Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: redrumloa on February 09, 2005, 04:45:00 PM
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Please keep this thread clean, with no 'hYpErIoN rOxXxX U fOOl' or 'McBill mows my lawn'. I'd rather this stay serious based on facts and potential senerios.
My opinions:
Is AROS going to be the future of the Amiga platform? It slowly marches on, quitely gainly ground on functionality. It would seem it's just a matter of time before it turns the corner and becomes a powerhouse that runs on dead cheap and plentiful hardware. It went fairly unnoticed that AROS got it's first TCP/IP and ethernet driver. People who have not looked at AROS in some time would be wuite impressed. It's still not ready for prime time, but you get the impression it should be building a head of steam in the near future. AROS has now lived through how many owners? How many official changes of direction? How many ever believed it would get this far?
MorphOS - dead.
Classic - will never die, but long since religated to hobyists.
A1/OS4 - As long as it's married to the current hardware, it's users will remain in the low thousands, very low. Officially it is still a beta prerelease, though overall the users seem quite happy with OS4 but pleasure with hardware is another story. How long can Hyperion develop as a charity? Am I missing something? I just don't see a long term future with it married to a single $1000 motherboard, especially considering even a higher spec mac is less than half price for a full computer.
What will Amiga forums be talking about in 2007 or 2008? How about 2010?
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Red..
'hYpErIoN rOxXxX U fOOl'
Hahaha!
I downloaded aros and was very impressed... now time to play with it (need to get the latest release with TCP stack :-)
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My opinions:
Is AROS going to be the future of the Amiga platform? It slowly marches on, quitely gainly ground on functionality. It would seem it's just a matter of time before it turns the corner and becomes a powerhouse that runs on dead cheap and plentiful hardware. It went fairly unnoticed that AROS got it's first TCP/IP and ethernet driver. People who have not looked at AROS in some time would be wuite impressed. It's still not ready for prime time, but you get the impression it should be building a head of steam in the near future. AROS has now lived through how many owners? How many official changes of direction? How many ever believed it would get this far?
It's a community OS vs corporate OS. Community takes longer and is usually rougher then corporate OSs as drive to code comes in waves and nulls. Support groups, like TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/) tries to fill in and level out some of the more nasty valleys that tend to follow spikes of coding. Two old bounties that were dropped are now back in active developement. Good news for those of us who want FAT32 support and run AROS hosted on OS-X.
What will Amiga forums be talking about in 2007 or 2008? How about 2010?
You really know how to install fear in a guy, don't you. ;^)
Dammy
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Future for Amiga ??? Possibly a Cell technologies based accelerator card for the 68k series ?!
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I think not :-D
But, i wonder how fast say an a1200 with RTG and a 1ghz CPU would go ...
Cell powered Amigaone would be cool tho :-D
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I downloaded aros and was very impressed... now time to play with it (need to get the latest release with TCP stack
I think CoolCat is planning AROS-Max 0.4.0 release in another two weeks. That one is probably going to be the best one for tcp/ip and NIC drivers to try out.
Oh, and Redrumloa has some nifty hardware that should work here (http://stores.ebay.com/Auctions-by-redrumloa-eShop_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQdptZ0QQfclZ4QQftidZ2QQstorecachemissZauctionsbyredrumloaeshopQQtZkm).
Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/)
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Is AROS the future of the Amiga?
Hmmm... Good question... It's certainly the future of my Amiga... but then I doubt many people here doubt that :-D
I hope that people will enjoy using AROS, even if it isn't their main Amgia experience :-)
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AROS is the future of AROS. Amiga is dead. :-D
;-)
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Amiga is dead
... Says mr Positivity in the amiga community :-D
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@ Dammy
I got a realtec RTL8129 PCI card... that chipset is supported right?
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LinchpiN wrote:
Amiga is dead
... Says mr Positivity in the amiga community :-D
Well, there's positivity and then there's mindless optimism. ;-)
But I kid. I hope no-one takes that the wrong way. :-)
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I was only joking man!
(Hence the big "doomy blue grin" )
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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What will Amiga forums be talking about in 2007 or 2008? How about 2010?
Hmm... AROS splits into two camps and users are killing each others.
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long term future with it married to a single $1000 motherboard
IMHO if I were to chose the "motherboard-dongle" I would have chosen the YTBD Playstation3.
(but that's with the grand assumption of several intangibles)
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I hope it is the future or at least a close second. I do wish OS4 all the best. However, for me at least, I have been burnt twice. Once when Commadore went bust and then when BeOS went belly up. I simply find it hard to trust a coperation trying to put out a desktop OS. There are so many things in the way. In the case of the new Amiga, I think it is the hardware. It is just so outdated and expensive. It is unlikly that the scale of economics will ever allow them to compete price wise.. I honestly wish more of the Amiga community would take part in Aros, but that is just me... If it were ready I would use it in a heartbeat. If there was commerical software for it, I would buy it... I am probably not the only one.... There are so many talented devlopers in this community. Can you image what Aros would be like if more of them were working on it?? It would ROCK!!
