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Amiga to use Linux Kernel
Pseudonymus Bosch writes "Amiga has selected Linux
as the OS kernel for the new Amiga Operating Environment that is scheduled for release later this year."
I wonder what caused such a sudden about-face. Regardless, I hope
Amiga does well, and makes some interesting changes to Linux. Even if they
don't go into the mainstream kernel, I'm curious to see what they have up their sleeves. Update: 07/09 12:35 by J : A Letter from Jim Collas
which might help explain things.
The Amiga OS will be released later this year? Ya' think?
This is getting ridiculous. What were they working on for the past 5 years? I guess we can take this as the official announcement that the Amiga is dead.
nice one. My favourite old machine and favourite OS together. This should be interesting if it happens. Wonder if the power light will still flicker when doing a guru meditation.
Brad
I am *very* excited about this recent development.
As an old time Amiga user, now a Linux user. I think this is great news. I loved the Amiga, and I love Linux too.
I'm surprised to see the choice of Linux for the next generation of AmigaOS.
:-(((
I programmed a bit on my Amiga 1200 few years ago.I wonder how they can translate a micro kernel architecture to a monoblock architecture ?
May be it is only one more of the promises for Amiga that will be never delivered
Laurent Boulard, an old disappointed Amiga fan
@mail: Laurent.Boulard@eleve.emn.fr
Depends. Both QNX and the Linux kernels are POSIX compliant. If the "main" OS is written around the POSIX stuff, they should be able to convert things over. It depends on how abstracted the major functions were intertwined with QNX, I suppose. I hope this doesn't mean that we're *still* going to be stuck with message passing up the wazoo. Ugh.
*shrug* The announcement does sound suspicious. This is definitely turning into 90210...instead of Dylan returning to the set, it's Torvalds..
Well you OBVIOUSLY never tried the Amiga, did you? Who used a workbench disk for WHAT? I seem to remember booting quite happily off my hard drive.
Atari's OS better than AmigaOS? Now THAT's funny! You can TOS that one right in the garbage bin..
If you are right, and they don't acknowldge this, or make their source available, this may be yet another challenge to the GNU license. I sure hope they do the right thing.
On the Atari you could boot from ROM, and you
got that green 640x200 screen, when you could open as many as 4 windows at once! Without a disk! How great...
With yet another company promising a fabulous new Amiga for everyone that will blow away everything and still just pushing it further and further into the future with no obvious progress... why isn't the hordes of Amiga fanatics (I know there are at least hundreds of you out there) putting together your OWN AmigaOS replacement? All the pieces exist, you just need to put it together.
Yes. this is an example of how Amiga does things.
The have decided to move away from a bad thing[TM]. And have now choosen a good thing[TM]
Rather than sticking with the proprietary and ultra expensive QNX.
This also will benefit Linux. Also this means that whatever good changes Amiga Inc. Does to the Linux kernel can now be put into the official Linux Kernel should the kernel developers choose to do so. After all they can't make the Linux kernel proprietary.
I'm not saying QNX sucks or anything. QNX actually rocks from what I have seen. It only sucks that it is proprietary.
But what will Amiga do with the GUI now? Will they stick with xfree or include parts of their new GUI in the kernel?
Maybe this will benefit Linux also in the 3D departments?
I would surely buy this thing. I hope Linux appliacations can be compiled under it with no difficulties. Can someone say GIMP :-) Blender. Mozilla, Xmms and so on. I hope this will be a strong multimedia platform.
Which Atari OS?
It was miles better than GEM.
Mint had potential but the Amiga OS was better than that as well.
Magic looks nice but I still prefer AmigaOS.
Try it out and use both machines.
I do. I have a 1200 and STE and even an Atari Falcon 030!
It's too bad...
:((
;)
Amiga OS will just be another Linux OS
I think I'll keep my G3 and wait for Mac OS X
Lolo
an old Amiga fan then a PC user and now a Mac fanatic !!!
NewTek has been very bluntly telling Linux users not to expect a Linux port of LightWave 3D, but maybe now if they want to port LightWave back to the Amiga (from whence it came), they may just have to port it to Linux.. and after that, its just a hop, skip, and jump to x86 Linux.
Well, for real-time stuff, they could always put RT Linux underneath it all for critical performance stuff...
At least the Amiga had a real operating system from the start. My Atari 1040ST could not multitask, had a maximum of four open windows, recognized two diskdrives even though I only had one etc..
I don't know much about the later revisions of TOS, but the early versions where no match against the Amiga's OS. And Amiga OS 3.1 is not at all bad at that.. With the exception of the multi-user aspects and proper memory protection, it is pretty much up to par with modern OS requirements..
If you have ever used the Amiga OS you would know that it is extremely compact and well written. The original release fit on to two floppies. I think that early next year would be a good bet tho.
I'd like to see a computer the profile of
an ST or 1200 running FreeBSD or Linux.
Such a all-in-one box would fit nicely
on my desk.
Check out the QNX site. They are asking for people to become beta sites for the QNX Amiga Network.
http://www.qnx.com/amiga/
Umm, the 68000 IS a 32-bit chip; it has many instructions that are
32-bits in length, and every register is 32-bits in length. (yes, even
the address register - the top 8 bits were just unused, even though
the could be read from and written to.)
>selling the OS at $60 bucks a pop (OS 3.5 which is scheduled to be released 3Q is slated to cost $59.95)?
OS3.5 is nothing to do with the AMIGA NG, it is the final os update for the "Classic Amiga" i.e. A500 A1200 A4000 etc.
Can you be more explicite on the 'ideologie' ?
I love my Amiga because with 4 floppy disks (the API documentation) and a C compilator (DICE) on my 120 Mo hard Disk, I discovered the 'professionnel' programmation with API system and not by hacking the hardware registers. The whole for less than 150$ (about 900 FF). When you are a kid fond of computers it was absolutly fabulous to make your first programme using windows, gadgets and menu with the intuition.library. I reminded the lovely community behind the Amiga too (and how Commodore ignored them !).
I had to wait for Linux for finding the same thing.
If OS5 is another OS, incompatible with the original kernel, I think it will be dead before being on the market (but I think it's just another fucking promise from Amiga HeadQuarters).
Because the Amiga community is (almost) dead and the way for starting programming is by Linux now.
Please AmigaCorps, let this lovely dead OS in its place.
Laurent Boulard.
It doesn't even look like Amiga told QNX that they changed their minds. They never told anyone about Linux on the news groups. In fact I just scanned over deja and it just looks like they confirmed time and time again that QNX is there choice.
Perhaps Amiga *burnt* QNX and QNX wanted to at least show off what they've done? 40 Engineers is a Hell of a lot of resources. I doubt this will be the last we'll here from QNX. Maybe they'll deliver this beta (or future versions) for free and just blow Amiga out of the water?
Duh, that's the advantage of a message passing kernel. Mach (as in MacOS X) is built on the same principles. The Linux kernel OTOH is just a piece of ugly bloat.
This is a *really* big dissapointment. Amiga with
a QNX kernal had the possibility to be new and
cool. But Amiga Desktop for Linux is nothing new.
Amiga says it eases hardware driver porting, this
mean they are not planing any new cool hardware
but planing on being another Linux distro with
a new GUI...
BeOS still rules the OS space, it would have been
cool to have some competition but they shot themselves in foot with this announcement.
Hmm. Amiga... Linux... Linus Torvalds... Transmeta... And da allmighty superchip... Anyone see the connection?
I witnessed my mates amiga 2000 with it newly installed 68010 play a mod, run an x windows client from another machine on the network, and format a floppy disk at once. To say I was impressed was an understatement. At the time my 486DX100 could not even attempt to replicate, specially under windows , and old PCs used to love making you wait while it accessed a floppy. Admittedly the amiga was under a bit of strain now and again, but it opened my eyes to think that clock speed is not the answer, a solid multitasking enviroment on sillicon is.
So why wasnt anything learnt from the amiga?
Apart from maybe 3DFX type stuff, if they actually took any inspiration at all.
Brad.
Linux is not that bad for multimedia performance, just support. Everyone says BeOS is faster, but it just doesn't seem that way to me. The performance problem really comes in when novices write slow X programs (X can actually be pretty fast, if you really know what you're doing (I don't)) for multimedia. Besides, most video work is done to a raw A/V drive; it would be quite possible to make a "dbfs" for Linux, similar to Be's stuff.
> I mean who really though that the original Amiga OS was better than the Atari's
:-) ) OS (not the GUI) was very advanced. The only problem with it was, that the Amiga was just too small for it: It was a cut-down version of Tripos, an OS wich run an mini computers.
Everybody who knows something about computers.
Though I never had an Amiga, I can say its (her's
At its time the Amiga OS was the only "real" operating system for the average person. Commodore's fault was to use this dammend game console as hardware platform.
out of necessity
When did they start competing with BeOS? What makes you think that QNX kernel has better multimedia support than Linux? As far as I know it has no support for soundcards and its demo can't even hit 800x600 at 16bpp. Also, you don't know its better because Amiga hasn't released it yet.
Get a clue.
(I haven't used the Amiga for ten years, so bear that in mind when reading this)
From what I remember then, the audience was people who likes cool and fast graphics, and multimedia
applications.
Using Quake 2 with my VooDoo 2 card on Linux makes me a little suspicious if the Linux kernel is the right thing for Amiga. Q2 was 30% slower on Linux than in Windows. One idea I had was that Linux doesn't allow anything but the kernel to handle the hardware. This makes Linux a slower choice.
When I programmed my Amiga I was fiddling directly with the hardware. Isn't that part of owning an Amiga?
Well, I have long since got tired of playing with graphics and sound so for me Linux is the perfect choice. But for the Amiga audience, I think not.
The way I see it, there's some guy sitting in his bedroom in his shorts issuing press releases two or three times a year on the internet. He puts the Amiga name on the press releases to satisfy his cruel need to frustrate Amiga nerds by making them belive there acutally is a product somewhere behind the verbiage and that it's just about to be released. Each press release generates a mini firestorm of debate which soon dies down only to be stoked by the next one a few months later. I think if I could find a much loved piece of technology from the past I could start a religion by expanding on this guy's technique.
The Linux kernel is not an operating system by itself. Don't assume that AmigaOS will be another distribution with a different window manager.
Most apps don't use kernel APIs, so Linux (the OS) and AmigaOS might not be compatible at all.
I'm a current Linux user, a former Amiga user, and I'm very excited about this development. If the hardware looks good, I'll probably buy one.
When you compare highly tuned windoze GL drivers with the "first cut" drivers currently available for Linux, you are seeing a difference in drivers, not the OS.
