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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!
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++;
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.
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.
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)
Yeah. What we need is a Linux kernel module that traps userland segmentation faults and throws a kernel panic. XD
I love all my Amigas; I fought on the epic frontlines of the Amiga versus Atari BBS flamewars before most of you were an ache in your daddys' groins. I carried the Boing Ball flag into harm's way too many times to count. But the true Amiga experience, as depicted by connoisseurs, requires abandonment of such niceties as memory protection and process isolation.
The hardcore nostalgics forget that the Amiga didn't have memory protection first because the hardware wasn't routinely available, and more importantly because the seamless memory map allowed all of RAM to be a huge playground for the CPU and custom co-processors to accomplish amazing things at less than 8 Mhz. Also, the kernel was blazing fast because there was no meaningful context transition from userland to kernel; everything was memory-pointer based, and all memory was directly mapped and non-virtual.
Therefore, it was also fragile. But that was an acceptable cost for blazing speed and jaw-dropping media performance at a time that MS-DOS machines were single-tasking, playing beeps and boops through a 2" speaker in the system case. and displaying EGA-level graphics.
So, let's not wax too nostalgic. True nostalgists wouldn't want this any more than an intelligent car collector will settle for a kit car body, even if it's on a more powerful and capable chassis than the original 1950s Ferrari (for instance).
Amiga enthusiasts who are curious or interested in one evolutionary path of the old OS might want to see this.
Other than that, I can't imagine this being a very popular product.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It's a bird! It's a plane! No, just the joke you didn't get.
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