of the Escena guys? Eyetech aren't entirely the oppurtunistic vultures you make them out to be. How much money do you think they lost in that design? When the Teron came out with the Articia chipset, THEY were the ones who took the initiative to try and go PPC only in the first place; and THEY were the ones who were able to bite the bullet, write off all the expenses incurred with the escena board, and change track to use the Teron. Do you think Eyetech has had ZERO impact on the fact we now have a new AmigaOS?

I probably sound like a fan-boy here (I'm not, I have yet to buy an A1), but I think you give Eyetech too little credit.

No. Perpetuating that ridiculous claim used to be the job of Eyetech, but not even they are trying to make people believe this any longer. I suggest you don't start doing it instead.

You did not provide a reference, and I could not find ANY sources of a cheaper Teron CX board on Google or Froogle. In fact, all I found were mentions of "hey the AmigaONE works out cheaper than a CX!". But I did find one thread on Amiga.org that mentioned that terrasoft solutions briefly advised via email that they were selling a board for $500, but it wasn't a CX and the price was never confirmed? I can't find any Teron products on their page. Can you point me to somewhere where I can buy a Teron CX for $500?

- Paul

Re:Seehund, you troll you

[csirac]

Thus, to get an increasing hardware base for AmigaOS, the compulsory nature of the licencing scheme must be taken out behind the barn and shot.

I really have to question your logic here. The only way sales would increase significantly, after "shooting" the OEM licensing plan, would be if there was a large existing target platform that people could magically purchase AmigaOS4 for and run on computers they did not buy exclusivley to run AmigaOS4.

We both know that due to extreme politics, arrogance, and shady business practice on both the red/blue sides that the Pegasos is simply not an option. So the only other big PPC platform that has existing users that you could be thinking of is Apple PPC hardware.

And I'm not so sure that would be as straight-forward as you seem to imply. Perhaps if AmigaOS selected just one model of Mac, and tried to just support that alone?....

- Paul

Great. Then what?

[keeboo]

Ok, nice.
But what are are we going to do with that?
Don't take me wrong, I do belive this Amiga OS 4 is technically fine etc. Myself, few years ago, I was a enthusiastic developer of Amiga OS apps. God knows how much I loved that platform and its OS.

But now... C'mon, I'm running Un*x applications (Linux OS) and I don't want to give up on what I have currently.
Who's gonna develop apps for that Amiga OS 4? -- I'm talking about real apps (GIMP, OpenOffice, etc alike). Or are we simply going to recompile them using ixemul.library (Posix layer) with things like gtk.library and qt.library? It would be pointless then.
Sorry, it hurts me to say too, but Amiga OS nowadays feels like a 32-bit CP/M arriving in 1990. -- Interesting but pointless.

If someone comes with some _decent_ GPL Linux kernel replacement (gosh, Linux kernel feels like a deformed child who just happens to do its work well now)... THEN you would get a friend.

Please guys... Let Amiga die with some dignity.

Re:Great. Then what?

[eclectro]

Please guys... Let Amiga die with some dignity

Well, it did die with dignity.

But there are those that can't leave the dead alone.

Re:AmigaOS

[Ilgaz]

Its because while you were playing "teenage mutant ninja turtles", we were SVideo editing on Amiga 4000+video toaster+targa ;)

Not entirely correct...

[Skuld-Chan]

While it is true a good number of games programmed the hardware directly (mainly because commodore documented it quite well for this purpose) not all do.

Good example of this is Quake and Quake 2 on AmigaDOS - both use standard libs:

Re:Confused, Perflexed, Flumoxxed

[13Echo]

No. It's an SUV that was made by Isuzu. Oh wait. That's "Amigo".

To all you unbelievers out there

[nihilistcanada]

The Amiga is not dead. It is probably pining for the Fjords

Amiga Never Died

[BrianHoskins]

I am interested to read the comments of many "Amiga Outsiders" who claim the Amiga Platform to be a dead ship, and that we should let her lie. This is my first time visiting here and it is interesting to read comments from people outside of the Amiga Community.

