Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: TeamBlackFox on June 26, 2014, 02:45:17 PM
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I go to a lot of Amiga forums and I see comments like this:
OMG! AMIGAOS 3.9 ON X86/X64/ARM WOULD BE AWESOME!!! :banana::banana:
These posts make me laugh a lot on the inside, but they make an interesting point and case discussion which begs the question:
Out of the context of the hardware - is Classic AmigaOS really that advanced?
Since I'm not a developer and don't know all the specifics of AmigaOS vs BSD vs GNU et cetera. I'm going to approach this from my own angle - with some bias.
BIAS NOTICE: I am a UNIX guy for most things - I use FreeBSD and IRIX mostly and ditched GNU/Linux, Windows and OS X. Please keep that in mind while reading this.
So on the surface Classic AmigaOS ( Simply referred as AmigaOS hereafter ) has a load of features that other kernels like Haiku, IRIX, BSD and other modern(ish) kernels:
Preemptive multitasking
Message passing
Handles DSOs
Runs mostly in usermode
However, it lacks mechanisms which are VERY important for security and stability:
Memory protection - Without this - poorly written programs can lock or crash the system.
Multi-user mechanisms - Needed for secure operations - on AmigaOS you're effectively the equivalent of a user on BSD with the NOPASSWD flag in sudo setup, so you don't get any warning as to if an operation will break something and no password prompts, and you have to effectively trust the programs you're running.
Standard video and audio APIs - Outside of running the built-in chipsets, you're relying on the manufacturer's standard compliance with video and audio APIs like RTG and AHI. Which means even if AmigaOS were on x86, without something like puh der baer or nalle puh no programs relying on the hardware will run even if you have something like "trance" on MorphOS
Some of these issues are "fixed" on MorphOS or AmigaOS 4, but not all of them. As far as I know, OS 4 has no multi-user support or memory protection ( never used it so I may be incorrect, correct me if I'm wrong ). Same with MorphOS or AROS ( I've used both of these - briefly ). AROS seems to correct this somewhat by employing the Linux kernel, but I question using THAT kernel of all the wonderful kernels out there.
The other issue which also currently applies to IRIX is that both OSes are heavily reliant on the underlying hardware to make up for their shortcomings. AmigaOS seems to rely on the chipsets for a lot that traditionally is relied on by a CPU so thats why it seems " snappy ". IRIX likewise is heavily integrated with its video hardware and subsystems so it feels faster than it really is.
Logistically this creates a problem for developers on x86 as this makes AmigaOS less desirable - with all the variants of hardware out there its impossible to support more than a handful of configurations fully, plus aith AmigaOS traditionally being proprietary and not free or open, besides the tiny, tiny market of active Amiga users I doubt the userbase would grow much with all the problems that are currently existing in the Classic AmigaOS. Maybe AROS or MorphOS will become very popular with people outside our communities, but I'd be interested to see how much the userbase actually grows or if the community actually benefits from having new people who may or may not have the best interests of the community in mind.
Anyways thats just some thoughts from a former and soon to be active user of AmigaOS once I get my 3000 in the mail.
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well. i dont think amiga os can be concurrent to the mainstream options available out there, but availability of mainstream hardware to run "amiga os" might be an improvement to "amiga os users" themselves.
from my perspective which is actually pretty bound to the amiga and related hardware and having a limited experience with os4 and arosx86 everybody needs to find the solution that suits his interest most.
here i am slightly biased towards aros, especially aros68k as i suppose it offers opportunities at least in some areas, a fair trade of research in others while it still conserves the legacy where its important, that means in therms of open source code and binary compatibility.
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Yeah don't take me as ragging on AmigaOS, I'm just saying from a user's perspective it has some work to do. I personally really like the design, which is why I like DragonFlyBSD ( I know Matt Dillon the developer ) because he's adding features that are AmigaOS-like.
AROS is a great project and I will use it once AROS68k surpasses the original AmigaOS in terms of performance and stability - as long as the Linux kernel stays off my desktops. Does AROS68k use the Linux kernel at all?
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Yeah don't take me as ragging on AmigaOS, I'm just saying from a user's perspective it has some work to do. I personally really like the design, which is why I like DragonFlyBSD ( I know Matt Dillon the developer ) because he's adding features that are AmigaOS-like.
AROS is a great project and I will use it once AROS68k surpasses the original AmigaOS in terms of performance and stability - as long as the Linux kernel stays off my desktops. Does AROS68k use the Linux kernel at all?
No it is based on Rom Replacements and does not use the Linux kernal. It is running on real hardware (Wawa can say more about it), running in all sort of versions of UAE (including FS-UAE and WinUAE), used in one form or another on Icaros (special distribution of Aros 68k) and Aeros (uses my 68k distribution AROS Vision) and boots from Linux directly in FS-UAE (called AMINUX but not updated recently).
My own distribution is Aros Vision:
http://www.aros-platform.de/
You can download and unpack it and easily use it in WinUAE or FS-UAE
There will be new accellerators based on FPGA soon and I am very optimistic that Aros 68k will run on it soon too
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AROS is a great project and I will use it once AROS68k surpasses the original AmigaOS in terms of performance and stability
that may still take quite a long time as the lack of quality feedback likely does not motivate the developers to improve on it.
- as long as the Linux kernel stays off my desktops. Does AROS68k use the Linux kernel at all?
no. aros (and particularly aros68k) does not use linux kernel except of linux hosted versions. the fork of aros that is aimed to use linux kernel for hardware abstraction is arix.
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Yeah don't take me as ragging on AmigaOS, I'm just saying from a user's perspective it has some work to do. I personally really like the design, which is why I like DragonFlyBSD ( I know Matt Dillon the developer ) because he's adding features that are AmigaOS-like.
AROS is a great project and I will use it once AROS68k surpasses the original AmigaOS in terms of performance and stability - as long as the Linux kernel stays off my desktops. Does AROS68k use the Linux kernel at all?
Surpassing it in speed on ECS/AGA? I do not believe that this will ever happen. AmigaOS was highly optimized for this hardware, beating it there is almost impossible. What is more realistic is beating AmigaOS by adapting it to new FPGA hardware with special abilities.
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FS-UAE. Hmm I may have to try this out. Thanks Olaf!
>FS-UAE - GPLv2
Now I want to punch someone in the face for not giving this a BSD-compatible licence. Oh well, gonna try it anyways.
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Surpassing it in speed on ECS/AGA? I do not believe that this will ever happen.
while it is not a priority this side is being optimized and bugfixed as well.
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Very nice post, seems to make sense, I think the Amiga OS was ahead of the time in 1987-1990 (maybe even later) and it should be respected for that. Today however I don't get the new versions of Amiga OS, other than to "Keep the Dream Alive". There are a few people in my Amiga Club into the new PowerPC stuff but for the price they pay and the limited functionality you really have to be a fan of the dream. The Aros and Morph OS stuff I get even less.
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Oh, I'm looking to get a PowerPC card for my in the mail 3000, but that will be later on once I'm in better financial shape to afford one. I also would like an X1k but if I ever get the cash for one I'll probably request that Trevor offer one to the FreeBSD or OpenBSD project so they can port it.
The point is that its vintage hardware that should be used, but its not an ideal replacement for whats out there. I got nothing against anyone who uses x86 extensively, I plan to get a box myself eventually, but I don't particularly like the hardware or its rapid depreciation and relatively worthless architecture.
