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Timberwolf (Firefox) Beta For AmigaOS

Posted by Unknown on from the what-else-are-you-gonna-do dept.

An anonymous reader writes "News from the world of AmigaOS that the Beta version of Timberwolf (a.k.a. Firefox) was made available last month." Timberwolf is a port of Firefox to the AmigaOS (the name change is for similar reasons to Debian's use of Iceweasel name) and has been under development for quite some time. The AmigaBounty project page has screenshots and even more info for those interested. There's a video of the browser in action, but beware of the cheesy soundtrack.

66 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. T-t-t-t-t-t-tiiiiim-beeeerrrrr by Niedi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.
    For all who don't know what I'm talking about:
    http://frededison.free.fr/
    or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...

    1. Re:T-t-t-t-t-t-tiiiiim-beeeerrrrr by Sipper · · Score: 1

      Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.

      For all who don't know what I'm talking about:

      http://frededison.free.fr/

      or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...

      Hahah! Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head for the next couple of days. ;-)
      But seriously, thanks -- nice link.

  2. Does the Amiga OS by geekoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?

    I get people like to do this stuff for fun and nostalgia. That's fine. It's just been so long since I have used an Amiga I can't think of anything today that it does better then Win7/OSX/Linux

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    1. Re:Does the Amiga OS by realmolo · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, no advantage.

      It's still a very *efficient* OS, but it lacks about a zillion features that any modern OS has. Protected memory, for one.

      But for day-to-day use? It's pointless and stupid. You can't do anything with AmigaOS that you can't do faster and better (anc cheaper- modern Amiga hardware is ridiculously expensive) on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.

      Still, AmigaOS has a lot of neat features. It's still very well-designed, and it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.

    2. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Johann+Lau · · Score: 1

      It boots very fast.

    3. Re:Does the Amiga OS by geekoid · · Score: 1

      So does my foot~

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    4. Re:Does the Amiga OS by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Oh, no argument form me on the design. I though maybe there was a file system property I had forgotten about.

      Thanks

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    5. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Johann+Lau · · Score: 3, Interesting

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6nRHNDY2Kw

    6. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Sloppy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Speed. AmigaOS is bloody fucking fast and ought to be able to run rings around most OSes.

      That's assuming you have equivalent hardware to your Linux system, which happens to never be the case.

      And it's assuming you don't care that any of hundred tasks can write to any particular piece of memory, an assumption which usually isn't the case, though somehow in the 1990s I managed to get by with that, telling myself "run bugfree software, run bugfree software." Whether or not there's actually such a thing as bugfree software, or if Firefox could possibly be an example of it, I'll leave to Firefox hackers to advocate. (Good luck, guys, you're going to need it.)

      And it's assuming that by "fast" you're not talking about the filesystems. The Amiga had some third-party filesystems that were pretty speedy for the time but somewhere around 2.4 Linux got into a league of its own.

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    7. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Last time I checked you couldn't get a PC virus to run on an Amiga.

    8. Re:Does the Amiga OS by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.

      There is a good chance that it would look nothing like the OS we used on legacy Amiga hardware.

      The reason the OS was so bloody fast was because it used a flat non-protected memory space. IPC was often done by passing pointers via registers. You could eavesdrop into any other task's memory space, even if its memory was not flagged with MEMF_PUBLIC. The majority of the kernel ran outside of 68K supervisor mode with function calls being made via a jump table as opposed to a software interrupt.

      One of the largest complaints about desktop multitasking operating systems of the 80s and 90s was that they crashed too much. That was a huge complaint with Windows 95 and was also a common complaint with AmigaOS. To continue being a viable OS, AmigaOS would have needed memory protection bolted on at some point.

      Using a fully virtualized protected memory model like UNIX and NT would have been incompatible with the foundation of AmigaOS since it would break IPC. You'd need stick with a flat address space, simply marking some memory sections as R/O. Program code sections could be R/O for everything except the kernel (that'd prohibit self-modifying code, but SMC was already incompatible with the data cache in 68020+ processors). Tasks could then allocate private memory, public memory or even semi-private memory by granting limited R/O or R/W access to other tasks.

      Main problem I see with that route is that you'd bump into the 4GB barrier much faster than fully virtualized memory models, especially since a large chunk of that 4GB would also be allocated to memory mapped hardware and other PCI peripherals. You'd need a processor with a 48-bit or 64-bit memory address space sooner than later.

    9. Re:Does the Amiga OS by damnbunni · · Score: 2

      I find it more fun to just screw around with than the other computers I've got. I wouldn't suggest anyone else get one unless they're just 'into computers' and like messing around with stuff.