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I love the way people assume stuff will just die off. I mean, how many people still use a classic? The writing was on the wall in 1993 that the platform was on a hiding to nowhere and yet plenty of people still have them and use them now, 12 years later.
The future of the amiga is diverse and multifaceted. In 2010 there will still be OS3.x users, AROS users, OS4 users, MOS users and any other variants that have appeared in the interim .
I don't expect the overall userbase of any of the above will be that big (although I hope to be proved wrong), but I bet they will all still exist.
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by LinchpiN on 2005/2/9 13:11:19
I got a realtec RTL8129 PCI card... that chipset is supported right?
Unfortunetly, no. Only RTL that is currently supported is 8029. I will hope some kind Dev will port rtl8139, eventually. So many chipsets, so little time. The only new networking chipset, that I know of, is being worked on is under a Bounty #27 (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/bounty_details_27.html), support for nForce2 NIC. I do encourage everyone to either drop a few Euros in this or create a new bounty for a given chipset to make arosTCP more end user useful.
Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/)
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Amiga will die when my Amiga dies and I cannot replace it. Atari will die when my Atari dies and I cannot replace it.
My Timex-Sinclair 1000 died. I ... don't think I'll replace that one. :-D
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bjjones37 wrote:
Amiga will die when my Amiga dies and I cannot replace it. Atari will die when my Atari dies and I cannot replace it.
My Timex-Sinclair 1000 died. I ... don't think I'll replace that one. :-D
I haev two, very much alive ZX81's :-D
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bloodline wrote:
bjjones37 wrote:
Amiga will die when my Amiga dies and I cannot replace it. Atari will die when my Atari dies and I cannot replace it.
My Timex-Sinclair 1000 died. I ... don't think I'll replace that one. :-D
I haev two, very much alive ZX81's :-D
I still have a TS-1500 and a TS-2068. What would the Sinclair equivalents of those be?
Ahem, oh yeah, AROS, lookin' good. :-D
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bjjones37 wrote:
bloodline wrote:
bjjones37 wrote:
Amiga will die when my Amiga dies and I cannot replace it. Atari will die when my Atari dies and I cannot replace it.
My Timex-Sinclair 1000 died. I ... don't think I'll replace that one. :-D
I haev two, very much alive ZX81's :-D
I still have a TS-1500 and a TS-2068. What would the Sinclair equivalents of those be?
Ahem, oh yeah, AROS, lookin' good. :-D
ZX Spectrums, I guess.
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I think that AROS is definitely the most likely to stay afloat - MorphOS has already hit very bad times, and the future of OS4 won't be secured until a lot more people can be convinced to buy into it. The nature of an open-source project is to allow it to continue indefinitely.
However (and this might be a controversial view) I cannot see what will happen to AROS once they've reached the ability to perfectly emulate the OS3.1 API. I personally think that open-source projects are great when there's a defined goal to reach (eg POSIX/Linux, Windows/ReactOS, Windows look'n'feel/KDE) but can reach problems when the time comes to add original functionality; with so many developers, its hard to make a clean break and start making completely novel features. Perhaps they'll prove me wrong, but AmigaOS4, while a lot less likely to be kept alive, offers the best chance of a "future Amiga" IMHO.
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Am I missing something?
Yes.
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@Rogue
A limb or three if you're not careful with that double ended light sabre thingy :-D
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I was always dead set against AROS. I've never liked the x86 architecture so wasn't too crazy about an "Amiga" which used x86 CPUs, and a part of me always viewed it as a crime against humanity to run AmigaOS on a PC anyway.
In October 2004 I saw a PC running AROS for the first time. I have to say I was extremely impressed - it runs well, it's fast, and it looks to be shaping up quite well.
I also tried OS4 for the first time in October 2004, and I was VERY impressed with that too!
Brian
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The thing no one is taking about is programs, like web, email, user experience, AROS acts like AmigaOS3.1,
tiers no memory protection, no stack enlargement, no support for old programs, there no debugger integrated,
there no Java, no CSS support for your web browser, no opus5, it's uses less for every thing,
it's like having a desktop you can do any thing whit, no media player.
AmigaOS4.0 is just way better,
the only argument for AROS is that it runs on AMD/Intel, and I hate unstable PC's whit fan noise over 100db,
ten years from now there might be AROS to work whit, if it exists,
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A limb or three if you're not careful with that double ended light sabre thingy
Don't worry, I killed an undead Sith lord with that thing. I can handle it...