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AmigaOS trades features and security for speed, responsiveness, and compactness. Some of the features and security can be added in a modular way but the AmigaOS will likely never be a high security OS. High security multi-user support may be necessary for some applications but can be a hassle for the majority of users that don't need it.
Surpassing it in speed on ECS/AGA? I do not believe that this will ever happen. AmigaOS was highly optimized for this hardware, beating it there is almost impossible. What is more realistic is beating AmigaOS by adapting it to new FPGA hardware with special abilities.
I believe the exec.library, ffs and ram handler were written mostly in 68k assembler. They are often optimized for 68000-68030 performance though. There is room for performance increases on modern 68k processors although not much to be gained for code size. Note that ffs was blown away by better algorithms with pfs so maybe there is room for improvement even for these assembler parts. The higher level AmigaOS modules written in C have more potential for improvement. Some are compiled for the 68000 (SAS/C mostly). I have disassembled enough of them to tell you that it would be rare that I couldn't save 20% of the code while still optimizing for speed. Look no further than PeterK's icon.library for example. He has added support for many more icon types, gained much in speed optimized for speed while putting the icon.library on a major diet. ISA changes to an enhanced 68k processor could allow for another 5%-15% of AmigaOS size reduction. The AmigaOS doesn't have the bloat that many other operating systems do but there is still significant room for improvements in speed and code size. Much of it's speed and responsiveness is because of it's simplicity.
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AmigaOS trades features and security for speed, responsiveness, and compactness.
I'll give you that compactness can be nice.
AmigaOS is my favourite graphical OS. If it had a more UNIX-like commandline and had some of the features I mentioned it missing it'd be pretty much the perfect OS.
Since it won't likely get those for a long time, my bet is thrown in the hat with DragonFly BSD. What Matt Dillon promises is what people want of AmigaOS with the UNIX philosophy behind it. ( Once Wayland becomes BSD friendly we'll be able to ditch horrible X11 )
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I'll give you that compactness can be nice.
AmigaOS is my favorite graphical OS. If it had a more UNIX-like commandline and had some of the features I mentioned it missing it'd be pretty much the perfect OS.
The Unix like command line is just a few aliases away. I have added these aliases to my S:Shell-Startup:
Alias cp copy
Alias free avail
Alias kill break
Alias ls "list sort N"
Alias mkdir makedir
Alias ps status
Alias rn "run >NIL:
Ok, it's not quite Linux (or DOS) but something like this can make life easier for someone who constantly changes between shells on different platforms. Linux has more advanced options like pipes that are more powerful than the Amiga PIPE: device but the Amiga supports 3rd party shells also. The AmigaOS shell is easier to use, IMO, than any other CLI/shell that I have come across but it's not the most powerful.
Since it won't likely get those for a long time, my bet is thrown in the hat with DragonFly BSD. What Matt Dillon promises is what people want of AmigaOS with the UNIX philosophy behind it. ( Once Wayland becomes BSD friendly we'll be able to ditch horrible X11 )
I have followed Matt Dillon's work and DragonFly looks promising (big brother OS to AmigaOS by a former Amigan). I wish DragonFly was more popular. If it was as popular as Free BSD, I would install it on my x86 box instead of Mint. I'm worried about lack of support though.
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The Unix like command line is just a few aliases away. I have added these aliases to my S:Shell-Startup:
Alias cp copy
Alias free avail
Alias kill break
Alias ls "list sort N"
Alias mkdir makedir
Alias ps status
Alias rn "run >NIL:
Ok, it's not quite Linux (or DOS) but something like this can make life easier for someone who constantly changes between shells on different platforms. Linux has more advanced options like pipes that are more powerful than the Amiga PIPE: device but the Amiga supports 3rd party shells also. The AmigaOS shell is easier to use, IMO, than any other CLI/shell that I have come across but it's not the most powerful.
This will help when my 3000 comes (^w^) Thanks for the tip. And its not GNU/Linux I run, I run BSD since GNU/Linux is horrible.
I have followed Matt Dillon's work and DragonFly looks promising (big brother OS to AmigaOS by a former Amigan). I wish DragonFly was more popular. If it was as popular as Free BSD, I would install it on my x86 box instead of Mint. I'm worried about lack of support though.
Indeed. What hardware do you run? I'd be happy to tell you if its supported. Also HAMMERFS on either MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 would be awesome - it would bring ZFS like behaviours to Amigans. Imagine: snapshots, logical volumes, software RAID - the possibilities!
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Indeed. What hardware do you run? I'd be happy to tell you if its supported. Also HAMMERFS on either MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 would be awesome - it would bring ZFS like behaviours to Amigans. Imagine: snapshots, logical volumes, software RAID - the possibilities!
I don't currently have a Linux/BSD box setup but I have a spare Pentium 4 (with hyper- threading and 2GB of memory) box with Intel chipset and a new half Terrabyte SATA HD. It's nothing special but I figured I could try out Linux/BSD/AROS/Haiku etc. on it if I could find the time. I currently have my Pentium M Windows XP laptop networked to my Amiga using SMBFS. It gives me AmiDevCpp compiling, UAE, modern web browsing and a general file server. It's efficient and sufficient for my needs but it wouldn't hurt to have a backup computer. I have some Linux experience but I would like to avoid some of the time consuming Linux tediousness like hardcore shell usage, endless settings configurations and the need to compile everything. I would rather stay away from needless eye candy bloat and degenerative GUIs that require many clicks, have hidden gadgets, and no uniformity like Windows 8 and Ubuntu. I was leaning toward Mint but also considered Free BSD. I couldn't even find reviews for DragonFly. I want a no hassle OS that is as easy and fast to use as the AmigaOS but with more modern software (especially a browser). That's all :). Suggestions?
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Well problem - DragonFly BSD is 64-bit only now. No more i386 releases. So that crosses it off the list.
FreeBSD is great, but its all DIY - you compile the X server from ports or install from pkgng. Once you get it setup, though its very low maintenance. If you're looking for an Amiga style window system I have a few you may like in mind:
AmiWM - Amiga Window Manager Clone: http://xwinman.org/amiwm.php
AfterStep - NeXTSTEP WM Clone: http://xwinman.org/afterstep.php
Enligtenment - The one I use: http://xwinman.org/enlightenment.php
If you're looking for variety of programs you can't beat GNU/Linux, but I don't like it because the entire system feels held together with duct tape. FreeBSD is the choice I'd pick considering your hardware, but you'll have to set everything up in very true UNIX fashion - I like that a lot.
One OS you may enjoy though is OpenSXCE - a distro of illumos - a Solaris 10 fork:
http://opensxce.org/
Other than that, if I get "Ugly Betty", my Octane, working, then I'd be happy to sell her to you for a decent price - the Octanes are by far the best bang for buck with SGI - IRIX can use Firefox 3.6 currently and while Amigas dominated the low end market, IRIX dominated the high end market.
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@TeamBlackFox
Thanks for the suggestions. That gives me some more to investigate. I could upgrade to a cheap duo-core x86_64 box which would pay for itself in electrical costs if I used the system for more than backup purposes but then I would lose my room heater in the winter ;).