      The one thing it does that I really, really wish Windows or OSX would do is its focus paradigm. Click to focus, but click does not raise window. It gives you the advantages of both click to focus - the focus stays where you want it even if you bump the mouse - and the advantage of focus follows mouse, that you can have a background window be the active one. Double-clicking a window raises it to the top.

      I'd certainly pay a few bucks for a program to add that to my PC or Mac.

      I do use my Amiga quite a bit - it's a 2009 model, with 800 MHz PowerPC and a gig of RAM - because the browser is good enough, my IM and email clients work fine, and it has most of the software I want to use. But I also have other computers, because some stuff the Amiga just won't do, or it's a pain in the butt to do with it.

      My 'New Amiga' wasn't cheap, but it was in line with other pricey hobbies. A bit more than a launch-day Playstation 3, all told, got me a machine with no moving parts other than the DVD drive. So at least it has 'completely silent' as an advantage.

    10. Re:Does the Amiga OS by unixisc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Since 64-bit CPUs are now common (except ARM), I'd think they could leapfrog 32-bit, and go directly from 16-bit to 64 bit and be there on PPC or MIPS. Do something like using the top (or bottom) half of the address space as reserved for the R/O, and leave the other half there for the memory to grow. That would still give the user up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 bytes to address. In fact, they could even toss in some compatibility features w/ the old 16-bit Amiga DOS.

      But I only see the point if some computer manufacturer bundles it w/ a new computer that can't run Windows, such as a MIPS or PPC based computer. No point in having this to port it to PCs - there are already too many alternatives for PCs, and as others have noted above, there is no reason to prefer it to Windows7/OS-X or any of the Unixes.

    11. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Desler · · Score: 1

      the 2.5GHz processor would be expected to boot faster than the 25MHz system, but in actual fact the 25MHz 68040 Classic Amiga A4000 will boot in 1 minute *or*less*...

      And my laptop and desktop come out of sleep in like 3 seconds. Whoop-de-doo for your Amiga.

    12. Re:Does the Amiga OS by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Funny

      Last time I checked, you cant get a PC virus to run on a potato either.

    13. Re:Does the Amiga OS by toejam13 · · Score: 1

      I'd think they could leapfrog 32-bit, and go directly from 16-bit to 64 bit ... the old 16-bit Amiga DOS.

      The Motorola 68000 was actually a 32-bit processor internally. Data registers were all 32-bits in width and the ALU performed math operations at that size. Address registers, including the stack pointer and program counter, were also 32-bits in width.

      The only part of the 68000 that was 16-bits in width was its external data bus. It could perform 32-bit reads and writes, but had to do so using two fetches, one low and one high. The 68020 was the first processor of the family to have a full 32-bit wide external data bus.

    14. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Johann+Lau · · Score: 1

      before the HD on my A4000T died, it booted more like in 10-15 seconds. And that wasn't even a fast HD.

    15. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Johann+Lau · · Score: 1

      That's apples and oranges.

    16. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Last time I checked, you couldn't eat an Amiga. Just saying...

    17. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Bert64 · · Score: 2

      Safer purely due to security through obscurity... AmigaOS has virtually no security features, it doesn't even have a concept of users or of protected address space so a vulnerability in any userland application is effectively a kernel level exploit.

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    18. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      If you're running Linux, then there are several window managers which provide the behaviour you desire... I always used to run windowmaker with a focus follows mouse configuration, where only clicking on the titlebar would bring the window to the front.

      The idea of buying an 800mhz (single core?) desktop in 2009 seems pretty insane... Sure there is a place for low power hardware, but only when it's cheap (eg look at raspberry pi)...

      Having hardware that expensive ensures that no new users will ever take up the hobby, which means slow development, no economies of scale so the prices remain high etc...

      Also if you read the article, they are doing the bare minimum to comply with the MPL... That is, they are releasing source code for any modified mozilla files, but won't be releasing any new files they create, and almost certainly won't be committing their work back to mozilla.
      This means their port will always lag behind, you will have to wait for binaries to be provided, and won't be able to compile it yourself let alone make any changes or improvements.

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    19. Re:Does the Amiga OS by thereitis · · Score: 1

      So you're saying it just looks inedible? That changes things...

    20. Re:Does the Amiga OS by damnbunni · · Score: 1

      Is it any more insane than buying any other toy? I mean, toys are generally pretty useless. There are people who spend more than a car costs on bicycles. Is that insane? People regularly spend thousands of dollars on pretty rocks or pretty pictures that don't do anything at all. That seems more insane to me than buying a toy, but they must enjoy having them. At least I can play with the toy. I've had my money's worth of fun out of it, so it doesn't seem like a waste to me.