Too bad I still need to make my own noises :-)
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Rogue wrote:
Too bad I still need to make my own noises :-)
I'm sorry, I just got a mental picture of you then as the Star Wars Kid...
:roflmao:
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I see AROS as the natural progression .....
(I was against it before because of incompatability
with Classic Amiga)
But time marchs on and the old classic hardware is dying
of old age and just wearing out.
(I still love and use both of my Amigas)
Aros is gaining ground, adding new fearures almost every
day. When they solve the harddrive install problem I
think quite a few users will migrate over. It will be a slow
migration. Most of us have an old PC around not being
used (to slow for WinXP) and decide one day, 'What the Hell'
I'm going to take a look at AROS. Most will think its "Not
to Bad" and play around with it for awhile.
Thats the way most things work.. slow ... but, in the end
it will be that way.
After all it costs nothing to try, then you're probably
hooked.
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AmiBools wrote:
The thing no one is taking about is programs, like web, email, user experience, AROS acts like AmigaOS3.1,
tiers no memory protection, no stack enlargement, no support for old programs, there no debugger integrated,
there no Java, no CSS support for your web browser, no opus5, it's uses less for every thing,
it's like having a desktop you can do any thing whit, no media player.
AmigaOS4.0 is just way better,
the only argument for AROS is that it runs on AMD/Intel, and I hate unstable PC's whit fan noise over 100db,
ten years from now there might be AROS to work whit, if it exists,
Any decent PC is totally stable and reasonably quiet, mine is almost inaudible.
About AROS lacking things, just give it a bit of time, and think about what OS4 is lacking compared to other OS's, probably even SkyOS.. (what I'm saying is it's silly to compare them...considering the "grand picture")
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AmiBools wrote:
The thing no one is taking about is programs, like web, email, user experience, AROS acts like AmigaOS3.1,
tiers no memory protection, no stack enlargement, no support for old programs, there no debugger integrated,
there no Java, no CSS support for your web browser, no opus5, it's uses less for every thing,
it's like having a desktop you can do any thing whit, no media player.
AmigaOS4.0 is just way better,
the only argument for AROS is that it runs on AMD/Intel, and I hate unstable PC's whit fan noise over 100db,
ten years from now there might be AROS to work whit, if it exists,
I would like to address this by saying first of all I am not an OS4 hater. I think the guys at hyperion and amiga inc. are doing some really cool things. My problem and something I see as a problem for it in the US market is it doesn't use cheaply available INTEL hardware.. The US market has embraced whole heartedly. I for one was not a fan of intel cpu's until the first pentiums came about, which solved a lot of architectural issues.. The reality is that they are plentiful and cheap and you can't fight that. The thing is that they are faster and arguably cheaper than the G4 and available in quantity, including the AMD64s..
I would like to talk about web email and user experience on AROS. The fact of the matter is that it would be easy to port any existing Amiga code with the level of source compatibility that they have attained. Not even OS4 web browsers really touch the current CSS DOM and functionality of FireFox or Internet Explorer. So, I'd just say that there is no real advantage there at this time..
As far as memory protection, can you tell me honestly that it's turned on by DEFAULT? Probably not because it introduces incompatibilities with some software. While it's there and it's a feature, it's not like saying you have VIRTUAL memory. The classic Amiga didn't really have memory management and most programs were well written and didn't need it..
As for no Java for it, you are wrong again. J/Amiga is in development for it as well as OS4 and there is a binary for it.. As for no Opus 5.. Well there is the open source version of Opus.. I doubt I'd need more functionality than that and honestly Opus isn't all that great.. You sound like a Windows XP user who still wants to use the old Norton Commander for DOS..
As for no media player, don't you really have to go out an buy Frogger for OS4 to get a good full featured media player anyway.. Seems to me there are plenty of PD open source Amiga players that would be a simple port to AROS..
Oh and no debugger? Do you as an end user of an operating system want to really see a debugger? Probably not, it sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes up saying "this is not professional"... So I really think that's a minimal thing..
Also, for the Amiga user who doesn't like AROS because they say it's incompatible.. Well lets talk about compatibility for a second.. Is the AmigaOne with OS 4 really much more compatible? Does the A1 read a classic Amiga floppy (without a catweasel) or retain compatiblity with classic Amiga custom chipsets. Are there Zorro slots next to the PCI slots??
It's probably not software compatible with without E-UAE... Wait what's that? It's the UAE Amiga emulator, you know like Amiga Forever or WinUAE (wait shudder I just mentioned something for windows)..
The truth is there is no generation of new Amiga that is compatible with the previous generation of Amiga's. Even the Amiga one.. The PowerPC processor is not the 68000 series, and even the PPC add-ons for old amigas, aren't software binarily compatible as I understand is.