I really like the compactness of the AmigaOS, also, and much of that comes from the 68k. I can debug and disassemble code while being able to read it which is a huge advantage. Optimizing is easier on code that is more human readable also (compilers are not doing their job). No other processor offers these advantages to the extent of the 68k. I am helping with the enhanced 68k Apollo/Phoenix project which is bringing out a new affordable accelerator. I would like to make compiler support easier through 68k ISA enhancements. I am also helping with the vbcc compiler (which also has Amiga roots). Hopefully, we will be able to bring back and enhance the AmigaOS on an enhanced 68k processor and bring more modern software to the Amiga. I actually prefer to stay 32 bit and shrink where most other processors have chosen to go bigger requiring more caches and longer pipelines. I do like a simplified MMU for partial memory protection, cache settings and debugging. Some form of memory expansion and partial program isolation (non-shared parts) may be possible through an extension of the 68k SFC/DFC registers without the overhead of supporting virtual addressing (and without the overhead of 64 bits). Most OS development has been too much of follow the leader and feature focus. Much of the OS innovation (and software innovation) has moved to Android, iOS and BlackBerryOS/QNX (playing catchup but QNX is solid) where some features are no longer expected. Unfortunately, ARM doesn't provide a consistent ISA and the hardware for smart phones and pads can vary considerably.
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I guess good luck with that. I'm probably NOT going to code for AmigaOS for a few reasons:
No compiler I particularly like for C, and I must use a compiler available for FreeBSD since thats my development system for platforms.
No POSIX compliance
No OpenGL
I'll use it though, definitely as a user. If I were to add the things I want, I'd probably end up with DragonFlyBSD. So instead I stick to FreeBSD and track DFBSD development.
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I guess good luck with that. I'm probably NOT going to code for AmigaOS for a few reasons:
No compiler I particularly like for C, and I must use a compiler available for FreeBSD since thats my development system for platforms.
We would like to support vbcc, GNU/GCC and CLANG/LLVM. This requires some support back from the maintainers of the compilers. So far, we have received the most support from vbcc. Vbcc is also the smallest, most modular and has the least number of dependencies. We would like to support them all but we will have to focus efforts also. We will also have to become more popular before we gain more respect. Some are biased against fpga processor support. There has been some effort that has gone into Amiga/AROS or 68k support for all the compilers listed above.
No POSIX compliance
Different levels of POSIX compliance are available through ixemul (GCC targeted), libnix (GCC targeted) and Frank Wille's Posix lib (vbcc targeted). Ixemul basically provides an emulated BSD environment on the Amiga. It makes porting BSD programs very easy but it's not always Amiga friendly and it's big. Libnix and the Posix lib are lighter weight and Amiga friendly but they are not as complete or BSD/Linux compatible. The source code is available so they can be extended as needed.
No OpenGL
The most modern OpenGL/Mesa and 3D support is on AROS but it requires big resources too. It supports hardware rendering through Gallium but there is limited gfx card drivers. There is an old version of Mesa called StormMesa which works well enough with 3D hardware (Warp3D) or software rendering on AmigaOS. Wazp3D can be used for OpenGL/Mesa software rendering in many cases and works on many platforms. UAE can use the underlying OS 3D hardware support. The Amiga needs more work in the area of 3D though.
I'll use it though, definitely as a user. If I were to add the things I want, I'd probably end up with DragonFlyBSD. So instead I stick to FreeBSD and track DFBSD development.
For all the bells and whistles on a workstation/server, DragonFly sounds like it would be super. A modern AmigaOS has possibilities as an efficient personal netbook/notebook/gadget OS. They are very different goals. What we need are options and choices rather than trying to make one OS and processor for everything. All that got us was a security and virus nightmare.
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The most modern OpenGL/Mesa and 3D support is on AROS but it requires big resources too. It supports hardware rendering through Gallium but there is limited gfx card drivers.
limited? im not sure how limited it is in comparison to other gfx card solutions on amiga like systems, it supports a number of models, namely those that are supported by gallium, and it supports 3d hardware acceleration. sure it might not be optimal, i cant tell, i dont run aros native on x86.
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Very nice post, seems to make sense, I think the Amiga OS was ahead of the time in 1987-1990 (maybe even later) and it should be respected for that.
Of course an OS designed in 85 cannot offer the same features as a modern OS, that would be crazy ;)
It was obviously very advanced when it was first released in 85 but in subsequent years Commodore didn't really do much with it apart from minor enhancements (same as what they did with the hardware!). Some serious effort was put into 3.9 (maybe 3.5 as well?) but that was still based on the original 85 code base.
Personally I like using Amiga OS 3.9 because of the simplicity and 'retro feel' but it does feel very week in some areas (like file management for example). With a few minor updates it could be improved to make it even more usable (integrated file management, memory protection etc).
I wouldn't actually want to run AmigaOS 3.x or even 4.x on my PC, maybe I'm in the minority here but I'm quite happy with running Windows on my PC and using my retro hardware for my retro OS fix. Windows 7 isn't perfect but it's good enough to open my browser and run my Compiler, I don't really need much more from an OS these days.
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Of course an OS designed in 85 cannot offer the same features as a modern OS, that would be crazy ;)
It was obviously very advanced when it was first released in 85 but in subsequent years Commodore didn't really do much with it apart from minor enhancements (same as what they did with the hardware!). Some serious effort was put into 3.9 (maybe 3.5 as well?) but that was still based on the original 85 code base.
C= did more to upgrade the AmigaOS than the hardware. AmigaOS 2.x was a major improvement but had it's share of flaws. AmigaOS 3.1 was the best upgrade all the way around. It added a lot of new support as well as key bug fixes. This was the first time that the AmigaOS felt professional. AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 were mostly bug fixes and 3rd party add-ons. It was hit and miss as far as improvements. Overall it's good but should have been better.
Personally I like using Amiga OS 3.9 because of the simplicity and 'retro feel' but it does feel very week in some areas (like file management for example). With a few minor updates it could be improved to make it even more usable (integrated file management, memory protection etc).
Workbench was improved but it could be better. It handles gfx boards and large hard drives better at least. A good file manager is still useful. PeterK's icon.library makes icons fast enough to be tolerable.
I wouldn't actually want to run AmigaOS 3.x or even 4.x on my PC, maybe I'm in the minority here but I'm quite happy with running Windows on my PC and using my retro hardware for my retro OS fix. Windows 7 isn't perfect but it's good enough to open my browser and run my Compiler, I don't really need much more from an OS these days.
I'm with you. It would seem like heresy. Using UAE on Windows is bad enough ;).
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I wouldn't actually want to run AmigaOS 3.x or even 4.x on my PC
I wouldn't run 3.x on my Amiga if I didn't have to. 68020+ can do SO much better than AOS.
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Amiga OS 3.9 already runs everywhere. So?
It only is limited to past and requires JIT for productive use.
(running AOS3.9 on emulator on x86 is cost efficient way to use 68k Amiga on high res display, on laptop and with some 1Ghz 68060, other than that, not interested. + MorphOS on PowerBook already covers my mobile 68k/AmigaOS needs. (and I also have AOS4 system))
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This is an extremely valuable question and not enough people ponder it.
The Amiga OS outside of the Amiga Hardware still has a lot of unique things for which it would be cool to have it be able to run on more modern hardware.
History
I have since before the Amiga and up until now used and continue to use many different computing platforms and operating systems, both professionally and out of my own curiosity.
In the late '90s just as Gateway purchased the rights to the Amiga I wrote them an extensive analysis on why they should give up on the hardware game and focus only on the OS. I was shot down by Gateway/Amiga Inc. as they believed that the OS had now future outside the custom hardware. I bet Carl Sassenrath would also disagree with them.
The Little OS that Could
Without a doubt the Amiga OS, true to its goal, is the most user centric and the most user friendly OS ever developed.
