Why should I use Amiga?

[Ami_GFX]

It's zen like simplicity compared to over bloated monsters like Windoze Xp and Vista. The fact that everything works like it's supposed to and it doesn't come with a lot of useless junk that takes forever to load. It is extremely light on system resources and leaves most of your memory and hardisk and CPU cycles to you to do what you want with them.

Amiga DOS is like a stripped down Unix derivitive that is elegant and functional and has a lot of power. The Workbench GUI is a little eccentric but once you get use to it, it really rocks and has a real creative edge and it never gets in the way of things like Windoze does.

The only OS that I can compare it to is OS2 which came from the opposite extreme--IBM, Big Blue--of computer culture but had a lot in common with it including the Rexx language and the stability and reliability factor--reliable enough for the banking industry. The Amiga OS was reliable enough for the Broadcast Television industry.

[Ami_GFX]

What about Linux?

I'm used to doing A LOT of work in a CLI, does Amiga have a powerful CLI (better than the Windoze CLI, with support for pipe's and stuff like that)?

The Amiga CLI is a lot better than Windoze but a lot less elaborate than Unix. Unlike Windoze, it is very bug free and things work the way you expect them to work.

Are there ports of my favorite programs, Emacs, Epic4, Lynx?

Emacs is included in Amiga OS under the name Memacs. I use it all the time. I work mostly with Classic Amigas. The newer versions of Amiga OS come with a more sophisticated GUI text editor but Memacs definitly does the job

[Ami_GFX]

What does Amiga have that Unix doesnt?

Unix is a multitasking OS designed for a multiuser environment. Amiga OS is a multitasking OS designed for a single user. The Amiga is a graphics orientated system and even though it has a good CLI, it's strength is the way it deals with graphics--especailly moving graphics. There is very good application interoperabilty via the Arexx language and you can have several applications loaded in memory passing data--usally graphics data--to each other for processing.