It is naive to suppose that Linux isn't capable of running just as fast, if not faster, than windoze, once the drivers are optimized.
There is a lot of work going on now with respect to 3d video on Linux, and let me tell you, the next 12 months are going to be very interesting times for Linux gamers and other users of 3D graphics on Linux.
The way I see it, this is the final acknowledgement of the fact that Amiga is dead.
With QNX we would at least get a consistent modular OS model with a microkernel. Exactly
what original AmigaOS was.
With Linux we will get just another Linux distribution, with a kernel written by a guy
who is ignorant and proud to be this way,
with primitive monolithic structure stemming
from the fact that guy's experience with OSes
has been limited to a basic acquaintance with
Unix.
And don't forget the joy of recompiling
your kernel and messing with different versions
of system libraries: that is what makes up a
proud Linux user, doesn't it?
'BSD-ers have not landed some huge commercial project yet'?!?
BSD-ers landed a much bigger comercial project a while ago in MacOSX.
One thing I'm wondering about is how Amiga can do this legally, as I understood it the GNU prohibits use of GNUed code in commercial code, unlike the BSD licence. Oh well, maybe I should read the licences again...
What I'm most curious about is what they'll do with regard to C libraries etc.
If most of their "operating environment" is layered on top of POSIX compliant C/C++ libraries, then it would be even easier.
Most of Amiga OS has been fairly Unix like for years. The network stack is mostly Berkeley sockets compatible, etc., and that certainly makes it easier.
Maybe there is something to the cults claiming the world will go under this new year after all...
As long as they run on a Linux kernel, and someone provide a X server that can coexist nicely with whatever GUI they end up with, then most/all existing Linux software will be able to coexist with their new "operating environment".
I suspect that what they will release will be a heavily object oriented (Amiga OS has always been fairly object oriented, even down to internal Exec data structures) environment that is using mostly Posix features (which would explain why the switch from being geared at QNX to Linux seems to be something they could do very easily), and that provide a coherent and small GUI and "Amiga like" environment, while you could still easily run Linux software on it.
That's a good thing: It would let them innovate, and even if most software companies ignore their operating environment, they'd still have the software base of Linux to give them momentum.
Now it's really all down to their operating environment and their hardware: If they aren't REALLY exciting, all they will have is yet another Linux box.
Congrats. Maybe more old-skool Amiga fans will realize that BeOS is where it's at today.
-M
Who cares about the OS cost.. Amiga can give it away... Cos i know i am going to want the Amiga hardware that it runs on best... Gotta love distributed processing....
And even if they are developing for QNX, that most probably mean that the software is mostly POSIX compliant, and thus easily moved to Linux.
And you are wrong. It won't have to run in a "closed box" on top of Linux. Only if they require changes to be statically linked with the Linux kernel, or to GPL'ed libraries will they have to release software under the GPL.
I suspect that the "operating environment" is to the new Amiga like glibc, system shells, init and other basic utilities are to Linux: All of them run on top of the kernel, all of them shield user applications from dealing directly with the kernel. How many people use syscalls directly in their applications? Close to none. Because it's mostly a stupid thing to do.
But this has an interesting side effect: If done properly, there would be nothing preventing a user from running whatever Amiga's operating environment turns out to be, and a typical Linux environment simultaneously on the same machine, without performance degradations:
They would share process spaces, address space, etc., but could potentially use mostly different system libraries.
It's not quite what you do with most microkernel based OS's, but is quite interesting anyway: While what the typical user see reflects the kernel too (filesystem model, devices, memory protection, multiuser model etc.), you can change the look and feel a lot by just replacing a few system libraries and shells.
Linux already has "soft" realtime possibilities, with setscheduler() etc., that lets you set "realtime" scheduling of processes etc.
It's not frequently used (it can lock up your machine, because a runaway "realtime" process will effectively prevent all other non-"realtime" processes from running)
But of course, the granularity of the soft realtime support may not be good enough for the most demanding realtime apps. In that case there's RT-Linux, which is a realtime microkernel, with the real Linux kernel running as a realtime process on top of it. A bit more work, but can guarantee a lot more about when your realtime process is scheduled.
Using either method is a lot better than just messing with "nice", and I'm sure either could be improved a lot.
Still, the A4000 and A1200 are fairly slow by todays standards. They're stopgap systems while Amiga Inc. are working on the new platform. The A4000 and A1200 were the last models released before Commodore went bankrupt in '93 (or was it '94?)
Another performance and memory issue is that the Amiga OS has always been extremely efficient. You can run fairly advanced applications with as little as 512KB of RAM (in addition to the OS in ROM), and when I was using Amiga, 2-8 MB RAM, and no swap (in fact you had to use an extra program to even make it support swap), was the norm, and I can't for my bare life remember running out of RAM, even though I had a nasty habit of running lots of shells, a couple of text editors, a terminal program, and a drawing program (Deluxe Paint... Sigh, I still miss it. Gimp is nice - lots of features and stuff, but it can't beet the feel of DP IV) at the same time, and occasionally doing compiles in the background.
Most companies using BSD doesn't say so. They present their product as an intergrated package, with their own name. That's one of the results of using the BSD license instead of GPL or LGPL.
These are people that were part of building Gateway from nothing into a multi-billion-dollar corporation. I doubt charity, dumbness, or "using up an investors grants" are among the reasons for their business decisions.
Changing to Linux now makes a lot of sense:
Since QNX just yesterday released a lot of infor about their Amiga project, my guess is that QNX is the backstabber here, but we can't know, now can we? Since neither party has actually given any information about why this change came about.
They _just_ switched to a linux kernel, and expect to have a release _this_ year? Whats wrong with this picture? Even after having a kernel, to integrate things into the hardware and the kernel it would take several months. Not to mention it wouldn't be beneficial to use ext2 for the file system, for media because of its various limitations including file size. Its actually limited in the kernel right now even still. Building an entire GUI and making it a seperate OS as it plans? I don't see this happening, even with 100 engineers. We all know how long decent OS development takes. Look at NT, BeOS, Linux, BSD, and MacOS X. Its not something thats gonna make it out by the end of the year, probably not even in beta form. Unless Amiga is full of uber engineers. Im not trying to troll, but this just seems incredibly unlikely to me. If they can do it, more power to them, but will we see flaws in the design later (like in the win32 api...)
They better leave that in...
It was greate fun writing apps
that messed with it.
I hope maybe this time round they
will introduce a exec library
function call or something to access
it (for those who don't know, the
only way to get the Amiga's power light
to flash was with a weird bit of meddling
directly with a memory address)
Amiga OS 3.1...
the last release ('95ish, I think),
had grown, using 5 880Kb floppies.
Of course, 1 was just some additional
fonts, 1 was multi-language support
(the Amiga's Locale library), and
you could easily make a full installation
up and running using the other
three (Workbench disk, still fully bootable
on it's own; the Extras disk, with some stuff like an icon editor; and the Storage disk, with some optional device drivers)
QNX is one of the few microkernel OS's that seems to be efficient enough.
But QNX is NOT a good commercial choice for a company that want to release a consumer machine, since there's practically NO available software for if. If there's one thing that should be learned by the Amiga story, it is that if you don't get all the newest applications fast, you DIE.
By going with the Linux kernel, both Amiga and Linux win: There will be more reasons for people to port to Linux.
But what makes you think it will be yet another Linux distribution?
The kernel provide memory protection, file system abstraction, process management, and a hardware driver model. Not much else. There's a damn lot more needed for a full OS, and in Linux that is taken care of by lots of libraries and applications with Unix heritage.
There's nothing in the press releases that imply that the Amiga operating environment will use those libraries and applications. That doesn't mean they can't be used, to let you run Linux applications too, but it means that they can ship an OS that is very different from Linux, while retaining enough compatibility that you could run any Linux application on it as well.
How is that for providing the user with choice?
And no, I haven't forgotten about recompiling kernels, and messing with system libraries. But I don't see it as a joy. I see it as a currently necessary evil that mostly eventually went away with recent distributions and good packaging formats.
I'm one of those weirdos who's never owned a MS operating system, ever... I started out with a VIC-20, then a C-64, an Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000, before I finally switched to PC hardware running Linux (Slackware, then Redhat). I'd love going back to an Amiga again, if they manage to get out some cool hardware again, and a Linux (kernel) based OS, that is compatible enough that I can just install some libraries and Linux (the OS) software too.
Care to give any particular reasons other than this sucks and this rules. We need as many different OS choices as possible. Do you only want to be stuck with one?
That would be really cool, as it would mean that they can provide added value, while still harnessing all of the available software for Linux.
Why bother with GIMP...
Amiga has a number of great graphics programs
already available...
There's the revered old DigiPaint,
which I STILL use for bitmap graphics...
and then Photogenics, which is almost on par with Photoshop, and superior in a number of ways.
Not to mention Photogenics also has a scripting language.
-Just Another Anonymous Coward
I mostly agree with you. But you're wrong about flash: There is a flash plugin for Linux... In fact, it has even been ported to Amiga...
The best thing about the Amiga floppy drives
was that they actually had a separate hardware channel devoted to telling the system whether or not there was EVEN A FLOPPY IN THE DRIVE!
PC systems have to spin for a minute before they can even figure that out, and even then they aren't sure. All it would have taken was one extra wire.
I hope the NG Amigas ship with a SuperDisk or ZIP drive (SCSI!).
-Just Another Anonymous Coward
When was the last time you saw an Amiga...
I've got an A4000T sitting right here,
with a 800x600x24 display open, running MUI
(a program similar in idea to GTK and QT)...
I assure you, it looks just as good as Enlightenment does on my Linux box.
For that matter, the bland old AmigaOS 3.1 still looked good.
What version of the AmigaOS are you talking about? The 1.2 and previous?
Literal translation is female friend.
But since Americans don't say what they mean, "girlfriend" doesn't mean female friend.
You people should find real girlfriends, instead of the square headed ones.
When did X become part of the Linux kernel?
You don't seriously expect them to use X, do you?
They could be the ones to bring Linux into the non-geek market, but I don't think it will be, beyond the kernel, the Linux environment that we're used to.
"Well, I'm bored of playing with RedHat, S.u.S.E., Debian, Caldera, Slackware, and Mandrake for free. Hmmm...Maybe I'll buy a new computer to get Amiga's distribution."
I don't think so.
Think different.
Why are you particularily happy that somebody is calling a Linux distribution an Amiga? Does that somehow make Linux more Amiga-like? If you ask anybody what defines the Amiga, you'll get one of two answers: The OS, or the hardware. Linux running on an x86 is neither.
