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How Icaros Desktop Brings the Amiga Experience To x86 PCs
angry tapir writes "Icaros Desktop is an effort to build a modern Amiga-compatible operating system to standard x86 hardware. It's a distribution built atop AROS, which is an open source effort to create a system compatible at the API level with the AmigaOS 3.x series. I recently had a chat to the creator of Icaros, Paolo Besser, about the creation of the OS and why Amiga continues to inspire people today."
Evar!
Well in 20 years, we'll have x86 denial syndrome instead (of Amiga Denial Syndrome that is).
Can I seamlessly run Amiga games written for the 68000 on it? This would require emulation, but it's been done before.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The x86 architecture is actually still used a lot on the desktop and server market, but I understand what you mean. It's pretty dead in the tablets and cellphone market, the largest market for processors.
c++;
I wonder why they wouldn't use a Linux distribution for this project.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I recall from the Amiga back then (a friend had one), and what I have seen here so far, this "Amiga Experience" is all about the GUI, not so much about the underlying tech. Which is no matter what totally different than on the original Amiga for the simple fact that we have so different hardware nowadays. Hard drives, more memory, USB, optical drives, WiFi, you name it. It wasn't there back then, and is standard now.
Already there are themes to make Gnome or KDE look and behave exactly like OS-X, or Mac Classic, or Windows XP or whatever. They can be themed so thoroughly, using different window managers probably even more possibilities, that I'd say this is the way to go.
Take a Linux distro, e.g. Ubuntu, as base, and build your own customisation on it. There are plenty of derivative distros that do it just like that. Ubuntu being a derivative itself. And presto you have the Amiga Experience, with all it's quirks, with all the underlying goodness of modern hardware support etc.
Or am I really missing something here?
I've got a feeling the AC was saying that Amiga OS is 'only used by hobbyists in lala land'...
Hardly. Ten years ago, maybe.
I have to say this project upsets me.
Why? Because if it had been completed fifteen years ago, it'd have been something I'd (and millions of other Amiga enthusiasts) would have been able to jump on, and over time it would have grown. The issues with Exec's lack of MMU support would have been, as time progressed, dealt with in an evolutionary way (I have no idea what the solution would have been, but I'm pretty sure it would have come about.) And so the platform would have lived on.
Unfortunately it wasn't completed then, and the mindshare has moved to GNU/Linux. The problems with AmigaOS back in 1994 are still present in AROS. There's no easy way to fix the issues any more, because the people interested aren't tight knit and large enough to actually agree upon a way forward.
Which is NOT, absolutely NOT, to diss the efforts of the AROS crew. What they've produced is impressive, and anyone who thinks all operating systems should either be POSIX or Windows based should, absolutely should, download this and play with it.
What upsets me is that I can't, any longer, jump on something so wonderful. There's no point.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It was a superb machine (arguably the best personal computer) in the 80s and early 90s, but its now 2012 and things have moved on. Why are people still intent on trying to resurrect it like some festering computer zombie? Its making a mockery of the Amiga name and of the time and effort the original designers put into its HARDWARE - because it was the hardware rather than the OS which really made it what it was.
Ten years ago I might have agreed. Today with every major desktop OS running on x86 or x86-64, not so much. Besides, people are more interested in the Amiga experience as opposed to the underlying hardware. This goes double since the majority of PPC systems in the post-Commodore world have been something of an expensive joke.
>> why Amiga continues to inspire people today
Um...not really. I owned two Amiga machines and worked on two different Video Toaster rigs. Fun at the time, but I'm very, very happy that the Amiga's best features (graphics, sound and text-to-speech) went mainstream. I haven't plugged in any of my old systems in more than five years.
Let it rest - RIP.
Hobbyists are more then enough to justify it. If they get a kick out ouf playing with AmigaOS then good for them. Some people play games, some people read, some people waterski, and some people enjoy playing with old tech. Not sure why people get so butthurt over what other people do with their free time.
Amiga's moved-on anyway. OS 3 is obsolete, replaced by OS 4.0 and 4.1. Running version 3 today would be like running a Mac with OS9.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Just take a gander at this thread from 3 mnths ago.
BeOs didn't succeed with x86. Some developers said that those who has originally used BeOs started to use window/Linux and stopped to support original BeOs apps because everythig was easier with Windows/Linux.
Custom hardware is good choise, there woun't be any benefits to go x86/x64
Custom hardware makes Amiga special and force people who has it to use it. (Yes I know there is linux distro for ppc)
OS4 needs to remain PPC.