      Focus follows mouse with clicking titlebar bringing the window to the front is the exact opposite of what I want. I want focus doesn't follow mouse, clicking focuses, but clicking to focus does NOT raise the window to the top. The only WM I ever found that did that was AmiWM, which tried for the AmigaOS 2.X look-and-feel. And managed it, for the most part.

    21. Re:Does the Amiga OS by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      I prefer focus follows mouse, but it can be turned off. Clicking in a window should not bring that window to the front otherwise having the focus follow mouse becomes useless since any interaction with the window would bring it to the foreground...
      The window should only come to the foreground if you click in a particular place, or if use a keyboard shortcut or modifier key in combination with a click... In essence, your requirements are the same as mine minus the focus following mouse.

      As to hobbies... People generally ease into their hobbies, and increase their expenditure later. If the cost of entry is high, then very few people will take up the hobby at all. This is also why IA64 never took off among the hobbyist community, while linux and bsd based systems on exotic cpus like sparc, alpha and hppa are generally far more active - lowend old hardware can be bought for a pittance, whereas ia64 hardware was extortionate until very recently.

      Also the amiga "community" as it were, does not operate like a niche hobbyist platform... They do very little to encourage new users or support existing ones. There really is no money to be made on commercial amiga ventures, and yet they persist in trying anyway.

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  3. Wait ... by lennier1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do newer Amiga systems even have enough memory to handle the memory leaks in Firefox' add-on system?

    1. Re:Wait ... by Bambi+Dee · · Score: 1

      I should think so. Provided you consider AmigaOne "Amiga enough"...

    2. Re:Wait ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No matter how many articles come out that show Firefox's memory management to be competitive there's always going to be clueless trolls like you that are stuck in an infinite loop. Trolls to say something stupid and trolls to mod it Insightful.

      Why don't you tell Adam he doesn't know WTF he's doing: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-17-firefox-10-ubuntu,3129-14.html

    3. Re:Wait ... by makomk · · Score: 1

      Sounds about right too - Chrome is incredibly memory-hungry in my experience.

    4. Re:Wait ... by lennier1 · · Score: 1

      I yet have to see a Chrome install that manages inflate to 2.5+ GB.

    5. Re:Wait ... by makomk · · Score: 1

      2.5+ GB? Chrome will hit 25+ GB quite easily if you let it and have enough RAM installed - it's just that each individual process generally uses less than a gigabyte of RAM, so it's very difficult to see how much it's using in a standard task manager or Chrome's integrated task manager. (Chrome does track its total memory usage but that figure is tucked away in the "Stats for nerds" section.)

  4. Timberwolf? by AarghVark · · Score: 2

    I do hope its the D variant with all the SRM's on it.

    1. Re:Timberwolf? by lennier1 · · Score: 2

      Does the output bounce around like the display that earned the MadCat its name?

    2. Re:Timberwolf? by AarghVark · · Score: 1

      Actually, it was the fact that it combined the armaments of both the Marauder (PPC's) and Catapault (LRM's) which caused it to be dubbed MadCat.

    3. Re:Timberwolf? by lennier1 · · Score: 2

      According to the story, the first time they encountered one, the recognition system couldn't decide between MAD (Marauder) and CAT (Catapult). Reports of this event later lead to the new name.

    4. Re:Timberwolf? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      If I remember Lethal Heritage correctly, Mad Cat was designated by Precentor Martial that way exactly because it has got arms like a Marauder but shoulder missile launchers like the Catapult, so AarghVark might be correct.

      --
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  5. source code license by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "The source code of the port will be made available only as far as the MPL requires it, i.e. all modified source code files will be available for interested parties, but new files will not. This is in accordance with the requirements of the Mozilla Public License. "

    that's the true amiga spirit when it comes to source releases. Release as little as possible. Got to make sure no-one else running any machines "similar" to the AmigaOS could possibly benefit from their work.

    1. Re:source code license by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      If this is true, it's bad news. I don't enter my credit card info on software I haven't compiled myself...

    2. Re:source code license by AC-x · · Score: 2

      I hope you also read through the entire source code. And compiled the compiler you used. And hand assembled the compiler you compiled the compiler with :)

  6. Re:So? by philip.paradis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I care. Other /. members apparently care. Since you don't care, why did you waste your time posting a comment?

    --
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  7. Quit putting the first half-sentence in the title by Dogtanian · · Score: 2

    Does the Amiga OS have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?

