OS4 vs MOS vs AROS

[bhoggett]

AROS still has some way to go before convincing me that it will ever be viable as a primary daily use platform. Development will have to pick up considerably IMHO because that is its major drawback.

AmigaOS4 and MorphOS only run on hardware which I will never own, so they are of no interest to me at present.

[bhoggett]

T_Bone wrote:
I still plan on having an A1 and a peg3, but having to hope a hardware company is able to stick around makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

That's my thinking. If Apple can't persuade me to buy a Mac, despite their resources and proven quality, Eyetech and bPlan have no chance.

I'd rather stick to hardware I can replace at the drop of a hat with minimal disruption to my daily use.

However, that's OT here.   :-P

[bhoggett]

KennyR wrote:
AROS right now is an OS with all the disadvantages of AmigaOS, with the added complication that it runs a thousandth of the software. Having to recompile everything when very little Amiga software was actually open source is a killer.

Agreed. That's AROS' biggest hurdle, but unfortunately whenever I raised the point in the past it has been dismissed as irrelevant or invalid. That doesn't bode well for it being seriously addressed any time soon.

[bhoggett]

@Fabio

You are of course quite right to choose your own aims.

However, my earlier point stands: AROS is not an alternative to AOS4 or MOS or Linux or Windows, and won't be for the foreseeable future. From purely a users' point of view, an OS without applications is pointless.

It's why BeOS failed, and why QNX is only used by a very tiny community of geeks and embedded application developers.

That's not a criticism, but it is reality. AROS hype far outweighs its usefulness.

[bhoggett]

@Fabio

I was not really alluding to transparent 68k emulation etc., or to any Amithlon comparisons.

I was simply looking at AROS in a dispassionate way. I know you've always said that applications will come, but for me (and this thread does ask for personal opinions) that approach offers no confidence in the project at all.

Mindless optimism is fine, but it carries no weight with me. That's why I regard AROS as overhyped and overrated. Amiga applications are mostly closed source, and persuading developers to do specific AROS ports is a bit like relying on a future lottery win. You need to attract users to attract developers, or else stay a hobby project for a tiny number of hobbyist geeks. It's a hurdle you will have to face, and pretending it doesn't exist makes me believe you will never get over it.

No offense intended, of course.

[bhoggett]

@Fabio

Regarding applications, what I describe as "mindless optimism" is the expectation that people will just develop for it and port for it because it is like AmigaOS, despite the fact that there aren't any users and there is no visible market.

When I ask "why?", the answer seems to be "they just will, you'll see".

As for the community, much of it is the result of the hype. How many people on aros-exec.org use it or develop for it on a daily basis? 10? 20? 100? Less? Most of the AROS enthusiasts are there because of what they want AROS to become rather than what it is likely to be any time soon.

I don't have a ready answer for you, but yes, following the current priorities I do believe AROS is doomed. Or at least doomed to linger indefnitely on the verge of being a serious  OS, but never quite getting there.