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Linus on Amiga decision
amiga_dude
sent us an article that has a ton of information about the confussion and
questions surrounding the recent
Linux Amiga QNX
news that has been sprouting up. This one is a pretty good
catch all piece with some Linux words as well.
Do you have anything to say about the subject, or are you merely echoing Linus' thoughts?
This is probably just fallout from the Mindcraft tests.
"Everybody seems to be gushing how "this means Amiga will run Linux apps out of the box.""
You are forgetting vmware, which run MS-software on Linux.
and if they use a non-x86 processor, it means all those commercial apps are not there.
Why whine about Amiga using Linux for something? The Amiga was the first really efficient, well designed home computer - why not maybe have some faith that they might do something really cool now with the software. And hey - alot of very good apps exist for AmigaOS, maybe this will mean they'll soon be available for Linux. I don't see this as a bad thing at all.
As I suspected:
www.mischevouslittle.demon.co.uk is running thttpd/1.00.disbu on FreeBSD
Can a FreeBSD user make it through the day without flaming Linux? I think not.
http://www.flyingmice.com/squid/moobunny/amiga/mes sages/10172.shtml
Most of it strikes me as being the typical jealosy/bitterness "they didn't BSD, the heathens" attitude. Then again, I don't know.
I know you could.
And windows is a lousy os too, but does it
matter which lousy operation systems that exists
as long as noone plan to use then?
Hint: It nos QNX but neutrino that are
beeing uset, and it is a complete different
os, written from the ground.
ie: No codebase from qnx, and no software
written for qnx wil run on it, witout a port.
Oracle uses the Linux Kernel. ...
Informix uses the Linux Kernel.
Sybase uses the Linux Kernel.
Hewlett-Packard uses the Linux Kernel.
IBM DB2 uses the Linux Kernel.
CodeWarrier uses the Linux Kernel.
WordPerfect uses the Linux Kernel.
SGI uses the Linux Kernel.
Creative Labs uses the Linux Kernel.
Cobalt uses the Linux Kernel.
Sony PlayStation uses the Linux Kernel.
And so on
Now Amiga is going to build their object system on the Linux Kernel.
What's the big deal?
I accept your apology in advance!
no shoes, no shirt, no problem
One point I'd like to make is that the original Amiga was so great because of the custom AV chips in it. I don't really remember their names. I think there were Agnes and Veronica, among others, that handled special tasks.
So, if they are going to do something revolutionary, it's likely it will be in the hardware and will involve custom audio/video/3D/java chips. The Linux kernel would presumably just interface to these hardware subsystems which handle the bulk of the work.
In My Humble Understanding, that's why the supporting kernel isn't quite as important as it is made out to be; cause it's just doing grunt work and interfacing with peripherals. The driver support in Linux probably does make it a better choice than QNX.
I would presume that any higher layers of the Amiga would be proprietary, but if they made any improvements to the kernel (including new device drivers) they'd have to make them available to be added to the core kernel distro.
No matter how you slice it, stuff is going to get Real Nuts Real Soon Now.
You obviously don't know anything about QNX nor most other RTOS's.
Yeah. Right.
Just as you need to add at least libc and a shell to the Linux kernel to get a working system.
totally wrong. Anyone whose visited qnx's webpage knows there are several c++ compilers for thier RTOSs. And I'm not even going to address the "underpowered and useless" comment...
Have you really checked up QNX?
Its Photon is very nice, and assembler, get a life, most good RTOS today have high level programming tools. mostly C++ stuff.
As for requiring the same libraries, you need a small minimum, yes. But that doesn't mean that the "Amiga only" applications have to use those libraries.
So to run Linux apps, you would have to add some libraries found in a typical Linux distribution, yes. But only a miniscule part of what a typical Linux distro includes. And that doesn't stop you from adding your own libraries for the Amiga specific applications.
As a result the TCP/IP code in Linux is by far the worst in the industry,
worse even than the severely broken code in Win-NT/98.
I have a network (Ethernet) with two computers on it. One is my Pentium/166, a Linux box, which acts as a gateway to the outside and as a firewall. The other is a beffed up Pentium II/400 running Windows 98.
As a test of the network while I was setting it up, I ran some 'ping -f' commands from the Linux computer to the Win98 one. I discovered that we could get about 4M/s transfer rates for a few seconds, but then mysterious pauses would occur during which no data was transmitted. tcpdump showed my system sending out ARP packets to find the other computer during this time.
When I sat down at the other computer I found the problem. The pings were overloading Windows and causing it to seize up, freezing all activity on the computer except the mouse pointer! And this is a well-designed networking stack?
Daniel
Duhhh... hey Billy Bob, perhaps you should lay off the "lame"thrower long enough to realize that I re-posted comments FROM ANOTHER SITE for
Twit.
The GPL does not allow you to link GPL'd code to non GPL'd code, unless the non-GPL'd code is under a less restrictive license (for instance the LGPL).
However, libraries accessing the kernel does not link to it. They use the syscall mechanism. There is neither implicit nor explicit linking.
If you were right, then no commercial software for Linux would be legal, since the commercial software without exception link to at least the C library, which uses the syscall mechanism.
Do colleges graduate anyone with guts anymore?
Well, colleges don't graduate regular Slashdot participants, because they never log off to finish their coursework.
The student Slashdot/Linux lifestyle can lead to situations like a friend of mine who
has been a student or employee of the U of MN since he graduated from HS in 1968. Had a work study job in the hopsital as a "student" for so long that it finally was converted to a regular job. Made a big stink when he was laid off and lost his bennies in a costcutting measure a few years back. Of course he made it back onto the payroll eventually, and is still there. I don't think he's ever applied for even a bachelors degree.
Having used BSD TCP/IP for an in-house project, I can tell you first hand that it is *far* from bug free. In fact it is not really even fully RFC compliant. As to code quality, it's variable at best; much of it is a mess, down right hackish even.
They don't say what userspace they're using but since it's supposed to be a new operating system and they say they don't want to be 'just another distribution' I assume they are not using a GNU system, beyond maybe glibc. Then they say that third-party commercial software will run! I think they underestimate the assumptions that most UNIX software makes about its operating environment (whether this is good or not is a matter of opinion, but it is a fact) -- the entire system is built on the idea of using small programs in many diverse situations, which requires at least the common utilities (sh, grep, sed?) to be around. Maybe WordPerfect would run since it's ported from Windows; I'm dubious about Quake, and most useful software (Emacs, gcc, dpkg, etc) is almost certainly going to have difficulty in an environment that lacks the basic facilities provided by GNU. [ I suppose it might (barely) run, but don't even dream about compiling anything -- just look at the amount of stuff that gets invoked for a typical configure or make run ]
Daniel
RTOSs' don't even run on regular computers like you and I purchase. The media has to be gold-plated uranium. They don't use bits and bytes, they use little pixies who fly around on the wires.
Or whatever.
Let's make it simple.
Linux TCP/IP - BAD
BSD TCP/IP - GOOD
Why?
BSD TCP/IT stack has a backing of commercial developers with easy access to quickly eveloving standards and 24/7 dedication.
Linux TCP/IP is being patched by Linux community who have hard time to follow standards and amendmends as they are not members of standards commities etc.
So, considering the above, Linux's problem is that its TCP/IP stack is not BSD derrived.
We were using QNX as our kernel because of its real-time capabilities. Rtlinux gives you interrupt response times equal to QNX. Works great, too! Plus you can run all your Linux apps instead of using the brain dead QNX tools.
If that is all you can add to the discussion (speculation about what the author might or might not know) then why did you type anything at all?
when a 'moderator' marks something down as flamebait, the moderator is taking the bait.
this should not have been marked down as such.
You speaketh:
> BSD TCP/IT stack has a backing of commercial developers with easy access to quickly
> eveloving standards and 24/7 dedication.BSD TCP/IT stack has a backing of commercial
> developers with easy access to quickly eveloving standards and 24/7 dedication.
Translation:
The BSD stack has been fragmented into numerous closed source derivatives by the aforementioned "commercial developers", which do NOT all interoperate properly. (consider all the known TCP/IP bugs found in all the BSD derived stacks out there)
You sayeth:
> Linux TCP/IP is being patched by Linux community who have hard time to follow standards and
> amendmends as they are not members of standards commities etc. Linux TCP/IP is being patched by
> Linux community who have hard time to follow standards and amendmends as they are not members
> of standards commities etc.
Translation: Linux was not written by some corporation's warm bodies who sit on standards committees to try and influence things in favor of their company's product, but rather, it was written by people with actual experience with networking who needed to ensure interoperability with everybody else's broken TCP/IP stack. It is tested by hundreds of thousands of people and relied upon on a daily basis. In short, it works-- regardless of what meaningless platitudes you wish to spout.
Rodents of Unusuale Size? I don't think they exist...
Real time OSes are a stupid way to do audio/video stuff on a commodity computer. The problem is that just having "Real Time" doesn't necessarily mean that your computer is fast enough-- and the tradeoffs are that your machine may become useless for anything else.
The right way to do A/V stuff is with special (intelligent) hardware that works in real time itself (under the control of the machine), and takes the load off your CPU (and operating system).
Real time OSes may seem like an impressive way to make a 1980s soundcard work good, but "real" hardware will work with any old OS.
Actually not quite. The OS was on a ROM but the GUI (workbench) was what you had to boot (either from a floppy or HD, note that it was VERY small though)
Well,it's sad that Linux lost to Windows NT rather badly
and the principal cause of that loss is TCP/IP stack
inferior to that of Win NT. Which do you think
has a better TCP/IP implementation, Win NT or BSD-derived OS? I can't answer definitively without similar test
between FreeBSD vs Win NT. However, I bet it's FreeBSD. Then, isn't it rather clear that Linux has a big big problem with TCP/IP implementation? BSD TCP/IP implementation has been refined over a much longer period than that of Linux and it seems to me pretty natural that BSD implemetation is much better than that of Linux(nothing to be shamed of, here). When a problem is identified, what's to be done is not avoiding the issue but admitting the defect and trying to fix it. If everybody in Linux community takes a stance like yours, I believe the future of Linux is rather bleak. It's not yet time for champaigne nor for arrogance but time to begin a step-up effort to catch up with superior networking code out there.