    This tends- justifiably- to be asked every time there's been a bit of Amiga "news" in the past few years (including that of the final release of Amiga OS 4, delayed for around 15 years).

    If there *is* any major advantage, then no-one came up with one during any of those discussions.

    Really, the Amiga OS nowadays is just a plaything for a few very hardcore hobbyists willing to pay for overpriced, underpowered custom hardware that isn't even directly compatible with the original Amiga anyway. Amiga OS (and the original hardware) was fantastic in its day, and beat the living heck out of MS-DOS and early Windows, but that was a long time ago. Anyone for whom Amiga OS/hardware compatibility was essential or even useful would have been forced to give up and migrate elsewhere by the late-90s at most. For that reason, even if one *could* upgrade it to a modern OS, it'd make more sense just to write a new OS from scratch- the "classic" core would just end up being legacy baggage that would please the Amiga obsessives because they could call it Amiga OS, but have little real world use beyond muddying the design.

    (Sorry, didn't want that to sound like a dismissal of the genuinely innovative Amiga OS, but things have moved on too far now).

    The Amiga IP seems to be a bit confusing, having been sold on several times, split and licensed (and the rights disputed), as well as the names having been used on things having apparently nothing to do with the Amiga (some mobile phone OS layer called "Amiga Anywhere" and even worse slapped onto some generic HTPC cases that reused the numbers of classic Amigas). F****** horrid, just let it go.

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  8. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Isn't one of the great things about the whole open source thingy that even the most niche systems are catered for?
    I don't run AmigaOS but I still think this is mighty cool.

  9. Amiga OS4 by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    which requires a power pc accelerator, so if I take my 3000, spend a pile of money for a obsolete power pc card, and a pile of money for obsolete ram, I can run firefox on something I already know it sucks balls on?

    I have a powermac 9600/300 with a pile of ram in it, a much better motherboard and chipset, faster video and disk I/O and guess what? Iceweasel is painfully slow in debian, classzilla is painfully slow in mac OS9, and if you want anywhere reasonable speed you have to drop down to a very basic geko engine browser, and then its like 45 seconds to load slashdot with no javabloat ... or just use a text browser, maybe one with image support like links2.

    1. Re:Amiga OS4 by raddude99 · · Score: 1

      which requires a power pc accelerator, so if I take my 3000, spend a pile of money for a obsolete power pc card, and a pile of money for obsolete ram, I can run firefox on something I already know it sucks balls on?

      Obsolete ram is actually quite cheap if you check ebay. And if you're so worried about price you probably missed this story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/23/2312219/hyperion-promises-an-amigaos-netbook where Hyoperion is working on a low-cost PPC Amiga Netbook to run AmigaOS 4.x on

      I have a powermac 9600/300 with a pile of ram in it, a much better motherboard and chipset, faster video and disk I/O and guess what? Iceweasel is painfully slow in debian, classzilla is painfully slow in mac OS9, and if you want anywhere reasonable speed you have to drop down to a very basic geko engine browser, and then its like 45 seconds to load slashdot with no javabloat ... or just use a text browser, maybe one with image support like links2.

      You're kinda missing the point,just because OS9 is so slow doesn't mean that AmigaOS will be. I've used PPC Amiga machines (expanded old 68k machines not the newer pure PPC machines) to load slashdot, and they did it way faster than 45 seconds.

  10. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I care. I happen to like the amiga os, and wish a few more modern os's would take a lesson. (stackable, push/pull windows, a feature I greatly miss, dynamic ram drive, rad (bootabe ram drive), easy to use script control of most software, king-con (king con eats bash for breakfast), the amiga os has many great concepts that have been largely lost or poorly re-produced in other os's even to this day.

  11. leave us be by amigabill · · Score: 2

    AmigaOS today is for people that are obsessed with it. Either you are, and enjoy it, or you are not, and don't care. It can be a useful platform, though yes it does have some limitations today. I don't know why people post Amiga stuff to the non-caring Slashdot etc. sites. Move along and let us enjoy our hobby, we obsessors don't need your counseling and it won't bring us to our senses anyway.

    1. Re:leave us be by styrotech · · Score: 3, Informative

      No way! I haven't used an Amiga for 15-20 yrs and probably never will again, but I still have a soft spot for it and like to occasionally hear about what's happening with its latest incarnations.

      After all it is very nerdy news, and that's what we're here for right?