So how does one get classic compatibility (how can I run Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Print etc.??) Well my guess is thru UAE on all those platforms whether you run it on Windows, A1/OS4, or AROS UAE.. So anyone against it because it's an intel processor is probably just biased unecessarily. Current PCs are stable and very worthy and cheap. Whatever flavor of OS you decide on you can be compatible with classic Amiga through UAE..
How many people actually use old Amiga 3.5" disks today anyway, and haven't moved there software from old systems onto ADF? Not many that I know of.. Disks go bad media goes bad, you can't get new ds/dd disks very easily anymore.. Mechanisms for 880K drives are made anymore.. Most people run an emulator..
So that question is what really runs UAE the best? I'd bet you can't beat intel hardware for speed. Also WinUAE is probably updated the most.. So saying the A1 has a better lineage just doesn't work for me..
What I like about the A1 is the new user interface and it's promise of further future development. It's nice, but I have no interest in the reaction gui and I could run a web browser on any number of other platforms and get better results.
How many new programs are coming out for the A1 vs AROS.. So far I see more programs ported every day than I find up on OS4Depot.. The problem is to get into the A1 you have a big money hardware investment. However you do get a comercial product (insert the windows vs linux argument here) with support behind it (commercial vs community). Most people who want a new amiga want it to run their old software library. It's just as easy with UAE on any platform. UAE is great. Where would we be as a community without it??
I just don't see OS 4 as way better. I just see it as the real Amiga. I see AROS as the PowerPC hardware alternative that lets me stay with an Amiga like OS while keeping my existing hardware investment..
The next generation AmigaOS might offer us some new features like hardware 3d support, multi user, and better networking. If it does it will finally be the upgrade that propells the OS forward and is a reason to look at it more competitively again..
As for AROS it's future lies in where it's user/developer community wants to take it.. While I won't invest in a G4 or G5 for myself. I think it's nice to have an Amiga style OS even if it's not an Amiga. I feel more secure in my hardware investment and how I use my machine.
I don't think the A1/OS4 will loose sales to AROS anymore than it's already loosing sales to windows. However having said that I bet the biggest Amiga user population growth these days is probably still WinUAE..
Having said I wont own a G4/G5 Amiga. I already three powerpc based Macs.. Let me tell you, my intel machines and AMD 64s just appear and clock faster. All of you PowerPC pundits need to check out the dark side.. You just might be happy these days..
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Wow!!!
"Is AROS the future of the Amiga?"
To tell you the truth I never gave it much thought.....and you know what....I still don't.
I'm sure there are people out there excited about AROS....but would they number greater than people excited about the future of OS4?
I seriously doubt it.
OS4 is the only Amiga thing with a chance.
To assume that AROS is the future of the Amiga would imply that you think that OS4 will fail. I don't think it will fail unless you have unrealistic expectations about success. I just hope everyone concerned will be able to make a living on it and enjoy the experience as much as the users are. As long as they don't get too ambitious and go out of business they'll be fine, and so far that is what I see them doing.
How many people are working full time on AROS versus how many of OS4? How can AROS even hope to catch up with OS4 when it hasn't even caught up with OS3 really? I see people port apps to MorphOS and OS4 and even classic sometimes, but I rarely hear anything about an AROS port, even though logic suggests that it would be the most accessible.
Yes, I've been as frustrated in the past about the hardware specs and the cost of an A1. But when you get an Amiga you're purchasing it to be different. You're purchasing it because you are different. When its finally released how can its lure not grab you? You must have the precious....You'll buy it for the experience....An Amiga won't ever be considered cutting edge again....we all know it....but it doesn't mean you don't want one. Justifying it is a different thing but I think there are many who will eventually, once things start to take off and everything, including a new complete system, is released and marketed as THE AMIGA.
When KMOS start marketing(don't laugh) it will be an Amiga they will be marketing, and the tech world will pay attention. You'll want an AMIGA then.....not a PC.
Wait 'till its done. Then talk. Ye of little faith.
And I am sooo surprised that there are so many in this thread. All good things are worth waiting for.
Ok. Going back to my happy place now. (http://64.33.47.100/images/a1000anim.gif)
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/queue 1950's style news reel/
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!
In the year 2010, we'll be using neural networked quantum computers with neural synaptic connections to our optical cortex with 3D Holographic display matrix. With the decline of Microsoft, due to every expanding computing requirements and bugs/security holes introduced with each new hotfix release, and the dilution of Linux with nearly one thousand flavors of distributions these computers will be running a myriad of open source operating systems. Chief amongst them AROS, the Amiga Research Operating System.
