How much would it cost to port AmigaOS to x64?

[commodorejohn]

It would cost the combined salaries of every programmer on the project for as long as it takes to complete it, plus overhead/administrative costs...

[commodorejohn]

I haven't heard anything about the PS4 including a PPC chip, and given that there's explicitly no backwards compatibility, there's no reason for it to include one.

[commodorejohn]

Which GUI are you talking about?

The clusterfu¢k one where no matter what desktop environment you select, every application uses one of half a dozen UI toolkits that all operate in subtly different, mutually-incompatible ways, and each application introduces its own inconsistencies on top of that, and eventually you snap and shoot up a Post Office?

[commodorejohn]

Well, if you only use KDE applications, maybe, but good luck with that...

[commodorejohn]

I'd say it's still bigger group than all (system friendly) Amiga applications (all GUI toolkits combined)

-EDIT-
Maybe the actual "amount" might not be better, but the "coverage of basic needs" (office software, proper text editor, media player etc.) is.

That may be, but I wasn't intending to say that AmigaOS beats out Linux - just that Linux UI is an unholy mess of warring standards applied with wild inconsistency to the extent that my two-week attempt to switch over last November left me wanting to kill people.

Back on topic, I simply don't buy that many more people would use an Amiga-derived operating system if it were on x86. Hardware cost is prohibitive for OS4, but you can get a decent MorphOS machine for $10 from your local school's storage closet, and it's hardly taken over the world. Nor has AROS exactly shown up on the mainstream radar...

[commodorejohn]

If Hyperion or whoever owns AmigaOS has any intention of a future for AmigaOS, x64 is the only choice.  If they continue the PPC route, the platform is no longer in limbo - it is officially dead.  I hate it, but it is the truth.

"Officially dead?" Is there some kind of certifying authority for OS livelihood? Does "official" death happen when there are zero users left? Or is it when the OS is no longer under development? Or when all disks containing the OS are wiped out? Because, uh, none of those things are at all true for either PPC Amiga-NG OS. Even for 68k Amigas only one of those is true, and the fact that that remains the case twenty years after the death of Commodore suggests that it's not likely to change in the immediate future.

Or is this some new definition of "officially" that means "not actually official at all," like how people use "literally" to mean "figuratively" these days?

[commodorejohn]

OS4 doesnt support SMP, so only one of an i7's cores is used, limiting its usefulness.
Endianess will have to be addressed, when porting the OS you will have to rewrite any ASM code that may be present (If any)
OS4 doesnt support 64-bit, and since 64-bit instructions use twice as much RAM, it will be grossly inefficient
Locking the system to certain machines (like OS X is) will increase compatibility but cripple market penetration, as we are in a recession and people dont always have cash for yet another system, especiallly not an i7 system
Leaving it open to any x64 machines will cost much more manpower to ensure compatibility


Plus, AmigaOS4 has little to offer over current alternative OSes for x86. Comparing it to ZETA/BeOS/Haiku, for example, you will see more x86 native apps for it (since BeOS had only a short PPC run) compared to OS4, which will require its porting before any applications can be compiled/tested

It doesn't matter, technical issues are utterly irrelevant to these people. "x64 is the Only Possible Future of Amiga!" is largely a mantra uttered with religious fervor and zero comprehension as a prayer to the Great God Intel, Dominator of the Market. If the PDP-8 made a sudden and inexplicable return and overthrow of the desktop market, they'd be suggesting OS4 get ported to that.