Next step for Amiga(like)OS?

[Painkiller]

@bloodline

No I want a computer that actually works and is not bug ridden I don't see how that is possible when there is so much variety in hardware.

People have different opinions you know...

Surely MOS is quite full of bugs, but a small team is working on it and I would think it is a lot easier for them to get rid of the bugs with one hardware in mind than thousands of different combinations.

[uncharted]

@bloodline

Why avoid legitimate criticisms of AROS and avoid engaging in discussion about it, in preference to making back-handed comments to people (The Simpsons, flower gardens)?

[bloodline]

Painkiller wrote:
@bloodline

No I want a computer that actually works and is not bug ridden I don't see how that is possible when there is so much variety in hardware.

People have different opinions you know...

Surely MOS is quite full of bugs, but a small team is working on it and I would think it is a lot easier for them to get rid of the bugs with one hardware in mind than thousands of different combinations.

Just buy an iMac and be happy...

[AeroMan]

persia wrote:


I have a Mac, I run OS X, XP, Gentoo Linux, one box, one screen, on keyboard.  Intel/AMD equipment is cheap, can you say that about Amiga equipment?  Stuff that you would throw out if it we're Amiga, and you pay 100s of dollarsfor it, where's the sense?  

PCs gets old too, as Painkiller said. I´m replacing mine, as it is 4 years old, and still uses DDR1 memories. It is better to buy a new mobo and keep my system up to date than pay more for old memory.

My mother still uses an old PC for internet, email, Office and basic stuff. It works, but is a throw away old hardware just like the Amiga, as you said. No hope for upgrade, she will have to spend money in a new machine.

I can´t say anything about new Amiga hardware being cheap or not, as it does not exists. But I can compare with Apple, for example. Here I can buy a really nice PC for the price of a normal Mac, and without some hacking, you need a Mac to run OS X

The race condition exists, of course. We want to see a new Amiga OS (AROS/MOS or OS4) because we are Amiga fans, and computer freaks. How would you convince a normal user to use  AROS instead of Windows, for example, even supposing all everyday app is available for it ?

It is hard to convince normal people to use even Linux. Apple has all the sex appeal and marketing, and Windows is almost a second name for computer today. Linux is free, and some new computers come with it to drop the price, and this is helping to gather more users.

So, why not PS3? If the main opposition to my "different hardware for advantage" is the "expensive and not available"  point, why ignore a US$500 supercomputer which still is a Blue Ray and have nice games?

[warpdesign]

 There is no next step. AmigaOS is a dead end. People forget that AmigaOS was a series of compromises. By design it provided a lot of features present on the high end machines of the day by compromising on security and stability while being able to deliver on affordable hardware at the time. It made for a damn nice system during its reign.

The folks who wrote AmigaOS knew from the very beginning that it wouldn't carry on for decades. If Commodore hadn't gone tits up and became a dominant player in the computing world, AmigaOS today would be something completely different than the OS we all love and are familiar with and all those legacy apps would be running in sandboxes, well not really, we would have dropped them long ago just like the mac people don't give a damn about pre OSX apps.

We move forward by writing something better, not by hanging on to obsolete technology.

There was nothing OS wise that was particularly original or ground breaking on AmigaOS. Almost all of the ground breaking stuff was the hardware, which by todays standards is completely irrelevant.

I totally agree... Unfortunately all people that wanted to move forward left the Amiga "boat". When reading everyone talking here, the most important thing is to be able to run their 10 years (and older...) applications. Not to have a new, modern OS. So development is headed toward compatibility, and not innovation... And a lot of time is spent ensuring compatibility more than having new clean (and not compatible, but who cares ?) API...

[codenetfx]

I am using Macs (G4s and Intels). I also use Windows machines daily (for work). I have Amigas for games and tweaking. I wish I could buy a modern machine with a modern CPU and coprocessors for graphics, sound, networking, media DSPs...something like a real supercomputer not this consumer-oriented garbage with flashy stickers and a gutload of branding messages.

One can argue that modern graphics cards act as "coprocessors" and this is true but they are not standard equipment. Also, no OS/hardware out there supports coprocessors for the killer application of today (networking and media, such as MP3).

Promise of multicore design is to provide the same coolness of co-processor designs (provided you have software that supports it); you would get a very responsive system (orders of magnitude more responsive than the fastest machine today), but the trouble is that it will take years for software to support multicore designs. Windows (XP and Server) allegedly support multicore *and* dual CPU hardware, but I am yet to "feel" the difference beyond perf. improvement with more RAM added.