/end news reel/
For me, AROS is plan B. If All else fails, there is AROS. It's quietly off to the side of Red vs. Blue debates. Slowly moving along doing its own thing. Answering only to itself.
It's coming along quite nicely. I'm really looking forward to the next AROS-Max release.
Stop over to the Team AROS site and drop a couple of bits in to the bounty jar. :-D
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Asking "Is AROS the future of the Amiga?" is like asking "Is Wine (http://www.winehq.com/) the future of Windows?"
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drHirudo wrote:
Asking "Is AROS the future of the Amiga?" is like asking "Is Wine (http://www.winehq.com/) the future of Windows?"
So you agree with Red then? Since M$ themselves have had to build a "Wine layer" for XP64 and Longhorn...
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I see AROS as the natural progression .....
OS4 is the natural evolution, the future. Try it, you will love it :-)
Aros is a good alternative, free and slowly but steady updated.... and i don't think MOS is dead anyway.
Be positive, OS4 is amazing, AmigaOne is not cheap but our market is still little. Anyway if i bought an XE everybody interested should be able to do it... i'm a very poor guy :-)
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drHirudo wrote:
Asking "Is AROS the future of the Amiga?" is like asking "Is Wine (http://www.winehq.com/) the future of Windows?"
A more correct analogy would be to ask:
"Is GNU/Linux the future of UNIX?"
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I would like to address this by saying first of all I am not an OS4 hater. I think the guys at hyperion and amiga inc. are doing some really cool things. My problem and something I see as a problem for it in the US market is it doesn't use cheaply available INTEL hardware.. The US market has embraced whole heartedly. I for one was not a fan of intel cpu's until the first pentiums came about, which solved a lot of architectural issues.. The reality is that they are plentiful and cheap and you can't fight that. The thing is that they are faster and arguably cheaper than the G4 and available in quantity, including the AMD64s..
I believe quality is better then quantity, And that price tag is well worth it if it’s any good.
I would like to talk about web email and user experience on AROS. The fact of the matter is that it would be easy to port any existing Amiga code with the level of source compatibility that they have attained. Not even OS4 web browsers really touch the current CSS DOM and functionality of FireFox or Internet Explorer. So, I'd just say that there is no real advantage there at this time..
This is true and this really is the problem, whit AROS it takes to long to develop the stuff need whit small number of developers,
As far as memory protection, can you tell me honestly that it's turned on by DEFAULT?
Probably not because it introduces incompatibilities with some software.
Yes it on, it detects some errors (it not fully enabled)
While it's there and it's a feature, it's not like saying you have VIRTUAL memory. The classic Amiga didn't really have memory management and most programs were well written and didn't need it.
True, the only problem is that games to day, require more ram then most computers have for textures, and you the growing use of PNG icons and 24bit graphics, so the system requires more.
As for no Java for it, you are wrong again. J/Amiga is in development for it as well as OS4 and there is a binary for it..
Yes, and it’s not progressing fast..
As for no Opus 5.. Well there is the open source version of Opus.. I doubt I'd need more functionality than that and honestly Opus isn't all that great.. You sound like a Windows XP user who still wants to use the old Norton Commander for DOS..
No you have mixed up Opus 5 whit Directory Opus 4, Opus 5 is full scale desktop, and the need to program that can control types of AmigaDOS commands like lha and mod players, images viewers, can be handy even to day, there lots of nice old programs, to be found and used that works on OS40,
As for no media player, don't you really have to go out an buy Frogger for OS4 to get a good full featured media player anyway.. Seems to me there are plenty of PD open source Amiga players that would be a simple port to AROS..
MPlayer (DVD,AVI,MPEG,WMA,…,), AMP2 (MPG) and movid (AVI,DIVX) are all excellent (free) programs, forogger is buggy and don’t work…
Oh and no debugger? Do you as an end user of an operating system want to really see a debugger? Probably not, it sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes up saying "this is not professional"... So I really think that's a minimal thing..
To report errors when they are found back to the developer, the quality of the programs increases this way, there are rally many badly programmed 68k programs to be found, some thing you find when use AmigaOS4.0
Also, for the Amiga user who doesn't like AROS because they say it's incompatible.. Well lets talk about compatibility for a second.. Is the AmigaOne with OS 4 really much more compatible? Does the A1 read a classic Amiga floppy (without a catweasel) or retain compatiblity with classic Amiga custom chipsets. Are there Zorro slots next to the PCI slots??
To some degree yes, there is paula emulation called nellypuh you can play sound, aga/ecs screens modes and emulated, as you say your limited to software that don’t access chips directly yes, unless as you say run uae on top of AmigaOS4.0
You most check out the compatibilitylist at intuitionbase for classic software.