If an x86 Linux box is an Amiga, it turns out I have a couple more Amigas than I thought.
Sure, a 50mhz 68060 seems pitiful compared to modern systems...
but I can do equivalent tasks on something even more outdated (68040, 40mhz) and still get similar responsivness that I'm getting under X on a PII/333 running linux.
It's all in the OS...the AmigaOS (not just was) IS a brilliant OS...except for memory protection, it still can compete with modern systems...
even with a "slower" processor...
Not to mention, many Amigas now have dual processors...a 50mhz 608060, and a PowerPC chip running at 250mhz...
And if the OS can keep up on a 50mhz CPU, think about what it can do on 250mhz...
-Just Another Anonymous Coward
(Linux advocate, Amiga Fanatic)
You don't know what you're talking about.
QNX has audio support, just not much. And you
try putting drivers for 20 "popular"
accelerated graphics cards on a floppy....
the demo runs using a flat mode SVGA driver,
the only thing everybody has.
QNX == 100% POSIX, Linux == 100% POSIX
You see? no problem to move the whole system over to a new kernel. Hell they can use _any_ kernel that are 100% POSIX compatible and have ANSI C/C++ compilers.
Am I the only one concerned about this?
They plan to tack on proprietary extensions onto Linux and not give it back to the free software community?
Yes, I do.
Why?
What have they said to make you think that? All they said was "Linux kernel." Can you even think of one reason why they would want to use X?
So... there'll be two Amiga OS'es? ERrgrgghhhh. I think it might be two different _implementations_ which will be used in different markets.
I can't wait for a port of BLAZEMONGER to Linux!
drool...
Dan?
It could be that they plan to use mkLinux, which uses the Mach microkernel.
Dan Dodge, CTO QNX Software Systems, officially says there WILL be a QNX-AmigaOS REGARDLESS of what Amiga Inc. says about Linux.
http://www.qnx.com/amiga/wherewestand.ht ml
L4 Linux is one of the most interesting technologies under development. Check out their WEBSITE. It really works.
Take a look...
WARNING: I've found that a sense of humor is useful when reading BeDope stories.
My guess is they are broke. As QNX is a RT system it would fit quite nicely into a media oriented machine, but it is not free. Now there is still BeOS and two more companies are going to deliver it pre-installed on their machines. Amiga - The Zombie Empire.
this eXtreme linuX is way cool
REPEAT THE FOLLOWING UNTIL IT SINKS IN...
The real power behind the amiga's blazing speed was not the CPU!
The real power lies in the peripheral silicon. I.e. a separate processor for graphics, one to drive the sound, etc.
Nonono... The M is Microsoft ;-)
They allowed their hardware/driver info out as open source finally, others still have not. And the glide code is written from the same code base as the windows one. The difference is Mesa as stated...eventually (well even 3.1 beta is said to be there) Mesa will get optimized and the GL cards will do well in linux. Now for full 3D in X...isn't Metro doing 3DX...will it help games, I dunno, but they are doing it.
This is really disappointing... The superior technology of QNX loses to the Linux hype/marketing machine.
Only morons compile their own OSes.
Of course those happen to be the same type of people that use the Amiga, so....
The original announcement of a new generation Amiga OS being developed around the QNX microkernel was very exciting. After all, QNX embodies many of the same ideals as the original Amiga OS. For example, it is fundamentally a message passing system and is implemented in a simple, efficient manner.
And now, out of the blue, a complete about face. I must admit this is very disappointing. If I wanted to use a Linux based system, WTF wouldn't I just use Linux??? If all these guys want to do is support Linux, why not just contribute to one of the many existing GUI projects??? Apparently the sprit of the Amiga remains dead at the management level.
Obviously they have better taste than to buy into this GNU crap, that's all. I'm sure it'll be a much better Linux without the FSF pollution.
The astronauts of the nineteenth century were the explorers--those intrepid men, often British, who mounted expeditions from the club rooms of Pall Mall to the most exotic hinterlands of the world. When the astronauts came back from the moon they told their stories to Life magazine. When the Victorians returned from their expeditions, they presented their findings in lectures before the Royal Geographical Society, and then they wrote their memoirs in large leather-bound volumes. But make no mistake; they were some of the greatest celebrities of their age.
Today we have Linus Torvalds to look up to and admire. The magic that Linus and Transmeta are now working on will find its form embodied in the new Amiga, a combination of some of the greatest technological breakthroughs in the history of computer science. It is this stunning combination of software and hardware wizardry which will lead us into the 21st century. When Linus finally sits back and gives us his leather bound memoirs, the history of Transmeta and Amiga Linux will be a most delightful read, a peek into the mind of one of our few god-like mortals.
BeOS is living and breathing, but still on the edge. It is very difficult for a proprietary system to compete with Windows, as OS/2 and NextStep showed. NextStep still lives in a way, but only as a Macintosh-specific system and OS/2 only survives--barely--because it is supported by IBM. I do not think BeOS is a threat to Linux at all, unless Be pulls off some kind of miracle in marketing. Do not get me wrong, I like ALL competition to Microsoft, but I just do not see how BeOS could be successful outside its "MediaOS" niche. As a matter of fact, I would be (pleasently) surprised if it becomes a major success even in that niche.
currently, I don't know how many
official Amigas are being produced,
but www.antigravity.com sells a
line of Amigas of their own...
fully compatible with the official
line, but with some nice add-on cards.
I've heard the waiting time is LONG,
however.
for some links, try www.amiga.org,
or www.cucug.org/amiga.html
-Just Another Anonymous Coward
Have you ever seen the
Amiga Kernel Reference manuals
(for the 1.0-3.1 OS's, not NG)?
They gave as much information
as was possible w/o showing you
the source, to the point it was
easy to patch, intercept, and mess
with the low level code with
confidence.
If they switch to open source,
it wouldn't affect coders much.
The whole thread is very telling. It seems that Linux is no longer perceived as leading edge technology. I presume that most people posting here already have some Linux experience, yet they express deep disappointment at Amiga Inc.'s decision. The Linux hype is fading, fading, fading ...
Uh - yeah - a lot of platforms failed to gain acceptance in the past due to lack of apps...sorta like *nix and X? The only thing using X will get them is a shortened development time and a crappy GUI. Oh, and maybe a few thousand worthless apps that nobody really wants to run anyway.
Seriously, they shouldn't be using the Linux kernel and they REALLY shouldn't be event considering using X.
QNX would have been perfect for that. The message passing is in the kernel and extends over the network. That's why what you describe works (sending a message between local process and a process on another machine is completely transparent.)
Although I once saw a usenet posting from Stuart Ferguson (coauthor of Lightwave) saying he was interested in porting to the next generation MacOS!
Big name? Amiga? Amiga is a footnote of late 80s technology.
:-)) but come on...it's done. It's gone. Amiga was a powerhouse when PCs were made by a company. Now PCs are made by hundreds of companies, and the distributed power is absolutely awe inspiring. Get a P-III 600, a nVidia TNT-2 and a Soundblaster Live! and you have a combination that took an unbelievable amount of engineering to make.
I once had an Atari ST and was an avid enthusiast (and it ran at 8Mhz compared to the petty 7.14 of the Amiga!
Amiga doesn't have a chance and appears to be nothing more than press releases. The absolute ABSURDITY that they could dump an OS and claim to have their product BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR is astounding. Pipe dreams and investor talk.
Yeah, Mac OS X has a BSD layer ABOVE the Mach kernel. Though if you develop a Mac OS X app you generally will not be using the BSD layer - you will be using the Carbon or Cocoa layer, which also extend down to the Mach kernel. Get it? Yeah, you can run BSD apps if you want to, but that isn't really what the OS is based on, its based on a microkernel. You could take away the BSD layer, and Carbon or Cocoa apps would still function. (Well, in theory anyway.)
Would be nice if Amiga would have stuck with the QNX message passing microkernel approach but oh well.
Clearly you have never read anything about the inner workings of QNX. The coolest part of QNX is its simplicity. Device drivers and user processes are essentially the same thing, just that the former can access hardware registers where the latter can not. What this means is that the QNX kernel does not inherently support sound, or video, or anything. It just provides the bare minimal core, which essentially amounts to memory management and process messaging. So there is no inherent flaw in the QNX architecture that prevents you from supporting sounds cards, MPEG cards, FireWire port, or whatever other piece of technology you care to write drivers for.
Judging QNX on the web browsing demo disk alone is not reasonable. That demo is very impressive but if you RTFM it tells you that it is inherently limited - no support for video acceleration, etc due to lack of space for the drivers. Duh! Now imagine what that OS is like with full hardware accelerated video - which is fully supported when there is actually space for the required video drivers. And yes, there are drivers for various sound cards as well.
Let's see....Gateway owns Amiga. Gateway has been in bed with Microsoft since Day 1 (remember, Gateway was not exactly forthcoming during the DOJ trial). Coolas is an employee of Gateway. Microsoft wants very badly to get in on all the hype surrounding Linux. Is it possible we're seeing, not the birth of AmigaLinux, but of MS-Linux?
Linux users should remember the old line about "If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas."
except that QNX HAS advanced features like memory protection and IPC...and yet it manages to remain small and efficient.
Are are you just another 20 something college dropout with no social skills and a big mouth?
http://www.qnx.com/literature/nto_sysarch/nto_sysa rch.html
Surprised that nobody mentioned the coprocessor // Even my // Text to speech is understandable. //
and the sophisticated special-purpose chipset.
These lifted lots of the processing load from the CPU, making
the machine quite fast with a slow CPU.
A1000 has a 16-bit barrel shifter and excellent
bit-blt ("blitter") hardware, as well a fast programmable
logic-function generator with 3 inputs. Also has four
8-bit A->D converters.
Native charset was Latin-1, 'way back in 1985!!
Oh, you're so funny, Mr IndiaSchmindia.
Remember, England conquered India once, it could very well happen again when you're busy seducing all your elephants or something.
Or we won't bother, looks like the Pakistanis will do the job for us.
They've got the tools for the job you know, although they're also black little annoying buggers.
Well at least I can spell };))
>Even raving comspiracy
QNX and Linux are booth Posix compatible kernels. Most software
written for one should run on the other after being recompiled.
Then look at this:
t ml
"2.
AmigaSoftTM Operating Environment (OE) - We are developing our next generation operating environment
including operating system, user interface, and some revolutionary software structures to be disclosed at a later
date. Target beta version is late 3Q99 with final in late 4Q99. We are also looking at the possibility of porting this
new AmigaSoftTM OE to the O/S 3.5 recommended hardware configurations. If we can accomplish this it will allow
people to run the new OE on specific Amiga configurations with PowerPC boards."
