One unified OS for the future?

[itix]

@OlafS3

The other problem with abstraction layers like that (or even bytecodes like .NET) is that of speed. We will always suffer from a lack of speed compared to Windows machines, and as programs get heavier and heavier in their resources it's going to become more and more impractical. We need to grab as much power out of our "Amiga" machines (whatever they are) - the primary advantage we have is that we have much more lightweight operating systems. If we go the way of bytecode and abstractions we lose that strength entirely.

If not losing on speed then we are losing on application development. It is so much faster to type programs in C# using .NET than using relatively low level languages like C. When C programmer is working on 0.7 beta C# programmer is already finalizing new features to forthcoming 3.1 release.

And speed is not so much important anymore when we are at 1GHz+ range. Most of time CPU is running almost idle wasting its potential.

We are already using bytecode in sense how we run 68k programs on PPC and it is fast enough. We just dont get advantages of .NET with it.

[itix]

It depends on what you want to do.
If you want to encode (or decode) video, play MAME, that sort of thing, then using bytecode would be impossible.
I know what you mean, though - for less demanding applications, high level programming languages like C# or Java can speed up the writing massively - but as usual different applications have different requirements, so we can't force people to use high-level code as it could be disastrous (especially for things like device drivers).

Bytecode is not solution to everything but you could write a MP3 encoder in C# and use encoder libraries written in C.

[itix]

My comment was about Trevor Dickinson and Matthew Leaman of A-Eon and AmigaKit respectively, not Hyperion, and the recent efforts to help programmers, plus A-Eon's/AmigaKit's sponsorship of software projects, such as the Libre Office port, and others.

Genesi used to sponsor developers with free hardware but many just took free hardware, sold it and then quit. Some developers did develop something and then quit. Only few lasted longer so personally I dont see it viable option. Even when developers have good intentions it gets easily wasted, like with Spotify.

Bounties work better but someone must get committed to update software regularly.

[itix]

If and when MorphOS starts work on SMP (have they done so already? I really don't know) they too will have to change the API somewhat, but I just wish it would be with changes that are compatible with AmigaOS's API changes. Not going to happen, though, I suspect....

From MorphOS developer point of view I have not seen any changes in AmigaOS 4 that would support SMP.

[itix]

One of the main things that is a problem is that Forbid() is not SMP friendly. When a task calls Forbid() it expects no other process will run at the same time also not on another CPU. Currently this function is used a lot both in the OS libraries as well as in programs themselves.
So one of the things being done is to replace Forbid() locking in the OS functions with other means of locking. Likely this will break compatibility with some programs that expect the exact Forbid() behavior. This in turn will be enough for some forum whiners to claim the result is a not 100% compatible system but for more pragmatic persons it may be good enough as most of the programs will still run without problems and also giving you the advantage of SMP.

This still leaves the programs that themselves are heavy Forbid() users. This can likely be solved by penalizing the performance of these programs by rate limiting Forbid() calls so non-heavy Forbid() users are not much impacted and run (almost) at full speed. Probably enough material again for some people to complain loudly.

You mean users are stupid trolls, right?

I mean, if the user has bought system to run his software collection he does expect it does run his software in the future, too. If you make clean break and say, this is not going to run 68k software anymore, then it is different. But dont expect users are going to buy into this because to many Amiga is just a hobby.

[itix]

I don't quite get the point why there's any room between the two for anything "more novel but still obsolete", and PPC hardware *is* obsolete, either because it is old (MOS) or because it is "obsolete by design" (AOS). If I'd like to reach out for the Amiga community (rarely these days), there are still the 68K machines, so I don't need them for that.

There are two good reasons.

If you are using real Amiga you must patch OS and install upgrades.
If you are using real Amiga you must patch HW and install upgrades.

With MorphOS you just buy some $20-$200 HW from ebay, install OS from USB or CDROM and if you like it you register it online. That is Amiga made easy.

Real Amiga can do same but personally I am not ready to invest my time and money to get it there. Not anymore.

I had to sacrifice some level of compatibility, I can only run RTG compliant software on it. But it was not great loss because my Amiga 1200 could run only RTG compliant software anyway (I didnt have TV available to Amiga).

[itix]

I read somewhere that the people at Hyperion said better PPC than X86 because people would compare it with Windows when it runs on X86. That is both wrong and true, of course it is true that people would compare a X86 version of AmigaOS (or MorphOS) with other OSs, but it is also wrong because people always compare it with existing alternatives.

Nope People still compare MorphOS or AmigaOS to Windows, no matter were they running on same hardware or not.

[itix]

Not long ago I was on a amiga-meeting. There were a lot of Amigas with lots of addons, from A500 up to A4000. One was showing MorphOS on Mac Mini. Really a nice system (from first sight) but I do not think that there were people dropping their Amigas in favor of MorphOS (or AmigaOS). They like to tinker around with their old machine, build in exotic accellerators or sound cards.

And when you dont like to tinker with it, what choices you have there? If you go to WinUAE you still have to update OS with patches and upgrades.

The only thing that really might create interest (and that is from my point of view the vast majority of amiga users) could be a FPGA accellerator they can use to update their old hardware. Or perhaps a good standalone device. "NG" is perhaps the loudest and most visible group in web but it is not representing the majority of users. What do you think?

Old Amiga users are loud, too. It is built-in to Amiga users, I think But there are more 68k users than NG users combined, just more fragmented with different ideas and requirements.

[itix]

No, the people who are not user but use the fact that one or two programs don't run or have to be run in UAE to put rants on forums are the trolls. The users should use the OS they enjoy the most; hobbyist devs should work on the features they enjoy the most.

Why should it matter if they put rants on forums?

[itix]

Why do you think your "bloated" needs are representing everyone?

Bloated is relative. What is definition where efficiency ends and bloat begins?

C64 with 64 kB RAM used to be plentiful. Then Amiga 500 with 512 kB RAM, then with 1 MB. Then Amiga 1200 with 2 MB and now we are pondering is 8 GB bloat or not.

[itix]

Bloated is indeed relative. It depends what you want to do with a system. If you want to play in first league competing with Windows or Mac (in applications) and see it running the newest games (in competition to the newest consoles) then 4 GB are not enough in future.

Maybe I just want to have multiple applications running in parallel. At the work I may have 10 Visual Studio solutions open, three remote connections via RDP, stupid Lotus Notes (sh*t IBM software but unfortunately it is our email solution), few browser instances and some utils including TortoiseSVN, possibly checking out multiple repositories at once. None of them are particularly demanding but with all that stuff together I would appreciate having more RAM than just 4 GB.

[itix]

If your texteditor crashes then you loose your work anyhow.
Whether this is on AMIGA-OS or on UNIX it does not matter.
And memory protection does not help here.

This thinking is flawed. When your text editor crashes you indeed lose your work on that text editor. But your other text editors are still running and you can save your work.

[itix]

No its not,

When I do stuff in parallel on AMIGA then I listen to an MP3 in the background and write some stuff in an editor.

If the MP3 player and the text editor is stable enough - then you do not need memory protection for this.

Even without memory protection my texteditor did not crash on me for years.
So I'm not missing anything here.

Teet editor was used just as an example. And please remember because there is no MP some other program could crash it. Perhaps MP3 you are listening to has broken frame your MP3 player can't decode and trashes data in your text editor. Not likely to happen but it is possible.

I am ok with it but it can't be denied how useful MP is.