No valid reason for OS4 to go to commodity hardware. The market isn't there - niche OS's are free/open source on commodity hardware, Hyperion would have no business model.
It's be just another offshoot hobby OS that could once make a meager earning on the PPC side that is now on commodity HW where there's a plethora of free OS'es for every niche market. Another OS I'd have to run an emulation layer on to run legacy software. Why should I run OS4 x86 vs. AROS, vs. UAE/Amikit/Amithlon?
and those are just select quotes from the first 2 pages. The snobs still exist.
No. You see, even the most snobby of snobs is well aware that the only viable CPU architectures right now are ix86 and ARM. 68K is dead outside of the low power (in every sense) embedded world; and PowerPC is a WTF.
Ten years ago, like I said, you might have found a hold out, clinging perhaps to PowerPC as a possible 68k successor, but today? Nope. The CPU wars are over.
Why the animosity to Amiga enthusiasts? Im willing to bet that a significant portion of Linux users on Slashdot were once Amiga users and for various reasons moved on - maybe like myself - a reluctant windows user in the late 90's before discovering Linux and dumping windows for good eventually! Initially Linux - for me reminded in many ways of Amiga OS which is why it was so easy for me to fall in love with it.
Although Linux will for the moment remain my primary OS I've been keeping an eye on AROS. Over the years and as of late the system is becoming really polished with different distro's including one for 68k that can be run on classic hardware - as well as a port currently underway for the Raspberry PI. So you will see that this is not just about running AmigaOS on x86 but creating an OS that eventually will run across different processor architectures. There is also a very interesting Aros / Linux hybrid which opens up the world of linux applications to use inside AROS ... Aeros / Broadway X .
How quickly we forget that Linus Torvalds was scratching an itch to build a minix clone for x86 which has led to the incredibly widespread and varied use we see today. So to AROS which started albiet more recently than Torvalds effort which has similar but humble beginnings.
AROS and the work that has been done are enabling things like replacement , royalty free Kickstart's that can be used with emulation software - free of the chains of licensing. Its open source nature will ensure that the operating system can be free and modified by all.
I for one applaud the efforts that have gone into the project particularly since they have so few active developers. (Anyone interested should probably dig in)
Nope, look at my post below from an Amiga thread from 3 months ago for 3 seperate people in the first 2 pages decrying AmigaOS on x86 and how PPC hardware makes it 'special'.
The Amiga wasn't PowerPC based. It was a popular upgrade, and some of the companies that called themselves "Amiga" after Commodore's downfall produced machines they called "Amigas" with PowerPCs, but those machines were basic PREP (or whatever the term is), not resembling the Amiga range in any shape or form. The only connection was the operating system.
What you have here are PowerPC snobs, not Amiga snobs.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I used to be a die hard Amiga fan and I still dip into the scene every now and again to see what's going on.
They seem to have a fairly decent browser in the form of a Firefox port called Timberwolf, but it's quite sad to see the amount of effort they have to through just to watch a video on YouTube.
Likewise, USB support is still quite lacking (I'm not even sure they have USB2 support yet), and most of the software is just ports of Linux software (Blender etc.)
It's interesting to see what's going on, but it'll only ever be a hobby. Some of them still seem to think the Amiga will take over the world one day.
Summation 2
Only the second person mentioned PPC. The first guy was just saying you should have to have 'custom hardware' because otherwise AmigaOS is no longer 'special'.
Pascal Papara's Broadway AROS project has been brought to the Raspberry Pi by Stephen Jones. There's also an ARM6 hosted version of the AROS project available.
Not sure why people get so butthurt over what other people do with their free time.
Amen! This is an incredibly common reflex, found in all walks of life, and in relation to almost any area of human behaviour imaginable.
They were referring to AmigaOS not x86.
Did you feel a little breeze in your hair? Yeah, that was the comment going over your head. He intentionally switched them up for effect.
Sorry, I thought you were quoting one comment.
That said, it still doesn't really say what you're suggesting. What the first and third comment are saying is that they think the best computer would be combination of AmigaOS and custom hardware. They think AmigaOS should be created for this custom computer.
Now, you'll note a few things. One is that that doesn't specify a CPU. The other is that pretty much rules out the crappy "Let's combine the reference-architecture PowerPC motherboards with AmigaOS" "Amigas" that have been pouring out of companies that have called themselves "Amiga" in the last few years. Because those reference architecture PCI-supporting PowerPC motherboards aren't exactly custom computers either.