This has nothing to do with where the widgets are placed in relation to the window, the small footprint, or the inclusion of pre-emptive multitasking. It is about the paradigms.
The OS paradigms that are at the core of the Amiga OS are in certain ways more relevant today than they were in the late '80s and early '90s. And that makes it doubly tragic that all of the post OS3.x forks are missing this important point.
At the end of the day there aren't many unique OS paradigms in existence today. There is the Unix paradigm, the Mac OS (pre-OS X) and Windows paradigm, there is an assortment of experimental OS paradigms that will most likely never get their "moment in the Sun", and then there is the Amiga OS paradigm.
And yes, there are some superficial similarities between all of these which are there for a bunch of different reasons and have a lot to do with convention.
A really good OS strikes a balance between the user and the developer. As an OS is primarily an environment in which applications are run, it would behove itself to make it easy for application developers to create applications for it. Make it easy for developers to write the kinds of software users would like to use.
Windows is terrible at this. Mac OS X is slightly better only because of the energy that Apple puts in to establish the benchmark and by controlling the tools. Don't even get me started on Unix and Linux.
Amiga OS is the only OS I have had the pleasure of knowing that did this well, without the overbearing control, and in the late '80s and early '90s for crying out loud.
And yes, features such as memory protection, and multiuser environments and better ACLs could be implemented if there was funding.
Amiga OS could be like many of the other OSs, but other OSs have tried to be more Amiga like and failed. There is something in that, do you think?
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while it is not a priority this side is being optimized and bugfixed as well.
Nice to hear :-)
perhaps you could do a step-by-step manual how to install Aros 68k (nightly) on real hardware. I was often asked but I cannot help there.
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I'll give you that compactness can be nice.
AmigaOS is my favourite graphical OS. If it had a more UNIX-like commandline and had some of the features I mentioned it missing it'd be pretty much the perfect OS.
Since it won't likely get those for a long time, my bet is thrown in the hat with DragonFly BSD. What Matt Dillon promises is what people want of AmigaOS with the UNIX philosophy behind it. ( Once Wayland becomes BSD friendly we'll be able to ditch horrible X11 )
In my distribution there are many commands that are identical to unix world. Amiga 68k developers were heavy inspired by the unix world.
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Nice to hear :-)
perhaps you could do a step-by-step manual how to install Aros 68k (nightly) on real hardware. I was often asked but I cannot help there.
there is one instruction for instance here, if you scroll down a little:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support
must have been literally copied from my post, since it ends with "thats all folks" (without apostroph).
now it might not be exactly up to date as things change all the time, for instance you need additionally edit the startup sequence now, but roughtly it still stands i guess.
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C= did more to upgrade the AmigaOS than the hardware. AmigaOS 2.x was a major improvement but had it's share of flaws. AmigaOS 3.1 was the best upgrade all the way around. It added a lot of new support as well as key bug fixes. This was the first time that the AmigaOS felt professional.
Yes, the evolution of the AmigaOS under the auspices of Commodore was notable.
Maintain a certain level of backward compatibility both hardware and software
while offering innovations (datatypes, rtg, tags, etc) was a real challenge.
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Seems like Agami has some of the right ideas but I want to refute one in particular:
> Amiga OS is the only OS I have had the pleasure of knowing that did this well, without the overbearing control
I'll have to disagree here. AmigaOS is HEAVILY biased towards the user. Consider that UNIX was developed in the 1970s, and with it and Berkeley UNIX you get the following things Amiga still lacks:
Memory Protection
Privilege separation
Multi-user support
Plus there is a balance between the user and the developer in UNIX. Just most people are too dense to see it. Let me explain, but first:
> Don't even get me started on Unix and Linux.
Please don't make the mistake of blobbing these together. GNU/Linux is horribly biased to developers, and it promotes bad, bloated, lazy code.
Modern UNIX descendants like System V and BSD are primarily hindered by the horrible display server that is X11. Each variant of BSD and System V variant addressed this differently:
Sun developed NeWS, a Display Postscript variant, for SunOS, their Berkeley UNIX derived OS ( Berkeley UNIX refers to historical versions of BSD here ) but it failed horribly in the market due to X11 being very entrenched
NeXT Computers developed their variant of Display Postscript. Even though NeXTSTEP is not a true Berkeley UNIX derivative ( Based off Mach, not UNIX ) it does maintain UNIX compatibility, and their Display Postscript server technology was passed into OS X as Quartz.
SGI developed XSGI, their variant of X11 which addressed its flaws by optimising it for SGI hardware and stripping out what wasn't needed.
The others adopted X11 and dealt with the shortcomings. AMIX being a System V derivative was among these, notably.
However with Wayland under development we should see all the inherent flaws of X11 be corrected. Wayland is a proper display protocol which doesn't treat all hardware like a big dumb framebuffer ( What X11 does without the hacks like DRI and such that people have been working on )
The reason I say UNIX proper can balance user and developer focus is simple:
Its well known that UNIX itself is one of the most developer friendly OSes of all time.
Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.
The biggest issue in my opinion today is that most consumers are morons and are afraid of working in the console. Thats why I point newbies to UNIX to FISH, the Friendly Interactive Shell. Useless for scripting, but really assists new users by being actually helpful and interactive rather than biased towards developers. You throw together Wayland X Enlightenment X FISH and most users after the initial learning curve won't have any issues.
Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.
I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.
I rest my case in the matter at this point. Take it however you will.
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Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.
I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.
Silly how heavy Enlightenment was on 200Mhz PPro. Time has done miracles.
I tried bodhi on 10year old 2.4Ghz Celeron machine, it was pretty fast even without HW accelerated graphics. But the the SW support stopped and new bodhi is too picky with HW, so:
Is there a live CD to try DragonFlyBSD + Enlightenment combo?
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Seems like Agami has some of the right ideas but I want to refute one in particular:
> Amiga OS is the only OS I have had the pleasure of knowing that did this well, without the overbearing control
I'll have to disagree here. AmigaOS is HEAVILY biased towards the user. Consider that UNIX was developed in the 1970s, and with it and Berkeley UNIX you get the following things Amiga still lacks:
Memory Protection
Privilege separation
Multi-user support
Plus there is a balance between the user and the developer in UNIX. Just most people are too dense to see it. Let me explain, but first:
> Don't even get me started on Unix and Linux.
Please don't make the mistake of blobbing these together. GNU/Linux is horribly biased to developers, and it promotes bad, bloated, lazy code.
Modern UNIX descendants like System V and BSD are primarily hindered by the horrible display server that is X11. Each variant of BSD and System V variant addressed this differently:
Sun developed NeWS, a Display Postscript variant, for SunOS, their Berkeley UNIX derived OS ( Berkeley UNIX refers to historical versions of BSD here ) but it failed horribly in the market due to X11 being very entrenched
NeXT Computers developed their variant of Display Postscript. Even though NeXTSTEP is not a true Berkeley UNIX derivative ( Based off Mach, not UNIX ) it does maintain UNIX compatibility, and their Display Postscript server technology was passed into OS X as Quartz.
SGI developed XSGI, their variant of X11 which addressed its flaws by optimising it for SGI hardware and stripping out what wasn't needed.
The others adopted X11 and dealt with the shortcomings. AMIX being a System V derivative was among these, notably.