Found on:
http://www.amiga.de/diary/executive/up-0699-e.h
Blast from the past or what:)
Ahhh! I used to love the blazemonger posts.
Thanks for the memories(sniff).
um... make that a petty 7.16 MHz thank you
The OS is just the Icing, the cake amazes me!
They only started building this new revolutionary computer based on a new "mystery" chip last year.
It's supposed to blow away the stagnant computer industry. If it comes out on time, and isn't seriously flawed, It will blow them away on that fact alone.
Couldn't Amiga improve bewoulf or make something like that transparent clustering thing QNX has by themselves?
That would be *way* cool. I mean if I could just turn on additional computers and share the processor power on all those computers on my network.
I mean, is something like this allready in the works for Linux?
Enabling people to run programs distributed without having to make the programs specifically for use with beowulf would be a major cool thing for all computer users.
If you thought Linux Advocates were obnoxious now, wait 'til you see the new, improved Linux Amiga Advocate! ;-)
In fact, before I got a harddrive for my 1200 I was regularly using a RAD disk. (RAD: is a device in AmigaOS that survives a reboot. Very nifty)
/Andreas
This is all just a big E theme. That's it. Amiga will make their own distribution (RedHat with AmigaFS support compiled into the kernel) and will ship with an AmigaOS theme for E and GTK.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
By the way, the reason that Quake was slower was because Mesa was not as optimized as the 3Dfx miniGL drivers for Windows. They focus more on correctness and completeness than speed.
However, Mesa 3.1 is going to be MUCH faster, mostly due to heavy optimization work done by Keith W. and some others. I haven't tested Quake, but my own applications saw a speedup of 50%, and sometimes more. Keith reports that on both the Banshee and the Voodoo 2, Quake 2 timedemos are 10-15% *faster* than the running on 3Dfx's miniGL in Windows. Plus Mesa is a real OpenGL implementation, with all the bells and whistles!
I imagine that even Windows users will want to start using 3Dfx/Mesa with the release of this new version.
Don't quote me on those numbers, go look for Keith's timedemo posts on the Mesa-dev mailing list (www.mesa3d.org is the site). And Mesa 3.1 beta 2 is quite stable from what I've seen - download it and try it for yourself. I've been using it for Q3Test and it's quite speedy, certainly just as good as my Windows-using co-workers.
This is why I love open source/free software. In the time it takes you to say, " isn't as good as it could be", it's already better. In the meantime, 3Dfx has been working on their OpenGL driver for going on three years now and still have yet to make a "real" release.
The nifty thing about AmigaOS (and BeOS, for that matter) was the fast message-based IPC mechanism. I suppose they could hack that into the Linux kernel to get them the speed they would need to compete with BeOS, or even hack MkLinux to get them that, but it's not a matter of just taking the normal Linux kernel and plunking it in place. At least if they want "classic" Amiga programs to be re-compilable on this architecture without running like crap.
Sockets just won't get it. I've been doing a lot of work with sockets lately, and they're too bloody slow for the kind of IPC work that BeOS and AmigaOS-Classic do.
But maybe they're just dumping the whole Amiga project and going to become just Yet Another Linux Distribution. Maybe this is how Gateway is going to maintain their relationship with Microsoft while jumping on the Linux bandwagon, i.e., by taking this defunct brand name they bought for near nothing and attaching it to their new Linux line. SIgh.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Posted by _DogShu_:
I looked at the products that they offer, so I can get a feel for what they make. (The last amiga I saw was a gaming system from the 80's)
I looked at the computers that they have... and they seem like they're 10 years out of date!
The most RAM I saw them offer was 32 MB, but that's not the kicker...
25 mhz!!! Their chips run at 25 mhz!!! They also had 50 mhz chips, but it looked like 25 was standard.
ummmmmm, how are you supposed to do anything useful with this machine? People actually pay for this stuff? Is there something I'm missing?
If I got the message right, a new great AmigaOS is basically a thin wrapper around Linux kernel now?
I wonder how much "Linux" will be left underneath? Just the kernel+modules, or all the non-graphical stuff, or even X?
What is it exactly the new "Amiga" will implement on top of Linux - new windowing system, or yet another desktop?
Actually it would be the best if they just make a new desktop and a set of libraries nessesary to port existing Amiga aplication to X11- This would allow the Amiga-users a smooth transition to Linux, withouth too much pain, and add another desktop to Linux. I actually like the idea.
By selling the OS preinstalled on their own hardware, they sidestep the old and tired "but Linux is so hard to install" arguement. A new Amiga should come out of the box with X configured and the sound card working, and with any easy to use ppp utility. If they do this, and provide good support, they will have addressed the major concerns that keep most "normal" people from using Linux.
I wish you success Amiga -- this is your last chance!
TedC
Because a 'relative failure' will look bad to people outside the OSS community. Think LONG TERM here -- whilst gaining one extra 'member' is a 'good thing'(TM), it isn't good thing if it is to our detriment in the long run. We don't need to Hype Linux, and indeed shouldn't. I've already read sone articles in papers (one particular instance is in the technology section of the UK Telegraph) in which people have refered to 'calling the bluff of Linux' hype', which is something that must be dealt with. Above all, the Linux and Free Software community must getg to grips with is that, to most people, being 'Free' isn't inherently a good thing -- respect must be earned -- and that must be via the sheer quality of the software alone. So far as my opinion is concerned, I think that Amiga should have used QNX's OS, since the realtime capabilities of that are far better proven than Linux'. I would have personally been intterested to see how AmigaOS progressed with QNX Neutrino at its core, though I imagine that the porting effort was (relatively) small in any case (given the well touted POSIX conformance of QNX's OS's). Anyhow, don't just think blindly, THINK John
John
John_Chalisque
Because a 'relative failure' will look bad to people outside the OSS community. Think LONG TERM here -- whilst gaining one extra 'member' is a 'good thing'(TM), it isn't good thing if it is to our detriment in the long run.
We don't need to Hype Linux, and indeed shouldn't. I've already read sone articles in papers (one particular instance is in the technology section of the UK Telegraph) in which people have refered to 'calling the bluff of Linux' hype', which is something that must be dealt with.
Above all, the Linux and Free Software community must getg to grips with is that, to most people, being 'Free' isn't inherently a good thing -- respect must be earned -- and that must be via the sheer quality of the software alone.
So far as my opinion is concerned, I think that Amiga should have used QNX's OS, since the realtime capabilities of that are far better proven than Linux'. I would have personally been intterested to see how AmigaOS progressed with QNX Neutrino at its core, though I imagine that the porting effort was (relatively) small in any case (given the well touted POSIX conformance of QNX's OS's).
Anyhow, don't just think blindly, THINK
John
John
John_Chalisque
>And when everybody jumps on the bandwagon, it will be called the "Vowel Movement".
:)~
youre right, Amiga isnt doing an ENTIRE OS anymore, but i guess doing everything from the GUI APIs and windowing system, up. (replacing X is most likely...thank GOD)
I think with $$ behind them and not 15 year old legacy like X, they will get a much faster, cleaner, sexier interface than what were used to on Linux...here's hoping Amiga does The Right Thing
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
...select Amiga window decoration from the Be menu, and call it a day.
Jón
What can I say? This sucks. Linux is nice, but for the "new" Amiga? Gee, I guess I'll just put mkLinux on a iMac and call it iAmiga! :
QNX/Amiga would have been more exciting...
But I'll keep an eye on the development, as I have for the last YEARS!...
Jón
It will be a cheaper Mac-Wannabe just like it was before. It will be a remarkably simpler and inherently more maintainable system (by a novice) due to design. Plus it will have full driver support for all the hardware that comes with the box itself.
This trumps Linux on Intel somewhat at the moment.
It impresses the types of people you really do want impressed...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, the 680x0's were all 32bit chips no less 32bit than a 386SX.
If the original is engineered well it really doesn't matter what the original came with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Regarding learning from Amiga, I think at least Microsoft did. Specifically, that all the technical abilities in the world doesn't mean squat in the mass market, that's decided by marketing. And, this was even back when there were fewer computer users, with presumably a higher average IQ. I suppose at least this time around the cost of a system is such that the adventurous types can better afford to have multiple systems around for amusement... or even dual boot.
Btw, I had the occasion to witness an amiga 500 a few years ago, and thought "Wow!". The UI felt nice, even though I'd never used it before, multitasking worked impressively, and it did all this on hardware that was ancient compared to my pc at the time, which did all those poorly, as it was running something from M$. I remember mentioning its elegance to a windows whore once, who proceeded to call me a dumb kid, and quoted her 80k income as evidence.
Well, I have mixed feelings on this whole affair. QNX sounded like a really great OS, and I really would why they are scraping it. It doesn't make very much sense, especially with all the work that has been put in. At the same time, He really says some flattering things about linux, that I'm not sure are completely true. I'm a linux advocate all the way, but linux being the most stable OS out there? I really think BSD gives it a run for it's money.
:(
The next thing is that he says linux already has good hardware support. That's good, if you are planning to use PC hardware. Lets think about this for a minute though. In the linux kernel, the most extensive list of drivers are there for sound, network, and scsi, with some others thrown in. Now I don't know about you, but it seems like it would be silly to take a box, and support all the pc hardware under the sun, when it would be easier to just build it into the machine. It'd be nice to have upgrade options, and I think it's worth supporting the pci bus, but honestly, if your building in 100BT, 4speaker 3d sound, and a scsi controller already, and can do it outside of the pci bus in a better way, why bother? From what I've seen in driver development, Videocards seem to be some of the most important, but unless they are planning to run X or GGI, they are going to have to do it all anyway. I guess this is just wearing away at my hopes that we would see a really revolutionary box with a really cool hardware design, rather than just using your run of the mill PC components. It really sounds like Amiga is trying to take the "safe" "garanteed" road, and in doing so, isn't going to come out with anything spectacular like they did back with the original 1000.
All your arguments about things coming to Linux (Flash, Director, etc) because of Amiga still don't create a compelling reason to use Linux instead of "Amiga-Linux". They do create a compelling reason to use Linux though.
:)
,hacker Perl another Just)'
My argument was about What, over and above what Linux will offer when Amiga-Linux comes out, will compell people to buy Amiga, rather than (say) Red Hat Linux? - not about what would make people choose Amiga-Linux over something other than Linux. Given that, your arguments about commercial support, multiple platforms, etc, are moot. Linux has that today.