I can certainly relate to someone wanting the owners of the Amiga IP to come out with a revolutionary new computer, unlike anything out today. Because that's what we got in 1985. However, I think there's a world of difference between saying that, and saying "Also - it has to have some outdated, crappy, CPU that nobody uses any more". You'd put an ix86-64 in a modern Amiga for exactly the same reason as they put a 68000 in the original Amiga 1000 - it's a powerful, commodity, CPU, the best CPU you can get for the price.
I'd be enormously surprised if the first and third poster didn't agree with that.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Another undead "Amiga". Hooray...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
3 seperate people in the first 2 pages decrying AmigaOS on x86 and how PPC hardware makes it 'special'.
An 8-core POWER7 processor is special. Most everything these days from the PowerPC series is not.
Had Commodore actually released a PPC based Amiga themselves, then there might have been a real connection between the PPC and the Amiga. But Commodore folded before they could transition off of the 680x0. So all we have are a few third party PPC processor cards and a couple hobbyist companies tinkering with it after it fell from mainstream status.
To me, I think a lot of people had wishful thinking of what could have been had Commodore followed Apple down the PPC rabbit hole. That is why they're so hung up on it. But for most people, the Amiga died when it was a 680x0 machine running 3.x.
something was named Icarus, it went down in flames.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Define "custom hardware". Not even the game consoles really use specialty custom hardware anymore, and they were the last class of home systems to really do so. Now they just use tweaked versions of commodity hardware. These days, you have to look at big iron and mainframe systems to really find custom in-house designed hardware.
I'm not saying that it couldn't be done, but it really wouldn't be worth the cost. Heck, look at AMD who just licensed an ARM core so that they can get the Trusted Computing subsystem into their x86-64 processors. It was simply cheaper to license something else.
I completely agree with you. I was just saying that "custom hardware" is what the posters quoted were advocating, not "I HATE IX86!!?!"
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's a bird! It's a plane! No, just the joke you didn't get.
You mean other than the 3rd quote explicitly stating AmingaOS4 has no reason to go on commodity hardware and the first one saying there are no benefits to x86/x64? You seem to be trying to reinterpret their clear statements to try to claim they are saying the opposite of heir own words.
you all know that if you buy a modern MB with a PowerPC in it you can run the true AmigaOS http://www.amigaos.net/
Not all operating systems need to be, nor should be, multiuser, memory/resource protected, desktop publishing Goliaths. The OS I work on in my spare time is single user, no permissions, no memory protection simple piece of usefulness. I use it to run diagnostics and fix problems and I am proud of how well it does that. I believe your view of what a "useful OS" should be is skewed.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I think the weight of "people are inventing entire operating systems built in the manner of AmigaOS" outweighs your "I never turn on my video toasters any more."
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Everyone had a different idea of what the "Amiga Experience" was, because the machine was so striking in so many different ways.
I don't remember talking to many people who thought Intuition and Workbench (the GUI) were all that special (right-button fixed-position menus, and "screens" being the only "cool" Amiga-exclusive GUI features that I can think of off the top of my head), but OTOH in the mid-1980s there weren't that many GUI competitors, so I guess it's not far-fetched that at least some people thought that was special.
To some people, it was just the games. The Amiga had its day in the sun where it was, for a brief period, the game machine. When that day ended, those people moved on.
To me, it was all about the tech. And even within the tech, there were at least two camps and lots of people with a mix of membership in both. The custom chips were excellent -- by mid/late 1980s standards (by 1996 I had installed a graphics card and by 2000 the case was truly stuffed to the gills with replacements for nearly everything on the mobo, every Z3 slot filled and some cards with other weirdo connectors which connected to other sub-cards!).
Exec was excellent (if you ignored the issue of memory protection) and simple, and I still sometimes wish on Linux I could "nice" processes with absolute priorities. (But it doesn't matter as much, these days.)
Even AmigaDOS (!) (when's the last time you heard that part of the system praised?) had some very nice things about it, or easily added onto it. Linux finally got equivalent ramdisk tech with 2.4 but I still don't see a pipe device as awesome and convenient as APIPE. ;-) Linux finally got diverse filesystems (on of my favorite things about it) and has pulled ahead by a huge margin (I'll admit that; Linux is now the world leader in this regard) but Amiga people were plugging in, and playing with, and benchmarking different ones, years before anyone ever heard of Hans Reiser. When x86 people were working around fdisk partitioning, Amiga people had RDB -- equivalent tech is just now hitting becoming widely deployed with GPT. Some of its features seem very dubious by today's standards (I can't explain to anyone in 2012 why they would want "assigns" and not sound like a moron) but compared to AmigaDOS' comtemporaries .. oh, those people knew why someone would want a feature like that, and envied the Amiga even if they had to do it in secret.