Hrm, sounds more like Commadore except they do marketing too... Seriously, can you think Gateway could be as bad as Commadore? It's the techs who made the Amiga great, not the suits. So far it looks as though Gateway has let Amiga do what they want/need to. Sort of like Saturn. I'm not too worried at all unless it because really popular enough for the suits at Gateway to take notice and "get involved"...
first they imply that QNX is superior to linux (which it is not, QNX is a real time OS while linux is a full fledged unix) then they imply the TCP/IP code in linux stinks (which it doesnt, it may not be multithreaded but it works well in single threaded mode). Amiga mags/users should go crawl back into the corpse that their machine has become and stay there.
Some things to think about:
(1) There is NO ONE "BSD networking" code package. There is the original stuff from Berkeley, which is 10 years old and worthless, and there are the free, working versions in FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, respectively. All 3 differ in ways, and have been twisted and tied into the internals of the respective operating systems.
(2) Holger Kruse took the BSD stack (undoubtedly from one of the above) and made it into a closed-source product for Amiga. (free of charge, but closed source none the less). And now he is complaining about Linux's TCP/IP which is under the GPL... hmmm....
(3) Both Linux TCP/IP and BSD TCP/IP are NOT multithreaded or reentrant. Linux's stack is being threaded at this very moment, however. And BSD's??
(4) The majority of computers on the Internet are either running MacOS or Windows-- neither of which has a BSD TCP/IP stack. And Linux is responsible for "holding back the development of protocols on the Internet"? I think not.
(5) Holger's TCP/IP stack is probably used in 95% of cases for dial-up access to the Internet, and I don't doubt that that is what it is optimized for. So, when he claims that Linux doesn't perform well under congestion, I am betting he is talking about over a dial-up line. It's quite possible the his stack is a little better on slow dial-up lines than Linux. Does this matter to anyone running a server? Will this matter in a few years when dial-up access really has faded? No.
you dumbass. linux didnt loose to NT because it has an inferior TCP/IP stack - it lost because it has a single threaded TCP/IP stack while NT has a multithreaded one. Thats the reason your "superior" BSD stack will also loose to NT (remember that BIG LOCK BSD has around its stack?..well thats inferior)..there is nothing wrong/better/worse about ANY TCP/IP stack in any OS otherwise packets wouldnt flow efficiently from the machine. its just the single/multi threaded stuff that makes the difference.
Because of its custom chips the Amiga platform has evolved so slowly and was overrun later by PCs and others.
That's what you have to pay if you are forced to keep backwards compatibility on the hardware layers.
BTW: The two names were Agnus and Denise.
(Ther were some other chips I don't remember now.)
err..ive had loads of problems with X but i can say that it never shuts down the machine. Sure, the console may get screwed up but you can still rlogin remotely and kill X. dead X != dead system.
OK, Amiga has decided to built on Linux - somehow. Where are the details? What hardware will be used. How will Amiga deal with the GNU licensing issues?
I realize that the Linux announcement was just made a few days ago, but this has been in the works for some time. Amiga should release specific technical information *Pronto* at least for the sake of appeasing Amiga fanatics who somehow feel betrayed (seeing that QNX at least had a working demo of something it called an Amiga base....)
Given Amiga's history of vapor announcements since acquisition by Gateway, nobody really expects technical details to be forthcoming. It's very sad that Amiga enthusiasts keep believing and keep fooling themselves.
What is particularly disturbing is all the spec about Transmeta. This plays directly upon the Linus mystique in a very dishonest way. Nobody denies or confirms anything. Fuck em. This kind of secrecy is the exact opposite of everything we value in free software and the open foundation of Linux itself. Rumors float around that Linus himself has had secrect conversations with Collas about special chip(s) provided by Transmeta, and that this was one of the main reasons for the Linux decision. Huh? If Linus can't be more forthcoming (at least in denying speculation without providing all the details) then he should either quit his job at Transmeta, or turn leadership of Linux over to someone else. We don't need someone who is playing footsie with scoundrels like Gateway in the name of Linux from a position of representing Linux to others, at least in the public mind.
In my opinion, Amiga holdouts and wellwishers would do well to fully embrace open source or free software and let the Amiga die. We don't need a sort of or semi-free OS based on the Linux kernel which only runs on custom vapor hardware and which is not truly open source not to mention non-free.
The old Amiga was great. One can run most Amiga software with UAE on a Linux PC. I still have my A3000 thought the keyboard broke and I never got it replaced not to mention bad serial chips caused by lightnening strikes and the fact that my local Amiga store closed down years ago.....sob..
Ok. So we need more of a real time OS which is open source. Surely someone can work on that as an offshoot of Linux or Hurd, for example. I think it is a mistake to tie things too much to custom hardware. That was ok ten years ago when stock PC hardware was not so powerful. The performance increase with custom hardware for a "new" Amiga will not be meaningful to most users with todays machines. I hope I am wrong about that. I would dearly love to see a new paradigm for computer chips and memory which is vastly different from what we have with today's Intel clones and very expensive risc based boxes. But that will be much more profound a change than anything which will come out of Gateway, Amiga or even Transmeta. It will not happen overnight, either. In the meantime we are mainly concerned with improving the software for an OS which can run on a wide range of hardware, as Linux now does and which Hurd can do.
In summary - Amiga - put up or shut up. As I see it you have about one week to release meaningful technical details about hardware and software for the new Amiga or you will lose forever the interest of the developer community (at least the portion of it which is currently involved with free software, which is significant). Enough of your vapourware, lies and speculation.
Juilan is starving!
err...linux isnt GPLed..its LGPLed..which mean proprietary add in modules are allowed./
Both Amiga's kernel (exec.library) and GUI (intuition.library) reside on the Kickstart ROM. While being the default system desktop environment, Workbench is merely an application that represents files as icons - it does not provide any fundamental GUI functions to other applications (as intuition.library does).
In other words, you do not need to fire up Workbench in order to use GUI applications. Workbench is just like any application utilizing the Intuition GUI provided by the intuition.library - nothing more, nothing less.
It should also be noted that while Workbench must be launched by running a disk-based command (c:LoadWB), this is actually just a simple launcher that calls the system LoadWB() function call. Most parts of the Workbench desktop environment actually reside in Kickstart ROM (hence the small disk footprint.)
Translation: Linux's Stack is not written by professionals who read standards. It's written by people who reverse engineer other stuff and then write me-too copies. This is a general Linux problem, not just a TCP/IP problem. Sitting in a back room trying to reverse engineer everything works if you want a kinda-sorta operating environment. If you're not gonna sit at the table when the standards are being written, your product will never be anything more interesting than a Taiwanese PC clone was in 1988 (cheap, adequate, but never much more than that)
It's important to read these discussions at a -1 threshold, and follow up the good moderated down posts with a comment or two. That keeps stuff from being buried by moderators with an agenda other than the truth.
I would not be surprised to find out what line of work his ancestors were doing 55 or 60 years ago in his country of origin.
Frankly, I hadn't heard the phrase "shareware" in several years. [isn't that use of the expression "share" funny? Do they really know the meaning of the word "share"?] It is pretty much an alien concept in the open source world. All of a sudden these old "shareware" types are chomping at the bit for the new Amiga to come out so they can subjigate the "share croppers" again. They don't realize that the world has changed. They fear the concept of open source because it cuts them out of the picture. Their joy in QNX is that they could corral all the suckers again.
It's kernel not kernal.
;-0
:-)
Incidently what about the Amiga people who use Linux like myself? Am I not "one of the brightest bulbs in the box"?
Maybe those years of doing 68k asm on the Amiga/Atari did something bad to my brain.
Frank
I don't know why anyone here thinks that BSD'ers such as myself look down at Linux. :) ), the prevalence of opinions like the ones in the letter quoted a few posts up may have something to do with it. I'm glad to see there's one sane BSD user, though. I was starting to wonder :)
Well (assuming you mean BSD users in general and not just ones that are like you
Daniel (I can't comment on BSD until I successfully get a variant bootstrapped onto my system..)
Sorry, these darn mouse wheels don't always work properly. "howardjp"s comment was suppose to be moderated funny. But when I use my mouse wheel to scroll down, it change the moderation as well. Too bad.
Now why am I an AC. Because, as a moderator you are not suppose to give your identity. Otherwise I would. Remember, practically anyone can be a moderator. So you may have some wouldn't know their asses from holes in ground and some actually support others opinions.
Signme the Anonymous Moderator Coward.
The Linux people read the standards too. They are free for everyone, and on the lists, people are constantly spouting RFCs.
Your argument is a straw man. Come up with a *REAL* bug or STFU!
Not, The fanciest 'feature' the QNX4 stack has is IP Forwarding, it has no firewalling, no NAT, no IPv6, none of the fancy multicast or QoS stuff, nothing!
It is based off BSD as that is what the little note that comes with the software says, but it has defiantely been highly modified to fit into the QNX model. For Neutrino I understand their stack was largely rewritten to be smaller in size so that it would better meet the emerging need for low footprint IP connections in embedded devices, certianly not for high speed or high scalablility.
I think he is trying to say that he is a dyslectic. Dyslexia is a very well known disablility (at least for somewhat educated people). I am not a doctor and yet I know this.
Give the poor guy a break will ya!
> no you dont want to edit video play games or surf
Huh?
And you have demonstrateable proof of this, right? I didn't think so.
Don't get me wrong I like BeOS, but its speed advantage is NOWHERE. Pervasive multithreading is a red herring on single CPU machines.
I don't suppose that they appreciate a bunch of Linux users trash-talking the Amiga.
welcome to capitalism, where the only important
thing is following every little rumor and
fistfight as though it were a story in the bible.
nevermind what people say, the 'real engineers' know
what is best. submit now if you know whats
good for you!