And yes it was a waste of my time. I was Manager of the ICOA PMWG. But I'm not bitter
Finally, you say it's interesting because it's based on concepts newer than 2 decades. Which part? The Object model? Well, that remains to be seen - and what is an Object model if not an Object oriented API to the OS? We've had API's for decades. And Linux _is_ based on decades old technology.
I say it would have been interesting if it was going to be QNX based, instead it just looks like a Linux distro with a new commercial look and API. Woo hoo. Not.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
A year ago Amiga made this big announcement about this secret chip that they were in talks with, that had 10 times the power of anything currently on the market. Later that changed into "We're evaluating different options, including the G4".
,hacker Perl another Just)'
At the same time they were in talks with BeOS about using their kernel for the new OS (yes, I know this was never public knowledge, but some day someone official will leak this information to the press). Then Amiga pulled out of that deal 'cos Be asked for too much money - so QNX was picked, and announced as "the best technology available". Now even that is down the pan.
So what happened to the statements like "realtime is important to a multimedia OS". I guess it is'nt. And I guess neither is QNX Neutrino's transparent clustering technology (that would have made beowulf look hard to work with). In the meantime Amiga developers drop like flies, as the Classic update gets pushed further and further back, and the specs for it shrink.
So who is going to buy this new Linux box? Not current Linux users for sure - they're happy with what they've got (I know I am). Not current Amiga users - there's nothing to tempt them to buy the new Amiga over and above Linux. I guess they'll have a good shot at the embedded/palm/consumer market. Good luck to them.
Sad really. In all that time we haven't seen one iota of progress from them development-wise. What are they going to do with their current code? Bin it and re-write for X, instead of Photon? (yes, I know the POSIX stuff will be portable). We've seen constant changes in direction. There's no faith left. Today I read comp.sys.amiga.misc for the first time in a while and there's only about 2 people defending Amiga's actions (and only to the extent of "wait and see what they deliver"), compared to many more a year ago.
So, since the only revolutionary stuff is gone (the QNX Neutrino OS) - what's left? An unknown Object model running on top of Linux? I think I'd rather stick with Corba and what I've got right now. What a shame - I was very hopeful a year ago. What a waste of time.
Matt.
(all the above quotes are paraphrased)
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I have it on good information, that it isnt
any of that. Amiga Inc., is in very deadly serious talks with BLAZEMONGER SuperCorp. This hidden, underground company secretly controls most countries. Their new chip is rumored to be a real killer with cybernetic implants to convert digital signals directl into brainwaves!
Amiga, the drug for the future!
sri
:-)
I'll buy one.
--
(Sure, they could port it to QNX, but this way they're a step ahead already.)
--
--
--
Amiga has been in secret talks with Transmeta, and have decided to go with their upcoming superprocessor. And at the same time, they've made the logical switch to Linux, which already runs in native mode. (Not just x86 emulation mode.)
This article explains:
Transmeta's processor, of course, is able to emulate x86, but isn't x86 architecture. And if it were going to be PowerPC, there wouldn't be anything "exciting" -- that's what everyone is expecting.Remember, you read it here first....
--
(And personally, I'm expecting some cool software stuff too.)
--
--
That's a troll, right?
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
They probably created the animated GIF on an Amiga...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Sorry to disappoint you, but GNU/Linux is not a company, hence it cannot be destroyed as you suggest. ;)
Only the kernel is GPLed. Even binary-only drivers may be distributed with it. It looks like Amiga will be adding proprietary value mainly outside the kernel, so I do not see what the problem is.
I am not trying to be beligerent here. I myself try to be different, for example, trying out the exokernel, Haskell, SML, etc.
Clearly, an Amiga on top of QNX sets you apart from the crowd better than GNU/Linux.
With the very tasty suggestion that Amiga has something going on with Transmeta, I don't see any reason why Amigans cannot have their established OS and still be differentiated by cool hardware.
Yeah, it's pretty funny that on a machine with no swap and 1M of RAM (which includes the "video card" memory), you could still use half of it as a RAM disk. :-)
>Regarding learning from Amiga, I think at least Microsoft did.
You mean when they finally got around to releasing a 32-bit, pre-emptive multitasking, multimedia-capable OS with long-filename support and auto-configuration of hardware cards?
I always thought MMCs were the mapper chips that NES cartridges used to bank-select their memory. =)
I wonder if this means they'll spend some time working on RTOS extensions for the Linux kernel. They've said all along that you need a RTOS for high-end multimedia, Be has said the same thing, if in different words.
Any kernel guru's know how much it'd change the compatibility of the Linux kernel if a more RTOS-type scheduler were present in the kernel instead of the stock one? I remember seeing a while back a group that was working on a replacement for the scheduler to provide better networking performance, how about multimedia performance?
It seems that high-bandwidth multimedia is where the convergence technologies (gak, marketingspeak!) are going. Lots of places are modifying Linux to allow the sort of real-time operations that are needed for such high-bandwidth data processing (Tivo or Replay, whichever is the one using Linux says they made changes to the LinuxPPC kernel to make it more realtime). I don't keep up with the 2.3 kernel discussions, but has this been talked about? It would seem to me that part of the redesign for even better SMP performance should be a look at the needs of a real-time scheduler so Linux can be used in a stock form to provide the sort of eye-popping multimedia demonstrations we see on BeOS, the old Amiga's (for their time), and to some extend modern workstations like SGI's. (Although SGI seems to be a more brute-force approach, largely based on their hardware architecture)
I think it'd be cool if Amiga approached the consumer market with a Linux-cored operating system with a non-X gui. X is awfully resource intensive for a consumer OS where a defined break between the GUI server and application clients are not needed. It'd be cool to see that GUI working with a linux kernel that made Linux THE platform for high-bandwidth multimedia applications.
It'd also be cool to see those extensions work under X for people who want that added power.
Wishful thinking? Probably. But I'm still curious about the RTOS issues with the Linux kernel.
QNX leaks info on a deal to try to force Amiga to
partner with them, and you say that Amiga are the
backstabbers? As the Canadians say, fuck off, eh?
No one forced QNX to do anything, and if any
contracts were violated, then I'm sure that they
can sue for relief. Otherwise, that's life in
the big city for a commercial software vendor.
If you don't like it, then hack on free software
and lead a worry-free existence.
Why would anyone want to work on QNX anyway?
RTOSs are crappy environments in general; they're
barely worth the trouble in embedded work and
not worth it at all in other cases.
It's really raw compared to something like QNX's stuff, but it's a step in the right direction.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I've been following the RTLinux project for a few months. It uses a very innovative approach to combining RT features with a standard Linux kernel. Basically, there is a minimally small RT kernel, and the Linux kernel running on top of it as an idle task.
This approach has a number of advantages. The main thing is that you can factor your programs into the parts that really need RT (like your video and audio codecs and mixing) and the parts that don't (like the initialization and configuration). Life gets easier on several counts. First, the RT part can get much simpler because it doesn't have to support a full, rich operating environment. Second, your apps get simpler because the bulk of them don't have to be specially made to fit in the RT box.
The other cool thing is that you're not burdening the mainstream Linux kernel with the requirements of being realtime. The Linux kernel doesn't have to worry about scheduling RT tasks while it's in the middle of a complex internal operation - the RT scheduler will just "make it so". Thus, we get to take advantage of all the cool development in the Linux kernel, including drivers and so on, without having to have an incompatible RT branch.
So my feeling is that this approach has great promise for building kick-ass consumer multimedia systems. I mean, you'd really be able to play skip-free MP3's and videos while doing multiple compiles or intensively surfing the web. Audio effects box? Sure!
The main thing standing in the way of this RT mecca is compatibility with existing stuff, almost all of which was designed without RT in mind. Some of the RT stuff can be kludged on top of the existing stuff, but a clean design is appealing for a number of reasons.
So to me, this announcement is good news. If Amiga has a codebase of RT multimedia stuff that can be readily ported to the RTLinux platform, then they really have a chance of delivering something interesting and useful. The smartest thing they could do is ship a computer that's just as good a Linux box as a Linux box, and just as good a multimedia platform as, say Be. It looks to me that both technically and marketing-wise, they now have a chance at it.
The Amiga is dead, long live the Amiga!
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
Granted, unlike iToaster the new Amiga (if it happens) will presumably actually use Linux instead of just sticking its name in the press release, but one can't help but suspect it's being done for similar reasons. Linux is the buzzword to be using now if you're challenging Microsoft.
And, if you need to get a new operating system out real fast, what better approach can you take than to use someone else's operating system... that you can use for free?
Personally, I'm skeptical as to whether or not the "great new hardware" for the next generation Amiga is still in the works, too. What about all the developers that are supposedly waiting in the wings to support the system? How many of them were developing for QNX? How many of them were developing at all? Will all of them be willing to develop for Linux? Will they be able to develop for the Amiga "OE" without developing for Linux itself?
That sounds like an odd question, but it isn't--there's no reason to believe this "operating environment" will also be GPLed. Of course, if it isn't, it'll have to run in a "closed box" on top of Linux. Is this going to be able to compete in real-time performance with BeOS? Or for that matter, QNX?
Or for that matter, the original AmigaDOS?
I know Amiga for years, i know QNX4 for 2 years, and just yesterday i had a presentation of Nto2 by QSSL people, man this microkernel rocks! it's very powerful, small, SMP, message passing, whatever you want!
i'm thinking that using linux kernel for amigaOS instead of Neutrino is a big big big mistake!!!!
i cannot believe this... amiga had very difficult time in the past, they made mistakes, and they continue, they never learned from the past?!?
why use a OS based on linux? just use linux instead! between NtoAmiga and BeOS i would have used both! between LinuxAmiga and BeOS, i'll use ONLY BeOS.
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
So, are Amiga and QNX in a very tiny (somewhat pathetic, if you want my opinion) version of the old OS/2 vs. WinNT split?
no, QNX exist for 20 years, way ahead before microsoft... QNX was the first OS to use HD, was the first OS to run in protected mode on a 286, was the first to this, was the first to taht, etc. you can learn more on http://www.qnx.com somewhere. QNX/NTO microkernel rocks!
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Do a "man sched_setscheduler" if you want to know how to include it in your own programs, or hunt down the (years old) "rt" utility if you want to be able to set any arbitrary program to be scheduled realtime. It's a nice thing to do with your MP3 player, for instance: in my experience, any system that can play MP3s at all can play them with zero skips if the player is running realtime.
/dev/zero > /dev/null" is a pretty sweet denial of service attack, freezing the X server and console by starving them of CPU cycles. You can still ping the system, and you can still open TCP connections... but inetd will never get a timeslice to spend answering those connections.