The Amiga was plenty loved for its tech. Maybe by different people for different reasons, but the techlove was there, and I think critical to Amiga lingering after Commodore's death, for as long as it did.
One thing, though. For all the Amiga tech we don't have today, we still get by. Some of it got improved on (FFS seems so quaint now), some of it got the need for it bypassed by either new paradigms or brute force (you don't need copper lists, or to tell APIPE how much memory to use for its queue, or decent partitioning system when you have LVM), some of it is now seen as a bad idea (e.g. reading the the code which implements a filesystem, from the inserted media), and whatever we all still lack today, is mitigated by the other advantages of being the mainstream (e.g. Core i5 for $200 instead of a Cyberstorm 060 for $1000). The tech was damn fine, but it's still 1980s tech that we're talking about. It still impressed in the 1990s, but mainly because the 1990s were a semi-dark age.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Incidentally, by some accounts Commodore were working with HP to transition to the PA-RISC processor and had no plans to use PPC... Had they not folded, they most likely would have moved to HPPA, later moved to IA64 and would probably be in the process of moving again.
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Those quote are hilarious...
BeOs didn't succeed with x86. Some developers said that those who has originally used BeOs started to use window/Linux and stopped to support original BeOs apps because everythig was easier with Windows/Linux.
Nor did it succeed on PPC.
No valid reason for OS4 to go to commodity hardware. The market isn't there - niche OS's are free/open source on commodity hardware, Hyperion would have no business model.
There is no market for a niche OS targeting hobbyists. Niche OS are free or open source and run on widely available hardware because that's the only way any of them has a hope of attracting a user base. Lots of people have old/spare hardware they would play with a new OS on, but very few would buy expensive hardware just to try an expensive os.
That's how myself and many others first experienced linux. In fact, my first experience of both linux and netbsd was installing them on an amiga since that's the hardware i had available at the time.
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If you go and look at the context of those kinds of comments you will find that 'Custom' hardware means one of two things to the Amiga community as a group. 1) The custom audio/video coprocessors that were produced by Commodore. Generally referred to as the "custom chipset". 2) PowerPC motherboards.
Yes, with the Hombre system that they were co-designing with HP.
Had they not folded, they most likely would have moved to HPPA, later moved to IA64 and would probably be in the process of moving again.
The few remaining polar bears are very thankful that IA64 didn't gain momentum...
Stick Men
For the collector / new to Amiga market, what would you recommend? I want to get a complete Amiga system, for gaming exclusively, but I always get tripped up in the model numbers (500, 1200, 3000, etc). Just something new to toy around with for a few months and add to my collection of gaming equipment. I had a Commodore 64 since it was released in the "C" format, and still have all of my equipment and software, but I was so jealous of the back-of-the-box screenshots for Amiga titles (we really couldn't afford an Amiga when they were new). I'd love to experience that first-hand, especially from some of the better houses such as Cinemaware. I'm just completely unsure what model to invest in.
The good old timey feeling of the late Renaissance
According to the article, Icaros plays nicely with a variant of UAE.
UAE provide the emulation and Motorola-to-Intel JIT.
While Icaros provide the Amiga OS API (thus, for example, the clip board is shared between x86 and motorola applications).
The screen shots also feature windows with amiga games running in them.
Now, it's another question how perfect this UAE+Icaros stack is for games and demos using bat-shit crazy copper effect running self-modifying code monstruosity triggered by in-sync CPU event ....
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"What upsets me is that I can't, any longer, jump on something so wonderful. There's no point." Why? The AROS community enjoys spending some of its spare time on this.
>> I want to get a complete Amiga system, for gaming exclusively, but I always get tripped up in the model numbers (500, 1200, 3000, etc).
I'd get BOTH a 500 and the 1200; both of these are CPU-under-the-keyboard models, but the 1200 has the built-in HD (120MB or so). Try to run your games on the 1200 first, but in my experience, you'll need the original 500 for a few of them. (The 3000 series and what-not are separate tower/keyboard affairs.)
Damn, I wish you didn't post AC, I was going to ask if I can use one monitor for both or if they use different monitors. Sorry if I seem uninformed on Amiga, its new to me in almost every sense.
Maybe someone would like to download Icaros Desktop and see what actually is. Here's the link to the project page. Thanks to all visitors, http://www.icarosdesktop.org