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Ars Technica Reviews AmigaOS 4.0
Amiga Lover writes "While tales of the troubles behind the Amiga's ownership abound over the last 10 years, work has been going on in the background for newer releases of the operating system that powered some of the most desirable computers from the 1980s. You can now buy brand new Amiga motherboards, and the operating system is very close to a final release. Jeremy Reimer from arstechnica reviews the current developer preview of AmigaOS 4.0, going over this new small and fast OS in thorough arstechnica style."
Does it have true multitasking and memory protection? It surely looks like a great modern OS, but is it more than just a toy?
I'm not trolling here, but Linux is useful. What are the real world modern uses for an Amiga machine? I recall they were used a lot on TV stations for titeling, but that was a while ago.
I always respected the Amiga a lot, and i still think it should have done better than it did, specially considering how advanced was in it's time. But other than the geek factor, what's the big deal over a new AmigaOS?
Running the OS and all its apps completely in memory provides a very different user experience than one is used to from modern operating systems. Switching applications is instantaneous, as is switching screens (providing you are running separate screens at the same monitor resolution, otherwise you have to wait for your monitor to resync).
Scrolling is about as fast as on my 2.4GHz P4 PC. While the PC clearly blows away the AmigaOne on pure CPU performance (for example, unarchiving files, or ripping to MP3), for general use they "feel" about the same. The A1 feels much faster than my 733MHz Pentium 3 running XP, and makes my poor 500MHz G3 iBook running OS X feel like a pig stuck in molasses.
The author obviously never tried RiscOS : on my 33MHz RiscPC (bought in Dec94), there's still nothing that can match its responsiveness... except a 202MHz Strong-ARM RiscPC.
You just don't have time to even think about taking an espresso when you double-click a directory folder.
But yes, that's right : RiSCOS is cooperatively multitasking, hence the quick interaction.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
But this isn't what the Amiga was.
The Amiga was a great games machine, with cool custom chips taking the load off the generally-not-too-great CPU, a highly consistent architecture, and an adequate, quirky OS which was good where it mattered for the applications it was used for.
Custom hardware was not something that was seen in commodity PCs at the time. Neither were good quality graphics and sound. It wasn't a better machine. In many ways it was inferior. It was a very different machine, and that's why it suceeded where it did.
AmigaOS 4.0 is simply another OS. Perhaps it's a very nice OS. BeOS was as well. But a nice OS doesn't make it better.
dude, did anyone else spend hours using ray-tracing programs? well, actually, you used the program for about 5 minutes, and then waited about 40, and then used it for another 5, and then waited 40...
ah, the 1980s!
m.
It always amazes me to think that
1) The Amiga, though marketed as a gaming machine or play-with-graphics machine, had an operating system so capable and Unix-like
and
2) That business never realized the huge potential of a multitasking, windowing, command-line integrated OS to run spreadsheets and wordprocessors on instead of the clunky program launcher that was MS-DOS.
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
Well, it's very interesting about how the Amiga has managed to continue on in the back waters of computing for the last few years. However, it's not the only one!
Thos of you who remember the Sinclair QL (ie. people such as Linus Torvalds and some of the early AmigaDOS authors who worked at Metacomco) might like to know that some people are continuing the development of both the hardware and the operating system..
eg. Q40 and their latest Q60 motherboard designed to fit in a PC case.
What's old is new again!
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
The following line from the article caught my eye:
"Wireless PCI cards using the Prism chipset are supported thanks to an OS4 driver ported over from Linux."
If they did a direct port of the code, surely that would be a GPL violation? The Linux driver would be under the GPL and therefore they would be forced to either take it out again or license OS4 as GPL.
Of course if they just used the Linux driver to reverse-engineer the workings of a Prism card, that would be acceptable - but the article sounds like that wasn't the case.
I'm assuming there must be some point I've missed, so would anybody more knowledgeable about Amigas be able to set the record straight?
Donate free food here
Here here.
I have an old G3 powerbook that I would love to see run something other than OS9. LinuxPPC/Debian won't install as the host OS; after much hacking the best I've got is the boot-from-OS9 option. It also lacks USB ports so installing OSX won't work.
So, like yourself, I was stoked until the 'custom boot rom' thingy. Oh well.
Donate free food here
> All that said, it's kinda sad to see you sitting here begging for whatever name-branded Amiga scraps you can get.
/ webapp/sps/site/overview. jsp?nodeId=018rH3bTdGZj9N58582822
Huh? I'm not begging for anything. I have a good job designing chips for a living and can easily pay for whatever I desire.
