Amiga OS 4 should be ported over to the xx86.

[Manu]

"Amiga OS 4 should be ported over to the xx86."

Absolutely, but for OS4 I don't really care anymore
just like Coldfish said. OS5 can bring me some
interest again if I feel I can wait another 5+ years.

AROS is looking good, and even better when it is more ready for Internet Browsing etc.

It's just insane keeping anything AmigaOS like on
expensive hard-to-get hardware. And what if I would
like to have a laptop running OS4 how many XX years would
I have to wait for that?

PowerPC is a dead end for Amiga. It always has been.
But if you want to keep the community tiny and not care
if you bring in new users or not then PowerPC is the
best choice out there.

[Manu]

neon32 wrote:
I believe the title of the thread is "Amiga OS 4 should be ported over to the x86" not "Do you care about Amiga OS4 or not?".

Well we already know that OS4 never is going to be ported
so there's no point in commenting on OS4 specifically.
So why would I care for OS4?

There's a couple of reasons off the top of my head why I don't want the Amiga to be running on x86. One is that I dont really want it to be involved in the Mhz race, where only the fastest speeds will do, which is how Mac and Windows seem to be doing things at the moment. It was the same back when the classic Amiga was around. "Your Amiga with it's 7 Mhz CPU is nothing compared to my PC running it 66Mhz!".

Oh, come on. That was ages ago, I thought everybody moved
on since then. I rather see Amiga progress among others
than be frozen in time on custom hardware. Do you really
think a small hardware company can keep up with todays
technology, we will always stay 10 years behind as long
as we are relying on tiny companys building harware for us
with slow progress. I don't like it that way.

And another point is that you cannot simply buy a x86 CPU that can be passivly cooled - every cpu, even mobile ones run hot and i'm sick of having a computer that makes so much noise. (And yes I have "silent" fans and psu in my computer, it still makes as much noise when cpu intense tasks are running)

Yes, PCs can run silent too.

One final point is that I dont think it's good to have just one main type of cpu out there. I think it's good to have options, and although there isn't any manufacturer that can compete with the x86 CPU at the moment, I dont think that everybody should just ditch everything else and jump on the x86 bandwagon, just becasue it's the "fastest".

Not jumping on the x86 bandwagon leaves us behind. Why do
you think AOS on PS3 is so hyped? Because it's new technology and it's believed to be fast. By your reasoning
it would be better that we should build our own PS3 eqvivalent and not use available fast hardware.

It's not the speed, it's what you do with it that counts.

Sure but we can't even have a decent laptop when we are
tied to PPC, because no one makes them.

[Manu]

Varthall wrote:

What does PPC architecture offer, apart from some vague "spiritual" heredity to the 680x0 of yore?

The possibility to build a custom machine, which is not yet another x86 mobo which has already its load of OSes.

Varthall

Wo needs custom hardware? Todays custom hardware means
worse designed, poorer performance, slow progress.
Why hold back Amiga OS ? Let in run on yet another x86 mobo
so people can give it a chance. Don't you think Eyetech
going bust shows how freaking hard it is to bring forth
special "allowed" hardware. How many bankrupts/failures do we need to see before bells starts ringing ?

[Manu]

Today there's fantastic technology sold at very low price, produced by the people who really know how to do their job but we don't use it because it's not Amiga. I tought computers were a tool to do things, not an idol

There you have it. Spot on. I couldn't agree more, infact
can I use your words in my signature  :-)