  12. Timberlake by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    Steer him clear of a Karaoke machine but as an actor he wasn't too bad in In Time. :-)

  13. Fuck weeklies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fuck weeklies, Nightly FTW.

  14. Re:Aren't they all betas? by unixisc · · Score: 3, Funny

    So does that mean Amiga users will be getting latest & greatest updates every 8 weeks? Is Timberwolf on v11 already?

  15. Re:So? by damnbunni · · Score: 1

    I use Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6. If there's a way to push the topmost window to the bottom of the stack on either, please explain how to do it.

    There certainly isn't a widget for it. Is there a keyboard shortcut or modifier-click that will do it?

    The only X11 window manager I recall with that feature was one that was specifically trying for the Amiga Workbench look and feel, but I admit I haven't used an X11 based system in ten years.

  16. What about AROS? by csirac · · Score: 3, Informative

    AROS is AmigaOS 3.1+, with extra bits, re-implemented as a portable OS (not just x86, but ARM, 68k, PPC). AROS is/was for users, by users, without (scant!) profits getting in the way of rational decision-making.

    The reason the various zombie shells of Amiga, Inc. and its contractors/IP licensees never did an x86 port is because by the time the AROS guys were actually doing it, the Amiga market was so small that monetizing such an effort would have been impossible without proprietary hardware in the first place.

    I'm glossing over the fact that PPC was technically also a much easier challenge than going x86, but I think that's the reality: there always seemed to be more money in what was left of the retail/reseller network for hardware, than software.

    I'd also like to point out that AmigaOS had virtual memory, even in the classic 3.x OS with add-ons, and many popular software packages were written to be "VM friendly". Also, AmigaOS 4.x has protected memory, but the implementation has some interesting twist which I forget the details of (but seemed a good compromise to transition AmigaOS 3.x apps into the new protected-memory world).

    Even with protected memory enabled, it sure as hell boots faster and starts apps quicker than the shiny new Asus laptop I bought last year...

    1. Re:What about AROS? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Actually, the old PREP boxes would have been a good target for AmigaOS, once Apple dropped support for it, and Be disappeared. In fact, those PREP boxes from Motorola and Umax would have been good for these 2 platforms, and might have even continued.

    2. Re:What about AROS? by Bert64 · · Score: 2

      Yes, the blatant attempts at profiteering were the final nail in the coffin for the Amiga...
      Back when i had a (relatively highend) Amiga, in order to connect it to the internet i would have needed to buy a tcp stack, and then buy a browser, even things like ftp, irc and telnet clients had a price tag attached! Even MS and Apple don't charge extra for basic things like that.

      And AmigaOS 4, not only expensive in its own right (even free niche os's have trouble gaining traction, what hope does an expensive one have?), but it's also tied to proprietary hardware that is insanely overpriced, under specced and not widely available.

      Put it this way, lots of people are willing to try AROS, its a free download and will run happily on hardware that the vast majority of people already have at their disposal. It will run happily on old hardware which you may have laying around, can boot as a livecd so as not to affect your existing installation and can run inside of common virtualization software. You've nothing to lose, and anyone can try it.
      Contrast that with AmigaOS 4, you have to pay several hundred EUR (last i checked) for the hardware, plus an additional 100+ for the copy of AmigaOS, and then if you don't like the OS or find that it doesn't suit your needs all you have to show for it is a very slow linux box.

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  17. Re:So? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    X11 based systems have thousands of window managers, some of which behave exactly like you describe and there are so many possibilities you can find one which exactly suits your needs.
    Dynamic ram drive? Try /dev/shm on linux, or /tmp on solaris.
    RAD:? Modern computers don't need to reboot anywhere near as often as amigaos did, even windows is pretty stable these days so the utility of a reset resident ram drive is fairly limited. And then you have flash drives, and you can even get pcie cards with a load of ram on them for very fast storage.

    King con is a shell handler (ie a terminal emulator), bash is a shell... King con is more like xterm and you can run all manner of shells in it (tho i dont believe bash was ever ported to amigaos due to the lack of fork()?)... The two are not directly comparable, and bash is far more powerful than the standard amigaos shell scripting language.

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  18. Music in the demo video is so Amiga! by drx · · Score: 1

    I ROFL'd when watching the video. Totally reminds me of playing Outrun on the classic Amiga. Thumbs up!!

  19. Alternative approach by eyeoftheidol · · Score: 1

    Timberwolf on the X1000 can't compare (yet) with Firefox on Wintel, but it's fun (and other browsers are available on the Amiga, including those running under AmiCygnix [YouTube]). And this is a work in development. The more alternatives there are to the mainstream OSes, the better!

