Amiga.org
Amiga.org specific forums => New User Introductions => Topic started by: Solodric on February 06, 2005, 08:08:22 PM
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Hey, I'm a real newbie to this. I've never used an amiga before at all, and until recently I was under the impression that it was an open-source OS like Linux that did really well a long time ago. Could someone please explain to me the exact nature of what Amiga is?
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Wow, thats a hard one to answer ! Where do I start ?
Well, Amiga is a computer we had/have and it can be found in various models from small console sized ones up to desktop computers.
Amiga is also the operating system that we love to use, that we love to fiddle with, and hack around with to make it do what we want.
Amiga's are still in use all around the world, and can be emulated on many other computers to allow others of us to keep using the OS.
Amiga OS has never been open source and is not likely to become so, since OS4 is very close to release.
Amiga is what you make of it, and good fun while you are doing it as well.
Does that cover it ?
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You ask a big question Solodric.
The Amiga is many things. It is a way, and it is a feeling. It is a machine and it is a method.
There are many stories, legends, mysteries, lies, tales, truths and metatruths told about the Amiga but which is which is hard to say.
Only immersion in that which is Amiga shall enlighten the novice who chooses to follow the path.
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The Amiga as it was known in its greatest form was a computer manufactured by Commodore after the Commodore 64. The series of Amiga computers was known as the Commodore Amiga line. The Amiga line was light years ahead of the competition, offering true stereo sound during the time of the infamous PC Speaker, and arcade-like graphics when PC graphics were blocky. It also featured one of the first (if not the first, not sure about that) true multi-tasking OS, known as Workbench (Now known as Amiga OS).
Its capabilities were due to its use of custom chips for different operations (seperate Graphics & Audio chips, etc).
Commodore went bankrupt (due to poor business decisions, and the PC hardware was finally catching up) and Amiga was seperated from the Commodore name. It was bought by Escom, and the latest Amiga models were re-released without the Commodore badging. Eventually Escom went bankrupt and Amiga has been bought by several companies since, including Gateway. It is now independant, known as Amiga Inc. and there are new Amiga Computers being built on G3 / G4 hardware. Amiga OS 4 is under development, and whilst there are not many companies still developing software for the platform, there is still quite a bit of interest from hobbyists, etc.
Hope that clarifies everything for you. That's a bit of the basic history of Amiga.
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Here you can read alot about Amiga: Amiga History Guide (http://amiga.emugaming.com/)
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AROS is open source -> www.aros.org
AmigaOne and OS4 aren't -> www.amigaworld.net
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My real question is more about modern Amiga than it is about amiga's history. How does Amiga stack up against other modern OS's?
I'm a hardcore gamer and I need the best multitasking available. I was thinking running Windows on Linux (Since it runs better on Linux than it does normally) via ghost-drive to optimize performance, because I honestly cant go out and buy crudloads of RAM to cram into my system, I'd much prefer a system that makes the most of it's resources (Which need to be considerable for a gamer)
but I'd heard good things about Amiga, and if it's better I'll use it instead of linux, or maybe go really crazy and have Amiga>Linux>Windows running :P
What do you guys think?
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I think the best reference I could give that you could relate to is Apple MAC. Moderen Amiga OS is hardware dependant on 68k and PPC processors, with the exception of the AROS development project mentioned above. AROS is a project devoted to porting the classic Amiga OS to x86 and other hardware, but it's still being developed. Though we here agree Amiga is one of our favs, it's really not your best choice for the latest and greatest 3D engine games (Yet).:-) To run Amiga OS you will have to buy amiga hardware. You can download the latest AROS port and run it on your x86 PC, but software will be a bit foreign to you and won't include the lastest port of HL2 or DOOM3 :)
But don't let me put you off. Find and old amiga on ebay or play with AROS or even look up UAE (Universal Amiga Emulator) and emulate an amiga on your PC, I think you'll have fun anyway. Have a pocketpc? Then look here too....
PocketPC_UAE Amiga Emulator (http://pocketinsanity.sourceforge.net/index.php?content=uae_screens). Then just come back and ask lots of questions.
Plaz
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Hm. I'll probably try emulating it, yeah. My main question is: Is Amiga just a more efficient/effective OS than Windows or Linux? Will it use my somewhat limited RAM supply to greater effect?
What are Amiga's advantage and disadvantages? :P
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Hm. I'll probably try emulating it, yeah.