Ever watch TV? you've seen Amiga output and never knew it!
The Amiga always had a RTOS...
Within 2 guesses I'd say that you're either an Amiga user or a FreeBSD user.
I'm tired about all of this nonsense about including a GDI in the kernel.
For once and for all: puting the GDI in the kernel will not improove performance !
Probably, if you don't write a very good implementation, you face the risk of getting a slower system.
I will explain the reason why the GDI shouldn't be in the kernel:
1 - Graphics cards are not regular devices. Most Graphic cards use "memory mapped IO" instead of interrupts and IO Ports.
Graphics cards are different from other devices that rely on a driver inside the kernel.
If you look at any graphics card in use today, you will see that it uses two different memory ranges.
First, you have the "video memory", that includes the frame buffer and a back buffer, used for storing backup copies of fonts and bitmaps, or textures in the modern 3D cards.
You can copy images and change the screen image just by writing to the video memory.
Second you have the "control memory", that include the graphic card registers.
You send commands to the graphics card just by writing in this memory area.
If you are using an accelerated graphic card, you can send commands to use the hardware accleleration, just by writing in this memory area.
The main point is that you don't need to be inside the kernel to write and read to the memory. Any regular process does read and write to it's onw memory space.
This is the way the X server works. The X server starts by calling the "mmap" system call to map the "video memory" and the "control memory" to it's own process memory space.
Starting from this point, the X server can use the graphic card just by writing and reading memory. It does't have to do any system calls to use the graphics card.
Writing to the graphics card memory inside the kernel is exactly as fast as writing to that memory inside a user process.
On the other side, if you put the GDI inside the kernel, you will have to call a system call for every graphic operation.
As everybody knows, calling a system is very slow, because it involves changes in the CPU running mode (changing the ring levels, etc).
2 - The magik of the X Window system is that it works in asynchronous mode.
X Clients don't send requests to the X server, one at a time.
Instead, X Clients have a internal buffer that stores the requests. Requests are only sent to the server when the buffer is full, or when "XFlush" is called.
This way, instead of calling one "write" system call for every X request, the "Xlib" groups many requests and calls only one system call.
If you put the GDI inside the kernel, you would have to use one system call for every request.
3 - The X server performs another task: it avoids conflits between X clients. If you put the GDI in the kernel, you would also have to use a lot of locking inside the kernel, to make sure that two processes don't use confliting parts of the GDI at the same time. This would slow down the GDI a little.
4 - Having the GDI in a separate process (the X server) is a very good way of paralellising grphics applications is SMP machines. Sometimes you have the applications doing a lot of calculations, while the X server is doing a lot of graphics work on another CPU.
5 - The GDI is very complex (as compared to many subsystems in the kernel), having many many graphics funcions. This way, the GDI would increase the level of complexity of the kernel.
This way, the level of security, stability and reliability of the kernel would decrease a lot.
Why does anyone believe any press releases concerning the Amiga? For five years or more, each sucessive owner of the Amiga brand has spouted a stream of PR bullshit in an attempt to shock this dodo back to life. We are told one moment that the next Amiga will use custom hardware and a custom OS, then it's going to be an x86 running QNX, then it's going to be a PowerPC running Linux and so on. In other words they haven't even far enough into the design to know what operating system or hardware it will use. Each press release contradicts prior ones, making extravagant claims but nothing ever, ever appears. After FIVE years!
And if by some miracle an Amiga did surface, what would be so damned impressive about a PPC running Linux? An iMac can do that today. In fact, why name it Amiga at all? What would this supposed Amiga have in common with it's namesake? Nothing except for the handful of diehard Amiga chumps that will buy the new one simply because it says Amiga on the side.
The few Amiga magazines still in existence lap up the PR bullshit, simultaneously printing the latest announcements whilst apologising for the fact that the previous ones came to nothing. Some months they get so desperate for positive news that they actually draw sketches of what the next Amiga might look like!
For any Amiga fans, face the facts. The Amiga had a glorious reign from the late '80s to the early '90s and then it died. It died due to the total incompetence of Commodore, and each sucessive owners has done little more than shovel dirt on it's grave. It was a sad event when the Amiga died (I know because I owned several) but there it is. C'est la vie.
If you want run your old Amiga stuff, install Linux, run UAE and be done with it. Don't hold out for something that will be an Amiga in little more than name. That is if it ever appears at all.
QNX 4 is supposedly quite good, but it's not right to say that QNX has been in development for 20 years. More like 3 or 4.
QNX 2 was a piece of crap and QNX 4 was (rightly) written from scratch to Posix standards. I had to use the QNX 2 travesty at work and aside from the very fast kernel, the tools and compiler were very shoddy and extremely badly written.
Well done Hutchings, two sentences without one fact correct.
Try actually reading anything I have ever written with benchmarks in and you will find that if possible the benchmarks are my own, and I always make a point of indicating that any benchmarks should be treated with a pinch of salt.
Really Ben, it's not like we haven't been through this before. So you didn't like an article (which actually wasn't written by me) that you read two years ago - learn to live with it. Don't let it consume you. Get on with life.
If you really want to rerun this tedious argument, then at least spare the poor people here...
Andrew Korn
Happened to me a couple of days ago.... Server that had only gone down because of power failure 'til now. Started X and the machine locked solid. No net traffic. Nothing.
cr*p video card and an old version of X, but still....
I mean, they are using the lowest level of Linux to do the common stuff expected from the Kernal, I take it, so they will still be using Linux.
Does any one think based upon what has been said that they are still subject to release the source code to the parts of Linux they are using? If what they have gets to integrated into the Kernal, how much of it will be released as source code?
Are they still going to contribute to Linux?
I think its still apropriate to call it a Linux distribution, I do not see a reason not to unless some else does? Its still distibuting Linux. I mean they can say that they do not want it called a Linux distribution but technicaly it could, couldn't it?
I like that though, the Amiga Linux distribution. Although I know their are quite a few people concerned about Micros~13, following the same route, coming out with a linux distribution with a win32 operating environment....
What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger...
It would be nice if they did. They really have done much to Lightwave except add more rendering features, and it always had better quality rendering then 3ds/Max, also their modeler is much easier to use then 3ds/max's (at least from an artists stand point), 3ds always has to much a cluttered view and their paradimes are not as good as Lightwave modelers, 3ds/max benefits more in texture mapping, since it has free form texture mapping, while texture mapping in Lightwave is normally limited to diffrent mapping paradigms (projection, cylinderical, spherical, etcetera), so its a pain in terms of texture mapping.... I never did like Max because its work flow paradigm is not as nice as Lightwaves.
:p.... any way dreams are better when you make them happen... And I do not see a reason to bug Newtek or any software vendor for that matter into porting to linux.
Personly Nichiman's Marai, seems really good to me better then Max and better then Lightwave, but I also do not like some of their paradigms work flows, I think its more related to their controls. Maya is also beautifully done, and the scripting is great, as well as Softimage.
Also in terms of price, Lightwave still costs cheaper, when you take into consideration that a lot of Maxs abilities is in its plugins, and after you add up all the prices of the plugins, its not as cheap as lightwave.
Also Lightwave would be more portable since it uses OpenGL, while Max uses OpenGL as a secondary API, Heidi is their main one, and the last time they were working on porting to the DEC Alpha, they were acting dumb because of some lousy divide zero interrupt was not supported by Alphas, and last I remember it never got done.
I'm hoping some great developer will decide to make a good open source 3D program with a good paradigm to boot, but the ones I have seen thus far are buggy and are not easy to use for artists
He is responding to someone who got marked as flaim bait, if you hit at the bottom of this page "3 replies beneath your threshold", and do a search for "fool" you will see him respond to a flame...
Linux already IS legitimate. If Amiga "pulls this off" then there will simply be yet another version of Linux. No more, no less.
You mean Video Toaster which is available for the PC now for about the same cost or less.
Yes, but they implied that they would be using a totally different system than GNU. Given that, I don't imagine that the base install will ship the GNU userspace, and I think they'll be too busy getting their own software bootstrapped to port GNU. So it'll be up to the individual user to hunt the stuff down..you could get the programs to run eventually (install a real Linux distribution in a chroot'ed environment :) ) but that's not really 'out of the box', which is what the article claimed, and won't be useful to 'Joe Amiga User'..so I repeat that they are somewhat confused, either about Amiga's plans or about the environmental requirements of UNIX software.
Daniel
Kruse is off his rocker or has a hidden agenda (not too hard to imagine as he is the maintainer of a shareware TCP stack). Linux has had IPv6 and an advanced QOS implementation with multiple queueing/priority algorithms since early 2.1. The notion that Linux developers don't read the RFCs is laughable to anyone who reads linux-kernel; networking developers there frequently quote chapter and verse. As for workarounds, every TCP/IP stack has workarounds for the others; that's life in the big city. No one's software is perfect, but TCP/IP has to work seamlessly. Linux has tons of workarounds for other stacks; the comments associated with these are (in general) more reflective of pragmatism than hostility and bitterness.
The fact that it's not BSD derived is a bonus as far as I'm concerned. The BSD stack was originally implemented when memory was much more expensive than it is now; thus it relies on smallish data structures called 'mbufs' that are chained together to form packets. The Linux stack was written from the ground up to be more modern; it uses 'skbuffs' which store entire packets in contiguous data buffers.
BSD now uses 'mbuf clusters' to attain skbuff-like performance, but my point is that you shouldn't go around worshipping old implementations, because they were ofter engineered for a very different set of requirements.
I maintain the TCP/IP stack of an embedded OS. We used NetBSD because of its portability and because of the licensing (this is a commercial closed-source OS). I would love to be able to use the Linux stack instead; I have read the code for both extensively, and the Linux code is more readable and (in 2.3) has much better multithreading.