Mac is probably the closest to that goal but still does not have dedicated hardware for networking and will have an OS that supports multicore natively some time next year (Snow Leopard).

Multicore support is significant because old-fashioned software is wasting a lot of hardware you paid for in a new machine. When you push a lot of data through your wireless (or wired) LAN, you are using too many (single) CPU cycles *and* you are keeping the data bus very crowded and that chokes up the overall performance while other cores are idling. This is why even the GHz machines do not feel as fast as they should be.

A CPU/mobo designs which are 100 times faster on paper than CPU/mobo designs from 20 years ago, *should* feel at least several orders of magnitude faster than "old software" And yet it does not.

Intel's now obsolete supercomputer on a chip called i860 (64-bit RISC processor from 1992 or 1993, can't remember now) was a technology that could deliver Amiga-like graphics. i860 Graphics/DSP boards for 486DX-33MHz could deliver video quality of today back in 1993. i860 failed to capture marketshare because it did not have a lot of software written for it. Expansion boards were very expensive and that did not help either (this should sound familiar).

As of future Amiga design, it would have to include MC68K (likely a copy of MiniMig design) for compatibility.

The coolest thing that happened to Amiga (relatively) recently is the MiniMig - a proof that a legacy coprocessor design can be implemented in FPGA and "teamed" with a low-voltage MC68K to deliver a low-cost compatibility package. Natami is likely the next wave, when it becomes available.

Amiga as a platform does not have a bright future as long as software platform (OS) remains in limbo.

My hunch is that both Amiga Inc and Hyperion will go bankrupt within a short period of time. Their business models are not sustainable and their business style is not entrepreneurial but rather confrontational. Whoever wins that ridiculous battle, Amiga as a platform will lose. Delete Amiga Inc. and Hyperion from your bookmarks. It is a waste of time. And for God's sake, stop bidding up those PPC cards to ridiculous amounts on ebay. They are worth 200-300 bucks tops. 14 year old hardware.

Amiga's future is outside of the corporate world. MiniMig and AROS (both open source) prove that. A multicore design that includes powerful graphics card, sound card with an powerful DSP, network card with a dedicated CPU , built-in SCSI and SATA interfaces would be worthy of an Amiga - especially if it ran AROS.

Until then, grab a Mac and a Minimig (or a vintage Mig

[persia]

Amiga's future is as a retro machine, the people it will attract are the retro hobbyists.  It's like amateur radio or antique cars.  Speed and power mean nothing in that world.  There will never be a modern Amiga because there is no market for one.

[TheMagicM]

its pretty sad that Amiga users stick to old hardware, new hardware comes out and is available now (EFIKA) but dont buy it.

Some people complain  "well its discontinued and ..." so is your Amiga and look how long its lived and its probably still ticking.  

Otherwise you'll just be the same old boring person..waiting for X operating system to be released for X motherboard and just being disappointed all the time.  On top of that we'll have to read your posts of frustration and disappointment.

Hey its cool playing w/an old Amiga..I have ALOT of them but am slowly ebaying them.  I actually put them all in storage after taking the software off that I wanted.  If I want to run something Amiga, it'll have to run on my EFIKA or under EUAE.

Anyway, carry on. :-)

[amigadave]

TheMagicM wrote:
....  If I want to run something Amiga, it'll have to run on my EFIKA or under EUAE.

Anyway, carry on. :-)

Those are two viable options to use.

persia wrote:
 Amiga's future is as a retro machine, the people it will attract are the retro hobbyists. It's like amateur radio or antique cars. Speed and power mean nothing in that world. There will never be a modern Amiga because there is no market for one.

Another valid opinion of the current and possible future of the Amiga platform.

codenetfx wrote:
I wish I could buy a modern machine with a modern CPU and coprocessors for graphics, sound, networking, media DSPs...something like a real supercomputer not this consumer-oriented garbage with flashy stickers and a gutload of branding messages.

A wish that many of us have, but few feel is a possible reality for an Amiga.  That will take many years, if it happens at all.

codenetfx also wrote:
Promise of multicore design is to provide the same coolness of co-processor designs (provided you have software that supports it); you would get a very responsive system (orders of magnitude more responsive than the fastest machine today), but the trouble is that it will take years for software to support multicore designs. Windows (XP and Server) allegedly support multicore *and* dual CPU hardware, but I am yet to "feel" the difference beyond perf. improvement with more RAM added.