  20. Re:So? by Daniel+Klugh · · Score: 1

    My 1979 Atari computer (HCS) has "recoverable" RAM disks. But that's because the device drivers/handlers that I use just don't bother to build a new file system (MyDOS) or else they only do so when they can find no existing one (SpartaDOS X). It's the same with the Amiga's "Executive Multitasker" and AmigaDOS as well. I can't imagine how your choice of OS would make any difference as RAM disks are handled by the device handler rather than the the OS itself.
    (except for Linux; and even it supports FUSE!)
    The same for "RAM:" style file systems. I even remember something like the for MS-DOS.

    And the FVWM window manager for X supports pushing a window to the top/bottom of the window stack. I had it set so that the right mouse button on the title bar moved a window to the top of the stack; or, in the case that it was already at the top, to the bottom. I did this because in imitation of the Amiga.
    (except it's a special "gadget" instead of the title bar on the Amiga)
    Once again that's the job of the window manager and not of the OS.

    Why would someone want to build these kinds of things into the OS?

    --
    Daniel Klugh
  21. Point of fact on "profiteering" by AC-x · · Score: 1

    Yes, the blatant attempts at profiteering were the final nail in the coffin for the Amiga...
    Back when i had a (relatively highend) Amiga, in order to connect it to the internet i would have needed to buy a tcp stack, and then buy a browser, even things like ftp, irc and telnet clients had a price tag attached! Even MS and Apple don't charge extra for basic things like that.

    At time time (due to Commodore's bankruptcy) there was no first party networking stack, browser etc. so all these had to be provided by third parties, hence most of these things being commercial or shareware. Don't you remember when you had to pay for Netscape or IE on PC? And the big fuss everyone made of Microsoft bundling their browser with Windows?

    1. Re:Point of fact on "profiteering" by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Windows and MacOS also had no default TCP stack in those days, and yet free stacks were available... Even "demo" versions would function, while demo versions of the amiga stacks would disconnect you after 30 minutes.
      You also had completely free operating systems such as bsd and early linux versions, which included a tcp stack by default.

      Netscape was available for free to non commercial users, IE was available for free too (even for non windows users on macos, solaris and hp-ux)...

      Also the "evaluation" versions of netscape were fully functional and did not try to blackmail you into paying by shutting down after 30 minutes. You could buy them on cd or floppy, along with telephone support... An option many people took up because downloading was very time consuming on slow dialups.

      It'a also worth noting that netscape and ie were both years ahead of any of the native amigaos browsers, to the extent that a better and cheaper browsing experience could be had by emulating a mac on the amiga and using that for browsing.

      Let's also consider irc clients, the biggest windows client mirc is shareware, yet you only get a nag screen on startup and the software is fully functional without registering... the amiga equivalent, amirc, also disconnects you after 30 minutes rendering it completely unusable. it also appears to have several undocumented features allowing other users on irc to remotely check your registration key (a clear invasion of privacy) and possibly do other nefarious things in an attempt to discourage pirate copies.

      there was also a highly elitist atmosphere, where anyone suspected of running warez copies of amiga software were often publicly attacked and/or turned away from amiga related sites and irc channels. there were many people who simply could not afford the ridiculous prices charged.

      The effect this profiteering and gouging had, was to drive even more users away from the amiga. For the price of a complete set of internet tools on the amiga, it was possible to purchase a perfectly capable x86 system running windows or linux.

      Myself at the time, being still at school with no source of income i was simply unable to purchase the software, and became sick of the constant attacks when using pirated copies. I thus had no choice but to install linux on the amiga and use this for quite some time until i was able to afford an x86 based replacement machine. Had it been usable and affordable, i would likely have continued using amigaos for quite some time.

      Having recently taken the amiga out of storage to play with, the situation is even more ridiculous... Not only does all this software still enforce the 30 minute timeouts and nag you to purchase it, but you now cannot purchase it even if you wanted to!

      And it seems this trend continues, the port of firefox discussed in the article is only going to release the bare minimum of sourcecode required to satisfy the mozilla license, and will withhold everything else. What exactly is this supposed to achieve?

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    2. Re:Point of fact on "profiteering" by AC-x · · Score: 1

      Windows and MacOS also had no default TCP stack in those days, and yet free stacks were available... Even "demo" versions would function, while demo versions of the amiga stacks would disconnect you after 30 minutes.
      You also had completely free operating systems such as bsd and early linux versions, which included a tcp stack by default.

      At that point the Amiga user base was so small it's lucky there were usable stacks at all, no way a 3rd party company could make money releasing a free stack and not enough free software enthusiasts to release a decent free stack.