The biggest problem here is security on multiuser systems, and safety against broken programs. Basically, if you run a program with SCHED_FIFO or another realtime scheduling strategy, no non-realtime programs get to run until the realtime one is in a blocking system call. In other words, if your realtime program infinite loops, you've just locked up one CPU in your system. For this reason, only root (or a suid root program) can set a process to run with realtime scheduling; otherwise running "rt cat
Hi, it's Utter formely known as the AC that you replied to.
;-)
Thanks for you clarification. I must admit that I have built my own homegrown view of graphics in Linux.
I think I got it from that I had to build a specific 3dfx module and insert it into the kernel. And I also had to compile the kernel with MTRR support. Without these two, the Linux version would run half the speed of the Windows version. I assumed that the windows version directly could set the MTRRs from glide. (And also that NT had support for graphics in the kernel. Which got NT the reputation to do the famous blue screen with certain screen savers)
But back to why Linux is slower. According to the glide porting guy, he used the same code as in Windows. And ID ported the mini GL, which also is the same code as in Windows. Result, 37 fps in Linux and 42 fps in Windows. (Even faster on NT)
When I compared the Q3 test the differences were larger. (But there 3dfx had optimized the GL drivers up and beyond, so it looked awful) The Linux version looked nice but was SLOOOW.
Conclusion.. I will never buy a 3dfx card again. If they can't support Linux or give me an open source driver, they can have it.
Not that this has anything to do with Amiga.
Amiga Inc has no interest in Amiga hardware. Their intention to use Linux as a basis for future Amiga software has nothing to to with the existence of Linux for Amiga hardware.
Oh, not this old claim. AmigaOS has nothing to do with Unix. Some Unixisms (such as line editing keys) were retrofitted onto it in releases 1.3 and 2.0, and a lot of Unix stuff was ported or reimplemented at user level. Its origins lie elsewhere.
Uh, how about an accelerated 1200? I would do this, only I can't fit a CD-ROM drive in there and my original 1200 keyboard broke in some inexplicable way, and decent power supplies are expensive, so now it relies on a PC keyboard and a PC case. The motherboard, floppy and accelerator are still in the original case...
That would be *way* cool. I mean if I could just turn on additional computers and share the processor power on all those computers on my network.
I mean, is something like this allready in the works for Linux?
Check out MOSIX (in particular, MO6): http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/mosix/
---
DNA just wants to be free...
so it really has nothing to do at all with the x graphics system or whatever.
No, but the hardware is still accessed directly from userspace in exactly the same fashion as XFree86 and SVGAlib. I was using X11 as a particular example of the problems with the "get overly broad i/o permissions and then beat on the hardware directly from userspace while ignoring the kernel" approach to hardware support.
(Actually, the next rev of XFree86 likely will do 3d graphics support, so there :P)
---
DNA just wants to be free...
Hi folks,
The Amiga is dead since YEARS!!! Believe it or not, but the time where just one question ruled the world - Amiga vs Atari ST - is over, over, over, over....
BTW the Atari ST was way better and still is...*evil grin*
--- GnorpH
The Amiga was a mightily impressive machine it its day, doing more with less than any of its competitors. I still remember the awe I felt when I saw the Video Toaster for the first time... I'm glad to see a glimmer of hope for a possible comeback, and maybe some new life into the A1200 I still have in the closet...
I didn't see anything about GNU in the two articles I read. All I saw was the plan to use the Linux kernel. I suspect the rest of the OS will be Amiga's own stuff, not GNU (why would they make YALD [Yet Another Linux Distribution]?) I suspect that any code they modify in the kernel will be released, but there's nothing that says they have to release the whole OS, if libraries and the GUI and such are written in-house with no GPL code.
Just a tadbit to tack on to that is that Linux has pretty good support (or will have) when altivec comes out. gcc will support altivec in the future, you can add support for it today, by getting the patch from motorola.
What does Altivec do? Well, as described by David McEvery, it is MMX implemented correctly. Basically its a set of additional instructions to the standard PowerPC RISC proccessor, adding support for better proccessing of graphical and related stuff. Sounds like MMX? Well it is, in a sense, basically what it has larger and faster processing of things, and implements cache correctly.
I wouldn't expect source level compatibility with the original Amiga IPC mechanism. Classic Amigas have no memory protection or virtual memory. Everything is in the same address space. Message passing was so quick because you could pass a single 4-byte pointer to a structure. "Hey, look at this over here!" That doesn't work in environments like Linux that have virtual memory.
Yes, a shared memory scheme could be worked up, but that would imply one of two things: Either you'd have to explicitely create the shared space (losing source compatibility), or all Amiga processes would have to execute in one giant shared address space. They'd essentially all be threads in one big mega-process. There goes your inter-application memory protection though.
They could however run all older applications in a single shared space assuming that the processor architecture will be 68k compatible (like PPC). Newer applications would probably have to use a different IPC scheme that accounts for virtual address spaces. Then your "classic" applications could still stomp on eachother, but at least they'd leave all of the newer apps alone. This could be easily extended to have multiple "classic Amiga" address spaces. Apps that need to communicate with eachother you'd have to run in the same space, otherwise they can be separate and hence protected from one another. I suppose some sort of weird "auto-merging" mechanism could even be worked out, where if one classic-Amiga process sends a message to another, the page tables of both processes are merged. That's pretty crazy though.
Hmmm... if they change processor platforms, Intel... If they change desktops, KDE... and then if they change back to their original processor platform, Motorola...
--
Program Intellivision!
Given the Amiga's history of destroying companies, I'm rather pleased they left QNX before serious damage could occur.
:)
Bye bye, linux.
I have been keeping myself updated on the latest amiga developments, and there is a difference between the amiga operating SYSTEM and the amiga operating ENVIRONMENT. /. article). now there is also the amiga operating ENVIRONMENT, this will be an environment that will run on ALL platforms, PCs, MACs, old amigas, etc... therefor it comes to me as no surprise they choose linux (as it covers the most platforms)
new amigas are comming, and that is a fact (what HW they will be using we do not know yet etc...)
the OS they will be running is based on QNX (with screenshots seen in an earlier
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
While trying not to sound too serious, I'll have to remark that Motorola's AltiVec CPUs could also be called "exciting" and they're rather new. They'd probably be cheap enough, too.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Not saying whether it's right or wrong, but it's not just Amiga. It may surprise you, but that's the way a lot of business does business.
For instance, I'm in an advertising agency. My department does proposals, web sites, multimedia CDROMs, etc, so forth... for a variety of clients. We spend a lot of time and money busting ass to impress the client.
And you know what? It's not uncommon for the client to either say, "Thank you, but no." Or worse, if we haven't explicitly put forth a nondisclosure agreement, they can take the proposals and work we've done so far and pitch the whole thing to another vendor.
So I wouldn't blame Amiga. Maybe it sounds horrible, but it's not "The Amiga Way," it's the vendor-client relationship way.
And besides, I'm happier with the decision, Amiga needs to make whatever decisions necessary for their success, no matter who they make happy or sad-- except the consumer of Amiga.
One more thing-- Amiga + Linux. Isn't multimedia performance/support one of Linux's worst faults? What if Amiga can solve that?
So... I still don't get your point. :) Given the price of hard drives (I know, I bought a 128 MB for my Amiga at US$300), it would seem to me that having the *option* of running from floppy with a ram disk for cached commands would be optimal. Of course, once you had a hard drive, you no longer needed kickstart.
But never having used an Atari ST, I dunno how they did it better.
The "Amiga" is more a philosophical legacy than anything now. Originally, it was the first 32-bit, pre-emptive multitasking, high performance, multimedia platform. Oh, and it ran fairly nicely in 2MB of ram. And brilliantly in under 8MB. And very very nice from there up.
Now, what's left of it is the philosophy of creating a high performance computing platform with multimedia built in from the ground up. They're trying to revive the attributes of the original Amiga using modern hardware.
What all the noise means is, they need a foundation (QNX, now Linux). On top of that, they're writing the drivers and applications to reach the goal. In other words, not a variation of KDE-- but their own KDE equivalent, video drivers and datatypes, sound drivers and datatypes, performance tweaks, etc and so forth.
Part of the goal may be that the Amiga OS can run on any hardware. However, I imagine that they'll develop a hardware platform specifically optimized for the performance they want.
So the "Amiga" is an OS, and eventually a hardware platform.
Well, Amiga had Multitasking, but as for User interface -- Ugh! Atari's GEM interface, as bad as it was, beat the crap out of it.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I was wondering if the Amiga group had any business sense or if they are just playing around and using up grants/investor's money.
To dump QNX and use Linux is a very stupid move, imnsho.
QNX does RT. Does it properly. It was designed with RT in mind from the ground up. Multimedia without proper RT is a bad thing. Look at how much hardware you have to throw at the existing OS's to do MM properly.
QNX is small and complete.
Changing to Linux at this point strikes of a under-priveldged sibling calling out "I want a blue one too!" even if there is a perfectly good red one sitting in their lap.
Re: free software versus payware. Do you really think that Amiga will be free? QNX is _heavily_ discounted based on projected number of units sold - the cost of using QNX vs Linux is negligible - especially when you factor in R&D costs. At least with QNX there is someone being paid to write driver X on a schedule as opposed to having some people on the 'net coding it up in their free moments.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it exclusively on my personal machines (some have never even seen a Windows disk(ette)).
For Amiga to be changing the underlying substructure at this point sounds like a nail in the coffin. Maybe the final one?
r@m
I must agree with some of the posters that this is a very disappointing move. Not because Linux would not make a good kernel (I cannot comment on that), but because it is once again an Amiga "savior" changing its tune as soon as it is called on to deliver a product. Now, maybe they'll actually deliver on this, but my hopes have been lowered some as a result.
It seems to me that this decision was probably based on the fact that the Linux kernel is free (as in free beer) and has a lot of driver support. With QNX they were partnered with a company that looked like it was trying to finally invade the consumer space to increase its profits, whereas with Linux Amiga has to share no royalties. And of course, having lots of drivers for Linux already makes it much easier for Amiga to make its computers look supported.
The question really is what this means technically. If Amiga is going to be just another Linux distro with a different wm or something like that, forget it, who cares? With QNX at least they had something to differentiate the Amiga from the crowd - "the realtime OS with a microkernel that is used by NASA and nuclear power plants" - sounded nifty, didn't it? Now they've got the Linux marketing juggernaut, but is it really better for the Amiga?
Now, I wouldn't mind having a Linux-based Amiga running on a PPC G4, but it's just wait-and-see time again for the Amiga.
So maybe there's hope for destroying Microsoft after all :)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I know circular links in a ext2 floppy would cause a lovely hard-lock in Linux. I think the problem under NT is related. This should be fixed in one of the service packs.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> Ever thought that this was a spoiler put out by QNX since they lost the contract?