AND

Multicore support is significant because old-fashioned software is wasting a lot of hardware you paid for in a new machine. When you push a lot of data through your wireless (or wired) LAN, you are using too many (single) CPU cycles *and* you are keeping the data bus very crowded and that chokes up the overall performance while other cores are idling. This is why even the GHz machines do not feel as fast as they should be.

A CPU/mobo designs which are 100 times faster on paper than CPU/mobo designs from 20 years ago, *should* feel at least several orders of magnitude faster than "old software" And yet it does not.

I wholeheartedly agree that new computers and their OSes do not feel as fast as 15+ year old Amigas, which is very disappointing.  We should be light years ahead of where we currently are.  For some Amiga users, this "feeling" is what keeps them going and hoping for a rebirth of a commercially viable Amiga.  My personal hopes are not that high (unrealistic).

codenetfx also wrote:
i860 failed to capture marketshare because it did not have a lot of software written for it. Expansion boards were very expensive and that did not help either (this should sound familiar).

And

warpdesign wrote:
Unfortunately all people that wanted to move forward left the Amiga "boat". When reading everyone talking here, the most important thing is to be able to run their 10 years (and older...) applications. Not to have a new, modern OS. So development is headed toward compatibility, and not innovation... And a lot of time is spent ensuring compatibility more than having new clean (and not compatible, but who cares ?) API...

@codenetfx,
Yes, sounds very familiar and is a big reason that next generation Amiga OSes have not been very successful.  Not enough good new programs for them.  

@warpdesign,
A new Amiga(Like)OS is worthless if it is just a similar API that runs faster and on newer hardware.  You have to have useful and/or entertaining software for it.

This is why some of us want the backward compatibility to be kept and improved upon.  We want the ability to run some of that 78,000 software titles currently on Aminet, as well as the commercial Amiga software on which we have spent good money, to run on our new Amigas until more new PPC Amiga software can be written.

Sort of goes hand-in-hand with the idea that many of us want to see AOS4.x and MOS2.x ported to all the used PPC Macs out there as a short term solution to the hardware shortage until newer Amiga hardware can be invented and produced in mass quantities (a few thousand anyway). Yes, I know that the Efika is available right now, but for some of us, it is just not fast enough, or have all the features we would want in a new Amiga computer.  That being said, if I had the extra cash, I would very likely go buy one and pay the MOS2.x team their price for the latest version of their OS.

Just because we want these less than ideal, short term fixes, it does not mean that we do not want the longer term, better solutions to happen.  You might argue that if time is spent completing the short term projects that it will take away time for the long term projects.  That is true, but if the Amiga community is forced to wait another 4 to 6 years for the long term projects to be completed, there won't be hardly any of us left to care.  Many already say that there are not enough that care right now, and they may be right.

[warpdesign]

You have to have useful and/or entertaining software for it

By developing something real "new", we could have way more "fun" than running 10 years old apps... Look at MacOSX: who's running OS9 apps today (and I believe there are a lot more than 78 000 apps for pre-OSX...)

OSX added a lot more...

Yes, it will take time. But the sooner we start, the sooner we'll have fun again... And the sooner we'll get rid of this old, old, old API, which was designed for old hardware, without portability in mind,...

[TheMagicM]

warpdesign:

yea I agree.  This legacy compatability stuff is far too overrated.  

[amigadave]

warpdesign wrote:

You have to have useful and/or entertaining software for it

By developing something real "new", we could have way more "fun" than running 10 years old apps... Look at MacOSX: who's running OS9 apps today (and I believe there are a lot more than 78 000 apps for pre-OSX...)

OSX added a lot more...

Yes, it will take time. But the sooner we start, the sooner we'll have fun again... And the sooner we'll get rid of this old, old, old API, which was designed for old hardware, without portability in mind,...

Comparing anything Amiga to OSX is like comparing the Model T Ford to today's Shelby Mustang GT.  They have almost nothing in common other than they both roll on wheels and carry people.

Yes, there are still many old time Mac users that are running OS9 apps on their new OSX machines and Apple saw the value of building in that compatibility to make the transition from the old to the new.  What do you think would have happened to Apple's already small market share if they had not had any backward compatibility?  New sales of the OSX Macs probably would have been half or less of what they have been.