> Which do you think has a better TCP/IP implementation, Win NT or BSD-derived OS? I can't
> answer definitively without similar test between FreeBSD vs Win NT.
Then why do you assume BSD is better?
> BSD TCP/IP implementation has been refined over a much longer period than that of Linux and it
> seems to me pretty natural that BSD implemetation is much better than that of
> Linux(nothing to be shamed of, here).
Age of code has no bearing on its quality. MS-DOS is pushing 20 years old and is still piece of shit.
Quality of code has to do with how well it has been maintained, how much it has been used/tested/bugs fixed, etc.
> When a problem is identified, what's to be done is not avoiding the issue but admitting the defect
> and trying to fix it.
Which is what is going on right now by the Linux TCP/IP gurus.
> It's not yet time for champaigne nor for arrogance but time to begin a step-up effort to
> catch up with superior networking code out there.
Merely saying that BSD is superior does not make it so. Indeed, since you haven't yet made one factual or quantitative statement regarding the _actual_ performance of BSD TCP/IP, you are merely blowing hot air.
> You are mistaken. Miami was never free. It was always shareware. You "dumping" charge is
> completely unfounded.
I could have sworn that it first came out as a free stack for Amiga users who wanted to use dial-up connections. This was the last time I used my Amiga (3 years ago). (and it was right after I paid like $300 for an Amiga ethernet card and TCP/IP software)
I'm going to check Deja News...
> Although you are correct that Kruse takes free code and turning it into shareware, that is
> an oversimplified way of putting it. He has taken free code and used it part of his product;
> he didn't simply sell repackaged stuff. Keep in mind that Miami also includes a very convenient
> GUI, a built-in PPP interface (written from scratch; not ported), and a few other odds and
> ends. Considering the amount of work that Mr. Kruse put into delivering a final polished
> product, I think the shareware fee is pretty reasonable.
I do agree that it's good think that he's ported TCP/IP and the X Window System for Amiga. And his prices are reasonable for Amiga software (I won't argue at all there). But I think you have to keep his perspective in mind when considering his criticisms of Linux.
You (original poster) don't understand pipelined superscalar processors. Context switches between threads are *bad*; they cause pipeline stalls, cache flushes, and all kinds of other bad stuff. And with every generation of microprocessor, the hit becomes bigger because CPUs keep getting more highly parallel and increasingly faster compared to main memory.
Multithreaded code offers no performance benefit on UP machines (it's a performance hit, in fact). Its advantage is that it offers a programming model that many find conceptually cleaner (each thread has only a single task to perform) yet often trickier to debug.
People who worry about the "monolithic" design of the Linux kernel compared to threaded microkernels don't understand how Unix kernels work. They are elegant in that they transparently allow threaded system calls if the right locking primitives are used. Linux 2.3 uses them more pervasively than any previous kernel version, and has excellent (near-linear) multiprocessor scalability because of it. 2.2 is not as good, but is still plenty good enough to saturate most I/O channels. Incrementing threaded filesystems and networking on a microkernel design is actually _harder_ than on a monolithic kernel.
All of which, of course, just goes to show that 99% of people who offer opinions about threading and kernel architectures don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Where did you get that impression? In fact it is just the opposite. AmigaOS is designed to be very modular and run on microkernels if need be. One of the whole points of this sort of design is to move as much capability out of the kernel as possible, and move it into userland. This is known as decoupling and it is one of the benefits touted by advocates of this type of design. It allows changes to be made to parts of the system without unwanted side-effects rippling through disturbing other parts of the system. Until recently, the Linux kernel didn't support this architecture too well. But now the new Linux kernels are pervasively multithreaded (although some of the capabilities are not turned on yet; they are waiting for some of the glue-work to catch up). This is the continued direction of the kernel development. It will offer much of the architectual benefits of a true mircrokernel without the speed penalty associated with microkernels (for example compare the peformance penalty of the Hurd kernel to Linux).
No it's not flame bait. It is a critical observation. It is based on the long twisted path of false hopes and false starts that have been created since Commodore went bankrupt.
If every critical comment must be taken as flamebait by Amiga users then they should not be on slashdot. In the past slashdot was known for its lively discussion and debate. Now it is on the verge of becoming a politically correct wasteland where all independant thoughts are controlled by thorazine doped moderation.
>This guy is basically full of shit.
This guy makes a living developing TCP/IP code. His MIAMI stack is one of the best on ANY platform.
What exactly are your credentials?
>won't be contributing any back to the community?
I didn`t think us Amigans could teach you Linux guys anything anyway };)
There is no "Spirit of Amiga" in the new product because there is no product! They can't even decide what hardware or software it's going to use!
And even if by some miracle it did surface, what "spirit" is it preserving? A few familiar developer names does not a new Amiga make. The latest press release suggests this new computer will be little more than a PowerPC running Linux. How is this the new Amiga? If it's built with off-the-shelf components, then what is the difference between this and any other PC box? If it's built with custom hardware, then it implies proprietary and lock-in doesn't it?
The Amiga died years ago. It was a wonderful computer and we all loved it, but it's dead now. Dead and buried. Using the Amiga name on a new computer is just a ploy to gain a few more sales from the diehard Amiga chumps that time forgot.
If you want to preserve the memory of your Amiga, run UAE. Otherwise move on.
It could be a possibility based on the previous post reply, but it doesn't necessary follow logically from it. Further factual evidence, proove that it is just plain wrong (read the comments of the TCP source: surprised they list point by point how each RFC detail is supported).
Incredible. You'd think an intelligent man like Andrew Korn would have filtered out any posts by this infamously unlikeable shit-flinger by now.
His stack does not ship with back doors, this rumour came about because of a cracked version which contained backdoors.
Paranoid rants? See above.
Incidentally this rumour has frequently been resurrected by those 'so called pirates', most recently in the form of a fake news story posted on Amiga.org by a hacker/s.
But then you already know all this, being a poor persecuted so called 'pirate' yourself.
He-he.. Stanford Escondido village
subnet. No firewall... Lotsa Win95..
grad students.
My machine their was potscanned,
SYN flooded, whatever I have no clue about
daily.
Why bother?
Speaking of advice - can you please check my
current host...
Yeah I know 2.0.36 TCP/IP.. but the rest...
If you guys can crash it, i'll call a smart
person to configure it properly.
This just goes to demonstrate why hype always beats technology... Linux never made a dent in the MS machine until it stated generating its own unjustified hype from the news media. Now that it has, Linux has become a new evil empire, crushing superior operating systems like QNX.
Nobody ever said that the new Amiga will be
...
x86 based. Neither did anyone say that it will
be PPC based(*). Actually it was repeated milllion
times that it will NOT be x86 based.
* - In some interview years ago Petro Tyschtschenko(**),
head of Amiga International said that they choose
PPC but that was "corrected" shortly.
** - or whatever his name is
The Amiga if far from dead. Still 2 million usrers. 2% of the people who read slashdot are on an Amiga. It may not sound like a large numbers but it adds up to a good sized market.
...for Linux Pagestream has long been my favourite DTP program, and Lightwave has long been my favourite 3D animation program. Take the hint, guys!
NG Amiga stands for Newsgroup, because it's beyond vaporware in that it doesn't even leave the newsgroups and make it's way into print media, like the usual vaporware does.
Maybe somebody should slap the Amiga brandname onto some sort of PDA or Net PC something, just to keep the Amiga fetishists placated.
I don't know why anyone here thinks that BSD'ers such as myself look down at Linux. Analysis of the second Mindcraft tests showed that the threading in the Linux TCP/IP stack wasn't pervasive enought to scale well onto multiple processors. On the BSD development mailing lists, the question came up, "How would we have faired, and does our TCP/IP stack have the same problems?". The response from some of the core development members was that the current BSD TCP/IP stack suffers from the same malady, a giant lock around the TCP/IP stack. It's not much of an issue on a single processor, but throws the same obstacles in BSD's way as it does Linux.
I wish people here would try not to be so reactionary, how many of us have ever committed to either the BSD or Linux kernel code? That's what I thought.
If Amiga does this well they can make the first real userfriendly system that joe computer user canget on and actually use. Redhat seems to go for this with rpms and whatnot but still is way beyond your normal user. If they accomplish that it could succede I think, with gateway providing the money for marketing since they own amiga. Get a portion of your average computer user market using linux and software manufacturers would start producing Linux software.
I think it has a good chance of working, I don't know why #amiga and random amiga people I have talked to are so against the idea of Linux.
The messenger has a long history of non-altruistic behaviour. His stack ships with back doors and time bombs. His paranoid rants against so called "pirates" are well known. He considers himself the "King" of Amiga tcp/ip. He thinks all Amiga tcp/ip should pass under his control. Take heart: his reign is just about over.
Tapping into the existing base of X software is the only way they will succeed. They need to have a critical mass of software apps, and Linux/BSD running on X is the only viable alternative to Windows right now. It doesn't matter how good their OS is, they will end up struggling along with Be if they don't realize this.
I'm all for dumping my apps every two years and starting from scratch, but most consumers are like lemmings.
This article is amusing, the author has clearly never even seen any of QNX's software let alone used it! The comparisions he makes with Linux are simply laughable. For instance, Linux's IP stack may not be the best in the world, but QNX's certainly is no better right now - Neutrino was not created soley for Amiga, I imagine that QSSL was asked if they could provide a real time OS by Amiga and simply re-fitted a few things they were already doing for their real customers.
The concept that Neutrino is an OS without a market is even more amusing, last year our little company easially shipped 1000 Neutrino licenses, and we are not a big customer. I assure you that QSSL and their OS's will be just fine without Amiga.
As for the clueless people who post things like 'I want this for my next OS!' - Get a clue! The cost alone should be frightening enough to change your mind: 1100$ USD for a runtime license and another 2000$ for the development tools, and even then it is only interesting if you are going to cut code for it.
Due to over-moderation, slashdot has become as unstimulating as a cold day old bowl of Cream of Wheat.