It's probably not software compatible with without E-UAE... Wait what's that? It's the UAE Amiga emulator, you know like Amiga Forever or WinUAE (wait shudder I just mentioned something for windows)..
yes WinUAE is better the E-UAE, then again the software that runs whit out UAE gets big speed boost by the native system resources, And you do not need to start UAE as a bonus, JIT is on it’s way for AmigaOS4.0, it’s used in the bata versions under testing
The truth is there is no generation of new Amiga that is compatible with the previous generation of Amiga's. Even the Amiga one.. The PowerPC processor is not the 68000 series, and even the PPC add-ons for old amigas, aren't software binarily compatible as I understand is.
PPC and 68k uses the same byte order, so it’s better for emulation, more sync whit classic, E-UAE for example presents the Amiga500 almost as the real thing whit out JIT, try disable JIT on WinUAE and run shadow of the beast, or any other game.
So how does one get classic compatibility (how can I run Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Print etc.??) Well my guess is thru UAE on all those platforms
yes DPaint don work, PPaint works, some programs do not work, some programs do work,
PPaint is just as good as Dpaint, and really TVpaint, FXpaint is a lot better for true color displays.
whether you run it on Windows, A1/OS4, or AROS UAE.. So anyone against it because it's an intel processor is probably just biased unecessarily.
I’m not against winuae, it most likely is doing a better job at promoting AmigaOS then AROS right now.
Current PCs are stable and very worthy and cheap. Whatever flavor of OS you decide on you can be compatible with classic Amiga through UAE..
My personal experience is different,
How many people actually use old Amiga 3.5" disks today anyway, and haven't moved there software from old systems onto ADF? Not many that I know of.. Disks go bad media goes bad, you can't get new ds/dd disks very easily anymore.. Mechanisms for 880K drives are made anymore.. Most people run an emulator..
I agree that floppy’s is bad media, old and outdated, and I can’t use Amiga floppy disk my self, I found 68k tool on aminet that allows me to mount disk images, and I’m using a frends Amiga1200 to transfer my old disk to a zip drive, currently using a USB zip drive on the AmigaOne
So that question is what really runs UAE the best? I'd bet you can't beat intel hardware for speed. Also WinUAE is probably updated the most.. So saying the A1 has a better lineage just doesn't work for me..
I be showing my amigaone/os4 setup to you if you did not live in the US. ;-)
What I like about the A1 is the new user interface and it's promise of further future development. It's nice, but I have no interest in the reaction gui and I could run a web browser on any number of other platforms and get better results.
That’s just a visual feature most of the changes are under the hood.
How many new programs are coming out for the A1 vs AROS.. So far I see more programs ported every day than I find up on OS4Depot.. The problem is to get into the A1 you have a big money hardware investment.
The dollar not at it’s best, you better start making some thing over there ;-) or Asia is taking over,
or maybe the war’s has a cost.
However you do get a comercial product (insert the windows vs linux argument here) with support behind it (commercial vs community). Most people who want a new amiga want it to run their old software library. It's just as easy with UAE on any platform. UAE is great. Where would we be as a community without it??
How knows, maybe Amiga and clones it will all die whit 197x/198x/199x generation of users.
I just don't see OS 4 as way better. I just see it as the real Amiga. I see AROS as the PowerPC hardware alternative that lets me stay with an Amiga like OS while keeping my existing hardware investment..
Quite a few OS is running on i686 and many of them are good, so do they not cover a lager market?
The next generation AmigaOS might offer us some new features like hardware 3d support,
Warp3D almost ready from what I read at aw.net,
multi user, and better networking.
No the current or the upcoming version, how knows?
If it does it will finally be the upgrade that propells the OS forward and is a reason to look at it more competitively again..
The biggest advantage it it’s size and how little cpu usage it need to run.
As for AROS it's future lies in where it's user/developer community wants to take it.. While I won't invest in a G4 or G5 for myself. I think it's nice to have an Amiga style OS even if it's not an Amiga. I feel more secure in my hardware investment and how I use my machine.
the hardware investment in a AmigaOne, makes shore that hypersion can work full time on developing the platform as small amount goes back to development of the OS,
I don't think the A1/OS4 will loose sales to AROS anymore than it's already loosing sales to windows. However having said that I bet the biggest Amiga user population growth these days is probably still WinUAE..
True
Having said I wont own a G4/G5 Amiga. I already three powerpc based Macs.. Let me tell you, my intel machines and AMD 64s just appear and clock faster. All of you PowerPC pundits need to check out the dark side.. You just might be happy these days..
A already have, and I don’t like it.
AROS looks great it’s just too slow progress.