What on earth is your logic behind this theory? Can you name any reason that a company would knowingly engage in fraud (which that would be if they knew they didn't have the contract), for one, or trumpet their losing a contract? "We put 40 top engineers on this and we still lost the contract, so THERE, Amiga."
Even raving comspiracy nuts usually use SOME form of twisted logic.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
...anything BUT 3DFx? I hane TNT card....
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
The amiga website proudly has a "powered by Amiga" animated gif on their front page, but a quick visit to www.netcraft.co.uk's "what's that server running?" site reveals :
www.amiga.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
I don't know if I'm raving or not, but the update post seems to indicated that QNX wants to crack the consumer market with-or-without the Amiga brandname. It's not like the blessing of Amiga is really all that important in this day and age.
(I'm not really sure how much the Amiga brandname would really help you nowdays. Even the oldline Amiga fans would know that just because it's called the "Amiga" doesn't mean it's the *Amiga*.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I have a feeling that in 2032, I'll be browsing the 3D-Holo-Web, and I'll stumble across a Amiga-versus-Atari flamewar (crossposted to holonet.deathmatch.alt.os.QNX.SuckedRocks.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Ok, I was doing allright with amiga until the "linux is the most stable operating system on the market" comment. Ha! Does this pres not know anything? Even linux advocates I think will admit that it is not "the most stable" os. I was looking forward to seeing qnx's work, they have a very nice little os with very little exposure. But and amiga based on a linux kernel? boooring...
-lx
I know the chips, and I know that the chip selected last year is better than the Emotion Engine is. Plus the MMC chip has multiple MPEG decoders, and scaling HW for multiple display devices of the future. PCI, DVD, satellite MAC,
Hardware DES, and some neat-o hackable HW too!
This is the base machine (at well under $500) too!
I'm sure these other chips and machines will be impressive when they come out, and get lots of attention. But the new Amiga is capable of emulating them! Just like all the rest...
"It's over; It's MP3!"
JoeT
No comment on QNX...
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
Press release. Heh!
Last year I was Senior Hardware Engineer at Amiga Inc. If I told anymore, they'd have to kill me.
That chip company had the heavy'st NDA I'd ever signed. I didnt need hope, after I'd been exposed
to the truth. It is FAR superior. They had some X-Hi-Toro employees working there too!
Lots of Amiga people, lessons, code, style, ethic, design sense left the Amiga years ago:
they have contributed to what Linux is today.
Ask the Rasterman if the Amiga taught him anything!
I'm sure he can now teach the Amiga back!
So can now we ALL can support Linux.
(BeOS and BSD to go!)
"It's over; It's MP3!"
JoeT
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
It doesn't have anything to do with whether it's "commercial" code or not - Redhat has been selling GPL'd code for quite a while now. As long as Amiga supplies the source code to any GPL'd software they use (including the kernel) and obeys the other terms of the GPL, they should be OK.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
They allowed hardware info to one person. And I am pretty sure the windows and linux glide codebases are different. This one guy makes glide drivers for Voodoo cards (Daryll Strauss).
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
I compiled glx with Mesa 3.0 and Mesa 3.1, and I got no speedup in q2.
What does this have to do with Amiga? I would say there is almost no chance they will use X or the Mesa 3DFX drivers, which is what slows Quake down for Linux.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
will you please explain to me what you mean by Amiga?
as someone who knows very little about the amiga other than the twenty minutes i spent trying to make the emulator work, i am very confused. First i find out that AmigaOS is actually becoming QNX, then i find out it's going to actually be linux?
And if the QNX amigaOS isn't going to run on amiga hardware..
What relationship if any does this thing have to "the Amiga"? The letter says something very vague about "host environment for a new class of portable applications - applications that exist in a pervasive networked computing environment" but that doesn't seem to mean anything.
Does this mean that the mighty Amiga has become a variation on KDE? Or what?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Ah, but you fail to understand: the Amiga itself didn't destroy any companies, it was the Amiga Curse (tm) that did it. Nobody could ever trace a causal relationship between the Amiga and the companies that died while owning her -- it just "happened." This is a mystical force you're dealing with here. Your conventional defenses are useless! It's a threat unlike anything the Linux's distributed fault-tolerant open source coumminity has faced. Underestimating the potency of the Amiga Curse, and arrogantly proclaiming immunity, is the surest way to succumb to it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't see how the "next-generation" amiga OS bears any resemblence to the original. It would be one thing if they were trying to modernize the original, but now it seems like they're creating yet another proprietary niche OS and slapping the Amiga name (and perhaps part of the UI) on it.
From what I can see, it is completely different from the orginal save for the name. I'm not even sure why loyal Amigans would be in for this; I'm not so cynical to believe that OS loyalty can be based on the name of the OS alone.
So, what's the point? You want a propritary multimedia OS, get Be. You want a powerful OS that runs on many platforms, get a Linux distro. You want a 'NIX-derivative that has a pretty GUI, get MacOS X.
I did find it pretty funny, though, when the Amiga prez said that that Amigans shouldn't worry, the hardware platform will be "unique." Is that supposed to be a feature?
OK, I admit, I'm not a big Amiga user, though I have used friends' several times.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
It's interesting how the BSD-ers have not landed some huge commercial project yet. Despite all the labelling and claims that the focus of the OpenBSD project is itsease of portability, all these companies are looking to Linux as the way of the future, what they want to base their project on.
Makes one wonder if they are doing so as having Linux in your projet makes your companies stock value double, or if they are doing it becuase it is fashionable in the Valley to say you have Linux Inside.
www.jackasscritics.com
That's strange, the last time I installed it to take a look at it I needed about 16 disks if I remember correctly.... hmmmm... This was about 2 years ago for those interested.
---
I can't believe that I'm seeing lots of opposition to this brilliant idea from the open source crazed, free beer drunk slashdot community ! For them to go with QNX is a total non-starter because it a) costs money in licencing b) will never get the support of the hardware vendors who have only just got used to the idea of linux as on option and c) well it's closed and we have grown out of that trap.
...
So here are some ideas as to what I would like to see from them:
Firstly the s/w
1. Whatever hardware architecture they come up with must be capable of running everything I expect to run on my RedHat box now inc. clunky old X etc.
2. Whatever proprietory 'Amiga' stuff they run should be in addition to the above. I expect some nice fast direct to hardware video etc.
3. Must be able to run all the old Amiga software(or even new I guess)
This gives them a huge lot of stuff to get started with and the prospect that forward thinking game makers will provide the likes of Quake 3 for this architecture. You can't have an Amiga without games can you ?
Secondly H/W
1. This has to be very pretty, and SMALL. The likes of the Cobolt Cube and Netwinder show what can be done with imagination.
2. Put the graphics (Voodoo or whatever) and networking and all on one board like the good old days.
3. Add some zippy video stuff MPEG decoders etc
4. Can we get rid of the fans ? I want to use this as a high quality sound as well as video system in my living room so I don't want any fans werring.
5. Some how this has to be cheap !
Ahh dreaming, dreaming
By the way I used to have a Atari because at the time the Amiga was so expensive. This has depressed me for years because the Amiga was so superior to the ST and it's 68000 version of DOS.
Good luck Amiga.
For me the past is not over yet.
BeOS schedules at a very high rate (4000Hz I think), while linux defaults to 100. So, BeOS can do realtime audio with a latency of about 4ms (they claim 3, but they're lying.. err.. marketing). Linux on the other hand can't beat 12ms in my tests, stock. Of course, the linux box I'm writing this on has HZ=3200 as an experiment in low latency audio. it works OK, but not quite good enough. Something like the KURT linux patches should be able to do 2-3ms latency audio, and with RTLinux, you could do microsecond latency, if you write your own soundcard driver. So assuming Amiga modifies the kernel some (at the very very least, jacking up the HZ), this could be a multimedia powerhouse.
Amiga is still a gateway owned company, right?
Just the ideology of making a different, hopefully better, machine. One that is multimedia centric and is very efficient.
If you go to www.amiga.com you'll see that there aren't any plans to support exisiting Amiga hardware with OS5 and the only concession being made to supporting older software is the possibility of an "Amiga on a PCI card" that would fit into the new machine.
If I want to go back to the glory days of the Amiga I just use UAE
The AmigaOS was always very Unix-near, and I guess they continued along that line when they developed the new hardware and the design for the new OS.
From there it should be fairly easy to switch from some development-kernel (which is maybe largly Linux-based anyway) to Linux.
Keep in mind that the Amiga Linux version has been around for some time now. There is both a good PPC version and maybe even a Motorolla version (not sure here). It is actually very easy for Amiga Inc to say this as they just have to take the freely available Amiga LinuxPPC version and get started.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
Sorry? I used to have an Amiga (first an Amiga 500 and then an Amiga 3000). What's that about having to use a workbench disk? It is only the very early amigas that couldn't boot from harddisk. Even my Amiga 500 could boot from harddisk after kickstart 1.2 (I believe).
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
Ah, that's another matter of course. The Amiga hardware was not very cheap. But neither was the Atari hardware (at least in Belgium). When I bought my Amiga 500, the Atari ST (or something) was about the same price.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
The link is dud because the guy didn't test his HTML. You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof :)
I have to admit that when Jim Collas posted this on csa misc, I was pretty skeptical, too. I think there's going to be a huge row over this.
Jim Collas is also somewhat less than forthcoming in matters of telling the truth *ahem* so we may never get to the bottom of this.
Still, I wonder if they realise that the GPL will force them to release their kernel mods?
So, are Amiga and QNX in a very tiny (somewhat pathetic, if you want my opinion) version of the old OS/2 vs. WinNT split? As in, "Sure, let's develop technology jointly. . . Oh wait, nevermind, how about if I just take my half of the tech and bail, leaving you along and pissed off?" How else do we explain the dual announcements of competing versions of the same product????
--JZ
I can't believe these guys! I don't think they'll ever make up their minds. We've heard of so many "decisions", and "we are confident that..", and "we firmly belive that..", and pictures and napkin sketches of promising new arcitectures, and then some months pass and everything has changed.
I loved the Amiga, and it hurts to see what clowns are in charge of it now.
So QNX had 40 supposedly very talented engineers working on the "next generation" Amiga OS, and as soon as this is announced, completely different plans are announced. What's the point of all this???
I think now more than ever I believe a new Amiga will never see the light of day.
So what if they use the Linux kernel - in two weeks they'll use some other kernel. Very sad.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Either QNX got too bellicose (or complacent for that matter) and Amiga went somewhere else, or they still are using QNX for their photon WM.