The most frightening aspect is that there exists these slashdot femme-men who are so frail as to be offended by Wakko Warner's pithy observation that holding out hope for the Amiga is akin to trying to will a rotting corpse back to life.
These moderaters are like toothless old women whose only meal can consist of well gummed Wonder Bread which has been further softened by a soaking in tepid tap water. Do colleges graduate anyone with guts anymore? Or are they all sheep?
And for the record, I don't happen to agree with Wakko Warner on his point; I'm merely shocked that anyone would feel the need to moderate down his comment.
This guy is basically full of shit.
I can't even dignify that with a response. Arguing with people like this is a waste of effort.
The only valid point he makes is that there isn't enough parallelism going on in Linux's network stack to scale well beyond 4 CPU's. But, he only touches on that briefly before spewing all sorts of bile about how Linux is holding back new protocols and "curbing performance on the Internet". Note to self: find out what this guy is smoking, and avoid it all costs.
BTW, comp.sys.amiga.sys isn't even a valid newsgroup on my ISP's server. But, that's just my ISP being stupid, perhaps not a lot of people are arguing with this guy because the people who could argue are over in comp.sys.linux.*, or even avoiding the Usenet wasteland altogether.
I know that Linux's TCP/IP stack is not BSD-derived. That's not the point. The point is that it's not BSD derived is not a problem, which is what the article a was quoting from was stating.
Well, the alternative is to have the graphics drivers in a privledged user space program (X), which is just as capabable of bringing down the whole OS. Pick your poison.
Anyway, can we maybe only post Amiga news if it's actual news from now on? As in, an actual product being shipped? (I have a feeling that we won't be seeing any Amiga news anymore if this happens, though.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Amiga used to be a bunch of intelligent, smart, and witty people. Where are you now? I used to converse with people of copper chip timings and such. People used to share 3D rendering code, and hal optimizations with me. Now a bunch of crazy people are posting stupid, un-intellegent, pro-ami , bad linux. What gives?
Where are we now? Using Linux, BSD, stuff like that. I was an Amiga loyalist for years, yeah, hardware-bashing assembly-writing democoder, there was no way I was going to switch to a PC when the hardware was so much worse and the OS was so much worse.
But times started to change.. with Commodore's slow slide into the mud, the hardware stopped getting better, the OS stopped getting better, but I still stuck with it, even when people were buying much more powerful PCs for half the money, 'cos I used Windows at work and didn't want to go anywhere near it at home.
Then I discovered Linux. An OS as good as AmigaDOS, running on that stupidly cheap PC hardware, and with a community full of keen hackers just like the old Amiga scene. So I bought a PC, and packed the A500, A1200 and A3000 away. Not without regret, believe me, but their time was just past.
And after spending literally years in the mid-90's believing in an imminent Amiga resurrection, I can say with as much confidence as I can say anything, that it's just not going to happen.
The first Amiga was a standout because of it's advanced hardware and OS at a bargain price. This opportunity no longer exists; hardware is a commodity item, and advanced operating systems are free (speech and beer).
What hasn't changed is the desire to make a computer better than anyone has before. Something "insanely great", as Steve Jobs would say.
Gateway is in a better position to do this than Commadore ever was. At least they've demonstrated their ability to successfully run a business over the long haul, which is something Commadore had problems with. As long as Amiga remains atonamous, they have the chance to do something great.
I'm dismayed at the number of /. posters (not to single you out in particular) who are predicting certain failure for Amiga, and seem to have no vision for what can be done. Someday someone will create a better computer, but it won't be done by people who are living in the past.
TedC
TedC
all part of World Domination, baby, yeah! ;)
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Funny thing, freeBSD's TCP/IP stack suffers from the same malady as Linux's and would have fared no better in the Mindcraft benchmarks. Serveral major, modern commercial Unices also have or until recently had this problem. Reason is that under real world operating conditions the TCP/IP stack is not the bottleneck, ethernet bandwidth is. Only many separate simultaneous requests and the file size requested is vanishingly small can you overwelm the TCP/IP stack and take a performance hit. This is why Microsoft insisted on very small static pages and multiple 100Mbit cards for the test, that was the only way they could get the number of requests high enough to hit the limits of the TCP/IP stack before they hit the limits of the ethernet protocol (or some other weakness in NT itself).
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
Yep. I remember that fact from my Amiga days. The Miami TCP stack for the Amiga is CRIPPLE-WARE folks. You now know the *REAL* reason why H.Kruse has a grudge against the Linux TCP stack. He basically couldn't steal it.
Sorry, but quite simply not true.. A GPL program can make calls to a NON GPL program without much of a problem. This is why vendors can make closed source drivers, as long as the code for the driver is 100% their own.. The kernel can call it just fine, and no need to swallow the GPL..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The problem is, many have never read the GPL, and probrably won't, becouse then they'd actually KNOW how friggen idiotic they where over the last 2 years..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
None of the "It's OK to use Linux as the Amiga's new kernel" posts have managed to address one of the key reasons for using QNX as the kernel.
:)
,hacker Perl another Just)'
Real Time
The only way to succeed in a true multimedia OS is to have deterministic timing. This allows you to create awsome effects hardware like the Video Toaster (lack of deterministic timing is why it's taken so long to see an adequate replacement for the toaster on newer OS's), and powerful media software like Scala. The sort of thing that Amiga Inc were talking about reviving. Unfortunately Linux doesn't address these problems - even with the RT-Linux patches (which are a good start). It seems to me a big waste of Amiga's time and resources to hack in real time code back into the kernel, when they had a great (possibly the best) real time OS waiting to be used.
I wait with interest to see what they come up with, but I'm not selling my Linux box down the river yet, I can't wait for the WindowMaker theme to come out that emulates the LAF...
Matt.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
First, there is plenty of IPv6 software for Linux, over on ftp.inner.net.
Second, there are IPsec implementations for Linux over on Free S/WAN and NIST.
Third, Linux had IPv6 support before Microsoft's experimental stack. I started using IPv6 with no problems as of 2.0.28, when the first patches came out.
Fourth, Linux supports a wide range of multicast protocols, including PIM. You need to patch the BSD kernels for such support.
Lastly, Linux has support for QoS, including RED, CBQ, RSVP. I've only seen an Intel experimental version of RSVP for Windows, and it's not that impressive.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Everybody seems to be gushing how "this means Amiga will run Linux apps out of the box."
Of course, that won't happen unless they're using X, the same libraries, etc., etc.--in other words, if it is "just another distribution."
The best info I can garner is that the Amiga will just be running the kernel, although nobody's clearly stated that yet. Does anyone know?
Just because he knows about TCP/IP doesn't mean he knows anything about Linux, and also doesn't mean that he's not just spouting off. So he's a well-read crackpot who is... :P
--
Well, not according to this article which says Solaris is a reimplementation that doesn't use BSD, just like Linux's IP stack.
It also says Solaris isn't very good at sticking to the standards, rather like Linux 1.0, but unlike Linux 2.0.30 and 2.1.34 which are pretty good (and I bet 2.2 is better).
I wonder whether Holger Kruse ever mailed any bug reports to the Linux kernel folks. I think that would be simpler than implementing workarounds in his stack.
This article is the major reference for the RFC and is written by the same guy as the RFC. It also has a lot of tough criticism of other systems, including Solaris and several BSD-dervived stacks. Windows gets a fairly clean bill, and they are very critical of Trumpet Winsock.
I tried to check Dawson's paper, but his server seems to be down.
For the other problems in the RFC they were either clearly marked as BSD problems, or I couldn't follow up the references. (Either because there weren't any, or because they were paper and not online.) The RFC doesn't name names, so it's impossible to say which of the others Linux has been guilty of, or is guilty of.
I think Holger Kruse should tell us what his 4 workarounds are, that he has been forced to put in to work around Linux. Linux has plenty of stuff put in to work around other people's mistakes of course. I guess having to put that sort of thing in your code can make you arrogant.
Why? Jutify "QNX is a horrible operating system"
It is *very* lightweight and *very* stable, two things that all desktop operating systems at this time are not (with perhaps the exception of BeOS but lets not argue about that one right now) It is stable to the point that it can run for years, and survive drivers misbehaving and other *core* system components being changed. Linux is pretty good, but not *that* good.
Unfortunately with QNX they were going the right way, but I feel that this decision to use linux is not the right one (even though I love Linux) - Note that the decision appears to have been made by management and as such is hoping to ride the current Linux [hype/bandwagon/frenzy] that appears to be in evidence.
~Pev
OK first off: OSS/Linux. The sound drivers that (probably about) 10% of Linux users use are not released under GPL. There are probably hundreds of other kernel modules out there that are proprietary and/or GPL-unfriendly. Linus made a decision a long time ago that proprietary modules can exist.
:). X is no different from Netscape which is no different from false(1) -- they are all just programs which make up the operating system, and they can all be released under whatever licence they want. The game you want to play is trying to draw a line between "applications" and "the OS". Is X part of the OS, or is it an application? How about bash? perl?
Second off:
. . . all of which are separate and distinct entities that cooperate and work together. I don't see this distinction where the new Amiga OS is concerned
Neither do I. If you can create "entities" that sit on top of Linux which are neither kernel modules, programs, nor libraries, then I suppose you might have a point in there somewhere. Unfortunately, you can't, and thus, you don't
Whatever Amiga does to make their own new operating system, they're going to have to do one of the following:
- make changes to the kernel. They will have to make their changes public according to the GPL.
- make kernel modules. These can be proprietary.
- make cool new GUIs (as a replacement for X). This can be proprietary, as it is just a program.
- make a cool new API to replace libc. This can be proprietary. It is not against the law to port Motif to Linux; proprietary libraries are A-OK.
QNX is a horrible operating system. I wouldn't
use it to run a toaster, much less a desktop
environment. Message passing is for wussies.
I'm not sure how current his information is; for example, he states that there's no IPv6 and IPSEC support for Linux. This is incorrect; IPv6 was added in 2.1, and IPSEC was recently announced (though it's not in the kernel distribution).
