Re:Not only fast reboot - NO shutdown
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AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 1
As an FYI: The Amiga 4000 did do this on ctrl-amiga-amiga. It'd wait about one and a half seconds before rebooting and in that time it'd cleanly finish everything it could (such as aborting large write operations and so on). I've never actually tested on my OS4 system, but I'd imagine the soft reboot (ctrl-amiga-amiga (or ctrl-win-win on a "standard" keyboard)) would do it whereas the hard reboot (ctrl-alt-alt) would not.
Amigas in the 21st century are defined by the fact that they run AmigaOS.
I'm sorry, but that just seems lame. Why? If you use Linux, do you define the box by the OS or the hardware? Do you say, "my P4 2GHz" or "my Linux box"? It's exactly the same sort of thing. I have a couple of Linux systems around here - one's on PPC hardware and one's on intel. They're both just "Linux boxes" to me.
Eventually I learned that it is the old coins that people want to collect because they are rare interesting reminders of the past. If you're interested in being a "classic collector", then absolutely. But that's a whole different ballgame. I'd expect a classic car enthusiast to prefer to the old cars, and I'd expect a coin collector to collect the old ones (collecting current ones doesn't make much sense, since they aren't current for long!). And in the same vein, I'd expect a classic computer enthusiast to prefer an Amiga 500 to an AmigaOne. But AmigaOS4 isn't for "classic enthusiasts" - it's for people who want a modern OS and like the AmigaOS way of doing things. Just as a 2006 model car is nicer to drive than one from the 1950s, AmigaOS4 is a nicer OS than any of the classic versions.
Yes, the "dongle chip" as it's affectionately known is probably the most horrible thing Amiga Users have ever had forced upon them... we can only hope that once the whole situation with Amiga Inc resolves itself, Hyperion will have free access to do whatever they want with AmigaOS4 and then we'll likely see it opened for many other platforms, including the Pegasos hardware (which I think is great hardware, but I find MorphOS a bit uncomfortable to use compared to AmigaOS4). Like many others, I also dream of the day AmigaOS4 gets ported to x86 (I'd love to run it side by side with MacOS on this intel iMac I've got here!)
Without proper memory management, I wouldn't expect it to be particularly reliable, but whatever. You're obviously far too used to living in a land of badly coded apps then. There's no reason for well coded apps that expect to be running in an environment with only limited (or no) memory protection to cause any problems. I can happily run my OS4 box for over a week of fairly regular usage without a single crash because the apps I'm running EXPECT to run in that kind of environment and so are friendly enough to not trash each others memory.
There's a good chance that many embedded operating systems you use every day have no memory protection, but when was the last time your cellphone crashed? (if the answer is "recently", I feel sorry for you, but MOST cellphones don't crash on a regular basis). If memory protection was such a "MUST HAVE", then it would've been unthinkable for a multitasking OS to ever be written without it, but there are plenty of examples of ones that do. I'm not saying it's worthless of course - I'd love to have a full and advanced memory protection system in AmigaOS, but my main point is that it still works reliably without it.
By "same accessories" I really kind of meant the car accessories (radio, seats etc), not the computer hardware (graphics cards etc). It was supposed to be a reference to running the same software - sorry for the bad analogy.
As for the hardware, yes, the AmigaOne has little to nothing in common with classic Amigas, but Amiga really isn't about the hardware - trying to build a new hardware platform would be suicide (can any small independent motherboard manufacturer dream of competing with ATI/NVidia on the graphics front? Or Creative on the sound front? Not really!). Amigas in the 21st century are defined by the fact that they run AmigaOS.
And the auto show and veering a little off topic... I actually freely admit to having no idea what a Studebaker looks like - I'm not from the US! If we're talking classic cars I do know though, give me the super modern version any day - I was pretty excited to see the rerelease of the Holden Monaro in 2001 and onwards (sold in the US as a Pontiac GTO I believe) - enough of the stylings of the old one to make it instantly recognisable while still being a gorgeous modern vehicle.
Indeed, that *is* as real an Amiga as you'll get. That is my point. Isn't the AmigaOne more or less just a common PPC based motherboard? Yep - essentially that's right.
Wasn't the major draw of the original Amiga the hardware... including the m68k CPU? Not to me and many others. To the gamers of the day, perhaps that was the case... but old school Amiga gamers probably have very little reason to care what goes on with AmigaOS since many of them never used it anyway (instead just booting straight to games from their floppy disks).
