OS for the X1000

[commodorejohn]

Board is ready and your X1000 is ready to rock and roll, it has OS4.2 on it (that is what it seems to be getting on it) and it all runs fine.
You can internet on it, you can play audio on it, so your favorite mp3's and all things and it can even show your video's.
 
And then ?
 
It can't play modern pc games, or any other platform like Xbox or Playstation, other than Amiga Classic, it may be able to do the ported Quake and so on, but it won't play Call Of Duty or Need For Speed for example.
 
At most offices they use Word and Excell, so here comes an email with a word document, you may be able to read it if that exists on OS4.1, but can you also fully edit it ?
You get a PDF also, again it might be able to read it, but can you also edit it ?

Could dual-boot Debian and run it pretty nicely, if the specs on the A-Eon website are still up to date. That'll open up a lot more software options than OS4 presently has. (And yes, you can't run x86 Windows-binary games, but that's true of any non-x86 system. But you do have access to any of the many open-source games out there, and some mainstream game companies like iD Software even support Linux users.)

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, I imagine so.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, but those ID software games are x86-only binaries, right?

Are they? I don't recall; I haven't actually kept up with commercial gaming in a while. They do release the source for previous engines when they come out with a new one, so you can run pre-iD Tech 4 (Doom 3 engine) games, at least (and IT4 is supposed to be released GPL sometime this year, I understand.) But yeah, that is a definite problem with Linux gaming...

[commodorejohn]

Why would a "real Amiga enthusiast" want to run Microsoft Word or Excel on an Amiga anyway? If you're so desperate to play something as complex as Call of Duty then you should probably just use a PC and stop holding your breath for a couple of guys with hardly any financial backing or support to come up with something similar for an Amiga system.

Quoted for truth. It seems like there's a lot of people in this community who suffer from such a massive inferiority complex that they've decided the Amiga should just be a PC. What's the point in that?

[commodorejohn]

AROS and Amithlon are both as much Amiga as they are PC.

Well, I'm not referring to the cross-platform compatibility projects so much as I am these people who whine about not being able to use Excel or whatever on their Amiga. The logic seems to go:

• "I hate PCs and don't want to have to use them for anything,"
• "I need to use Program X but don't want to do it on a PC,"
  
• "Program X therefore needs to be available on the Amiga,"
  
• "Nobody wants to port or clone Program X for the Amiga as it stands,"
  
• "Therefore the only practical solution is to change the definition of 'Amiga' to be whatever environment is needed to run Program X without porting or cloning,"
  
• "Now that I've redefined 'Amiga' to mean 'Intel PC,' I don't have to hate using one anymore!"

Guys, it's okay to use more than one platform. It doesn't make you a traitor to the cause.

[commodorejohn]

And it serves only for technology demo. It can not run 68k binaries so it is better run AROS natively on x86 or m68 hardware (i.e. Natami if it ever gets released).

What is needed then is a PPC implementation of a 68k emulator...

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, but it's still a separate emulator, right? Something like the OS-integrated emulation on Power Macs would be nice for use with OS-friendly apps.

[commodorejohn]

All of the above has been available for a long time, so your posts are surprisingly uninformed.  Check out a OS4, or MorphOS forum some time and you will learn a lot more.

Yes, my post was uninformed, because I don't use and have no real interest in OS4 or MorphOS. But as itix wasn't discussing either, I'm not sure that's really all too relevant.

[commodorejohn]

That is because it checks the hardware, if it dind't do that it could run on it, would slow to a crawl, but can be done with enough memory, every Windows still starts in DOS, although it's not called DOS anymore.

No it wouldn't. Windows 95 runs in 386 protected mode, and could not possibly run on a 286.

[commodorejohn]

Windows did run on a 286.   Windows 95 might not have but Windows 1 - 3.1 most certainly did.

Well yeah, but that was kind of the whole point. Windows up to 3.1 was fundamentally a 16-bit OS (Win32 extensions for 3.1 notwithstanding,) and thus it was perfectly feasible for it to run on a 286 (though I don't recall if it ever made use of the 286's protected mode - not a lot did, aside from OS/2 and Xenix.) Windows 95 on the other hand was the first real step forward for the OS, using 386 protected mode to provide some actual process separation and memory protection (albeit not very well-handled) in a potentially greatly-expanded memory space.

xeron's point, if I'm not mistaken, was that OS4 is similarily a step forward from OS3.x and is not backwards-compatible for similar reasons. Not sure I agree 100%, but his analogy was sound; buzzfuzz's wasn't.