There's an obvious dividing line: the system call gateway. Anything that implements a system call is part of the kernel; anything else is userspace and hence is unaffected by the kernel's licence. By this definition, glibc is an application just as much as Oracle is. (It's just an application used by practically all other applications. You can envision writing a system call interface for another language, such as Java or M3, and then writing the userspace code completely in that language, with no C code or library at all.) Amiga can therefore build anything on top of the kernel that they want, and can use any licence they want for the components.
Bruce is just an old fart -- he's talking about the pre 1.0 days when the Linux kernel was distributed by punch card, and fit in your hand to boot.
:-^
You're correct. Arguing with people such as yourself would be pointless. Linux's TCP/IP code isn't BSD-derived. Read your Linux history before you post again.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Speaking of FUD...
Ancipital's legendary for spreading flat-out lies in comp.sys.amiga.misc - I see that he hasn't changed.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I was unaware of a definition of cripple-ware that included fully functional and working software. The fact that it has a one-hour session timeout (with a working auto-reconnect feature) doesn't jibe with my idea of crippled.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
To put this in context, Mr. Kruse developed Miami (Modem Internet for AMIga) and Miami Deluxe (a full-featured TCP/IP stack with routing, IP-NAT, etc. built in). More info can be found at Nordic Global.
I only mention this to say that Holger's not some half-read crackpot who's just spouting off - he really does know what he's talking about.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Enough is enough. These Amiga articles have reached the point where they're not funny any more. I'm gonna configure Slashdot not to show them.
fish and pipes
Neutrino works on x86, PPC, SH3, SH4, arm/strongarm, and will run on alot of others microprocessor. The kernel is about 40Kb, and only 10% of this kernel is microprocessor dependant, so rewriting 4Kb of code is easy for QSSL.
I agree QNX/NTO is not made for the end user, but for embedded appliance and realtime critical stuff, it rocks!
The guy who wrote the article knows nothing on QNX, i suggest him to contact QSSL so they can show him a demo. All the QNX stuff in this article is bullshit.
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
note that the next TCPIP package for QNX (TCPIP4.4 in alpha right now) is based on BSD4.4 and will have all the funny stuff like NAT or whatever. :o)
note also that in BeOS the TCPIP stack has been written by only one person!!! ok it lacks some raw socket interface (you cannot use traceroute e.g.) and the performance on a 100Mb are poor, but wrote a stack alone in one week is great
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
i said the NEXT tcpip package, actually it's v4.25, the v4.4 is actually in alpha stage, and will have NAT and whatever.
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
However, that kind of "OS" is a toy. You might as well run DOS or Windows."
-Linus Torvalds October 1996 on comp.os.linux.development.system
| Today on comp.sys.amiga.misc, we've had
:)
... :)
| regulars complaining that linux was so
| ludicrously bloated that it couldn't run on a
| p100
And this was on c.s.a.*misc*? Things have indeed gotten bad down Amiga way. Such silly prattle used to rarely make it out of c.s.a.advocacy in the old days.
Just don't tell "scanner" (my 486 - serves as a host for my scanner and X10 firecracker)that. Or at least two of the webservers here at Clemson - they're both P75s.
I'll have to come out and agree with the sentiment that some others are posting here: Amiga *announcing* this and that just isn't news anymore. All that's come out of anything officially connected with the Amiga for *years* has been vapor. Vapor!
I've owned various Amigas since 1987, though the A3000 and A500 I still own are boxed and in the attic at the moment. I quit the roller coaster in 1996 and started using Linux and Windows to get my work done. Now I just use Linux at home. I do still like to read about Amiga news occasionally, though. But who really cares which kernel AmigaVaporOS will be based on?
Though hearing an AmigaOS user say that *Linux* is unstable really does crack me up
-- Rick
There was a time when the entire kernel source in .tar.gz form fit on one floppy and Linux didn't network. Then there was a time when it didn't network well. Then it networked well, but slowly. Then it was the fastest monoprocessor TCP/IP implementation. Then it networked well on multiprocessors, but slowly...
Get the point?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't think that free software precludes a tighly focused group of engineers, though. There is lots of evidence for the contrary, especially where the Linux kernel team is concerned.
I agree that X is moribund, but of course there are free software efforts like Berlin to replace it on Linux. I don't care much that the Amiga won't run X, as long as you can port GDK and CORBA you can run the GNOME tools.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I found the criticism of Linux' TCP/IP rather laughable, because I remember not very long ago one of the primary criticisms of Linux was that it didn't have TCP/IP. Whatever you don't like about Linux' TCP/IP implementation will be fixed soon enough. Meanwhile, it runs fast enough to saturate my 768/768 DSL while the Pentium 120 CPU is loafing along. I can wait a year for it to be fast enough to saturate a DS3. The criticism regarding other OS having work-arounds to interoperate with Linux applies to Linux 1.x (or other old versions), and of course those problems are long gone (along with the FIN_WAIT problem he mentioned). The criticism about lack of IPV6, etc., is bogus, he's not been keeping up with Linux' development.
Someday, Linux development will taper off and we'll switch to another system - maybe even a message-passing system like QNX. But the system we switch to will be free software, because of its fast evolution, not proprietary like QNX.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Read your /usr/src/linux/COPYING.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
They could make it a module, and Linus made specific exemption for binary-only modules.
First of all you're quite ignorant as to how different systems work. No kernel that I know of has a GUI in it. That includes NT's. NT has a component of the kernel called GDI which provides very limited graphics in the kernel. That makes things a lot faster, and really isn't the reason for instability. The GGI project in the linux world has similar goals, and IMHO, they are on the right track. Now the problem with NT is the windowing system. I don't have my roomate's copy of "Inside Windows NT" with me to quote the dlls and exes, but basically they way that it works is that the system boots, the GUI starts. However, if the GUI dies, the startup processes tell the kernel to die, because the assumption is that you're pretty fucked without that GUI. It would be like init under linux monitoring X after X starts and shutting down the machine if it finds X isn't running. This is a very poor design, but it has nothing to do with the GDI layer in the NT kernel.
This is true, but I don't see the problem. Let's take my system for example. I have 4 PCI cards in the system. The network card's driver is in the kernel. The SCSI card's driver is in the kernel. The Sound Card's driver is in the kernel. The Graphics Card's drive is in user space. Why? Beats the hell out of me. Sure the graphics card driver could take down the kernel, but so could any of the other ones.
a good debunking of the whole thing. Thanks.
support gun control: take guns from cops
So, I'm assuming that the components that make up the Amiga Operating Environment won't be GNU, but will they be open-source in some way? Or are these guys just interested in what Linux can do for them, and won't be contributing any back to the community?
Anyone have any news on this?
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
That's okay, because Slashdot moderators, just like Linux users, wouldn't know their asses from holes in ground.
I'm not so sure. The GPL specifically forbids opening up only _part_ of your source code -- that's the viral nature part. If you can prove that an OS is not "one big thing" then I guess you can justify doing that, and admittedly an Operating System is a pretty vague concept, but the kernel is _part_ of an OS, not separate from it, so if you use a GPL'd kernel in your OS the OS is required to be free software b/c of the GPL's viral nature.
I'm going to read that !@#$% license again...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Oracle, Informix, Sybase, DB2, have APPLICATIONS that run on top of Linux. Under the GPL, the viral quality of the GPL is exempted if an application is making a call to an operating system.
I see a distinction between that and the rest of the Amiga OS. What they claim to be doing is using the Linux kernel as a foundation for the rest of the operating system -- since it's the Amiga OS, presumably a graphical operating system -- which is not the same as an application.
Different parts of a Linux distribution can be placed under different licenses because Linux is not one operating system per se. You have a kernel, a few different shells (bash, etc.) a windowing environment (X) all of which are separate and distinct entities that cooperate and work together. I don't see this distinction where the new Amiga OS is concerned. I can't see how anyone would be able to classify "every part of the OS except the kernel" as a distinct application that runs on top of the Linux kernel.
If that is really the argument made, I think it would seriously weaken the legitimacy of the GPL. But that's just my opinion, and, as always...
... never discount the possibility that I am WRONG.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Proprietary software can exist on Linux b/c there is an exemption in the GPL which allows proprietary code to make necessary calls (or whatever the terminology is) on a computer -- rough translation: a proprietary app can run on top of a GPL'd operating system. If the proprietary app tried to modify the GPL'd OS in any way, well, then there might be a problem.
The reverse is also true: a GPL'd app can run on top of a proprietary OS.
The problem I'm having is that I don't see the same parallel between "kernel" and "the rest of the OS" that I see with "app" and "OS in general." I just don't see it. I freely grant that it could be b/c I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that the relationship between an OS kernel and the rest of the operating system proper must by necessity be a lot more intertwined than an application and an operating system.
But, as always, never discount the possibility that I am WRONG.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Well, I guess I can't argue with that. :-)
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I'm not a recognized expert on the GNU General Public License, but methinks I see a problem here:
The GPL, which the Linux Kernel is distributed under, is viral. Any code that makes use of the Linux kernel must, therefore, be distributed under the GPL or a license that is compatible with the GPL.
Also, if the GPL'd software makes calls to other software or libraries, those software or libraries must also be distributed under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license. The only exceptions to this are, basically, operating systems.
So how will this new Amiga OS be licensed? If they really are going to be using the Linux kernel, then it _must_ be distributed under a Free Software license. I can't see any way around it. I find it difficult to believe that Gateway would be willing to do this, my opinion is that they either a) haven't thought this through, or b) think they've found a way around it.
I think everyone should watch this very closely, and this question ("what kind of license?") should be asked, very pointedly, over and over again, until they answer.
This could be a very important precident for free software - if Amiga thinks they can use kernel technology licensed under the GPL without in turn freeing up their source code, they need to either a) be convinced otherwise or b) be taken to court. If option b), then we'll see exactly how legally binding the terms of the GPL are.