I can certainly see where comments like these come from. Afterall, The Amiga certainly hasn't been in everyone's face these last 10 years has it? The truth is, 10 years ago the Amiga and it's fantastic Operating System was the bee's knees. It was clearly the BEST computing solution out there and had massive opportunities for success. Unfortunately, due to a very long story which I wont properly go into here, Commodore messed up big time.
In the cruel business world, it doesn't matter how good your product is. It doesn't matter what your solution can do that others cannot. It doesn't matter that yours is the BEST product. Infact, NONE of these things matter a dime, without that magical term: "Marketing".
The Amiga as a platform was marketed all wrong. As good as the Amiga was at gameing, few people realised that the Amiga was actually BETTER at creativity. It's Operating System was doing things 10 years ago that the likes of Windows is only just recently catching up to. None of these things were marketed, and it's clear to see how a true business man like Bill Gates managed to steal the desktop dominance with a worse product, right under our noses!!!

Since Commodore, the Amiga has had worse, not better luck. It's subsequent owners made promises that never came, and time has dragged on to the point where everyone has forgotten about our computing platform, and to remember it now brings out rather nostalgic memories - and THAT is where the whole "Amiga has been dead for a decade" feeling comes from.

For me, a person who never left the Amiga Platform after Commodore went down, the Amiga has never died. 10 years ago it was alive and well, and 10 years later it is still alive and well - in it's own limited way.
The Amiga has never stopped developing. It has been dragged into the new decade kicking and screaming by the efforts of the Amiga Community and the amazing innovation of Amiga Developers - my Amiga1200 can do things today that the original designers never DREAMED of!!!

The Amiga Operating System has too made some progress over the years. After 3.0 (the last release by Commodore) it went to 3.1 with improved features, and has since moved all the way to 3.9. So to now take it to OS4.0 is not a new thing at all, it's a step upward from the developments already made in OS3.9. You have to understand that the Amiga has never stopped fighting on, it has never stopped developing. In the background (from your point of view) things have continued and the Amiga has developed on regardless.
My Amiga 1200 has 256MB RAM, a dual processor accelerator board (68K and PPC), A 6-slot PCI expansion board with PCI Graphics, Sound, Ethernet and TV Cards, it has 6 USB2.0 ports, 80GB of HD space, a CDRW... pretty much it has most of the things that modern PC and MAC users enjoy!!!

AmigaOS4.0 is for me an exciting development because it is the first time that the Operating System has been moved to a new CPU. The Amiga Operating System has been re-written for PPC, and what that means is we can upgrade our hardware even further. The new Amiga machines, while not as revolutionary as the originals were, DO support every modern computer advance that PC user enjoy. Fast, modern processors, fast IDE bus, massive scope for RAM expansions... that sort of thing.

So you see, things have never really stood still at all, we've made sure of that!!!

Check out a screen grab of my current Amiga Desktop (which is OS3.9) and see what you think.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~amigaos/AmigaOS3 .9 _April2004.png

Best regards to everyone,

Brian

Re:Why I use my Amigas

[eclectro]

But yet you post as an Anonymous Coward???

Re:AmigaOS

[Bunji X]

...and the rest of us, still in our teens back in the late 80's and early 90's also used it for..

Coding: Hisoft Devpac Assembler, Aztec C, SAS/C, Storm C, Hisoft C, Hisoft pascal, AMOS and Microsoft Amiga Basic(!).

Creating art/gfx: Digital Creation's Brilliance, Deluxe paint, Real 3D, Imagine 3D and Lightwave.

Creating Music: Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Startrekker, Protracker, MED, OctaMED, Bars and Pipes, Super Jam, etc.

Desktop Publishing: Pagestream, Professional page.

Text editing / Word processing: Cygnus ED, Wordsworth, Final writer and Pro Write.

At that time most of the applications mentioned (with the the OS/HW combo) were much superior to anything you could find on "professional" PCs and Macs at the time, in some ways some of them still are. But sadly, most of the applications mentioned are now dead or only available for Windows/Linux/Mac.

Funny thing is, as far I can remeber it was not superior or cheap PC hardware that killed Amiga. It was not even the mistreatment it was subjected to by Commodore. It was iD software's "Doom" that put the final nail in the coffin. As no acceptable Doom clone appered for the Amiga in reasonable time, every kid around begged their parents to buy PCs instead of Amigas, which in turn led to the decline of the mass market for Amiga hardware and following that, the loss of most software houses.

Re:Your biased logic is messed

[3seas]

the "amiga curse" is seeded in money and control mentality, and in Intellectual Property issues where the IP of Amiga is so widely spread in ownership that its simply not possible to open source it..