WIthout any of that you've just got a PC running an archaic OS that doesn't even have proper memory management. I'd disagree about archaic. AmigaOS4 is a modern OS. True, it doesn't have things that many people have come to expect from a modern OS such as being multiuser or having an advanced memory management system, but for a HOME DESKTOP OS, you'd be surprised how well you can get by perfectly happily without these things. What's more important by far is whether I can do whatever it is I need to do and that it doesn't quickly and reliably. Which, other than a minor shortage of software, I can (my biggest current concern with using the platform is a lack of software, however as a hobbyist/professional coder I'm doing my part to work on that, as are many others).
Don't expect AmigaOS to ever be a server, nor expect it to be too graceful with shockingly coded apps... but you CAN expect it to run quickly, reliably and be easy, intuitive and fun to use.
Ahh. Forgot about Term! A BIG step up from jr-comm! Certainly is!
Liked the fact that there were different optimized versions depending on which processor you had That's very common with Amiga applications. Many installers will ask what CPU you have (good ones will detect it) and then give you the appropriate binary based on that. It probably isn't THAT necessary really, but it was just always part of the Amiga way of doing things.
As a note: The m68k emulator in OS4 for PPC machines treats itself as a 68020 with FPU - just MUCH faster.
Sorry - I'm not too keen on opening a VNC server to the outside world! If you're interested in taking a look though, most places do have local Amiga User Groups - just put a quick post up on somewhere like AmigaWorld.net and I'm sure you'll find somewhere nearby you can go play with it in person.
As for why you'd want it - well, honestly, maybe you wouldn't. It all depends what you need out of a computer - if AmigaOS and the apps that it has can provide it, then all the things TFA mentioned about speed, responsiveness and not being bugged to death by other apps can be a pretty big draw. If what you need isn't available on AmigaOS, then just like any OS, you probably don't really want it.
Not only fast reboot - NO shutdown
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 2, Informative
I find it interesting TFA never mentioned my personal "quirky little favourite" of AmigaOS. Not only are the reboots amazingly fast, but you don't need to shutdown. If I want to turn it off, I press the power button. If I want to reboot, I give it the three finger salute (that's either "Ctrl Amiga Amiga" or "Ctrl Alt Alt" (depending on if you want a soft or hard reboot) for anyone paying attention) or hit the reboot button on the front of the computer. There's no "shutdown" required.
I've said it before (and will therefore probably get my first ever "redundant" mod) but if he's wanting OS4, then AROS is *NOT* the answer. Unless you consider Win95 the answer to someone looking for Windows Vista!
glosses over the fact that all the applications are fifteen years behind the time, and the author fails I don't think that's completely fair... better to say "the vast majority of the applications..." - there are a few modern apps, and getting more each day. After all, tell me what DVD playing software you used 15 years ago? And what SMB client? And what MP3 player? etc etc.
There's a lot of discussion of AROS in this thread, but I think people need to remember that it is just a re-engineering as you say. And it strives for "AmigaOS 3.1" as the target, which is getting VERY old now. When people think of AmigaOS, they often think of OS3.1 or earlier, since that's what most of them have seen. That's where all the "Amiga is dead, get over it" comments come from. As an AmigaOS4 user (and AmigaOS3.9 before I got my AmigaOne), I couldn't imagine going back to something so primitive. Some wonderful features in there, but really, that OS truly *is* dead - AmigaOS4 is *many* years ahead ("Sys:Prefs/Internet" is a pretty good dead giveaway right from the start!)
If it were to ever happen, the open sourcing of OS4 would effectively kill AROS (in its current form) in seconds (it'd be reborn of course by patching the few goodies they do have on top of OS4).
As for your other comments - yes, how do people LIVE without ARexx?!
Re:Why Amiga? Why not Zeta?
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AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 1
AROS - because it's too much like AmigaOS 3.1... yuk! AND you've got less applications available than classic AmigaOS. Honestly, AROS is great as an "Amiga Research OS", but I wouldn't dare consider it for any real usage.
Syllable - can't comment, since I haven't seen anything other than screenshots... but I'd be at least slightly worried about application support (probably significantly less than AmigaOS)
For anyone reading the above and saying "how many apps can there really still be for AmigaOS?", take a look at Aminet and OS4Depot.
I know you were just trying to be funny, but...
