Software we want ported to Amiga

[AmigaNow]

Here is my wish list of programs to be ported to the Amiga.

The important ones come to mind:

FireFox browser http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/
Daz Studio  http://www.daz3d.com/
wxWidgets   http://www.wxwidgets.org/
Dev-C++     http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html/

With FireFox, we can surf the net easier.  :-D

With Open Office, we would have pc compat. spreadsheet, database, etc

With Daz Studio, we would have an excellant 3D rendering package like Poser.

With wxWidgets, we would have a cross platform compiler set  that would allow easier porting of numerous programs to the Amiga!

With Dev-C++, we would have an excellant easy to use Compiler.


Anyone think of anything else? I know there is currently a bounty of around $10,000 US on Firefox ported to Amiga!

Thanks,
JS

[AMC258]

Don't read this post wrong, I'm not saying you're stupid or anything of the sort, I'm just giving my point of view.

Believe me, I can understand why you want FireFox.  But, I'd much prefer a more functional IBrowse!

We already have PC compatible spreadsheet, database, etc, with some really nice programs, much nicer than a slow ported program.

Ports are a good way to bridge the gap when genuine Amiga programs are not available, but genuine Amiga programs always end up being better than the ports.  I have a Sparcstation next to my Amiga, if I really need to run Unix software that bad, which I don't, I'll do that.

[AmigaNow]

No offense taken. I would be extremely happy if the IBrowse team would include some of the things from FireFox and would purchase it in a minute. Same as for an Amiga original Open Office type program. But since the sourcecode is available, and could be ported, I don't see a reason it wouldn't benefit our community to have more programs on the Amiga.

By means of porting, I do mean to take the code and make it Amiga, not just simply porting "bloated code". wxWidgets for example has actual code targeted for the specific platform you are using so it is quite fast. The resulting GUI would be exactly Amiga, but have the standard wxWidgets way of programming it. Thus a single program could be compiled as IBM, Linux, Mac, or even Amiga. Then any wxWidget developer could easily offer an Amiga port when they compile the other ones...

BTW, wasn't AmigaAmp a port of WinAmp?

Thanks,
JS

[AMC258]

I was pondering that question when I read your first post.  I don't remember if it was an actual port, or just meant to look the same.  I do know that a lot of corrupt MP3s that don't play at all in WinAmp play just fine in AmigaAmp, until the latest version of AmigaAmp.

[iamaboringperson]

I know there is currently a bounty of around $10,000 US on Firefox ported to Amiga!

It's a joke!

Do you realise how difficult it would be to port that software to the Amiga?



I don't realise why people want this kind of software on the Amiga. I don't mean there's anything wrong with the software, but I'm running much of it on my Linux machine? Why not do the same?

[cv643d]

Here is my wishlist:

-InternetExplorer 7
-Microsoft Office 2007
-Adobe Photoshop CS2/Imageready
-Dreamweaver
-ACDsee classic
-Outlook Express
-Nero
-Winamp
-MSN Live

... the list could go on but that would be a great start!
 :-D

[steve30]

cv643d wrote:
Here is my wishlist:

-InternetExplorer 7
-Microsoft Office 2007
-Adobe Photoshop CS2/Imageready
-Dreamweaver
-ACDsee classic
-Outlook Express
-Nero
-Winamp
-MSN Live

... the list could go on but that would be a great start!
 :-D

All I can say to that list is WTF? Things like Photoshop might be nice, but MSN and IE?

[Karlos]

Re Dev C++

There is the AmiDevCPP cross compiler ;-)

[Karlos]

I don't want to burst anybody's bubble here, but great as firefox is from the end user experience, it's horribly resource hungry and crawls on machines with far more horsepower than any genuine 68K amiga has available.

The same is true of open office and a lot of other things on the list. When the Open Source guys start projects like this, they are typically aiming at mainstream systems, not decades old machines that have a tiny fraction of the horsepower available.

There's nothing directly stopping anybody from porting these apps - they might have to design and implement entire layers of library code first to provide some of the foundations required, but it could be done. However, when the end result is an application that runs slower than running windows 95 in PCx, who is going to bother?

[Karlos]

To see what I mean, find an old pentium 60, with an ISA graphics card (if possible, you don't want to have your results all skewed by having genuine CPU -> PCI performance that no existing 68K amiga PCI solution offers), build a linux or OpenBSD distribution for it (the lighter weight the better) and then see about building Firefox or openoffice (any version) on that.

You'll then get an idea of what a top-end 68060 with RTG would be like...

-edit-

There's nothing wrong, of course, in porting said open source packages to OS4 / MorphOS. Classic PPC users might well find them sluggish though.

[sicky]

@v643d

Here is my wishlist:

-InternetExplorer 7

What.... why? No thank you!

-Microsoft Office 2007

No thanks, Open Office, AbiWord or anything other than that thanks!

-Outlook Express

You really are a glutton for punishment aren't you? Why on earth would you want the worse e-mail client on ANY platform ported to the Amiga?

[sicky]

@Karlos

it's horribly resource hungry and crawls on machines with far more horsepower than any genuine 68K amiga has available

Who said anything about 68k machines, I assumed he was wanting to run these apps on PPC OS4 or maybe MorphOS?

[Varthall]

If we're speaking of running these applications on Amigas, I agree, 68k versions would be pointless, only PPC native ones would have sense. It might be interesting for those using Amithlon/WinUAE, though.

Varthall

[Karlos]

sicky wrote:
@Karlos

it's horribly resource hungry and crawls on machines with far more horsepower than any genuine 68K amiga has available

Who said anything about 68k machines, I assumed he was wanting to run these apps on PPC OS4 or maybe MorphOS?

Where did he say that? Have a look at each of the wishlist poster's signatures. Any OS4 or MOS machines there?

[sicky]

@Varthall

If we're speaking of running these applications on Amigas, I agree, 68k versions would be pointless, only PPC native ones would have sense.

That was what I was pointing out, a 68k original Amiga wouldn't have the power to run such applications.

It might be interesting for those using Amithlon/WinUAE, though.

Yes agreed, here I have a PC running Amithlon sitting next to my G5 iMac and I must say that the Amithlon machine is very fast indeed. Makes me wonder what OS4 would be like if it were similar to Amithlon running on PC hardware? When Amithlon first came out I thought it was the right direction to go.....