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As far as memory protection, can you tell me honestly that it's turned on by DEFAULT? Probably not because it introduces incompatibilities with some software. While it's there and it's a feature, it's not like saying you have VIRTUAL memory. The classic Amiga didn't really have memory management and most programs were well written and didn't need it..
As far as MP goes, the more or less general consesus among us AROS developers is that it will take a completely new API to be taken advantage of for real. It just makes no sense for apps to be able to protect some memory areas, and then leave the backdoor open for other apps to come in and mess things up.
As for virtual memory, just a couple of days ago I've implemented the needed (small) changes to exec to allow for a custom memory subsystem to be implemented which provides virtual memory. This feature is currently exploited by the linux hosted flavour of AROS, which can now use the host's virtual memory mamagement to implement virtual memory for AROS.
As for no media player, don't you really have to go out an buy Frogger for OS4 to get a good full featured media player anyway.. Seems to me there are plenty of PD open source Amiga players that would be a simple port to AROS..
We don't have Mplayer (yet), but we have a commandline app, named "play", which uses the same codecs mplayer uses, which can therefore play back anything mplayer can.
Oh and no debugger? Do you as an end user of an operating system want to really see a debugger? Probably not, it sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes up saying "this is not professional"... So I really think that's a minimal thing..
AROS does have an integrated debugger, though. Or rather, it integrates perfectly well with gdb, when running hosted. The ability to run AROS hosted is something that we, as developers, could never ever get rid of. It's just too useful to be able to backtrace into the living or dead AROS, together with all apps loaded.
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As far as memory protection, can you tell me honestly that it's turned on by DEFAULT?
Probably not because it introduces incompatibilities with some software.
Yes it on, it detects some errors (it not fully enabled)
So in the future memset(SysBase->MainInterface, 0, 0x12345678); cant screw up system?
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We don't have Mplayer (yet), but we have a commandline app, named "play", which uses the same codecs mplayer uses, which can therefore play back anything mplayer can.
Is it "easy" to recompile old Amiga programs to AROS? When porting to MorphOS or AmigaOS4 you mainly finetune your hooks and possibly 68k varargs functions, but I have no idea what kind of precautions are needed for AROS code?
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Is it "easy" to recompile old Amiga programs to AROS? When porting to MorphOS or AmigaOS4 you mainly finetune your hooks and possibly 68k varargs functions, but I have no idea what kind of precautions are needed for AROS code?
The only things that you have to pay attention to are, in sparse order:
1) hooks
2) asm code
3) varargs
for 1 and 2 you can just use the AROS_UF#? macros, for 3, we'd prefer people to use the inline macro version of those vararg functions.
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4) endianess. usually for file/io. sometimes also for other things (like image data arrays)
5) dos packets
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While OS4 is the next generation of Workbench/Intuition, and is really great, unless changes occur on the hardware front there's not going to be enough money coming in to stop the whole thing folding. It's not something I want to happen, but I think it will.
x86 hardware isn't going to disappear for a while yet, and as AROS doesn't need to get a bunch of money to continue development, I don't think it will either. The more features that are added to it the more people will be interested, and provided at least some of these people contribute it will just keep gaining assets (be they advocates, developers, sponors or whatever), get more features, and attract more people in turn.
In short, IMO, AROS has the potential to end up successful, and quite possibly the largest OS of the Amiga community - this isn't Return of the Jedi, in real life everyone gives in to the dark side at some point ;-)
Oh yeah, and the mere fact this is being debated shows that it's considered a player in the Amiga hood. word. :-D
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The best thing about AROS for me is that x86 means cheap access to small formfactors. Like this
533Mhz Geode @1W PC/104 (http://www.dspdesign.com/products/product_detail?product_id=127)
or this
http://www.ampro.com/html/coremodule_800.html (http://www.ampro.com/html/coremodule_800.html)
or this:
http://www.laptopsinc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=P1120CTO&Category_Code=PS2 (http://www.laptopsinc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=P1120CTO&Category_Code=PS2)
or regular laptops.
µA1-I, MicroAmigaOne-Industrial. Well thats a nice dream but mini-itx is waaay to big. Hell even PC/104 is to big for many uses in industry.
It´s the same with Pegasos.
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Excellent thread this, with some wonderful debate.
I downloaded the bootable AROS last week and ran it. Apart from my mouse not working, I was genuinely stunned at what has been achieved so far.
I have yet to see OS4, and really would like to. If there's anyone in the Yorkshire region of England, give me a shout please :-) .
AROS is a great start, and with a lot of thought I do see it moving forward. In particular, I'd like to see the stuff that has already been mentioned in order to bring it up to speed in the modern OS world - memory protection in particular would be a hot topic for me.
When I get spare time, I will be looking to see how I can help with AROS. At the moment, I can't afford/justify spending out on OS4, and that saddens me :-(
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chiark wrote:
Excellent thread this, with some wonderful debate.