* Synthesised Boot-Block Error and Guru Mediation Codes! I haven't seen OS4 guru yet, so I don't know if it really does. Instead we have this lovely little thing called "Grim Reaper" that just lets us kill the process when it dies painfully. In instances where I have seen a harder crash (only with the pre-release (beta) versions), it's just frozen completely.
* That Robo-Speech program we all used to type dirty words! The original version of "Say" from m68k AmigaOS systems runs fine on OS4:)
* A button that simulates "Blowing on the floppy to make sure it loads this time"! My AmigaOne doesn't have a floppy drive - sorry!
Re:emulator or vmware?
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 2, Informative
AROS would likely be "some" fun for him, but if he's just been looking at OS4 screenshots, AROS with it's OS3.1 looks would be a bit of a nasty shock stepping back in time.
To answer the emulation question the grandparent asked, unfortunately no - you'd need a PPC emulator that bypasses the "security" (sort of a hardware dongle chip on the motherboard of the AmigaOne - a move forced by Amiga Inc on the hardware and software developers (Amiga Inc is neither) and much hated by a large part of the Amiga community), can run the modified UBoot firmware (or a reasonable enough facsimile of it) and then you MIGHT just be able to get OS4 running.
Alternatively, wait a little bit until things settle down in the legal arena surrounding Amiga Inc and I think there's a good chance that Hyperion (the people who wrote AmigaOS4) will end up with full rights to it... then I expect to see some REAL movement.
On my system - whenever I try and run my own code:/
But seriously, not very often on final release. Some of the betas were a bit buggy and crashed fairly regularly doing routine things, but final release has been rock solid for me. Even my own code (joked about above) doesn't really lock up the system, just brings up the "Grim Reaper" (crash manager program) where I can kill the process, fix the code and try again. My current uptime is just over one week, with usage of between 2 and 3 hours every night after work and a good 6 hours each day of the weekend.
Re:The Amiga was a quantum leap for computers
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AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 2, Insightful
including.info files for executables (a local registry for each program) Actually, the ".info" files are pretty much just an icon and optionally some string variables for starting the program. For "registry-like" things, Amiga has always just used config files. Especially keep in mind that any file can have a ".info" (eg I could have "MyPicture.png.info" and the ".info" contains the path to my image editor instead of allowing the OS to use my image viewer to open it)
provide sound and graphics of 5000$ worth at the price of 500$. Yes, that'd certainly sell... but like you say, isn't really a possibility.
provide a computer with a fixed hardware, like a console, but with an O/S that the users can write applications and games that hit the hardware directly I agree with you on this as well - might sell in small quantities, but isn't really viable most likely.
do something really wild like a computer with 3d stereoscopic graphics projected either in mid air or in a special display And that'd be awesome, but again is a bit of stretch...
Overall, I do not think Amiga has a place in today's computing environment...especially when the O/S works on special hardware platforms. I think what you're missing is that no-one is really trying to revive the Amiga hardware platform. That's pretty much dead and buried, for the reasons you and many others have already outlined. The AmigaOS is what still stands a chance - perhaps only a slim one, and it quite likely (almost certainly) will never have any significant marketshare, but as long as it sells well enough to keep the developers coding it, that's all that really matters to those of us that love using it.
There were many "killer apps" for Amiga depending on who you are. I've been an Amiga user for 20 years now, and I still haven't EVER tried my hand at video editing on ANY platform. Other people talk about games and demos - feel free to look up my earlier posts about that...
MANY years ago on my Amiga 600 I remember the first local BBS to implement RIP... and those of us with Amigas all had use of it straight away, while the local DOS/Win31 users all suffered a long wait...
The terminal emulator we all used was "Term" - perfect RIP support. The source code and binaries for Term 4.7 are both on Aminet if you're interested.
It's more like a brand new Studebaker was built and a bunch of whiners went around saying "but it's not a REAL Studebaker", despite it having the same look and feel, being able to use all the same accessories, feeling the same to drive (only much smoother and more powerful) and so on, while having some new body streamlining and a modern efficient engine under the hood.
And what exactly is "classless" about the AmigaOne with AmigaOS4? It's as real an Amiga as you'll get.
True, it doesn't have an OCS, ECS or AGA graphics chipset... true, it doesn't use Paula for sound... but neither do most Classic Amigas these days if people are still serious about USING them - the chips are in there, but they've been bypassed LONG ago by expansion cards (including PCI buses added A4000T systems and then PCI graphics and sound cards thrown in). My AmigaOne is just as much an Amiga as those are, and a LOT classier.