AROS is a clean FOSS development/production intended to be portable. Where the AOS3.1 compatability will be reached and the next branch of development taken up that will go in a direction that the FOSS developers move it, perhaps with a little incentive from bounty paying contributors/sponsors.

Really no different than how FOSS developemnt happens in Linux kernel development trees.

What AROS doesn't have that the Amiga OS has, are those individuals that play the IP game and ownership and applied constraints for money and control, etc...the curse creators and sustainer...
(Amithlon is a very good example of such control and the damage it does --- for the uninformed, Amithlon was an commercial Amiga emulation engine that ran the official AmigaOS on x86 hardware --- it was shot down after proving itself popular, by a bunch of intentional manipulation of legal IP crap.. the curse performed by the curse casters..)

Anyone can contribute to AROS openly, or anonymously. And I suspect that as AROS continues to gain support that even some of the original AmigaOS developers might contribute a little, if they are legally allowed to. But then there are things like Rebol from Carl Sasshenrath (sp?) who will likely port Rebol to AROS should AROS gain enough of a following to warrant it.

AROS and AmigaOS are very different when it comes to source code, what can be done with it and who has control or ownership over it.

AROS is the consumer/developer choice result of constant failure of the commercial proprietary life of AmigaOS.

Great I have been waiting for AmigaOS 4.0

[Orion Blastar]

Now I just need that PPC card, IDE hard drive interface, Ethernet adapter, etc for my Amiga 500 to finally run it. ;)

I cannot wait until the Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, GNUCash, Evolution, Apache, and other open source projects are converted to run on AmigaOS 4.0, yeah! :D

Finally, maybe now us Amiga users can start to get more respect than the OS/2, Plan9, DR-DOS, CP/M, A/UX, Desqview, Xenix, OS9 (Not MacOS 9, that 6809 based OS that the Radio Shack Coco series ran), and GEM users have gotten. >:)

Of course you know that AmigaOne users will use Yellow Dog Linux with that Mac on Linux program to run Macintosh apps. Hee hee! :) Unless someone wants to port that to AmigaOS 4.0?

Hmmm, I wonder what the security of AmigaOS 4.0 is like? I want to have an AmigaOS 4.0 based web server and see if the Script-Kiddies can break into it?

Really if Amiga was serious about gaining marketshare and making money, they would have AmigaOS 4.0 supporting WINTEL hardware and sell it at Wal-Mart next to Lindows and Sun JavaOS workstations. :) Those Eyetech machines are way too costly. It may work for Apple to sell high priced machines, but not Amiga/Eyetech. Not unless they have or get the application base that MacOS OSX has.

Want to know a secret? I see dead OSes! ;)

Re:Great I have been waiting for AmigaOS 4.0

[jasonjacks0n]

Finally, maybe now us Amiga users can start to get more respect than the OS/2, Plan9, DR-DOS, CP/M, A/UX, Desqview, Xenix, OS9 (Not MacOS 9, that 6809 based OS that the Radio Shack Coco series ran), and GEM users have gotten. >:)

You left out GEOS, you insensitive clod! ;-)

Actually, I still rather miss DR-DOS 6 (and its successor, Novell-DOS 7), with DESQview or DESQview/X running on top. And XTGold for file management, of course. =)

Re:Still no memory protection?

[gho]

Who cares, it still crashed less than windows with the bonus of less overhead.

Jesus Christ! How YOU'VE changed?

[vortexau]

> I used to program professionally on the Amiga. I was part of the original Video Toaster team at Newtek
> back in the day. For god's sake just die!!
Hmmm! So, how long ago did you loose YOUR cool?
(NB- Following the acquition of a NewTek DigiView Gold, I "became" a Cool friend of NewTek! The DigiView was a 21-Bit colour video grabber marketed pre-'90s that generated income to finance the development of the VideoToaster.)
.

Re:Jesus Christ! How YOU'VE changed?

[Nerd4News]

(NB- Following the acquition of a NewTek DigiView Gold, I "became" a Cool friend of NewTek! The DigiView was a 21-Bit colour video grabber marketed pre-'90s that generated income to finance the development of the VideoToaster.)

So you were the other one! I remember answering their questionaire and sending it in. Got a few trinkets back as I remember. Never heard from them again.