Then again, never discount the possiblity that I am WRONG.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I've got to agree with this. The last thing we need to do is bloat the kernel with unnessary code. There will be no way to bail if the GUI crashes and when it does it will most likly take the whole machine with it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I've re-read this comment several times, and still have no idea what it means. Try using correctly formed sentences, with the first word capitalized. Include one idea per sentence, and spell all of the words correctly. Use correct punctuation. Then all will understand what you are trying to get across.
P.S. Typos are fine (we all make those!)
Amiga announced recently it is dropping one of the best modern OS's QNX to join the crush of Linux supporters. Although Amiga is right that this market is going to be huge, but it will compete directly with other Linux vendors like IBM, Dell, Compaq etc., etc. with the real risk to loose its unique face. The president Collas said: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not to judge the Linux decision until you have a chance to read the technology brief". Ok, no award for them. And welcome on board, sure!
Andrew
Can someone *knowledgeable* (other than the author) please give their take on the article linked to above. If all the implications are true, its no wonder Linux lost the Mindcraft benchmark tests.
Simon
As long as you don't replace ALL employees at the same time, something remains. New people assimilate the values and the spirit of the team and pass it on.
Let's assume that the last engineer who actually worked for Commodore left 5 years ago - I'm still sure that if you step into their development facility and speak with the people for a while you will feel something about the atmosphere which is not Mac, not Linux/Unix and definitely not Microsoft. And it's this kind of thing that makes great software.
Even if you ignore the actual code base, there's definitely something left.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The new soap opera starring an OS which has been down on its luck that decides that if it just gets a makeover, and dumps its fiance for the hot, young penguin chick that everyone wants to be seen with, things will turn out ok.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Isn't the whole argument here that graphics in kernel space means drivers in kernel space, and that means a bad driver can bring down the whole OS?
And in that case, whether Linux or NT, it seems like this could be a mistake. The main difference, of course, is that with open source Linux driver bugs are bound to be more efficiently fixed.
D
----
It was very informative - I couldn't have said it better.
Its expected that the author of any software will always defend and promote his/her creation. Holger Kruse is an extreem example of this as he has conveniently disregarded the changes in the Linux networking code from the 1.x days to the 2.2.x kernel in order to promote his implementation. The fact that he is not aware of the work being done on IPv6/Linux shows that he really has no knowledge of the Linux TCP/IP stack and his arguments are thus nullified.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
That's not necessarily bad. But what all this amounts to is that a division of Gateway is thinking about building a multimedia computer that uses some of the Linux kernel. The fact that it's called "Amiga" seems pretty incidental to me.
When did all the berzerkers and amongers come from and why are they all over /. RANTING about UNPROVEN, BIASED, STUPED FUD!! If you're here on /. for some damn crusade, then go fsck yourself. This is a FORUM for THOUGHT, comparison, and intrigue.
/. is alot of things for alot of people. What is it for YOU?
I am a BSD and Linux user.. they WORK, and I also own a few old amigas which are OBSOLETE. (Cause there arn't any new ones to speak of). I have a 600MHz Alpha that rocks the universe.
Amiga used to be a bunch of intelligent, smart, and witty people. Where are you now? I used to converse with people of copper chip timings and such. People used to share 3D rendering code, and hal optimizations with me. Now a bunch of crazy people are posting stupid, un-intellegent, pro-ami , bad linux. What gives?
And what's with some of you people arguing over the stack?? Excuse me, but your "personal feelings" don't make stacks. Hard work, protocol understanding, awesome timings, and know-how DO. How many people here have ACTUALLY looked deeper than make config?? I am by no means a kernel developer, but I am an app developer. And I look into the kernel ALL the time, because I feel it's important to know what impact my code really has! (For instance ioctl's are very specific, and arn't always in the man)
CCCCHHHHHIIIILLLL OOOUUUUTTTT and smell the code, ladies and gentleman.
Pana
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
There's no way to determine if Amiga will run Linux apps out of the box until then. However, I think using the Linux kernel makes for easy porting of apps between Linux and whatever-the-hell-the-Amiga-becomes. Hell... the current Amiga line has emulation libraries (ixemul) which allow for X-apps to be ported to WorkBench (there are a pile of well known Ghostscript-using PDF utilities which do this quite well).
Unfortunately, as with the rest of Amiga development, the phrase "wait and see" rears it's ugly head.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
I know better than that.
As for Amiga users not really understanding what a kernel is or what it does, this is the case for a number of users who have never felt inclined to dig into the guts of their machine. The Amiga equivalent of the typical Windows user. Scary, but they're out there. But in my own experience, the vast majority of Amiga users do in fact understand what the hell is going on, and many of them run/use numerous machines on all sorts of platforms... and do so very well. Oddly enough, these are the same users who have vowed to avoid c.s.a.* like the plague because of the open invitation to stupidly mouthing off that Usenet has become.
Comments by users about Linux bloat (I laughed out loud when I read that), and lethal instability, should be attributed to the individuals making them, and in a perfect world -- completely ignored as undereducated prattle.
I'm off to go test the other bulbs in the box now...
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
no you dont want to edit video play games or surf
doh
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
err no mate
"may also imply development of the Linux TCP/IP code, which is not well regarded as it stands"
emm
where did these people come from I thought that the linux stack came from BSD and thats as fault tolerant as it get's
what are these people on!!
unless im wrong ???
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
well part of what he says is true but some of it I not so sure of
but it is VERY scarey
alan cox where are you ????
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
yes thats what My isp uses and look Im useing windoze !
just because you dont like it does it mean that you wont use it work on it ?
if so you are loseing out of experances that the rest of use are haveing I use win2000 (dev work) and NT as well as HP-UX solaris and IRIX got a problem talk to IT surport
(-;
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
you should do something about your security
you are NOT anon
email me if you want advice
oh well
johnjones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
yes under my post why did you post it it only sucks up bandwidth
do something rob
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
re read it what does it say at the bottom.
,problem solveing and sports)
I am delectic sorry !
if you don't know what it means ask someone who deals with teaching english.
I can speak chinese fine.
basically it is a disability that means I have trouble spelling and formulating sentances (although like other deletics I am good at maths
sorry about that
john jones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
yes what you said was right
I like the BSD stuff becuase it is creaky old code that many people have worked on and siad thats wrong I can do better and done it NT suffers from the same DOS attacks that BSD did *years* ago
open systems share developments bsd is open to a degree and has reckoned by the industry @ large THE stack to die for in terms of security and speed I know because I read the stuff that comes from HP and digital two firms that "engineer" products
john jones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
You are mistaken. Miami was never free. It was always shareware. You "dumping" charge is completely unfounded.
Although you are correct that Kruse takes free code and turning it into shareware, that is an oversimplified way of putting it. He has taken free code and used it part of his product; he didn't simply sell repackaged stuff. Keep in mind that Miami also includes a very convenient GUI, a built-in PPP interface (written from scratch; not ported), and a few other odds and ends. Considering the amount of work that Mr. Kruse put into delivering a final polished product, I think the shareware fee is pretty reasonable.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The indications are that they are just taking the kernel and not the higher level stuff. When Collas started doing damage control, he explicitly did mention being able to leverage the Linux community for drivers, but noticably absent were any comments about Linux applications.
This would be consistent with the plans of an "Operating Environment" which (I'm totally talking out of my ass here) s an alternative to other GUI environments like KDE, or even other window managers, or even X itself.
OTOH, if they do it right, users should be able to install the typical Linux stuff -- it just wouldn't be "out of the box".
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I agree with the other replies. Put this thing back up; it's a valid point! We ride other companies (cough cough MICROSOFT cough) for vaporware, why do we hear about a [nearly] dead OS so often, when there's nothing there yet?
"Also, I certainly believe and hope that the Amiga people continue to build on the old Amiga foundation - strong technology. I see them as being commercial, but also as a market where people really care about doing the right thing technologically."
Gateway (the spotted cow people) bought Amiga a while back, and so in my mind, Amiga = Gateway - they are owned and managed by the same billionaire bean-counters. I worked for three years in Gateway's tech support (the filter through which passes all blunders made by the rest of the company) and I can assure you that the only thing they care about is the $. Gateway's stated reasons for buying Amiga were to increase their intellectual property portfolio (ie they wanted Amiga's patents). There were indications that Gateway was unaware of a the active Amiga community until after the purchase. I can remember checking daily to see if there were any new developments with Amiga for a couple of months after the acquisition and being disappointed when I saw nothing.
Keep in mind also that Gateway is one of those that won't offer Linux on their systems*, won't offer you a system without Windows, and won't honor the EULA. Do you think they will do nice things with Linux?
*OK, to be totally accurate, while they don't OFFER a Linux system, you CAN buy a system from Gateway with Linux on it. Be prepared to add at least $700 to the list price for the privilege of buying a custom-integrated solution.
Did any one notice the info on Transmeta's patent? Perhaps this has been discussed before, but its the first I've seen it....
Could a Linux/Transmeta alliance be just the answer to bring Wintel to its knees? The stuff about on-the-fly VLIW translation is COOL. I haven't seen anything like this coming out of the Intel camp...
My journal has hot
The only way Amiga could violate the license is if they decided to integrate all their GUI code and drivers into one monolithic kernel and not release it. A kernel is a kernel. An app is an app. A shell is a shell. They are each different. Just because you think something seems OSish, does not make it part of the kernel code. Simple as that. Maybe you were confused because you are not a programmer. Try programming. It's fun!
Corndog Software
"In it for the ca$h"
Corndog
This is also the arrogant fsckwit who put backdoors and or timebombs in his TCP/IP stack (of which I own a scad of legit copies). When challenged on the wisdom of this, he replied that he'd take "any and all means necessary" to protect his software. Of course, when I objected to this on moral and ethical grounds, I got derided as a "Liberal", a "Hippy" and a "Pirate". This was of course, the private hissing and spitting of the csa misc flamebait, but still...