However with Wayland under development we should see all the inherent flaws of X11 be corrected. Wayland is a proper display protocol which doesn't treat all hardware like a big dumb framebuffer ( What X11 does without the hacks like DRI and such that people have been working on )
The reason I say UNIX proper can balance user and developer focus is simple:
Its well known that UNIX itself is one of the most developer friendly OSes of all time.
Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.
The biggest issue in my opinion today is that most consumers are morons and are afraid of working in the console. Thats why I point newbies to UNIX to FISH, the Friendly Interactive Shell. Useless for scripting, but really assists new users by being actually helpful and interactive rather than biased towards developers. You throw together Wayland X Enlightenment X FISH and most users after the initial learning curve won't have any issues.
Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.
I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.
I rest my case in the matter at this point. Take it however you will.
I have nothing against Linux but I do not see how DragonFlyBSD will help the Amiga platform. We had a lot of people recently who promoted Linux, one company relabeled PCs with a special Linux distribution on it, one person promoted his own distribution, you are now recommending your favorite distro here. We all use PCs with Windows/MacOS or even Linux now for our everyday work. You said what are the shortcomings compared to modern platforms but we are all aware of that and they are addressed already in different projects (except MP). In good marketing you do not stress the limitations but search for the strength and how to go on. Are you interested to invest time (like many here do) in the project (whatever platform)?
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I have nothing against Linux but I do not see how DragonFlyBSD will help the Amiga platform. We had a lot of people recently who promoted Linux, one company relabeled PCs with a special Linux distribution on it, one person promoted his own distribution, you are now recommending your favorite distro here. We all use PCs with Windows/MacOS or even Linux now for our everyday work. You said what are the shortcomings compared to modern platforms but we are all aware of that and they are addressed already in different projects (except MP). In good marketing you do not stress the limitations but search for the strength and how to go on. Are you interested to invest time (like many here do) in the project (whatever platform)?
First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.
DragonFlyBSD is designed as a high performance UNIX OS that is inspired by the design of AmigaOS. Which in my opinion means it has the best chance of ever bringing the good aspects of AmigaOS to the modern UNIX market. Its design as an OS is such that it is suitable for servers and workstations, with limitations on driver support.
I'm not saying I want to invest time in developing for it - first off my experience with C and code in general is pretty weak. I develop in my spare time where I'm not working 50-55 hours a week at my dayjob as a data center tech for Dell/MS Azure - its a hobby and a limited one at that.
I'm merely championing the benefits DragonFlyBSD brings to the table and once Wayland makes its way to the BSDs, that will be the time for me or someone else to strike with this. Its not the right time and I'm not currently in a position financially or experience wise, but maybe when Wayland is matured the situation will be different. We will see until then.
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First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.
...
From the DragonFly BSD Web Site:
"DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and Linux."
As you acknowledge, X11 is a dog; This is where the user end has been let down of the UNIX/Linux/BSD OS paradigm. Kernel modulation and X11 are not user friendly aspects of any of the OSs that use it.
Wayland, when finished baking, may tip the scales somewhat, but there are still many aspects of UNIX/Linux/BSD OS paradigms that are not abstracted enough to make them worthy of the description "user friendly".
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Oh, I'm looking to get a PowerPC card for my in the mail 3000, but that will be later on once I'm in better financial shape to afford one. I also would like an X1k but if I ever get the cash for one .......
If cost is a consideration, I would suggest that you NOT bother buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator card for your A3000D. There is very little software for the Amiga that uses the 603e/604 PPC chip on those accelerators and if you wish to run that small amount of PPC Amiga software, there is another alternative that is much cheaper, and gives you additional options as well.
I am referring to running MorphOS3.6 on a G4 or G5 Mac model that is supported, as MorphOS3.6 has a good deal of compatibility with much of the WarpUp & PowerUp Amiga PPC software and demos.
The cost of those old Phase5 PPC & 680x0 dual CPU accelerators is prohibitively high still, and there is no guarantee that such boards will work much longer (or work at all when you receive it). Plus, the performance of the 603e and 604 PPC's is far below what you will get from any of the G4 or G5 PPC's in a used Mac. Lastly, the A3000D is cramped for space and the cooling for your proposed Phase5 PPC accelerator will be limited at best.
Just my 2 cents of advice, as an Amiga user who has owned every model of Amiga made, including a couple of those expensive Phase5 PPC accelerators, regarding you possibly buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator for your A3000D computer.
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i must here confirm the opinion pf the previous poster. ppc cards for amiga are rather neat collectibles than actually practical. the best thing they offer os a 40mb/s scsi controller. there is little use one can make of ppc on amiga, just few datatypes and few applications take advantage of ot. i have never seen morphos on action but it is probably better to invest in it or even in the native os4 hardware, however the latter comes at a higher cost again.
as for bsd, i can understand your personal bias. there is quite well maintained netbsd for amiga, with a lot of native hardware support:
http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/amiga/
but im sorry, i dont think, that it somehow helps to conserve amiga (concepts) for the future. it starts already with installation procedure (i did not came much further beyond anyway admittedly). on bsd i have to spend at least half an hour to get my drive set and basic installation up and running. with aros in comparison i just decompress the system image to the disk and it should start on any amiga.
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Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.
Well, of course not! There are probably *too many* standardized toolkits for X11. The athena widget set was probably the first. Motif another. Nowadays, we have gtk and Qt as the two most prominent. I love standards! There are so many to pick from! The reason for all that is that the "cut" between the display manager and the application is made in a different way, compared to AmigaOs. AmigaOs makes the cut at "widget level". The operating system provides standardized widgets, the application uses them, and all interactivity goes through the Os level in the form of high-level events: Gadget pressed, menu openend. X11 works differently. The cut is made at "raw event level". The application receives events like "mouse pressed", and triggers activites as "draw line". Of course, no application ever wants to use events at this level to build a graphical interface, and thus X toolkits help to implement high-level elements like boxes, scrollbars and so on. However, the boxes, gadgets, menus and scrollbars are all implemented at the application side, and each application can pick whatever toolkit it likes to implement such functionalities. The result of which is the very diverse universe of user interface designs and UI toolkits. The reason for this decision back then (at Xerox) was to keep the terminal (the X server) as lightweight as possible, and rather offload anything complex to the X client, which would be a stronger multi-user mainframe machine. It did make a lot of sense. AmigaOs does not have this issue - it was "designed" as a single-user single-machine system to begin with, so the problem did not even appear.
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First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.
no - you don't. Most people put the ridiculous platform wars behind them. Most software I am interested in works well on BSD and flavours of Linux so what's the problem?
It's really stupid to not get along with someone because they use a different operating system from you.. You realise that right ?
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Can I ask what the dire need for multi-user support is? Isn't there a third party add on that will accomplish this?
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Can I ask what the dire need for multi-user support is? Isn't there a third party add on that will accomplish this?
I know why Linux and Windows need it. Why does Amiga need at all?
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If cost is a consideration, I would suggest that you NOT bother buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator card for your A3000D. There is very little software for the Amiga that uses the 603e/604 PPC chip on those accelerators and if you wish to run that small amount of PPC Amiga software, there is another alternative that is much cheaper, and gives you additional options as well.
I am referring to running MorphOS3.6 on a G4 or G5 Mac model that is supported, as MorphOS3.6 has a good deal of compatibility with much of the WarpUp & PowerUp Amiga PPC software and demos.