They wanted a lot of money for the little motorized gizmo that turned the color wheel so I built one myself from an RC plane servo. Worked great. Still have all that stuff downstairs somewhere along with an A2000 & A3000. Alas, the only reason I have to fire them up any more is to play A-10 Tank Killer which still is a hell of a lot more fun than the PC versions.

Who uses Amigas? ANYONE who wants . . .

[vortexau]

> Serious question from someone for whom Amigas were games machines as a kid.
Well since I was in my thirties, I was running applications rather than games.

> Who uses amigas nowadays? . . . Is it kick-ass for music or something?
I do. Still do graphic manipulation with TVPaint, and ImageFX, along with wordprocessing etc. Up until December 2003 I accessed /. via my A2000/060 system running OS3.5!
It was a "kick-ass" music machine . . . ever heard of Mods, etc? It can still be used to create (and run) a competition-winning Party-Demo!

> Is AmigaOS designed for modern hardware, . . .
Yes! Firstly, the AmigaOne G4 motherboard.
large pic

> . . . can you do everything with it that you can with other systems?
ANYTHING that Apps & Hardware allows, or that YOU don't get to do if you've already been arrested.
.

serious question..? Without ANY research? Come on!

[vortexau]

> But why would anyone waste their time on AmigaOS these days? Ya, it was way cool when Apple II's roamed the earth and whatnot....but why does anyone really care about it now?
Well, let ME ask - "why would anyone waste their time on" Linux? Please - Apple IIs? Amiga had Double-sided 3.5" floppies & 12-Bit colour when ATs had 5.25" floppies & Macs were B&W!
ANYONE could "care about it" who wants a speedy - responsive system.

> How many people even mess with that platform?
Approx. one thousand motherboards were purchased prior to AmigaOS4.0 availability; when Debian-PPC was the majority OS distro!

> Can someone help me understand why this platform is still getting development effort?
Psst! I'll let YOU into a SECRET! What about a marketplace -- say, the Far East -- where the MS control-factor is unwelcome? :)
.

Re:AmigaOS

[cerebis]

Well as someone that was a diehard Amiga user that crafted many a reply to the Amiga haters back in the heyday of news groups, I think you may be overstating it a little. When it came to bitmap graphics, video editing, and 3D rendering Amigas really did have some topnotch software. However usually the winning angle wasn't that it was leaps and bounds better than any other platform's offerings, it was the value for money. Even these flagship applications didn't really start commanding the price of PC equivalents until the advent of Newtek's Video Toaster suite which of course came with a rather enormous peice of hardware which later became regarded as the era's most sophisticated dongle by the many that wanted Lightwave and not the rest. Amiga software was always weakest in business applications such as word processors, spreadsheets and the like. Sure there were some decent offerings in the end but they didn't quite make the grade until quite late in the Amiga lifespan. Btw you left off Scala, Vista Pro, and of course Directory Opus the incredible file manager/do all In my opinion on the PC we've only recently recovered the level of functionality found in Directory Opus and that is by means of multiple interoperating apps. Although no where near the easily accessible customising potential.

Re:AmigaOS

[cerebis]

Damn html setting stripped all my paragraph breaks.

Well as someone that was a diehard Amiga user that crafted many a reply to the Amiga haters back in the heyday of news groups, I think you may be overstating it a little.

When it came to bitmap graphics, video editing, and 3D rendering Amigas really did have some topnotch software. However usually the winning angle wasn't that it was leaps and bounds better than any other platform's offerings, it was the value for money.

Even these flagship applications didn't really start commanding the price of PC equivalents until the advent of Newtek's Video Toaster suite which of course came with a rather enormous peice of hardware which later became regarded as the era's most sophisticated dongle by the many that wanted Lightwave and not the rest.

Amiga software was always weakest in business applications such as word processors, spreadsheets and the like. Sure there were some decent offerings in the end but they didn't quite make the grade until quite late in the Amiga lifespan.

Btw you left off Scala, Vista Pro, and of course Directory Opus the incredible file manager/do all In my opinion on the PC we've only recently recovered the level of functionality found in Directory Opus and that is by means of multiple interoperating apps. Although no where near the easily accessible customising potential.

Re:AmigaOS

[POLAX]

Hmmm... funny that.... I hated DOOM with a passion when it came out...still have a dislike for 3D shooters (Duke Nuk'em being the exception and the Rainbow Six series not being considered "3D Shooters" on the grounds that it's not mindless nonsense).

