Efika OS4.1

[Trev]

- Sell OS4 (Sam Edition) for half price (second hand).
- Buy OS4 (Efika Edition) for full price.

The (* Edition) bit is humorous. Imagine what life would be like if Mac OS or Windows were marketed this way:

Windows (Asus ... Edition)
Windows (Biostar ... Edition)
Windows (eVGA ... Edition)
Windows (Foxconn ... Edition)
Windows (Gigabyte ... Edition)
Windows (HP ... Edition)
Windows (Intel ... Edition)
Windows (MSI ... Edition)
etc.

Historical footnote: MS-DOS and Windows were initially marketed this way and only licensed to OEMs, who sublicensed them to consumers. The upside was that OEMs were responsible for compatibility, not Microsoft. That's why you still see things like Compaq DOS floating around, as the OEM was responsible for customizing and compiling IO.SYS. The DOS kernel, MSDOS.SYS, and the shell, COMMAND.COM, were distributed as binaries. PC-DOS was the same stuff with a few ifdef's in source--the binary files just had different names, and many of the bundled utilities were different.

An OS4 version of an OEM Adaptation Kit would be very nice.

The next time anyone questions Windows's stability, consider that it runs on every 386 or higher PC BIOS-compatible motherboard manufactured in the last 17 years. (Well, maybe. I'm sure they're requiring a more advanced instruction set now.) The same can be said of Linux (which, despite claims to the contrary, is compatible with less hardware than Windows).

At least Apple has the luxury of designing both the hardware and the software, but frankly, there's no way Amiga, Inc. or Hyperion can compete with Apple in either the hardware or software market.

U-Boot, OpenFirmware, et al should make it simply a matter of device driver development. It's too bad most of the key OS4-related driver development info is still considered proprietary or closed.

[Trev]

@mpvia

Strickly speaking, I can't take the Windows version that came with my ASUS and go install it on another computer.

You're confusing operating system code with OEM preinstallation media and an OEM license. Windows is Windows. Asus has not modified it in any way. What they have done is streamlined the installation of drivers and other third-party applications (yuck), so you don't have to worry about it. Whether or not you can transfer an OEM license of Windows to another computer is for legal scholars to debate and wasn't the point of my message. ;-)

But consider this: if you dislike the licensing terms set forth by a vendor, then refuse to honor them. I'm not talking about mass duplication and redistribution without a license; that's obviously illegal under most circumstances. What I'm talking about is refusing to let Microsoft, Hyperion, or anyone else tell you what you may or may not do with hardware or software you have legally obtained. If I want to write a bootloader, drivers, and whatever else is necessary to run OS4 on unsupported hardware, I'm damn well going to do it. ;-) (Note the so-called infringing use of the Sega Dreamcast swirl on Tux's tummy in my avatar.)

[Trev]

CPU and other low level support is built into the Kernel. The Pegasos II kernel will not work with Efika because it has no MPC5200B support

That's an unfortunate design choice--one that will cost them even more in terms of community support down the road, when everyone is forced to buy new copies of OS4. Of course, I'm sure that was a conscious decision on their part. Plus, what does that do to the second-hand market? How do you know which version of OS4 you're getting? Bah.

[Trev]

The Windows version that came with my ASUS only contains the drivers for that particular hardware and won't work on a different computer.

That's where you're wrong though. All Windows SKUs, OEM or otherwise, should* come with support for popular hardware (read: drivers submitted by vendors for inclusion in the OS). Any system that works with a retail version of Windows will work with your OEM version of Windows, assuming the drivers and software Asus has bundled fail or exit gracefully when they can't find the hardware they need. (Windows drivers behave like services, and they should just exit cleanly if they don't find supported hardware.) Anyway, you can try it yourself and install your OEM copy of Windows on VMware or Virtual PC.

I was referring to the actual files on the computer. The Windows version that came with my ASUS only contains the drivers for that particular hardware and won't work on a different computer. Sure, I could probably piece together something that works using those files and drivers I download from the internet but how's that different than those people trying to hack together a version of AmigaOS4 for the MacMini using the AmigaOne OS4 distribution.

See above. *It's certainly possible for Asus to remove unnecessary drivers--it's done all the time in the corporate world to speed up the unattended build process (which we lovingly refer to as the unintended build process); however, for a company like Asus that builds hardware and bundles other vendors' drivers (rebranded or not), it doesn't make sense. It takes more effort to remove drivers from Windows, where the installation information for most drivers is integrated into a core set of INF files, than it does to add new ones, which are now just dumped into a directory scanned during setup.

I've only been supporting Windows for about 17 years now, so it's possible my memory of how things work is fuzzy or incomplete. ;-) Or things could have changed in the OEM world. These days, I do as little I can to get the job done, and that often means glossing over information that just isn't relevant to what I'm doing.

Now, all that said, if Asus really has produced an OS CD that only includes Asus drivers, then I have just lost a whole lot of respect for them. What a waste of time and no wonder my new X58 motherboard cost more than 300USD.

Prior to Windows 2000, you had to modify Microsoft's INF files if you wanted to truly integrate your drivers into the OS setup. You could use the OEM setup process, but that just wasn't as cool, and the drivers weren't integrated into NT's standard applets for adding and detecting display, network, sound, and storage adapters.

Anyway, back to OS4. If an OEM wants to bundle OS4 with their hardware and simplify the installation process for its users, awesome. More power to them. But if a user wants to buy an off the shelf copy of OS4 and run it on a supported platform (with vendor-supplied drivers, if necessary), they should not have to choose between five or six identical boxes that may or may not include boot and kernel support for their board.

[Trev]

Vendors often deliver systems without OS media in the US, too, but you usually have an option to get it. Lawsuits work wonders.