Re:Open Open Open? AROS!
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 1
AROS is great, and I've played with it quite a bit. But it's not a shade on OS4. AROS is a reimplementation of AmigaOS3.1 with some really nice features added. OS4 is a massive leap ahead of OS3.1. I sincerely hope the AROS guys look at OS4 and do some work in that area.
(of course, I even more sincerely hope to see OS4 on a platform people can readily get... I love using my AmigaOne and I hate it when I show it off to people only to have to follow up with "but there's no way you can currently get it yourself")
Re:Short memory
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AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been an Amiga user since around 1987... Went from A500, to A600 to A1200 to A4000 to AmigaOne. In that time, the longest I've been without an Amiga is 2 years (between my A4000 and my AmigaOne). In all that time, I was only ever really a gamer on the A500 (since I was under 10 years old...) and I've never really been in to the demoscene.
For me, the Amiga isn't about games or demos. I tend to side with the author of TFA really - the Amiga is just a great OS: Small, Fast, Efficient and doesn't bug you every few seconds or cache memory to disk when there's really no need to.
Right now, I'm writing this from my intel iMac, while my Win2k box sits to my left compiling some code for work, my Linux box sits under the desk being my local caching proxy and my AmigaOne has my email client open. So, I'm hardly a fanatic of any OS, but the Amiga will always be my favourite just for "getting stuff done" (assuming that the "stuff" in question has the appropriate software - the one great lacking on AmigaOS right now)
A desktop publishing software was crammed into 1.4MB, two 720KB floppies! Actually, on a Classic Amiga that'd be 2 880KB floppies, for a total of 1.6MB... Not that I've used floppies on my Amiga in a LONG time. My MicroA1 (same type as the author of TFA) has a DVD writer, an SD slot and a CF slot, but no floppy (if you're wondering, no the SD and CF aren't "standard" Amiga things - I've got it in an Antec Aria case which has those on the front, but they work perfectly of course).
Just an FYI since you don't seem to be aware of it - I downloaded a binary installer of DarWine ages ago (several months, don't recall exactly)... no need to compile and it works like a dream - doubleclick on an exe and up pops the "WineHelper" and X11 followed seconds later by the application (or, in some cases of course, a WINE error instead).
It's not as "clean" as CrossOver to use, but I honestly prefer it since CrossOver's "bundles" thing seems far too counterintuitive to me (each to their own of course - if you like CrossOver, keep with it!)
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As an FYI: The Amiga 4000 did do this on ctrl-amiga-amiga. It'd wait about one and a half seconds before rebooting and in that time it'd cleanly finish everything it could (such as aborting large write operations and so on). I've never actually tested on my OS4 system, but I'd imagine the soft reboot (ctrl-amiga-amiga (or ctrl-win-win on a "standard" keyboard)) would do it whereas the hard reboot (ctrl-alt-alt) would not.
I'm sorry, but that just seems lame. Why? If you use Linux, do you define the box by the OS or the hardware? Do you say, "my P4 2GHz" or "my Linux box"? It's exactly the same sort of thing. I have a couple of Linux systems around here - one's on PPC hardware and one's on intel. They're both just "Linux boxes" to me. Eventually I learned that it is the old coins that people want to collect because they are rare interesting reminders of the past. If you're interested in being a "classic collector", then absolutely. But that's a whole different ballgame. I'd expect a classic car enthusiast to prefer to the old cars, and I'd expect a coin collector to collect the old ones (collecting current ones doesn't make much sense, since they aren't current for long!). And in the same vein, I'd expect a classic computer enthusiast to prefer an Amiga 500 to an AmigaOne. But AmigaOS4 isn't for "classic enthusiasts" - it's for people who want a modern OS and like the AmigaOS way of doing things. Just as a 2006 model car is nicer to drive than one from the 1950s, AmigaOS4 is a nicer OS than any of the classic versions.
Yes, the "dongle chip" as it's affectionately known is probably the most horrible thing Amiga Users have ever had forced upon them... we can only hope that once the whole situation with Amiga Inc resolves itself, Hyperion will have free access to do whatever they want with AmigaOS4 and then we'll likely see it opened for many other platforms, including the Pegasos hardware (which I think is great hardware, but I find MorphOS a bit uncomfortable to use compared to AmigaOS4). Like many others, I also dream of the day AmigaOS4 gets ported to x86 (I'd love to run it side by side with MacOS on this intel iMac I've got here!)