The cost of those old Phase5 PPC & 680x0 dual CPU accelerators is prohibitively high still, and there is no guarantee that such boards will work much longer (or work at all when you receive it). Plus, the performance of the 603e and 604 PPC's is far below what you will get from any of the G4 or G5 PPC's in a used Mac. Lastly, the A3000D is cramped for space and the cooling for your proposed Phase5 PPC accelerator will be limited at best.
Just my 2 cents of advice, as an Amiga user who has owned every model of Amiga made, including a couple of those expensive Phase5 PPC accelerators, regarding you possibly buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator for your A3000D computer.
What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?
Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.
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What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?
Any accelerator for the A3000/4000 slot which allows ram expansion is going to cost you.
Imho the Cyberstorm mk3 is the sweet spot - you still get the 40MB/s scsi bus, the fast and wide ram bus, and the 68060, but without the extra complication and heat production of the 604e + associated components.
Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.
All true*, especially considering the unused processing power of the quad G5. For me, a single processor of a dual 2.7GHz G5 should be plenty enough for now though (ideal machine would be a single processor 2.7, but I'm not sure the DP G5 logicboard willl even operate with only one processor module present).
* Depends how you define 'the hardware.' Driver support for onboard peripherals is mostly complete now - certainly for most of the the G4 range of models/form factors, not sure about the G5 onboard goodies, as mine is still sat on the side awaiting a coolant change before installing MorphOS.
It'd be nice to be able to have more Ram available, but it's only Odyssey that really eats that up for me.
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What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?
Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.
then take a look at this:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arix-OS/414578091930728
and:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arix-OS/414578091930728
as I said... in work
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Thanks for the links Olaf I'll take a look at it after work ( They don't care as long as I don't go on facebook. )
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Thanks for the links Olaf I'll take a look at it after work ( They don't care as long as I don't go on facebook. )
I have not found another link. It is showing SMP working in ARIX (the commercial version of AROS) with two cores. Additional AROS using Linux kernel for driver support. There is also a 64bit version of AROS supporting (if I remember right) right now 128 GB RAM. Only MP is not possible at the moment but also promised for the future. There are versions for X86/X64/ARM/PPC and 68k. ARIX is in test right now so if you are interested you could certainly take part (after signing NDA).
Aeros is running using a Linux kernel (Linux hosted) with Linux Apps and WINE added. And then there is AMINUX (my distribution) running in FS-UAE started on a stick (with Linux) but not updated yet. Perhaps a more interesting playground for you.
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Eh if its running under the Linux kernel I'm not interested. I'm not interested in supporting the Linux kernel while open alternatives exist. Thanks anyways.
From the DragonFly BSD Web Site:
"DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and Linux."
You're taking it out of context. Its not saying Linux is UNIX or BSD is Linux. They're in the same class because the Linux kernel is a workalike. BSD is descended from Berkeley UNIX which is in turn descended from Research UNIX, the original UNIX.
no - you don't. Most people put the ridiculous platform wars behind them. Most software I am interested in works well on BSD and flavours of Linux so what's the problem?
It's really stupid to not get along with someone because they use a different operating system from you.. You realise that right ?
No, actually its Linux users who criticize the conservative nature of the BSD projects, criticize us for not adopting the GNU philosophy, which is a load of rubbish anyways, and say we're a bunch of masturbating monkeys ( Linus Torvalds himself called us that ). I've tried getting along with that class of Linux user, but I don't - mostly I hang around with BSD/Solaris/IRIX guys with a few GNU/Linux users who aren't a bunch of ignorant rude people.
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Eh if its running under the Linux kernel I'm not interested. I'm not interested in supporting the Linux kernel while open alternatives exist. Thanks anyways.
You're taking it out of context. Its not saying Linux is UNIX or BSD is Linux. They're in the same class because the Linux kernel is a workalike. BSD is descended from Berkeley UNIX which is in turn descended from Research UNIX, the original UNIX.
No, actually its Linux users who criticize the conservative nature of the BSD projects, criticize us for not adopting the GNU philosophy, which is a load of rubbish anyways, and say we're a bunch of masturbating monkeys ( Linus Torvalds himself called us that ). I've tried getting along with that class of Linux user, but I don't - mostly I hang around with BSD/Solaris/IRIX guys with a few GNU/Linux users who aren't a bunch of ignorant rude people.
that sounds worse than in the amiga community...
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that sounds worse than in the amiga community...
Indeed. :laughing:
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What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?
Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.
it was just an advise, bwb has mentioned csmk3, this might be sensible choice, in fact sticking ppc into an amiga is not any better than any of ng alternatives.
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Honestly better off looking for a '060 accel vs a PPC one. Not much uses the extra grunt out of the PPC side.
Of course, having the PPC gives you the option of running OS4 on a machine, but that being said in the experiences I had with OS4 Classic on my old A1200 I wasn't impressed with it. OS4 is just far better on the NG platforms, even my lowly 440ep runs OS4 just stunning where as my old PPC A1200 never ran it acceptably in my own books.
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What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?
Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.
Honestly, my favorite accelerator for the A3000D is the Warp Engine 68040 @ 40MHz. It is not the fastest accelerator you can get, but it is rock solid, has an excellent SCSI controller and fits well into the A3000D with small modifications to provide better airflow through the hard drive and floppy drive shelf.
I can't recommend 68060 accelerators that I have no experience with in the A3000D, but other members may give you some good recommendations. The 68060 is supposed to run cooler and may be a better choice in the A3000D's small case (small for an Amiga with Zorro slots).
I think your money would be better spent to get an accelerator without the PPC and use the saved money to buy a good RTG video card, like the PicassoIV, or Cybervision64. The A3000D is a very popular Amiga model, and I hope that you have hours of fun playing around with it. I suggest that you NOT try to expand it into something it can't do well. Stick with AmigaOS2.1 through AmigaOS3.9 and software for the OCS & ECS chipsets and you should enjoy it for what it is, and what it was designed to be.
The only reason I mentioned MorphOS, was because you intended to buy a PPC accelerator for your A3000D, and MorphOS will run almost all of the PPC Amiga software much better than any PPC accelerator could ever do it. Unless you are really interested in NG Amiga inspired systems and software, don't bother buying any hardware to run it. The NG systems are certainly not for everyone, as they are best suited to only the hard core users who are dedicated to supporting the future of NG systems. The Amiga NG platforms are not ready for the general computing public, and might never be ready for them. AROS & MorphOS have one advantage that they can both be "test driven" for free, if you happen to have any of the supported hardware to run them. From your signature, I see that you have a PPC G5 that might be supported some time in the future by MorphOS, and possibly AROS PPC as well, though I don't know if anyone is working on AROS PPC any more. Edit: I don't understand your comment about MorphOS barely utilizing the hardware, unless you are only referring to the Dual CPU or Dual Core & Dual CPU models, like your Quad Core G5 PowerMac, which is not yet supported (and might never be supported). My single core, 1.67GHz G4, 17" PowerBook is very well supported, specially now that MorphOS3.6 has been released and the internal AirPort Extreme is supported. The thing that I like about MorphOS is that updates are all free, and they come at a fairly regular pace. It is improving all the time, and shows its advantages by running some things better than MacOSX 10.5.8, on the same exact hardware. That is impressive for a tiny development team, in my opinion, who have very little free time to work on MorphOS. End Edit:
I hope you enjoy your Amiga A3000D. Did you choose that model because a version of it at one time in the distant past came from Commodore with Unix installed on it?
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OS4 is just far better on the NG platforms, even my lowly 440ep runs OS4 just stunning where as my old PPC A1200 never ran it acceptably in my own books.
