AmigaOS 4.0 released

tmk writes "After five years Hyperion announces the availability of AmigaOS 4.0: 'Amiga OS 4.0 is the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of compatibility.' But there is a snag: the new OS supports only the AmigaOne, which is not available anymore. According to Hyperion, the new hardware platform will be announced by third parties early 2007."

Comments

Ooh

[Greyfox]

A new release of AmigaOS! A new release of OS/2 can't be far behind!

Re:Ooh

[drinkypoo]

I'm still waiting for my CP/M update... Curse you, Amiga users! All three of you will burn in hell!

Re:Ooh

[IdleTime]

Well, I for one, am waiting on the new graphical OS for my Sinclair Z80. I hear it's going to kick some ass, the only problem is the boot time of 2 weeks from cassette tapes.

Re:Ooh

[Kazymyr]

I have a prerelease copy, but can't comment on it. I got a "R Tape loading error" on day 10 and had to start over. Still loading.

Re:Ooh

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

I heard that 'Duke Nukem Forever' will be released exclusively for AmigaOS!

He's dead, Jim.

[Just Some Guy]

I loved AmigaOS. I used it for probably a decade after it had completely stagnated at the top levels, while its huge crowd of shareware developers kept shovelling great software out to Aminet. But come on, folks: Amiga is dead. Not dying; dead. All of the technical elegance I appreciated for so long has now moved into other systems (KDE and its KIOslaves are far cooler than Amiga's "datatypes" ever hoped to be), and other than keeping an emulator available for the occasional retro-gaming jones, I just can't see a single reason for its continued existence.

I'm the last one to criticize people for spending their days working on projects that look insane to everyone else, but this brings me pretty close. Rest in peace, Amiga. You were beautiful at a time when no other computer was, but your era has long passed. Leave us with our wonderful memories, and sleep well.

Re:He's dead, Jim.

[Xugumad]

Yeah... now anyone looking for an elegant, easy to use but over expensive hardware/software combination with a serious lack of 3rd party software now gets a Mac.

(Posted from my MacBook Pro)

The comedy continues

[realmolo]

So, it takes them how long to finally "finish" AmigaOS 4.0? And now that it's finished, the hardware it runs on is unavailable?

Just when you think the Amiga saga can't get any more absurd...

I fully expect them to announce that they're starting an x86 port, and it'll be ready in January of 2008. Or January of 2018, whichever comes later.

I had an Amiga back in the day. Loved it. Have no desire to use on ever again, though.

Re:The comedy continues

[Just Some Guy]

I fully expect them to announce that they're starting an x86 port, and it'll be ready in January of 2008.

Spoken like someone who abandoned their Amiga before the bitter end and didn't stick around for the true lunacy. A real Amiga announcement would claim that the new DEC Alpha port would be available for sale in Two Weeks (tm).

Hardware is beside the point

[fm6]

If you're going to create an OS that nobody will use, does it matter whether there's any hardware to run it on?

Programming for Amiga

[robvangelder]

I'm not certain that it was the Operating System that made Amiga fun, but it's hardware and community.

I participated in "the scene" where you got to advertise your warez group by posting a miniature presentation before the game loaded.
These were called "intros" - some of these were a very impressive collection of code, graphics, and sound.
I used to write the code behind many intros in my early teens for programming exercise and to support my group.

The scene also released and supported an open source (free source?) soundtracker player that became the de-facto music player format for Amiga. Soundtracker (and forks of) were widely available with a huge library of samples and mods (mods being the completed song). Any non-musician could load some sound samples and start banging qwerty to hear tunes.

The Amiga's architecture was a very good for the first-time-asm-coder. 680x0 is quite an easy assembler language and Amiga's hardware, particularly the graphics (and copper), was easy to write for. So, the rewards after the first hour of programming were there and learning curve low. It made you want to poke around and look for more effects - with a few Guru Meditations along the way.
I mean, 1985 and it had 3d graphic capabilities built into the hardware - standard.

Put together, Amiga produced some of the best eye-candy I've ever seen.

I really miss the Amiga scene. I believe it's gone for good. The majority of use have grown up - moved on.
I don't believe a new Operating System is going to revive the community - the community that "made" Amiga what I remember it as.