There's a good chance that many embedded operating systems you use every day have no memory protection, but when was the last time your cellphone crashed? (if the answer is "recently", I feel sorry for you, but MOST cellphones don't crash on a regular basis). If memory protection was such a "MUST HAVE", then it would've been unthinkable for a multitasking OS to ever be written without it, but there are plenty of examples of ones that do. I'm not saying it's worthless of course - I'd love to have a full and advanced memory protection system in AmigaOS, but my main point is that it still works reliably without it.
By "same accessories" I really kind of meant the car accessories (radio, seats etc), not the computer hardware (graphics cards etc). It was supposed to be a reference to running the same software - sorry for the bad analogy.
As for the hardware, yes, the AmigaOne has little to nothing in common with classic Amigas, but Amiga really isn't about the hardware - trying to build a new hardware platform would be suicide (can any small independent motherboard manufacturer dream of competing with ATI/NVidia on the graphics front? Or Creative on the sound front? Not really!). Amigas in the 21st century are defined by the fact that they run AmigaOS.
And the auto show and veering a little off topic... I actually freely admit to having no idea what a Studebaker looks like - I'm not from the US! If we're talking classic cars I do know though, give me the super modern version any day - I was pretty excited to see the rerelease of the Holden Monaro in 2001 and onwards (sold in the US as a Pontiac GTO I believe) - enough of the stylings of the old one to make it instantly recognisable while still being a gorgeous modern vehicle.
Don't expect AmigaOS to ever be a server, nor expect it to be too graceful with shockingly coded apps... but you CAN expect it to run quickly, reliably and be easy, intuitive and fun to use.
As a note: The m68k emulator in OS4 for PPC machines treats itself as a 68020 with FPU - just MUCH faster.
Sorry - I'm not too keen on opening a VNC server to the outside world! If you're interested in taking a look though, most places do have local Amiga User Groups - just put a quick post up on somewhere like AmigaWorld.net and I'm sure you'll find somewhere nearby you can go play with it in person.
As for why you'd want it - well, honestly, maybe you wouldn't. It all depends what you need out of a computer - if AmigaOS and the apps that it has can provide it, then all the things TFA mentioned about speed, responsiveness and not being bugged to death by other apps can be a pretty big draw. If what you need isn't available on AmigaOS, then just like any OS, you probably don't really want it.
I find it interesting TFA never mentioned my personal "quirky little favourite" of AmigaOS. Not only are the reboots amazingly fast, but you don't need to shutdown. If I want to turn it off, I press the power button. If I want to reboot, I give it the three finger salute (that's either "Ctrl Amiga Amiga" or "Ctrl Alt Alt" (depending on if you want a soft or hard reboot) for anyone paying attention) or hit the reboot button on the front of the computer. There's no "shutdown" required.
I've said it before (and will therefore probably get my first ever "redundant" mod) but if he's wanting OS4, then AROS is *NOT* the answer. Unless you consider Win95 the answer to someone looking for Windows Vista!
There's a lot of discussion of AROS in this thread, but I think people need to remember that it is just a re-engineering as you say. And it strives for "AmigaOS 3.1" as the target, which is getting VERY old now. When people think of AmigaOS, they often think of OS3.1 or earlier, since that's what most of them have seen. That's where all the "Amiga is dead, get over it" comments come from. As an AmigaOS4 user (and AmigaOS3.9 before I got my AmigaOne), I couldn't imagine going back to something so primitive. Some wonderful features in there, but really, that OS truly *is* dead - AmigaOS4 is *many* years ahead ("Sys:Prefs/Internet" is a pretty good dead giveaway right from the start!)
If it were to ever happen, the open sourcing of OS4 would effectively kill AROS (in its current form) in seconds (it'd be reborn of course by patching the few goodies they do have on top of OS4).
As for your other comments - yes, how do people LIVE without ARexx?!
AROS - because it's too much like AmigaOS 3.1... yuk! AND you've got less applications available than classic AmigaOS. Honestly, AROS is great as an "Amiga Research OS", but I wouldn't dare consider it for any real usage.
Syllable - can't comment, since I haven't seen anything other than screenshots... but I'd be at least slightly worried about application support (probably significantly less than AmigaOS)
For anyone reading the above and saying "how many apps can there really still be for AmigaOS?", take a look at Aminet and OS4Depot.