I'll probably go for an '040 or '060 then.
Honestly, my favorite accelerator for the A3000D is the Warp Engine 68040 @ 40MHz. It is not the fastest accelerator you can get, but it is rock solid, has an excellent SCSI controller and fits well into the A3000D with small modifications to provide better airflow through the hard drive and floppy drive shelf.
I can't recommend 68060 accelerators that I have no experience with in the A3000D, but other members may give you some good recommendations. The 68060 is supposed to run cooler and may be a better choice in the A3000D's small case (small for an Amiga with Zorro slots).
I think your money would be better spent to get an accelerator without the PPC and use the saved money to buy a good RTG video card, like the PicassoIV, or Cybervision64. The A3000D is a very popular Amiga model, and I hope that you have hours of fun playing around with it. I suggest that you NOT try to expand it into something it can't do well. Stick with AmigaOS2.1 through AmigaOS3.9 and software for the OCS & ECS chipsets and you should enjoy it for what it is, and what it was designed to be.
The only reason I mentioned MorphOS, was because you intended to buy a PPC accelerator for your A3000D, and MorphOS will run almost all of the PPC Amiga software much better than any PPC accelerator could ever do it. Unless you are really interested in NG Amiga inspired systems and software, don't bother buying any hardware to run it. The NG systems are certainly not for everyone, as they are best suited to only the hard core users who are dedicated to supporting the future of NG systems. The Amiga NG platforms are not ready for the general computing public, and might never be ready for them. AROS & MorphOS have one advantage that they can both be "test driven" for free, if you happen to have any of the supported hardware to run them. From your signature, I see that you have a PPC G5 that might be supported some time in the future by MorphOS, and possibly AROS PPC as well, though I don't know if anyone is working on AROS PPC any more.
I hope you enjoy your Amiga A3000D. Did you choose that model because a version of it at one time in the distant past came from Commodore with Unix installed on it?
I had a 3000UX a few years back that was stolen by someone who a family member let into my house. I know who did it, and I'm 99.99% sure he took it to the scrapyard. He still won't admit he stole it. In hindsight though, I never used it, and Amiga UNIX is atrociously broken - so glad to have moved to BSD and IRIX. I'd much rather enjoy AmigaOS on it and use it for certain things ( If you read my signature I have a lot of systems and in my home network they all have a role they're specialized for )
As far as expandability for it goes, I have yet to decide other than a CPU upgrade. I was only looking at PowerPC cards because they seemed interesting but I didn't realize they're that slow ( I'm used to MIPS and SPARC which generally have slow clocks but high performance output )
I'm getting rid of the G5 soon due to its high power consumption, that I never want to touch OS X again, the atrocious prices for upgrades, the lack of overall expandability and the fact I can't find a good video card that won't burn out ( Had an X1900 in it till last night when it bit the dust, now a GeForce 6600 and the return of an unaccelerated X11 ). At this time I have no interest in AmigaOS beyond the legacy releases 3.9 and AROSM68k. AROS is a cool project, but I have no use for it, except I may, and this is a maybe, see if it can be hosted on DragonFly BSD ( Probably not as the Linux kernel is a piece of nonstandard junk and tends to break dependencies for other platforms ).
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@TeamBlackFox:
You seem to want AmigaOS to be just like UNIX. This would not be an improvement. UNIX is a late 60s/early 70s design filled with a lot of cruft and very user-unfriendly, I don't see what it would offer that AmigaOS does not. I've tried various UNIXes and they have been universally awful.
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@TeamBlackFox:
You seem to want AmigaOS to be just like UNIX. This would not be an improvement. UNIX is a late 60s/early 70s design filled with a lot of cruft and very user-unfriendly, I don't see what it would offer that AmigaOS does not. I've tried various UNIXes and they have been universally awful.
Not at all.
My favourite UNIX variant is SGI's IRIX which is very Amiga-like on the frontend - same market, different ends of the market though ( SGIs were 10k USD and up )
I just prefer the setup of UNIX and its philosophy ( Everything is a file, device nodes and commandline tools ) But I like AmigaOS for graphical stuff.
Ideally a UNIX variant like IRIX or DragonFly BSD with a Wayland compositor in the vein of Ambient, Zune or Workbench would be very ideal along with graphical tools for those who prefer GUIs ( I'm perfectly fine with console configurations but I know others arent )
Both these variants of UNIX differ from other UNIX in a few key areas:
IRIX is very optimized for graphical usage and therefore supports console and graphics usage equally. DragonFly BSD is still under heavy development and until it reaches the 5 or 6 release mark it will still not be ready for desktop use ( It works great for servers )
Both are designed to fix what others broke and did wrong.
Unfortunately IRIX has been frozen since 2006, but tha
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Everything is a file
Really? Sounds awful.
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Really? Sounds awful.
Not at all! For instance under UNIX we have a concept called mountpoints.
Lets say I have two drives:
Drive A is an SSD that is very fast, but very small
Drive B is a SCSI disk that is slower, but many times as big.
So I want to install all my OS files to Drive A. Well under Windows and AmigaOS, no issue.
Next I make Drive B into two slices- Slice 1 for personal data and Slice 2 for programs. I want them mounted transparently so that programs install automatically under Slice 2 and programs save my data to Slice 1.
Well under FreeBSD for example I'd do this:
I'd set up mountpoints so that da0 ( Drive A's device node/file ) is mounted at / and da1s1 ( Drive B, Slice 1's node/file ) mounts at /home, the userdata directory. Then since most all programs under the BSDs install in /usr/local/bin I'd mount da1s2 at that mountpoint.
As a result I have a transparent, unified filesystem that goes where I want it to go. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as to my understanding AmigaOS doesn't have this concept. Now some may say just change the install target, but what if you've a pesky program that WANTS to be installed to a certain location?
Note: This is merely an example. I'd never mount separate disks like this with consumer drives unless I had a RAID array configured, since I mostly use industrial drives, its not an issue though.
In addition under UNIX interprocess and device communication is handled via pseudofilesystems:
All device nodes/files are under /dev
Process information is under /proc or sometimes /sys
Under some process supervision schemes there is /run which has data used by the process table supervisor.
The main benefits to the UNIX method are that most data is transferred in raw text rather than binary, facilitating tools like tcpdump ( A packet capture program ) to be human readable immediately, which would be impossible if part of the binary stream was corrupted. I'm not saying binary - binary communication is bad, but in a lot of places like logs and raw dumps human readability is very nice.
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As a result I have a transparent, unified filesystem that goes where I want it to go. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as to my understanding AmigaOS doesn't have this concept.
On Amiga operating sytems we have the opposite - anything can be mounted at the top of the filesystem for easy access via assigns. Much more user-friendly imho than dealing with Unix paths. Rather than burrowing down into a path for everything, any directory can be addressed at the top level of the filesystem by creating an assign.
Assigns can also refer to multiple locations. The 'c' assign is an example of this (speaking form a MorphOS standpoint). The primary location is sys:c, however it is also a pseudonym for the location sys:morphos/c.
Assigns addressing multiple locations are prioritised in the order they are created (In this case sys:c is created first, then mossys:c added).
Consequently the command:
c:foobar
will first search the location
sys:c
for the file 'foobar'. If the file is not found, the location
sys:morphos/c
will then be searched
We also have softlinks which essentially operate the same as mountpoints, so wrt dos paths anything can be transparently addressed from anywhere.