I downloaded the bootable AROS last week and ran it. Apart from my mouse not working, I was genuinely stunned at what has been achieved so far.
Can you give more details about your set up?
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Sure - it's a Dell Latitude C640. It's docked and using a PS/2 Microsoft mouse (old one). The mouse, as soon as its used, skits the pointer right to tbe bottom of the screen and refuses to move. Using the keyboard shortcuts gets around the problem :-)
If I can help, email me - chiark@gmail.com :-D
Sorry for off topic :-)
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we can all hope for development in MOS to continue..
we can all hope the same for AOS4...
...but as many of us sense (or should I say, 'fear'), the dramatic reality of the matter is that the long term sustainability of a platform in general or operating system in particular, is determined by market forces .
Speculating and comparing OSs feature-wise is all very good (and entertaining!) but it tell us very little about which one will survive in the medium-term and spread to a greater user base.
If you want to do more than wishful thinking and desire to genuinely understand and (to a small extent) be able to make informed guesses with a reasonable chance of getting it right then you may want to see what the experts have to say.
There are people who have done more than just speculate: they have observed, measured, modelled and drawn conclusions from the spread of past technologies (be they OSs, specific IT products, or even biomedical innovations) and are in a position to talk with some confidence about which technology succeeds and which one is doomed to failure. They have looked into market forces, the technology's characteristics down to individual user preferences and have compiled lists of 'determinants' of success.
I would not dare try to explain the concept in the few lines of this post but to give an idea of the potency of such insights, here are the most fundamental ones as mentioned by such people as Everett Rogers:
-the technology's relative advantage
-the technology's cost
-the competitive pressure
-compatibility
-complementarity
-observability
-trialability
I guess this puts into perspective why microsoft has dominated the market. Your final prediction depends a lot on your estimates of these determinants but broadly IMHO, I expect AROS to be around the longest and have, by far (that should be in capitals, FAR), the biggest user base - however always falling short of going mainstream, say to the extent that linux has.
It is a hobby OS and it has the potential to make a great many of us, very, very happy in our everyday computing and even allow us to do serious work on it but don't expect it (even in the best case scenario) to have a much greater appeal than your average linux distro.
As far as AOS4, MOS are concerned, ironically IMHO MOS still has greater potential to spread more broadly - eventually even 'fusing' with AROS. This boils down to price and the number of existing adopters and developers. I will be extremely surprised to see AOS4 developed commercially in three years from now, but who knows, weirder things have happened! I certainly hope so! :-)
p.s.
Look out at amazon for Rogers (2003), "The Diffusion of Innovations"
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Chiark - try running it while not docked - AROS works fine on a Synaptics touchpad. If that fails it can be run under the QEmu PC emulator without problems ;-)
Amigean - I think you're over-analizing there, within the Amiga market everything /should/ have disappeared a long time ago if going by regular industry indicators. It's like it's the odd one out, that doesn't play by the rules.
As for AROS and MOS fusing, that will never happen, however elements of AROS have appeared in AmigaOS and elements of MOS (namely Ambient) have been realeased under the GPL so they could be ported as add-ons to AROS. The main reason for more integration not happenning is mostly to do with licensing issues as AROS is under the APL, and most other stuff is under the GPL (more restrictive).
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I really like the look of AROS and how things are coming along, but I would prefer it if they made a PPC version that could run on PPC Macs & Amigas.
I mean if AROS DOES turn out to be the future, and for one reason or another AmigaOS development goes belly up, what are all the PPC Amiga owners going to do with there machines if they want a more up-to-date OS? Not all of them will want to cling onto OS 4 beta forever, or OS 3.x. I think AROS on PPC would be a nice idea. :-)
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what are all the PPC Amiga owners going to do with there machines if they want a more up-to-date OS?
Get off their arses and port the source to PPC maybe? ;-)
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There was work done for Classic Amiga, but it peterred out. I'm sure if the need arose it wouldn't be a huge job to get it working on PPC hardware (at least not if enough people were interested - it's not like porting all of Linux or anything!).
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As for AROS and MOS fusing, that will never happen,
Actually, it already has: MOS is based on large parts from AROS, and some of that code has found its way back into AROS, debugged and enhanced. And sometime a bit more buggy than it was before ;-)
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by HopperJF on 2005/2/12 7:57:25
I really like the look of AROS and how things are coming along, but I would prefer it if they made a PPC version that could run on PPC Macs & Amigas.
A step in the direction has been started again, TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/) has an active Bounty #15, AROS hosted on OS-X (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/bounty_details_15.html).
Dammy
TeamAROS
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@amigean:
Excellent post. One point of view which I have never seen appear in these discussions before.