Re:Programming for Amiga

[Thumper_SVX]

Wow, am I getting nostalgic reading this thread!

I would tend to agree with you here. I was also part of "The Scene" way back when. The community was built up around people who tended to take what the manufacturers said their hardware could and could not do, and attempt to prove them wrong. Some of the slickest bits of code I ever saw in my life were in 68000 on the Amiga and Atari ST. The former had the advantage of nice hardware, but I saw some awesome code on the latter trying to overcome its limitations and making it more like the Amiga in software. Truly wonderful times.

That community doesn't have a chance in the modern computing world. The code these days is too obfuscated from the hardware to really push it in the same way that you can with assembly. On the other hand though it's increasingly difficult to code anything impressive because of the wide arrange of hardware that's out there. You just can't write a demo or intro that'll run on everyone's machine without going through an API layer (operating system), and then you just can't push the hardware like you want to.

This is why when I grew up I got involved a lot with embedded systems. While you don't have the in-built audience that you got with "the scene", embedded shops are screaming out for talented coders who can whip out awesomely efficient code on a known hardware platform. Although the audience is smaller, you will get a bunch of embedded geeks looking at your code and saying "Cool!" when you've done something truly amazing within the limits of the hardware. Then you get to see your code in the marketplace making stuff really work... or in the ultimate example launched into space and doing unexpected but wonderful things on another planet. Now there's a reward that the scene couldn't match :D

The whole REASON I stopped using AmigaOS..

[Sloppy]

..is that it was only available on limited hardware and wasn't being maintained. (Having software that is ten times faster than the competition isn't a real advantage if the hardware is twenty times slower.)

And the reason that happened, was because it wasn't Free.

AmigaOS 4 is truly following in the steps of its forefather. If the people in that project want to know how much marketshare AmigaOS 4 will have, they just have to look at the marketshare of AmigaOS 3.x.

As for me, I run software that I know will be maintained and updated. I don't have to take anyone's word for it; it requires no faith at all. And that's good, because I don't have any faith anymore: my Amiga experience killed it.

AmigaOS on PPC Mac

[IL-CSIXTY4]

The main obstacle to getting AmigaOS ported to anything other than the AmigaOne is Amiga, Inc's licensing program. They license out the right for a board to carry the Amiga name and run AmigaOS, by virtue of a ROM "dongle" that gets integrated into the motherboard. This means that anything running AmigaOS has to be specifically designed to run AmigaOS. According to messages on the AmigaWorld.net and Amiga.org forums, the company hasn't been very good at getting back to the few people who have emailed them asking about licenses. I can't see value they see in holding such tight reigns on something with such a small market.

Then, there's the matter of developer documentation. The folks at Hyperion who are coding the OS want solid documentation for the hardware they're targeting. They don't want to just look at the Linux Mac code and just trust it works the way it should.

But that second point is largely irrelevant, as they'll never get the chance to do it given the current situation with Amiga, Inc.

Funeral ceremonies were held today for the Amiga..

[mmell]

In attendance, her children: Agnus, Denise, Paula, Gary and Sid. There was a blit of a disturbance, but a copper quickly sorted the situation out.

I miss getting video toasted! Waaah!

Amiga is not (yet) vaporware

[guruevi]

A lot of /.-ers complaining that Amiga is vaporware. Not yet. Amiga is still used in existing installations especially in the music/theater world for DMX/MIDI and other computer-controlled light- and music sets as well as real-time effects on lights, video and music. The fact that most controllers are hardware based and don't need any processing by the CPU is a great thing as compared to the latency even top-end video- and soundcards on PCI produce. It has a great open-source fan base and it is (still) stable as hell in all the applications I've seen and especially in real-time performances not really a task for (Windows) PC computers.

Your moment of Zen

[Rob T Firefly]

If an operating system is released, and there's no hardware around to run it, does it make a sound?

her

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Amiga == feminine
Amigo == masculine

Re:Revive the Old Amiga?

[vidarh]

There is already an open source attempt at reimplementing AmigaOS sort of: AROS. It's been around for years.