      Netscape was available for free to non commercial users

      At release Netscape was only supposed to be free for education and charity users, but yeah reading some more about it sounds like they were pretty loose with it. Again compared to Amiga's tiny tiny user base how would a commercial software company make anything free for non-commercial developing for Amiga given there were pretty much zero commercial users at that point?

      there was also a highly elitist atmosphere, where anyone suspected of running warez copies of amiga software were often publicly attacked and/or turned away from amiga related sites and irc channels. there were many people who simply could not afford the ridiculous prices charged.

      Yeah everyone was pretty desperate to keep the platform alive, including the few commercial and shareware devs left. If there were no commercial devs would anyone have released a TCP stack etc for free?

      The effect this profiteering and gouging had, was to drive even more users away from the amiga. For the price of a complete set of internet tools on the amiga, it was possible to purchase a perfectly capable x86 system running windows or linux.

      What rubbish, you could get a complete suite for about £60-80, not free but hardly gouging. Big items like TCP stack and Browser were always commercial, but there were plenty of usable free and bundled apps for everything else. Maybe if you bought literally every shareware internet tool available you might get up to the cost of a decent PC...

      Without those commercial devs where would that software have come from? Microsoft could release free stuff because they already had a huge revenue stream (plus they wanted to undermine competition), Windows developers could release free for personal use stuff because the rest of the market was huge. Linux got a lot of free software because it had a huge free software enthusiast userbase.

      Having recently taken the amiga out of storage to play with, the situation is even more ridiculous... Not only does all this software still enforce the 30 minute timeouts and nag you to purchase it, but you now cannot purchase it even if you wanted to!

      Well duh, that's true of every single limited demo for no-longer available software. Authors could have released free version as abandonware but there's nothing to say they have to. Maybe now we have a huge FOSS scene we're feeling a bit entitled to free software in our old ages?

      And it seems this trend continues, the port of firefox discussed in the article is only going to release the bare minimum of sourcecode required to satisfy the mozilla license, and will withhold everything else. What exactly is this supposed to achieve?

      If they want to protect their little pet project they're within their rights to under the Mozilla license, they're still releasing it for free (beer).

    3. Re:Point of fact on "profiteering" by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      At that point the Amiga user base was so small it's lucky there were usable stacks at all, no way a 3rd party company could make money releasing a free stack and not enough free software enthusiasts to release a decent free stack.

      There are plenty of niche platforms with enough open source developers to write basic things like a tcp stack and often a lot more, see bsd, aros, syllable, minix etc.

      Commercial development for a niche platform is even worse (which is why it almost never happens), with the customer base being so small there is very limited money in it, which means either ridiculous prices or severe corner cutting to reduce development costs...
      The end result was that the amiga applications were not only far more expensive than equivalent applications on other platforms, but they were also massively inferior... I refer you to my earlier comment about running netscape under macos emulation on the amiga.

      A niche platform simply isn't viable as a commercial concern, the only hope it has for survival or even growth is through being open and free. Had amigaos been open sourced, and ported to hardware that was actually available for purchase it could be pretty successful these days. There are various use cases where it would have been more suitable than linux due to its lower resource requirements and better responsiveness on slower hardware.

      Yeah everyone was pretty desperate to keep the platform alive, including the few commercial and shareware devs left. If there were no commercial devs would anyone have released a TCP stack etc for free?

      And in doing so drove users away...
      Considering that free and open source tcp stacks already existed for linux and bsd, and as far as i know the commercial amigaos stacks were ported from bsd in any case... It's extremely likely that a free stack would have been ported (after all, aros has a free stack), and this would then have been available to everyone.

      If they want to protect their little pet project they're within their rights to under the Mozilla license, they're still releasing it for free (beer).

      "protect" ? protect from what? "protect" it from being ported to other platforms like aros? protect it from having bugs fixed by a third party? protect it from being updated when the original devs realise theres no profit in it?

      Well duh, that's true of every single limited demo for no-longer available software. Authors could have released free version as abandonware but there's nothing to say they have to. Maybe now we have a huge FOSS scene we're feeling a bit entitled to free software in our old ages?

      So now you have the situation where someone who purchases an old amiga for retro uses will not be able to network it. What's the use in that? I have an A4000 with an ethernet card which cannot be used in amigaos, i have to run linux on it which turns it into a linux box thats slower than even the lowest end embedded linux boxes these days.

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    4. Re:Point of fact on "profiteering" by AC-x · · Score: 1

      The Amiga never had a big FOSS scene, it was always much more centred around small time commercial and indie devs, with little open source and virtually no first party support. Who would have open sourced Amiga OS? Commodore? The people who paid for the IP after Commodore went bust? Not really sure what use the source would be anyway as it was very tied to the hardware architecture.