Emulation isn't efficient, it's just a way to see something how it works.
My main question is: Is Amiga just a more efficient/effective OS than Windows or Linux? Will it use my somewhat limited RAM supply to greater effect?
Here (http://www.basden.demon.co.uk/amiga/amiga.diffnt.html) is an interesting reading, although a bit old.
Your "somewhat limited RAM supply" must be more than the usual stock Amigas (varying from 256KB to 18MB on board -the so called "classic line"- ) with an OS that provides graphic interface and console.
Check out the Amiga Wiki (http://www.amigacentre.co.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl).
What are Amiga's advantage and disadvantages? :P
In your case, as "a hardcore gamer", there are only disadvantages (except if you're interested in some old games (http://www.back2roots.org/News)). I you were a developer, you could find interesting both AOS & Aros (speaking of Operating Systems, and not just the applications) :P
________
LESBIAN YOUNG (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/747/young/videos/1)
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Solodric wrote:
My real question is more about modern Amiga than it is about amiga's history. How does Amiga stack up against other modern OS's?
At this current point in time I'd say about 7 years behind Mac OS X or Windows XP in terms of features, 10 years behind in software, and a 0.001% chance of ever catching up.
I have no idea about Linux as I hated it the first time I used it and reformatted after a couple of days.
I'm a hardcore gamer and I need the best multitasking available.
Then an Amiga isn't for you unless you like the sound of playing 15-year-old arcade conversions and a handful of crashprone 7-year-old 3D PC ports which require an Amiga costing 5 times what a PC would and the PC would run it faster.
I was thinking running Windows on Linux (Since it runs better on Linux than it does normally) via ghost-drive to optimize performance, because I honestly cant go out and buy crudloads of RAM to cram into my system, I'd much prefer a system that makes the most of it's resources (Which need to be considerable for a gamer)
but I'd heard good things about Amiga, and if it's better I'll use it instead of linux, or maybe go really crazy and have Amiga>Linux>Windows running :P
What do you guys think?
I think an Amiga is nice to have as a hobby. The OS is fast and responsive. However the technology, even with PPC, is terribly outdated and it's way too expensive and there is no software available.
Sure, get an Amiga but just make sure you keep a Mac or PC handy for doing anything serious or playing games.
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Solodric wrote:
Hm. I'll probably try emulating it, yeah. My main question is: Is Amiga just a more efficient/effective OS than Windows or Linux? Will it use my somewhat limited RAM supply to greater effect?
Yes and yes.
What are Amiga's advantage and disadvantages? :P
Advantages... in 2005 none.
Disatvantages... high price, low speed, poor availability of software, old technology, no effective driving force behind it's development, no games, feature-lacking OS, tied to proprietary hardware, lack of drivers, etc etc.
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@Solodric
Want an expensive niche platform, but one with a lot of promise, a stupidly responsive OS and a clean sheet to develop for where you can make a difference? Get an AmigaONE.
Want to play old Amiga games, experience some retro nostalgia or run a fairly decent mid-range Amiga system for a low cost, so you can see what all the fuss is about? Get AmigaForever (an Amiga emulator + ROMs etc) or a real A1200.
Want an open-source OS with hardly any programs but'll work on your PC and is updated constanly? Get AROS.
Want to play ultra-modern games on maximum-specification hardware? None of the above.
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AmigaOS - Commercial operating system, currently coming up to version 4.0 (full release). Not open source, unless of course its AROS which is similar to AmigaOS 3.x but runs on x86 hardware.
Advantages of AmigaOS - There are some good games for it, fun to play around with since it is quite hard to mess up AmigaOS.
Disadvantages of AmigaOS - As far as modern applications go, it is quite weak. Although this is no fault of the operating system itself in most cases, this is just the small market and shortage of developers. Another thing to bare in mind is that although AmigaOS may be behind in features and standards compared to a lot of other OS's out there, AmigaOS has had many different owners and thus has caused a big gap in development, causing the current developers, Hyperion, to work extremely hard trying to "catch up" to the other features of its rivals.
Despite this being a massive job, it is not neccesarily impossible, and from what users of OS 4 have said, it is already a big improvement over the previous AmigaOS release, which was 3.9 in 2000.
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Hmm. I was going to dive into this thread, but I didn't... Now I guess I will. Amiga was never open-source, but between the once 'advanced' hardware and software and Commodore's willingness to document it, it was considered a very "open" system for its time.