Pegs and Macs

[Seehund]

The reason to why the Pegasos is not an option today is the existence of the licensing/bundling/dongling requirement. You don't have to be best buddies or business partners with a hardware vendor to sell your software to be used with their hardware.

Same thing with Macs, or whatever else you could think of.

To write drivers for hardware, you need no more "cooperation" from hardware vendors than availability of documentation/specs. These don't tend to magically appear any easier if you require that the hardware vendor buys a licence to sell your OS, in order to make it worth even discussing a port in the first place. And if you don't have docs directly from the maker, see if Linux, *BSD, Darwin or another FOSS OS has drivers.

Yes, of course it would only be feasible to (officially) support a limited number of Macs, just like with any other type of hardware. The point here is that an arbitrarily created and unnecessary licence situation has taken precedence over technical and financial feasibility issues. No licence, no AmigaOS for the hardware, no matter how little technical effort that would be required.

Also keep in mind that if AmigaOS was available for shrinkwrapped sales, it wouldn't even have to be Hyperion/AInc that did the development. As both a Linux and AmigaOS user, I'm quite used to depend on third party drivers. AmigaOS installations made compatible with new hardware this way would naturally not have to be officially supported by AInc/Hyperion, or published on their hardware compatibility list. And it still wouldn't exclude the existence of optional complete and bundled systems, licensed and officially supported, for those who would be interested in such an option.

An Amiga for us Windows / Linux users...

[Jugalator]

I prefer WinUAE for all my Amiga needs. :-)

Works perfectly fine with lots of games and even demos functional to 100%. It's still in development (last update just two months ago) and contains numerous features to extend the OS with, although it still feels and functions probably more like the Amiga you came to know than this "AmigaOS 4.0". You can even choose which ROM to use (which aren't freely available, but sold by the old Amiga software company Cloanto) to make it anything from an Amiga 500 with Kickstart 1.3 to an Amiga 1200 with AGA and Kickstart 3.0!

Best of all, the emulator itself is free, fast (or emulates the speed an Amiga would have if you wish), and can be run like a regular program on your existing partition where floppy disks are just simple Megabyte-sized image files.

WinUAE is based on UAE which is open source software, with downloadable binaries for Linux.

An OS of interest might be AROS with a goal to be a full-blown AmigaOS 3.x compatible OS. However, I have a feeling you'll have less problems with the emulator.

Re:An Amiga for us Windows / Linux users...

[Jugalator]

Some further investigation unveiled this page which seems to be a good information source for the experimental version of UAE that will (does?) give Linux and MacOS X users all the goodies from WinUAE that have been added.

Why do we need Linux apps on the Amiga?

[AlienRelics]

I keep seeing people implying that a new Amiga is useless without Linux apps.

ImageFX is there for graphics, and has been there for years. It is supported and updated.
http://www.novadesign.com

Pagestream is there for DTP and has been in constant development since Amigas were new.
http://www.grasshopperllc.com/

There are several programs for simple word processing, multimedia presentations, database, spreadsheets, etc. and more etc.

Open source Linux apps have been ported to the Amiga before. But we really don't -need- them.

Re:Can someone please explain...

[chegosaurus]

> There may be a more irrelevant and useless project in the world

There are about 79,000 of them on Sourceforge. (Conservative estimate.)

you know, why not?

[chegosaurus]

I used to love the Amiga. I still have two (A1200 and A4000.) Sometimes I use them, primarily to run Bars and Pipes, and I'm always amazed at how speedy and pleasant they are to use. But, I let it go as a serious computing platform a long time ago.

Like most people here, I originally saw this release as pointless - who would use such a thing when they can use a Unix derivative or a Mac? What a silly OS, with no applications. Then I got round to thinking what I use my computers for.

I run Solaris on my desktop and Linux on my laptop, and all I do with them is web browsing, mail, a bit of coding (mostly web stuff), some graphics stuff, and then just general tinkering. I think the same goes for a lot of other people here.

If I could get a nice stable port of GCC, GIMP, Apache, PHP, an nice browser and a decent mail client, then I could very happily use an Amiga, and I'd have a whole new OS to play with. So why not?

Make a quiet, decent looking off-the-shelf machine running this OS, sell it for a fair price and I for one might be interested.