I don't really see this as a bad thing, I see this as a necessity.
And why is that? And what is wrong with the direction?
It is clearly a legal necessity, since code has been trickling down from OS4. Right?
(Unless a certain entity buys out entire Hyperion - who knows, that would solve a lot)
You already know what I find wrong with the current direction, so no need to answer that again. Especially since all you do with any answer I give is to call me a "hater" and question my mental health.
what is wrong with a printer.device that prints correctly, an animation datatype that multitasks correctly and a CD file system that supports UDF? All these components came somehow into 3.1.4 through integration of 4.x components, just ,reviewed and bug-fixed to the amount necessary
Nothing wrong with that per se, but by nilly-willy pulling in OS4 components, the legal situation of the code gets even more entangled.
The 3.x series is a very conservative approach to the development, quite unlike 3.9 was and much less than 4.x attempted to be.
Unlike 3.9? Really. I don't find 3.5 and 3.9 to be very "radical" compared to 3.1, nothing fundamental was changed. With 3.2 there will be quite a few fundamental changes though, like system-startup, loading kickstart components from disk and setting up various devices pre-boot.
In fact, you really bewilder me: At the one hand, you ask for experimental components like 4-way adapter support, which we cannot test to the amount necessary to make it a product as robust as I would like to have it
And this bewilders me - IDEFix97 is named this for a reason - it came about in 1997 - it is more than 20 years ago. And support in other operating systems came along within a few years. And as it turns out, OS3.9 and OS4 also has had support all along... so, is it really experimental? Or do you prefer to name anything you have not had any hands-on experience with "experimental"?
How can it be, that the AmigaOS team is lacking so much in terms of hardware?
And refrain from using emulators as test cases?? This is _exactly_ what makes WinUAE so extremely useful, it has pretty much accurate emulation of _tons_ of Amiga hardware - and then the OS developers refuse to touch it? I find this ridiculous!
, at the other hand, you deny any development of components you don't appreciate and that are not even central to the Os experience. For example, the GUI will still be gadtools-based, thus rather lightweight, so why do you speak so hateful about reaction as it does not impact you at all. It may, however, improve the experience of other users that wait to have it.
"hateful"? You should save your superlatives to the times when they are truly needed.
Regarding the Reaction classes, I have two issues
* they are not the most efficient, nor the visually prettiest, often looking out of place
* more importantly - they are now considered Hyperion property and part of the "arsenal" against a better future.
You seem to have a very one-sided view on the development. "Only what I want, everything else is shit".
No, "anyone free to have whatever anyone wish" is what I would prefer.
To make matters worse, many of these bugs are in the kickstart chips that still are being sold.
Oh, worse, Cloanto sells 3.1 ROMs or 3.x ROMs ("developped without a license" (tm)) with even more bugs in it. Why isn't that bad? I believe it is actually worse, selling the old shit again, with the old bugs in it.
Old bugs that are _well known_ - which makes a huge difference.
We all understand, and you should appreciate this as well, that with a small developer group and - more important - a small group of beta-testers, our means are limited, yet we try the very best to fix what we broke.
Your resources are limited by choice - you could have tons more beta-testers (and more hardware available) if you chose a different approach.
And again I recommend to make a release candidate or two available in the wild for public testing at least for a month or two before burning and selling kickstart chips - it would _REALLY_ help a lot.
In 3.2, the System-Startup was designed to limit the impact of ROM bugs as many RAM components can be upgraded from disk without requiring the installation of a new ROM, and without requiring a reboot.
I do not mind rebooting, I don't know why so many care so much, makes me wonder if their systems are so unstable that boot time is so important. For me it is more important that systems are easy to debug, that they don't do unexpected things (like picking up some random ROM component from a filesystem that owner is using as download area)
3.1.4.1 fixes many, but far from all these bugs, and 3.1.4.1 will be the last "free update",
Apparently, you know more about the 3.1.4 updates than I do.
Well, if you know different, then please feel free to elaborate.
I have seen people asking if there will be a 3.1.4.5 or so, but no answer has been given as far as I have seen, so...
as 3.2 will be another product, and one with a vast amount of changes that go well beyond what OS 3.9 did, more and more becoming "OS 4 for 68k".
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Don't you think it is necessary to advance the 3.x line a bit?
Necessary? Not at all - cool, but not necessary. But that was not what I was writing, was it - I was writing that what is presented here, with this 3.2 line, is much more of a change over 3.1 than what OS3.5 and 3.9 ever was.
It is a less radical update than 3.9, the GUI stays pretty much the same.
The "GUI" was not changed in 3.9 either, less so, as it was still good old 3.1 Intuition.
Now we have Intuition.library v45 - based on original sources and rewritten from scratch, as the OS4 advert says...
OS3.5/3.9 with Reaction classes was not a dramatical change over OS3.1 with ClassAction, with exception of Workbench and ASL Prefs, one could still use old 3.1 Prefs programs if that was needed.
The only really radical changes about 3.5/3.9 was Workbench with AREXX support - which 3.1.4 and 3.2 also has, and explicit need for 020 on certain components - most annoyingly the resource.library.
Though what is wrong with a GUI that is no longer based on topaz.8, without the complexity of reaction?
Nothing - I welcome this. Too bad it will be entangled with Hyperion legalese.
What is bad about iconification gadgets in system tools?
That remains to be seen - depends how it behaves in certain corner cases.
What is wrong with windows you can drag out of the screen?
Well, I prefer this turned off, as it does not fit with my "workflow" where I often push windows to the screen border, or resize against a screen border. I would very much prefer to set qualifier that I can hold if I wish to drag windows off-screen. Also, without being able to have windows larger than screen, I really see very little use for it at all.
What is wrong with TAB-expansion in the Shell?
Nothing, it should have been there twenty-odd years ago.
None of these changes are radical, just slight tweaks, without impacting the overall "feel" of the Amiga.
The "feel" of Amiga is quite different depending on who you ask, the "feel" is not really important. What is important is how these changes are coming about, the timing and the context. It is _extremely_ "Amiga", and I don't mean that in a good way.
Which brings me to...
OS 4.x is a terrible mess
Exactly.
I do not know, and I do not care too much. The reason why I don't care about 4.x is that I never understood what a re-development of a retro-os on another outdated CPU platform is supposed to become.
It makes just as much sense as development of a retro-os on an original outdated CPU - sensewise, OS3 and OS4 are in the same boat.
I do not understand AROS for the same reason. If I would develop an Os from scratch, I would certainly not re-implement all the design errors of AmigaOs from scratch - so what's the point? There are better open portable operating systems than Amiga.
And nothing prevents you. The point of AROS was to scratch an itch, not to offer a product, nor to please anyone else but the developers themselves. Not like your work has much more point.
The only point in the 3.x development is to get rid of the "rough edges" of 3.1 and to integrate functionality into the Os that was otherwise provided by patches and hacks, with all the instabilities these provide. This is not about "creating a new operating system for 68K", because if I would want that, I would certainly not start from something as absurd as AmigaOs.
Say it again, louder, so that people can hear you.
What is the roadmap, exactly what patches and hacks do you want to get rid of? At what point do you consider OS3 finished?