Also, when other Amiga users were drooling over the shiny new Voodoo3 drivers, I was scratching my head not understanding the obsession when Radeons and GeForces were on their second generations. Instead of begging, I made a proposal to Nvidia for an NDA, I'd do all the work, support,e tc. all they'd have to do was put hardware on the shelves at the local PC emporium, which they already did. They didn't even respond with a polite "no thank you", they completely ignored us. ATI responded to my proposal with an NDA contract and some documentation. We do all the work, support, etc. and all they have to do is put Radeons on the shelves at te local PC emporium, which they already do.
I didn't beg for anything. I made a business proposal acceptable to ATI, and AmigaOS4 now runs nicely on Radeon cards.
I discussed the convenience of AmigaOS on a laptop, and thus iBook hardware with other developers, but there doesn't seem to be a business agreeable to all involved there. I'm now investigating the feasability of developing a PowerPC laptop of my own, which if it is a viable product will make an open-platform system as much as I could, and allow anyone write their own OS, drivers, etc. which is an obstacle to some extent when looking at Macs. Is this a feasable idea? It may not be, but this hasn't been proven to me yet.
Hey, Gentoo and Freescale seem pretty happy with the "other Amiga motherboard", the Pegasos2 AKA "Open Desktop Workstation" PowerPC motherboard. Wouldn't they be happy with a more easily portable PowerPC board as well?
http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.freescale.com
Good observation, and I hope others notice as well.
Yes, I use AmigaOS because of personal preference for my gerneral day to day computing, email, web browsing, etc. When the admittedly aging IBrowse web browser fails ona web site, I do use Firefox on Windows or Linux, whichever is handy. I use Windows for HalfLife2. (I understand Transgaming's thing can supposedly run HalfLife2 udner Linux now, but feel Windows is still better suited to this particular task) I have not played Doom3 since before the Linux native binary was available, but when I have time I would like to try it out and see how it fares. I do use Gentoo linux as a firewall, for geda EDA tools, and for MythTV. Each is good for certain things, and not as good for other certain things. The general user interface in AmigaOS fits my personality better than Windows or Linux, so that's my first choice. But it is not as suitable for some tasks as Windows or Linux. And instead of doing without, I do use the better platform for the job. Windows is better for certain games than Linux, Linux is better for firewalling my whole LAN and doing EDA stuff than Windows is. AmigaOS is of course behind in games available, lacks many firewall features available in Linux, and there's no ports of geda EDA tools yet, but for email, there's nothing better than security by a combination of incompatibility and this level of obscurity...
I bought my mom a PC running Windows, as I live 300 miles away and it easier for her to get support when I'm not around. I bought my sister a PC running windows, for the same reason. My dad bought his own, but I'm glad he did for the same reason. My mom and sister both run Firefox. My mom has OpenOffice. My sister has it, but usually uses MS Office because she thinks she needs it for school and that OpenOffice is inadequate.
My dad will ONLY use Microsoft products. He's one of them Joe Average guys Bill Gates wants us ALL to be. He is NOT WILLING to consider any alternative product, PERIOD. He believes that the mere fact Microsoft is so huge is proof that no other product can possibly be worth looking at, that everything else must totally suck, and the people have thusly used their wallets to vote for MS as the only possibly worthy software maker. Yet he's often calling me to help him get his PC working right again when it starts to flake out. There's zero chance reasoning with the guy, PERIOD. I've tried... He's constantly trying to talk me into using Windows and Office instead. He gave me a copy of Office so I'd have it, because I didn't have it before and must therefore have been totally unable to do anything with my computer. Something about in the real world I absolutely have to hav eit and use it because everyone else does, and I'll never survive without MS stuff at work. In reality, at work, I use a solaris box an OpenOffice... But there's no convincing him.
If you evaluate and then don't want to use AmigaOS, then don't. But don't say it's dead just because you don't want to use it. Let those of us who do want to use it, do so in peace.
If you want to use Linux, by all means, please do so. I do.
If you want to use Windows, that's your personal choice as well. I do. Same for Mac, *BSD, etc.
My dismay at seeing Amiga related posts here is that Slashdot ueres are not interested in evaluating the thing, to find out if the new version 4 AmigaOS could possibly be interesting to them. You've all already made up your mind against it, without knowing what it is or what it can do, or what it feels like, etc.
Its the same situation as Slashdot accuses most Windows users of. Joe Normal Windows user will not give Linux a chance to find out if he could possibly like it or not. Joe Average will ONLY ever use MS Office, as he is not willing to gove OpenOffice a chance and find out if it would suit him. This for good reason aggravates supporters of those products.
But those same advocates asking Windows users to at least evaluate their products BEFORE making a decision, are unwilling to co
Managment has in the past discussed the possibility uf a USB widget to hold the "custom ROM" part, which would make it possible to run on machines without it soldred to the motherboard, yet still retain that same level of piracy protection, whatever it's actually worth.