AROS would likely be "some" fun for him, but if he's just been looking at OS4 screenshots, AROS with it's OS3.1 looks would be a bit of a nasty shock stepping back in time.
To answer the emulation question the grandparent asked, unfortunately no - you'd need a PPC emulator that bypasses the "security" (sort of a hardware dongle chip on the motherboard of the AmigaOne - a move forced by Amiga Inc on the hardware and software developers (Amiga Inc is neither) and much hated by a large part of the Amiga community), can run the modified UBoot firmware (or a reasonable enough facsimile of it) and then you MIGHT just be able to get OS4 running.
Alternatively, wait a little bit until things settle down in the legal arena surrounding Amiga Inc and I think there's a good chance that Hyperion (the people who wrote AmigaOS4) will end up with full rights to it... then I expect to see some REAL movement.
On my system - whenever I try and run my own code :/
But seriously, not very often on final release. Some of the betas were a bit buggy and crashed fairly regularly doing routine things, but final release has been rock solid for me. Even my own code (joked about above) doesn't really lock up the system, just brings up the "Grim Reaper" (crash manager program) where I can kill the process, fix the code and try again. My current uptime is just over one week, with usage of between 2 and 3 hours every night after work and a good 6 hours each day of the weekend.
There were many "killer apps" for Amiga depending on who you are. I've been an Amiga user for 20 years now, and I still haven't EVER tried my hand at video editing on ANY platform. Other people talk about games and demos - feel free to look up my earlier posts about that...
MANY years ago on my Amiga 600 I remember the first local BBS to implement RIP... and those of us with Amigas all had use of it straight away, while the local DOS/Win31 users all suffered a long wait...
The terminal emulator we all used was "Term" - perfect RIP support. The source code and binaries for Term 4.7 are both on Aminet if you're interested.
Oh, and further to my last comment...
It's more like a brand new Studebaker was built and a bunch of whiners went around saying "but it's not a REAL Studebaker", despite it having the same look and feel, being able to use all the same accessories, feeling the same to drive (only much smoother and more powerful) and so on, while having some new body streamlining and a modern efficient engine under the hood.
And what exactly is "classless" about the AmigaOne with AmigaOS4? It's as real an Amiga as you'll get.
True, it doesn't have an OCS, ECS or AGA graphics chipset... true, it doesn't use Paula for sound... but neither do most Classic Amigas these days if people are still serious about USING them - the chips are in there, but they've been bypassed LONG ago by expansion cards (including PCI buses added A4000T systems and then PCI graphics and sound cards thrown in). My AmigaOne is just as much an Amiga as those are, and a LOT classier.
AROS is great, and I've played with it quite a bit. But it's not a shade on OS4. AROS is a reimplementation of AmigaOS3.1 with some really nice features added. OS4 is a massive leap ahead of OS3.1. I sincerely hope the AROS guys look at OS4 and do some work in that area.
(of course, I even more sincerely hope to see OS4 on a platform people can readily get... I love using my AmigaOne and I hate it when I show it off to people only to have to follow up with "but there's no way you can currently get it yourself")
I've been an Amiga user since around 1987... Went from A500, to A600 to A1200 to A4000 to AmigaOne. In that time, the longest I've been without an Amiga is 2 years (between my A4000 and my AmigaOne). In all that time, I was only ever really a gamer on the A500 (since I was under 10 years old...) and I've never really been in to the demoscene.
For me, the Amiga isn't about games or demos. I tend to side with the author of TFA really - the Amiga is just a great OS: Small, Fast, Efficient and doesn't bug you every few seconds or cache memory to disk when there's really no need to.
Right now, I'm writing this from my intel iMac, while my Win2k box sits to my left compiling some code for work, my Linux box sits under the desk being my local caching proxy and my AmigaOne has my email client open. So, I'm hardly a fanatic of any OS, but the Amiga will always be my favourite just for "getting stuff done" (assuming that the "stuff" in question has the appropriate software - the one great lacking on AmigaOS right now)
Just an FYI since you don't seem to be aware of it - I downloaded a binary installer of DarWine ages ago (several months, don't recall exactly)... no need to compile and it works like a dream - doubleclick on an exe and up pops the "WineHelper" and X11 followed seconds later by the application (or, in some cases of course, a WINE error instead).
It's not as "clean" as CrossOver to use, but I honestly prefer it since CrossOver's "bundles" thing seems far too counterintuitive to me (each to their own of course - if you like CrossOver, keep with it!)