Go ahead and follow the same path that OS4 and AmigaInc. have already been down and see how successful you will be.  I can just about guarantee it will be about half of what it could be if backward compatibility had been available to your potential buyers.

On the other hand if all you are thinking of developing is a hobby OS and hardware for a few hardcore coders that don't mind the lack of software or are satisfied in dual booting into Linux to have something to run on their new OS and hardware, that is fine (for the few of you).

All I am trying to say is that backward compatibility is better for a transition to anything new.  Then after established with hundreds of new software applications and entertainment provided, then drop the old 80's and 90's compatibility.

[AeroMan]

amigadave wrote:

All I am trying to say is that backward compatibility is better for a transition to anything new.  Then after established with hundreds of new software applications and entertainment provided, then drop the old 80's and 90's compatibility.

I agree with you on that (BTW, I really liked your previous post  :-) ) .

Apple has shown the way: do a brand new system, and sandbox old stuff. The difference is that we have a 15 year technology gap from OS3.1, and I believe this might be an advantage.

Do a new system with E-UAE and everybody is happy (I hope...) :-D

[uncharted]

AeroMan wrote:

Do a new system with E-UAE and everybody is happy (I hope...) :-D

If that was the case then I'm sure that AROS would be more popular than it is.  If the only need for an Amiga compatible machine is EUAE then MacOS X, Linux and Windows already fulfil that.

There needs to be a tighter integration than just having *UAE for it to really work.  If you took a look at how OS 9 compatibility was implemented you'd see that while there was a sand-boxed copy of OS9 launched in a window when it was needed, the actual software itself ran fully integrated with OS X.  It looked different, and had a different menubar at the top, but otherwise, it was another app.  There was no need to switch between OSes to use it.

[bloodline]

amigadave wrote:

warpdesign wrote:

You have to have useful and/or entertaining software for it

By developing something real "new", we could have way more "fun" than running 10 years old apps... Look at MacOSX: who's running OS9 apps today (and I believe there are a lot more than 78 000 apps for pre-OSX...)

OSX added a lot more...

Yes, it will take time. But the sooner we start, the sooner we'll have fun again... And the sooner we'll get rid of this old, old, old API, which was designed for old hardware, without portability in mind,...

Comparing anything Amiga to OSX is like comparing the Model T Ford to today's Shelby Mustang GT.  They have almost nothing in common other than they both roll on wheels and carry people.

Yes, there are still many old time Mac users that are running OS9 apps on their new OSX machines and Apple saw the value of building in that compatibility to make the transition from the old to the new.  What do you think would have happened to Apple's already small market share if they had not had any backward compatibility?  New sales of the OSX Macs probably would have been half or less of what they have been.

This is why Steve Jobs is the boss of Apple and you are not (this is not an insult upon you BTW).

When Apple brought out OSX, they did sandbox the old apps... very clever, but that did not drive sales, that just ensured that existing users who wanted to upgrade could. But that did not drive sales of OSX, that just keep existing users happy... that is not a market.

What drove OSX was Apple buying up all the best productivity software for OS9 and then porting it themselves to OSX, most of the best OSX productivity software is actually from apple. They were able to afford this by having a second source income... The iPod and iTunes... That pretty much funded the OS9 to OSX transition.

Steve Jobs is a genius... and his trick has been done.  Amiga can't do that anymore. The Amiga has nothing.

[AeroMan]

uncharted wrote:

There needs to be a tighter integration than just having *UAE for it to really work.  If you took a look at how OS 9 compatibility was implemented you'd see that while there was a sand-boxed copy of OS9 launched in a window when it was needed, the actual software itself ran fully integrated with OS X.  It looked different, and had a different menubar at the top, but otherwise, it was another app.  There was no need to switch between OSes to use it.

Maybe I couldn't express myself the right way. What I was thinking about is do the same way Apple did

If it is an OS 3 program, the system could launch an emulator to run it without the user notice. Pretty much like  
Apple did when they moved from 68K to PPC.

The advantage is that modern processors are capable of emulating a fast Amiga. If you tried 68K apps on the early PPC Macs, you probably noticed they were not as fast as native 68K

Regarding AROS, I'm a big fan of it, and think it is such a great idea. I don't think Win/Linux with UAE are a good solution for a modern Amiga, because Windows and Linux are not what I expect from an OS to work with.