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On Amiga operating sytems we have the opposite - anything can be mounted at the top of hte filesystem for easy access via assigns.
rather than burrowing down into a path for everything, any directory can be addressed at the top level of the filesystem by creating an assign.
We also have softlinks (speaking form a MorphOS standpoint) which essentially operate the same as mountpoints, so wrt dos paths anything can be trasparently addressed from anywhere.
Eh I don't consider it burrowing at all. Plus symbolic links are horribly inflexible. I prefer everything to be under a unified filesystem, but I guess I'm the one over here drinking green tea while everyone else is drinking black tea or something like that.
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Eh I don't consider it burrowing at all. Plus symbolic links are horribly inflexible. I prefer everything to be under a unified filesystem, but I guess I'm the one over here drinking green tea while everyone else is drinking black tea or something like that.
What I mean by that is that if I'm at the command line, I don't need to know where a directory is in the filesystem to be able to access it. As long as it has an assign, I can just type "foobar:" and I'm there.
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I see. I'm not into that setup because anything remotely resembling old DOS-type OSes with drive lettering or otherwise aggravates me. That is why on AmigaOS I only use the GUI and never the console for anything. On UNIX its the exact opposite - I use the console more often and the GUI is just a window manager/basic settings system overlayed, most of my control remains in the terminals.
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Not at all.
My favourite UNIX variant is SGI's IRIX which is very Amiga-like on the frontend - same market, different ends of the market though ( SGIs were 10k USD and up )
I just prefer the setup of UNIX and its philosophy ( Everything is a file, device nodes and commandline tools ) But I like AmigaOS for graphical stuff.
Ideally a UNIX variant like IRIX or DragonFly BSD with a Wayland compositor in the vein of Ambient, Zune or Workbench would be very ideal along with graphical tools for those who prefer GUIs ( I'm perfectly fine with console configurations but I know others arent )
Both these variants of UNIX differ from other UNIX in a few key areas:
IRIX is very optimized for graphical usage and therefore supports console and graphics usage equally. DragonFly BSD is still under heavy development and until it reaches the 5 or 6 release mark it will still not be ready for desktop use ( It works great for servers )
Both are designed to fix what others broke and did wrong.
Unfortunately IRIX has been frozen since 2006, but tha
There was a brief moment in time when the AmigaOS was supposed to be updated with the QNX kernel underneath, and I often wondered how that might have turned out. There is no way of telling what would have happened, but I believe that we all would have been better off if that deal with QNX would have worked out. Maybe Amiga could have made a comeback at that time, as it was shortly after Commodore and then Escom went bankrupt, when Gateway purchased the IP and patents, if my memory is correct. Or was it after Commodore but before Escom? Maybe this new AmigaOS based on QNX would have been more Unix like and similar to what you would like it to be?
My brother-in-law has his masters degree in computer science and is retired now, but he plays with several SGI systems like the ones shown in your signature. He has no interest in any Amiga or its variants.
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Well Dave,
The QNX micro-kernel is pretty cool.
I was an OS-9 68K vendor in the late 80's and early 90's and I'm still a strong supporter of that concept.
Out of the three NG OS', only MorphOS uses a micro-kernel.
And as there is a stated intent to move it to 64 bit/SMP capability once an ISA change is made, our community still could evolve.
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To TeamBlackFox (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=12679):
Your example is about normal file access. Where's the 'everything is a file' thing in that? If that's what it means, then it's not true. Everything is a file implies EVERYTHING, and that's why it sounds awful.
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To TeamBlackFox (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=12679):
Your example is about normal file access. Where's the 'everything is a file' thing in that? If that's what it means, then it's not true. Everything is a file implies EVERYTHING, and that's why it sounds awful.
Well all devices on your busses be they PCI/SCSI/ATAPI or what have you are accessed as files ( Specifically called device nodes ), /proc or /sys uses files like /proc/cpuinfo to communicate info about the hardware, directories are a file with a special bit set on them indicating they're a directory, interprocess communication is handled by socket files, pipe files and other things.
How many more examples do I have to list? The "Everything is a file" is a good thing not a bad. Unless you like accessing devices with raw binary streams and having to rely on the assumption that no part of the data stream is corrupted so your binary parser can parse the data... I don't know what you're getting at here - what the hell makes this a bad thing?
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what the hell makes this a bad thing?
I wrote that it sounds bad ;)
It just seems odd to me that you'd make things that essentially aren't files, files. Inter-process communication is one such thing: Why not just send a message? Why have this work through a file system?
Perhaps it's time for me to use google :)
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I wrote that it sounds bad ;)
It just seems odd to me that you'd make things that essentially aren't files, files. Inter-process communication is one such thing: Why not just send a message? Why have this work through a file system?
Perhaps it's time for me to use google :)
Sorry I took that the wrong way I suppose (=.=). Message passing is not traditionally the way UNIX does things, both methods have their benefits and drawbacks. This is why DragonFly BSD is a good thing - because they're adding things such as message passing. Its an interesting BSD/AmigaOS hybrid in some manners.
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This is why DragonFly BSD is a good thing - because they're adding things such as message passing. Its an interesting BSD/AmigaOS hybrid in some manners.
I researched DragonFlyBSD briefly and from what I thought to understand the Amiga-style message passing is only used in kernel and is not for user space. That's why I prefer to work on AROS.
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How many more examples do I have to list? The "Everything is a file" is a good thing not a bad.
Unix is, however, surprisingly inconsistent with "everthing is a file". I always wondered why network interfaces are not files. There is no /dev/eth0. Instead, you need to rely on "ifconfig" to do the magic for you. Network connections are not files either, they are sockets. Once opened, you can access them as files, but they do not show up in the directory hierarchy. Also pretty inconsistent.
AmigaOs is also pretty inconsistent. There is the "exec device layer" that defines the physical interface, and then there is the "Tripos Handler layer" that defines something similar one hierarchy up. They also use completely incompatible interfaces and communication protocols (IORequest vs. Packet) - mostly because CAOS was not ready in time.
In the end, assigns are IMHO less powerful than mount points. You can link in every device in almost every place in the file hierarchy, it integrates a separate entity as sub-part into the whole hierarchy. Assigns are quite the opposide: They take a sub-entity of the file hierarchy and move it top-level as a new "device-type" thing.
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Indeed. What hardware do you run? I'd be happy to tell you if its supported. Also HAMMERFS on either MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 would be awesome - it would bring ZFS like behaviours to Amigans. Imagine: snapshots, logical volumes, software RAID - the possibilities!
If I were to build a new box from parts, capable of running DragonFly BSD, what would you recommend? What should I look out for? Graphics, sound, and wireless need to work. Ideally it should be capable of running AROS as well.
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Why have this work through a file system?
There are pro's and con's. If everything is a file you can talk to anything just by opening the file and call a handful of api's on it.
With an mmu comes memory mapped files, then access then just becomes memory accesses.
If everything isn't a file, then you have to open a different library before opening the thing and potentially calling functions similar to those on a file but just called something else.
mostly because CAOS was not ready in time.
I got the impression it wasn't just not ready in time, it wasn't being worked on at all.
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
"CAOS was contracted out, for the most part, to a company that felt Unix was a better choice and didn't buy into my design. They became history when they started using their Sun development systems for other projects, not the Amiga higher level OS functions. "
The CAOS design wasn't great in places, it would have taken someone with real talent to knock it into shape. It's more likely to have ended up worse than what Metacomco delivered.