      Most FOSS enthusiasts were on other platforms or started their own (Aros etc.), if someone had wanted a free TCP stack on Amiga they would have written it but it just wasn't that scene so indie devs stepped in with shareware stacks. (btw Amiga OS has come with a full TCP stack since 3.9).

      Accusing indie devs of profiteering and gouging would be like accusing Notch of gouging for not releasing Minecraft as free open source, it's their work and if people want to pay for it they will.

      The current Amiga scene is probably still the same, hence most Amiga devs feeling more protective over there work than FOSS enthusiasts, especially with paid bounties for Amiga ports of apps like Firefox. You can't criticise the Amiga scene for not being something it never was.

  22. Of course it's fast by AC-x · · Score: 1

    Of course it's fast, programs are virtually running on the bare metal with minimal OS features/interference to slow things down.

    Fun to mess around with but these days hardware has caught up with features expected of a modern (complex) OS.

  23. Re:So? by Daniel+Klugh · · Score: 1
    Sounds like 4DOS.COM for MS-DOS from the 90's. It was a replacement for the command processor ("COMMAND.COM"). You could type:
    SET FILECOMPLETION=CD:DIRS;EDLIN:DIRS TXT DOC CFG;GIFCHECK:DIRS GIF
    and typing "CD " and then CONTROL-TAB would give you a list of directories. For EDLIN it would also show text files. For GIFCHECK it would show directories and GIF files.
    And when I type CD TOME it knows to swtich to \GAMES\ANGBAND\TOME.
    (if I use CDD instead it even changes the currently loggged drive to C:)
    If I type CD COMM\*A*.* it would look for a directory (in the directory-tree database) with a "A" anywhere in the filename and any extention whose parent directory is named COMM.

    And, if you were using NDOS from Norton Utilities, then you were using 4DOS. Try it out at <URL:ftp://ftp.jpsoft.com/4dos/>.

    --
    Daniel Klugh
  24. Re:So? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    That archive contains (very old) sourcecode for bash, you can download it from gnu.org too assuming they haven't removed such old versions. You won't be able to get it compiled and running on amigaos, no idea why someone would want to mirror old non amiga sourcecode on aminet either.

    It seems like kingcon merges some of the functions of a terminal with that of the shell, while unix keeps them in separate apps. From its readme, the features it provides have long been provided by x11 terminals such as konsole or gnome terminal.

    Also you have to ask yourself, after you've installed kingcon to replace the console device, and various other modifications... how much of the original amigaos are you actually using?

    It's unlikely anyone would want an x11 window manager that explicitly emulates the amiga desktop (and what desktop would you emulate? most amiga users tended to modify the default workbench quite heavily)... Once you take off your rose tinted glasses you will realise that while it may have a few nice features, not to mention the fact your clearly familiar and comfortable with it, it is by no means the best interface out there and also has its fair share of deficiencies.
    What you talked about was "stackable, push/pull windows" which several window managers can provide when configured accordingly. While i prefer this behaviour, i would not sacrifice virtual workspaces (no, "screens" provided by amigaos are not the same) among other things to use amigaos. The x11 model lets you pick and choose the best features.

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  25. You can't blame all that on the demo authors by csirac · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but it's totally insane to blame the lack of free/open software on the 'profiteering' behaviour of the very few developers who were left.

    You say that that these developers drove users away - what nonsense! What drove them (and by 'them' I now mean: potential freeware/open source developers) away was a total lack of leadership and utter neglect of the userbase by the various zombie shells which owned Amiga, including Commodore in its final years.

    Under Commodore, Amiga missed many opportunities; not that competent management would necessarily have saved it, but C= didn't exactly give it a head start.

    The lack of free software was a reflection of the health of the overall Amiga market: specatacular stagnation, deterioration and fragmentation (5 years between AmigaOS 3.1 -> 3.5?! WarpOS vs PowerUP? MorphOS? AROS?) of the tiny userbase and tinier still developer community, you must blame those that squandered their time in control of Amiga

    Nobody forced freeware/open source developers to pay for their TCP stack or web browser. Nobody stood there and actively prevented them from creating free/open equivalents.

    The simple fact is that if the Amiga platform had enough motivated developers to create free or even open software, it would have happened. But it didn't. You can't simply wish said developers into existence. They simply weren't there - the Amiga never really had a chance to develop an open source culture.

    P.S. I seem to recall that AWeb was open-sourced, although probably still too many years after it would have had an impact.