Does Linux have an Amiga feel?

[slaapliedje]

I've also been using 'Linux' for close to 20 years.  I put it in quotes, since Linux is just the kernel, and it's the multitude of userland utilities that you actually use.

The file hierarchy system, I'm guessing is what you're referring to?  Actually I'm not even sure what your comments were talking about.  When I started, the first thing I learned was the file hierarchy system.  Once you've learned that it's EASY.  Besides, it is very Unix, as is the AmigaOS.  Actually a lot of the 'inadequacies' that people talk about with even the newest Linux distribution is "why do I have to do that with the terminal?"  Because it's just the most efficient way to do some things.  Even in AmigaOS, there are tons of command line software.  It's useful, to say the least.

Anyhow, to answer the actual original post, you can get an Amiga Look & Feel.  It can get pretty close, but just not quite spot on.  There are themes for GTK (Gnome based) as well as Qt (KDE based), but most of that hasn't been updated in a while, so newer distributions will use the newer versions of gnome/kde that haven't had the themes upgraded for them.

There is a window manager called amiwm that makes the window borders look like the Amiga.  And someone has 'ported' Ken's Icons (the ones from AmigaOS4) for the Linux desktop environments.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Kind of funny that the only thing in this whole tread that is 'current' is Linux, AIX, and FreeBSD.

SunOS is now Solaris (owned by Oracle now ) and AIX is pretty much only available on fat IBM mainframes, which oddly are descended from PPC, so I guess they're After-Commodore Amiga-Like in hardware?

Hmmm, AmigaOS 4.x on a Power7+ processor would be... not sure I know if there is a word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER7

One can dream, right?  

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I think, from a user's point of view, that's kind of true - at least of the last 10-20 years or so. Back in the 90's it was less clear (as Windows 3.1 was way behind most of the competition).

Believe me, though, from a developer's point of view, different OSes are completely different. You've got different kernels, different multitasking paradigms, different methods of UI, all sorts of things. Programming AmigaOS is a pleasure - it's all nice and simple, logical and well thought out. Programming Linux depends on which toolkit you use, and to be fair I've not looked very hard at it (but the X system is awful)  - and then there's the monstrosity that is Windows. The words "WM_PAINT" still strike fear into my heart now, as do the initials "MFC".

When you get under the hood, you realise that the different OSes can be very different... it's just hidden from the average user to make them all look the same.

That's why some people are programmers and other people are users  I really need to start programming, but yeah even trying to choose toolkits / language, etc can be a pain.  I think i've decided on either Qt with Python, or Qt with C++.  But I want to be able to port applications to the Amiga easily, and Python is out of date, C++ will work, but Qt hasn't been ported to it, and I'd rather use something more native anyhow.

slaapliedje