Lowmag.net
Well, it seems it was the first one. The second link to the story mentions QNX releasing data too early.
Lowmag.net
You mean a MC680x0 version; remember that the PPC is made by Motorola too :-)
The Linux/m68k project has a web site. See it!
The lack of memory protection really bugs me. One crash and that's it, everything falls over, time to reboot. A real bummer when you're coding (especially if you make as many mistakes as I do :-) Not so bad for day-to-day use; my A1200 isn't on 24/7, but I can spend a happy evening's computing without something crashing it.
Other than that, I agree with you. The lack of swap doesn't bother me 'coz I've got enough silicon to multitask pretty well. My biggest gripe with my machine is the poor graphics. That problem would go away if I threw money at it, of course :-)
I like AmigaOS. I like it enough that it's my regular desktop OS at home, and I'm not really interested in anything else at the present time.
N/T
They were DD floppies, formatted to 837KB (though the OS said 880KB, you lost a few KB 'coz the usable sector capacity was 488 bytes). Later Amiga filesystems really did give you 880-odd KB per floppy.
Hardly. There are more than enough die-hard Linux advocates with little grip on the real world to cause any damage that needs causing (see the Mindcraft hate-mail if you need evidence of this - the worst of the Amiga fanatics couldn't have done better).
And, of course, there are plenty of Amiga advocates who are more capable of rational argument than the majority of Linux advocates. That said, I doubt that any of them are particularly excited by the news: most of the coherent Amiga advocates I know are already running some version of Linux...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Don't forget that the first release was in 1985. was it two HD floppies with 1.44Mb or smaller floppies?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
That's very strange, I first thought you double posted your response to my post and to the post i was responding but after my own reply to your post I see that it also double posted it to your two posts. Is that a bug?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
this is just a minor point, but voodoo cards, (up to the v2) exist outside the 2d graphics space. its a seperate peice of hardware with a seperate connection to the monitor.
so it really has nothing to do at all with the x graphics system or whatever.
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
My guess would be that they include an X server that plugs into there own GUI, that way native 'amiga' apps can run fast and nice, while still being able to use all those nice POSTIX and linux apps that use Graphics.
I hope they opensouce there GUI also, that would kick ass. and if there really in it for the hardware, then it woudln't hurt at all
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
the proper link should be http://www.amiga.de/diary/1999/990709- e.html
Is it just me, or does Amiga sound like it's incredibly easy to plug in some OS kernel and ship it as a product? They have just made the decision to use the linux kernel, yet it'll be plugged in and ready to sell within half a year. Is it really that trivial?
Many of you seems to think this is good for linux but won't save amiga, but if they make it they can do it two different ways - make cool hardware that everyone will buy and install amigaOS or linux since they got the same hardware support OR they might try to make money of the OS = port it to every platform linux support and sell a cool OS with apps, but that sounds just like... BeOS(hmm)
;-)))
. well I can't decide which alternative rock the most, but maybe all this is just Amigas final desperat moves before it dies...
good luck amiga, make cool hardware that I can buy or just improve my ordinaty linux distribution with cool stuff
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
:)
where can you buy an amiga? I never owned one... i was born only a year before the 1000 was released. and my first PC was a DOS 3 machine, (which was still in use untill a year or so ago. Anywho, I want an amiga... Anyone know where someone can get one?
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Amiga Operating Environment = AOE
:) */
Call it:
Amiga Independent User Operating Environment (AIUOE)
Then just call it "Vowel".
And when everybody jumps on the bandwagon, it will be called the "Vowel Movement".
/* Ok, that last line probably wasn't necessary.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
The article says that they plan to use the Linux kernel. Theres no mention of using any of the GNU programs or X or anything like that, just the kernel. So, it may not even run standard Linux binaries.
The link is dud and why would Amiga suddenly drop the work that 40 engineers at QNX have been working on?
Just checked out the Amiga website: http://www.amiga.com/diary/executive/linux-e.html it's true.
So what if they have a shite webserver running a shite OS?
AmigaOS isn't suited to servers, well, even less suited than NT, so what's your point?
It's about time that Amiga got it's act together in the OS department. I mean who really though that the original Amiga OS was better than the Atari's ? OK so I'm a little bit biased because I did love my Atari ST, but the Amiga... well you had to use a workbench disk... say no more.
Amiga won't be able to make a multimedia OS that can compete against BeOS if they go with the linux kernel instead of QNX. Now if they were building an amiga server OS off of linux then I would say that they would probably do very well, but that is not their plans. Frankly BeOS has a better chance of winning than Amiga since it is a really good OS and it is already being preloaded by atleas 6 OEMs.
---Got Coffee?---
--
Alexander Staubo
I have the floppy disk right here. It's a promotional copy -- the full OS takes a lot more than just the ony floppy -- but the point remains that you can fit the GUI, web browser, etc. on a single disk. Aside from the GUI part (QNX uses X, last I recall), OSes like Linux and *BSD probably do, too. Now, try that with any brand starting with the word "Windows". ;-)
But the old Amiga was awesome technology, ahead of its time. If it uses Linux, and any improvements it makes have to be available to the general public, where is its advantage over you getting Linux for free and running it on your home computer?
Amiga won't make any money in that situation, and their great changes and improvements will stop coming
Ask about the alternatives. There's always alternatives.
The ongoing death of the Amiga is an opportunity for most of us to see what we've got to look forward to when other architectures enter the later stages of their death.
I would argue that the Amiga was the first architecture to (falsely of course) promise immortality. Unlike people who owned ZX Spectrums or Commodore 64s, which were inevitably dead ends, Amiga users believed that their next computer, and the one after that would both be Amigas too.
In reality, ALL hardware architectures must die. Clever technical tricks can buy you an extra life (PowerPC Macs can run M68K code) but sooner or later your luck will run out. Bad management only accelerated this process.
If you think the reaction of Amiga fans to the slow death of their favourite architecture is painful -- just wait for (1) The death of the Mac, as Apple struggle to bring themselves and their customers into the 21st century; and also (2) Death of the IBM-compatible PC.
I predict that the PC will probably go first. The moaning and grumbling of Mac users when threatened with extinction will seem like NOTHING when compared with the wrath of PC users. Slashdot (or its future equivalent) will be besieged by people claiming that the 286 was a message from god, and that no-one really needs more than 4Gb of addressable memory anyway...
Then, once ex-PC users have settled down to running PC/AT emulators on their
ia64 machines, we've got the Mac Paradigm change. This could go two ways. Like PotatoShop users in general, they might say they really wanted the change all along, "Multiple undo was what I wanted anyway" == "Memory protection is a refreshing change"? Or they could go to the other extreme. Protestors tied to old PPC Mac displays; Articles in the paper calling for a boycott.
All this is starting to come true already - the Intel-based SGI machines may run Linux and NT, but they certainly aren't "IBM-compatible". Apple are shipping an operating system with BSD inside it.
Nick Lamb
"Linux isn't portable" -- Linus Torvalds
Don't live near a reactor or spend much time in an ICU, do you? By the way, fuck YOU very much, as we Americans say.
After QNX spends all the time and money, Amiga walks....If this is an example of how Amiga does things it's no wonder it's dying off. Good riddance.
And how will all of this be affected by the GPL? Will the new Gnu/Linux/Amiga OS be available for download along with source-code? How is Amiga planning to make money? By providing service ala Redhat and selling the OS at $60 bucks a pop (OS 3.5 which is scheduled to be released 3Q is slated to cost $59.95)?
This looks like another twist in Amiga's downward spiral brought about NOT by the OS but the idiots running the circus.
And Mozilla? Well, I'm still waiting....
In case of MS vs IBM, MS left with NT and IBM with Warp. Here, QNX is left with the OS and Amiga doesn't have dick.
Funny. When it was announced (mistakenly) that the iToaster was going to run a "hybrid Linux/Beos" operating system, Slashdoters flew into a rage attacking the very concept. "Will they release the code?" etc,etc.
Now, Amiga does a switch to Linux (in the process screwing their partners) and everyone is ready to jump in bed with'em and party all night.
Could it be that some people feel threatened by Be (which is a living, growing product on the market) and not by Amiga vaporware?
>I know the chips, and I know that the chip selected
Do you have some insider info here or are you just repeating the press release from last year?
If its the former please tell:)
Is a much better link, and covers the QNX stuff:
Things are quite a big clearer
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Don't get me wrong--Q is a great OS. I ran a BBS on it, and used it as my daily development environment, for years. But I paid pretty pence for my original copy of QNX 2, and that was second-hand. When 4 came out, and they wanted over a thousand US for a usable system, I started casting about for a replacement. I guess Dan and the boys imagine themselves retiring rich and young, because their stuff has always seemed a shade on the too-dear side to me.
More bugs to crush, until later then.
For years i've supported the amiga.. i've started with an a500 and slowly upgraded to a beefy a1200 tower.. Lately my attention turned to linux.. because the amiga market was kinda dead..
The first news about the new os was a nice change.. but now these latest changes make me a bit weary about the amiga situation..
How do amiga inc think these decisions will help them in building a strong market image.. they sway from one os to the other. Never making any real decisions.. Never fullfilling their promises.
I was a big amiga fan.. and one of the few that stayed with the machine.. but these devellopments make me a bit tired... And i'm starting too loose faith in my once wonderfull machine..
Ever since BeOS started to beat to the drum of being a "media OS" I thoguht of the implications of both Amiga and Be trying to battle it out for pretty much the same little niche. In the corners of my fevered little brain, I would dream of the day they would join forces, Be would handle the OS and software side of things, and Amiga would create funky new hardware, kinda like the BeBox but more so.
hehehehhe ur pretty funny. i hope not all Be users are as shallow as you...
i guess everyone using fwvm on x-windows is really an M$ user?
gnome with enlightenment defaults to a theme that is amazingly like win9x as well.
truly an old and shallow idea that "what is without mirrors that which is within"
now lets judge everything superficially and be done with it
Ive been an amiga user for years,
but now i do not support the amiga linux decicion
amigaOS is far supirior to linux
it is so much more efficient!
it is smaller, uses less ram,
it is much faster
but most of all it is made entirly of small modules
not a large kernal and shit
it only loads up what it needs and therefore only takes
seconds to boot
its also a lot easier to use
i supported the use QNX, i think Phase 5 have allways
done the right thing. amiga has done hardly anything
perhaps all amiga users should go along with phase 5
we have been waiting, and recieving nothing but stories
about how there changing the OS or the CPU
we hear one thing then they change their mindes
Phase 5 just get on with the job! and do it well