I suspect that he's just blowing up the extent of the problems in order to persuade everyone to buy his NG stack (assuming the NG ever comes out). His business is writing TCP/IP stacks. Simple as that, he's FUDding, just like old Billy Gates.
Please remember that most people that still advocate the Amiga aren't the brightest bulbs in the box. A lot of them are a bit bitter because they can't get any *nix working (despite there being great debian and redhat m68k ports which run on the Ami). A lot of them don't really understand what a kernal IS and what it does, and thus nothing they say should be taken without a hefty pinch of salt.
Today on comp.sys.amiga.misc, we've had regulars complaining that linux was so ludicrously bloated that it couldn't run on a p100, someone else claiming that linux was lethally unstable because it uses a monolithic kernel, and lots of little minitrolls screaming about the TCP/IP code, simply because they don't see that H.Kruse[1] is FUDding them into a nice pliable future market.
There's nothing more insecure than an Amiga advocate.
Of course, there are clever, interesting people left, like Jeff Grimmet, Jason Compton and Joe Cosby (all of whom speak in sentences, and can plug the thing in), but on the whole, it's a crazy boneyard flamefest.
Like Mouldy (or is that Skuller?), they want to believe so bad it hurts.
[1] Who produces a very closed src commercial stack, based on BSD code.. which has some interesting litte surrpises, to delete files, send private information to a remote site and crash your machine, under certain circumstances. The face that Holger claims they will be only used for "known pirate" keyfiles mollifies me not one bit. The whole mechanism smacks of less than lofty ethics.
Lightwave has been dead on the Amiga for years.
:).
There are old broken versions of 5 with loads of missing features, but they are barely useable.
The big push has been for Windows LW and to an extent (in latter days) Mac LW.
If you want LW, boot back into Windows, and make that 3d card sing for its supper (the 3d previews in the current version are NICE with a fasrt card
Shame they seem to raise the price by a random amount with every release. It's priced itself into the 3dsMAX market, and really isn't anywhere as good.
PII has 3 integer units and multithreaded programs allow them to be use more effiently.
this is *completly* wrong. The integer units can only exucute code thats right next to eachother, not way off somewhere else in ram. so while having multiple integer units speeds up linear code, it can't run integer code in 3 threads.
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Enuff to degrade AmigaOS to a toy. You know it existed and worked very well for (almost) a decade before Linux.
Furthermore, I don't think Linux has the kind of flexibility AmigaOS has.
--exa--
I think that's all right, it's okay to go with a known distribution, customize it, and distribute it. I think it would be very nice, for instance, to go with Debian. I see little problems with X and libs also since shared libraries get loaded only when needed. ;)
Since Amiga will be featuring a lot of multimedia, I suppose that they'll be able to support an X11R6 API. I don't know if they will base their work on XFree86, but they don't have to. Also, we don't know if they'll be using Mesa. I think it would be nice if Amiga contributed to PI's efforts.
On the other hand, it isn't stupid to assume that new Amiga software will be friendly with the conventions and leading applications on Linux. Supporting a technically sound distribution is one way to do this.
It might well be a software option to install Linux applications (and of course all the stuff that they depend on). I'd envision an Amiga system that's dependent on the Linux kernel, the common GNU tools but not on XFree86 or GNOME.
[Hmm, I gotta post this as a kind proposal for the kind of distribution Amiga should have]
--exa--
Transmeta, or another company which can offer technologies as exciting as rumored would make good partners with Amiga. However, using the Linux kernel gives rise to the practical issue of running Linux applications on the new Amiga hardware/software.
In my opinion, the Amiga "layer" would be dependent on a common set of GNU programs (tools) together with the already mentioned Linux kernel. At this stage, I would like to remind that Linus is very interested in "scaling down", and Collas promises a "clean kernel configuration". I would at least expect a nice bash shell that alignes with the expectations of a ordinary Linux user.
Now, in order to ensure compatibility with myriad of Linux applications you have to set some standards. I think that Debian's way of packaging, testing, porting, and permitting customized distributions is very suitable for the Amiga. In this manner, the Amiga can make a distribution that supplies a lot of Linux programs as an option. I believe that the option would be attractive if the Amiga develops X11 compatibility and allows other stuff (so you can have your usual internet stuff,etc. if you want) to be installed properly on the desktop computer [tagged with the staggering "multimedia convergence" definition]. Of course, other targeted products should also maintain the same Amiga software "layer". Then we'd have very *NIX capable multimedia computers and very fancy info appliances based on the same technology. That would make a great bet.
Please comment on how appropriate Debian is for the Amiga.
PS: Note that the strengths/weaknesses of Debian at both technology and policy are considerable.
--exa--
Yes it does hurt. I like my OS and want it to be the best. However we are going to do something that the Windows people can't do when they find a problem in their OS....we are going to fix it.
END
I'd interpret that as meaning adding a GUI to the OE, rather than to the kernel itself. If my memory serves me correctly, the traditional Amiga GUI was in ROM but not in the kernel.
It seems to have been posted 10th of July 1999. Look at the bottom of the page.
Once you've read the page linked above you need to read this as well.
Vmware lets you run windows applications on the windows os from within a virtual environment running linux. You still need a liscensed copy of windows, and when windows crashes, you still suffer.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I guess it does take an anonymous coward to rip into the asker of an apparently sincere and legitimate question with "You are clearly a moron."
Wow.
I guess it's an interesting form of entertainment (random vitriol), and that I did ask for it by clicking on the 'X answers beneath your current threshold,' but c'mon! Why the incivility?! My theory that Western Civ. is sinking like bricks in oil wants to be proved wrong, not backed at every turn.
Oh, right, anonymity and cowardice.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
"Amiga will presumably be adding a lot to the Linux kernel - certainly a GUI system..."
They have got to be kidding. Adding a GUI subsystem to the Linux Kernel? Unless there is a way to bail out of the GUI if it bombs, this can be nothing but bad. WindowsNT for example...
As I remember, most Linux drivers are not only in kernel space but compiled into the kernel. At least other systems load them outside kernel space (QNX)Besides, isn't the kernel space graphics in NT the reason it kicks Linux's ass in 3D? A proparly implemented driver in kernel space is just as stable and a lot faster than a user space driver.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Your comment that "BSD TCP/IP stack has a backing of comercial developers with easy access to quickly evolving standards and 24/7 dedication" is interesting but irrelevant. The original comment, that Linux's TCP/IP stack ought to have been based on BSD's would mean that 5 or 6 years ago it would have been essentially the same and now it would still be different. Where does that get us? Nowhere. What you're essentially saying is that Linux's open development is not as efficient as Berkley's.
... most companies take at least several months to implement them at any rate (unofficial specs) and therefore the Linux community has equal access to this information.
... besides your glaring spelling mistakes in the original, the Linux community is quite well respected for quickly adding public standards to the kernel code.
Interestingly enough, there aren't any closed TCP/IP standards
You and I can go and read any TCP/IP information that BSD or anyone else can. I may not be able to read their 'private' discusions, but I'm not terribly worried about that.
Maybe if you didn't make such short, blunt, unthought statements, no one would spend time responding in the same way.
... "have hard time to follow standards and ammendments"
If you want proof of easy access to TCP/IP information, refer to PCWebopedia's link list for TCP/IP.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
what mystifies me is that you feel important enough to dismiss this possible revolution as 'unimportant'. seriously, if amiga pulls this off,
linux would benefit by being legitimized, and, if the amiga is multimedia-centric, more software
( open and closed source ) would be made
availiable to it.
"some people have too much freedom" - george dubya bush, facist, err republican presidential hopeful and domain name squ
Holger Kruse on Linux TCP/IP Holger Kruse seems to know what he is talking about. I've seen several posts from him on comp.sys.amiga.sys backing up his statements, with few people arguing with him.
That is merely gossip, i've seen no factual evidence that supports that. Here is something to consider: 1) Hitherto Amiga has developed their GUI using the neutrino microkernel, it is reasonable to conclude that all their work on their GUI has been outside the kernel. 2) If Amiga included the GUI in the kernel, I believe they would have to release the source code to it, correct me if i am wrong. I do not believe they would ever release the source for their GUI, it would be a horrible business move.
rotfl
:) You got a 2 hour head start, go!
Mr. Anony,
You should try "Linux Sucks" next time. That way you can bill 2 more hours to a Microsoft customer for whatever Exchange Server version you just learn how to support. Thank you for reciting everything MS says on their website, cds, and MCSE books. We're truely enlightened.
But I wish you could save me from having a major itch to flame you to a Peiking duck crisp.
My feeling (as oppose to "real world experience" and "scientific facts" listed by Anonymous Coward) is that it's all moot anyway.
1. In the future, little robotic birds that feed on wind power and solar energy and automatic power stations every 2 square mile will eliminate a good chunk of what we now know as the all profitable transportation industry. The prototyping of nanotechnologies (or whatever prior art is invented in the researching frustration of finding out that nanotech is bull) will make manufacturing less manual. By then, all hell would break lose. Not only will low tech jobs (UPS drivers) be gone gone gone. High tech jobs would already be saturated (ask a EE/ITer) and hard for flame-bait writing anony's to penetrate (did I say penetrate, excuse me). Thus, by then we would nuke everyone in the fight for bottled water and it won't make much point whether Linux sucks or the presence of online Amiga hold-outs are actually just a buncha really smart and funny perl scripts.
2. Learn perl, before idiots like Anonymous learns it and cause havoc writing obscene low-performance scripts on a NT box and blame it on us. You'll have a good chance, cus he'll be here flaming me
3. In a world where MATRIX 3 will exist. Year 2000 is really 2000 BC. A GIANT STEP BACKWARDS FOR MANKIND.
4. La la la
You are right. What a twit I was. Another road
kill in the typographical distaster zone. If only the the notice that this was a repost was more prominent... Like I said, road-kill. Anyway, the guy who wrote it (not the reposter) is a idiot.
Lots of apologies and
s/Anonymous Coward/Original Writer/g
> X86 is cool
Since when?