This explains both the mindblowing demos/games, and their tendency to require somewhat specific hardware to run them. (And it still blows my mind just how much software existed and still exists on Aminet, versus what's left for Mac software if you can't be forced to move to 10... but that's a personal optimism. ;-))
Solodric wrote:
My real question is more about modern Amiga than it is about amiga's history. How does Amiga stack up against other modern OS's?
The memory protection and lack of multiuser aspects are issues for some, though OS4 paves a foundation for getting those sorted out. Those can be seen as things that 'slow down' gaming anyway, though it's never really that simple (and certainly isn't in this case, either). Gaming APIs should be good, when they're done and out, but this sort of amounts to reimplementing the equivalent of DirectX first, so it's hard to say how much you'll be wowed. (The magic comes later, if coders come to prefer what Hyperion's done, and start writing killer stuff targeting it.)
Meanwhile, the present options for hardware are fairly equivalent to an overclocked Gamecube in a number of ways -- similar CPUs, the option of faster GPUs, and with bottlenecks in slightly different spots (Gamecube, for instance, uses Rambus to a presumably good effect, while the current AmigaOnes are designed around good old SDRAM)... So you can certainly use that as a baseline for 'capability' when it comes to modern games. The problem is, we have to wait for developers to target or port to 4 to actually have modern games -- you'll have to wait and see what happens when the OS is actually 'released.'
I'm a hardcore gamer and I need the best multitasking available. I was thinking running Windows on Linux (Since it runs better on Linux than it does normally) via ghost-drive to optimize performance, because I honestly cant go out and buy crudloads of RAM to cram into my system, I'd much prefer a system that makes the most of it's resources (Which need to be considerable for a gamer)
I'm not entirely sure this sentence makes sense. WINE seems to have gotten pretty good, Transgaming (and whatever other companies have entered that space) offer a reasonable solution, but supported titles are still limited, and the current mess of GPU support is likely to obliterate your chances of a better experience even if you hit a corner case that works. (For instance, I hear you might be able to squeeze a better framerate out of DOOM3 under straight WINE in some circumstances, but only if the planets have aligned to give you the right graphics card/driver combo, and DOOM3 is one of the few performance-bound titles likely to be completely happy under that setup.) By all means, give it a shot, it's getting better every day, but I think it's a little early to call it a generalized solution, especially to the upgrade cycles Windows gaming demands.
Maybe I've missed something, because I'm also not sure what this usage of "ghost-drive" means -- Norton Ghost is a fine drive-cloning tool, but it's not an emulation solution, and it's not going to configure WINE for you. Is there something else by that name?
(Also, these solutions require Linux on x86, or the 64-bit equivalent, so I hope you weren't expecting that to be a magic portability bullet.)
but I'd heard good things about Amiga, and if it's better I'll use it instead of linux, or maybe go really crazy and have Amiga>Linux>Windows running :P
Since Amiga has decided to carry on with PPC, this is probably always going to suck until/unless Windows suddenly jumps off Intel and onto that platform, or PowerPC practically doubles in straight performance (Cell vector magic probably doesn't apply) versus x86-land. It won't suck worse than VirtualPC on Mac, but that's a form of emulation that requires actual 'emulation,' which has overhead. (...and you might be able to sweep some of that overhead out of the way with bytecode translation beforehand, but let's say that enters the realm of 'complicated stuff that would be common already if it were easy.')
However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have an Amiga alongside your PC, if/when there's something about it that makes it interesting to you. The world doesn't explode if you own hardware from multiple vendors, honest!
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I'd say that this "noob" is joking with you all. Noone would come to amiga.org and register if he didn't know what Amiga is. He could be that doomthingy or something similar.
Anyway, if he is a real noob, just give him link like:
http://amiga.emugaming.com/ahistory.html
no need to repeat the same story again and again, forever.
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I'm not jerking you guys around - that's hardly my style. I heard a little about Amiga from an old fan of it's and decided to Google it. That led me here. As for ghost drives, I was referring to partitioning your hardrive in such a way that the computer reads it has having two seperate drives, and you have your main drive (With your primary OS, such as Linux or Amiga) and the Ghost Drive can have a second OS (such as Windows) which you basicly access in a shell-like way, if I understand properly.
I'm not terribly computer savvy, to be honest, but I've had a few discussions about it and the above is the best I can figure out about ghost drives. Sounds like a good way to run Windows if you've the space (if that description is accurate)