This would make it possible to keep the managers happy and the OS functional on Macs or Pegasos2 or whatever. Neither Apple nor Genesi of course want to get into the licensing of the custom USB widget and ship the AmigaOS CD with their card. I believe there were hints that a 3rd party could, as far as Amiga Inc. and Hyperion were concerned, buy a Mac or Pegasos2 from the respective vendor, license the AmigaOS and USB widget from Amiga/Hyperion, and sell the combination of the two products and have to support the hardware themselves as Apple nor Genesi would do so anymore. Similar in concept to if I were to buy a Dell with Windows, install Linux, and sell the result with a disclaimer that Dell will no longer support the machine, call me for help instead.
But the option exists, or at least did at one time. Obviously, no one has taken up that offer to date.
The remainder of the BIOS is Uboot, which you guys would be happy to know is GPL stuff. This actually POSTs the machine, and then hands control over to the custom ROM code to get the OS running.
I can assure you if a computer has the ability to input, process, and output foo (be it in the form of graphics, printed paper, or a stream of 1s and 0s) - someone will use if for something useful.
I had an Amiga back in the day; this is when the shiny new IBM PC-XT was the big thing, and clones were just starting to come out. I was happily typing away in AmigaWord, or playing Artic Fox (an early EA game title), or running DOS applications on an IBM PC emulator, on a machine with a graphical interface that blew everthing out of the water.
This machine was 10 years ahead of its time. Files that I created on that machine still reside on my Linux workstation today.
A computer is a computer; what matters is how you can make it work for you, and if you are happy with the outcome.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Since then I use(d) WinME, WinXP and Linux (Mandrake, now Gentoo and LFS on my servers)
What are the real world modern uses for an Amiga machine?
Simple put: Every days desktop work and programming.
On AmigaOS I missed three things in the end: Mozilla (and overall XML), CAD/technical drawing and 3D games. That was all.
AmigaOS has one thing that is sooo far away from the oh so "modern" desktops: A standard IPC scripting language, that comes (and boots) with the OS. A REXX (IBM) derivare called ARexx (AmigaREXX) whose interpreter sits in the background as a demon and awaits his orders.
By use of this programming language - a very easy one, more easy than BASIC - one could write either complete applications with GUI and so on (albeit small ones, because of speed) or remote-control 'real' applications, like the text-editor, IDE, filemanager, email/news database, mail-readers, vector-drawing programs, the TCP stack-control and much more.
When this appeared noone would know what this would be good for but soon programs with ARexx support shot out of the ground like mushrooms in the forest. There was barely an application, that was NOT externally programmable by ARexx.
How is this on the "modern" OS ?
Windows: Has WSH, Windows Scripting Host. The idea behind it ain't bad. Descibing jobs in XML, combining these with several supported (JScript, VBScript, Perl, Python, REXX) languages, that simple query an API host to which the OS and the applications can export their functionality.
Nice one! Though, close to nobody uses it. And so no applications utilize it, with a few exceptions.
Not comparable to the state of the art desktop/power-user/IPC scripting on AmigaOS.
*IX: Even worse !
Emacs has elisp. The Gimp has GUILE, Python and Perl. KDE has a project (never really established) to use JavaScript as KDE IPC/Desktop/Power-User scripting language. It stalles, afaik, because people are more scared of the security problems, that might arise, than being enjoyed about the power they gain.
Gnome ? Forget it. What is possible with KDE and Gnome now is either to weak or wants a real programmer, not an every days power(!)-user.
CORBA and stuff.
Problem on both platforms is, that too many independant groups define, what happens on the desktop. On Windows it's the big corps war against each other, that happens to use your desktopas battlefield, on Linux/*BSD it's the bazar, where everyone cooks her/his own food.
Now let me give you an example what a every-days desktop session looked like on my Amiga - but please note, that this was very private to mee, since I wrote many macro-scripts that would allow such a neat integration of programs. However this would not have been possible without the broad acceptance of one single standard interface for IPC scripting and its transformation into applications/environment:
On Amiga I used UMS (Universal Message System). That was a PD program written in the early 90ies. It consisted of a server, that utilized a database and to this server many clients could connect. Each client was either an importer, an exporter (both robots) or a human-controlled application, such as a mail/newsreader.
Some scripts got sheduled by CRON events. They started the importer, which was a program handling a certain message-network. This could be FIDO, Maus or ZConnect (Germans), UUCP, NNTP, POP3/SMTP.
The script contacted the remote-host, got my email and news and the importer translated the message-format into the message-database owns. Then the same for ZConnect and FIDO. In the end, I had a huga database, storing all my communication over the years from several different networks, all usable with one single interface. Since the message-database was detached from any MUA I happily could make use of it differently:
While chatting on IRC with AmIRC, after a sucessfull import, I got a message echoed locally to my IRC client: "You got 4 new mails".
Assigning a few aliases (which again cal