One unified OS for the future?

[amigadave]

I am moving the forum post below to this thread, as it did not belong in the thread it was placed in by the original poster and had contributed to that thread going further "Off Topic".

Originally posted by matt3k

I have always encouraged and commented positively concerning Hyperion  and Trevor and it is well deserved. From a business standpoint his  investment and return on investment, this is certainly a labor of love  and I'm grateful for it.  How many guys would pony up real dollars  knowing that they will never make real money at it for the benefit of a  community?  Heck, I would put that kind of money in mutual funds and  collect an effortless return and not risk it in a fractured community  and all the issues with hardware and software development...

I'm not into bashing the few guys left willing to support the community.   I bet Trevor and the gang are reasonable people, PM them privately to  work this out...

IMHO,

Hyperion should consider dropping AOS4.x and move to MOS, it would solve  some of the problems we have been having and unify the community under  one banner.

MOS is really many country miles ahead at this point and they have a  proven track record of delivery, and a larger user base.  Having the one  OS would help the software developers and help get rid of this  pointless bickering.  If they want to rebrand MOS as AOS... fine... I  really don't care what they call it.  I'm just so tired of the back and  forth.

[amigadave]

Another moved forum post which is a reply to the original post

originally posted by spirantho

MOS is really many country miles ahead at this point

In what way? I see the opposite.

I would be very upset, having seen the progress that's been made behind the scenes on OS 4, if we went back to MorphOS.

However, this shouldn't turn into a red vs. blue debate (again) but  please just realise that MorphOS is NOT far ahead of OS 4 (having used  and developed on both), and throwing away all the good work that  Hyperion have done (much of which has never been seen because the end  results have not yet been released) would be a massive mistake.

[amigadave]

Yet another reply moved to this thread.

Originally posted by matt3k

I don't want to turn this into an MOS vs AOS session either.

To be fair and not make it my thoughts, I will give you the comments of  an AOS (NOT MOS) user who is a friend of mine and give you his comments  the last time he used MOS when he was over:

He mentioned:
Ambient being much more developed than workbench in many areas from cohesion of the OS to better file management.
Speed and performance of the system overall (regular usage, gaming, USB) was much better in MOS.
Available applications and application performance for MOS especially OWC and mplayer made a huge difference for him.

Remember these are from an AOS Users comments and not mine.  I'm not  here to bash AOS at all, and I realize that many users who bought AOS  would be miffed initially, the end result would help the whole  community.  You can't make everyone happy in life, but as I said IMHO  this would make sense to me and end the war and perhaps even attract  more people.  

Again this is my opinion and a longshot at best, but it is the way I see it...

Added:
LOL I found a OSNews article that illustrated some of my friends observations.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21977/Benchmarks_AmigaOS_4_1_vs_MorphOS_2_3

In what way? I see the opposite.

I would be very upset, having seen the progress that's been made behind the scenes on OS 4, if we went back to MorphOS.

However, this shouldn't turn into a red vs. blue debate (again) but  please just realise that MorphOS is NOT far ahead of OS 4 (having used  and developed on both), and throwing away all the good work that  Hyperion have done (much of which has never been seen because the end  results have not yet been released) would be a massive mistake.

[amigadave]

And another reply moved to this thread.

Originally posted by spirantho

I don't agree with his comments.

That's all I'll say, otherwise it'll all go red vs. blue again - but  that osnews article is misleading because for one thing MOS devs had  more information than AmigaOS devs about the Peg-II, and also because  the osnews article is measuring speed differences between MorphOS 2.3  and AmigaOS 4.1 beta - it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know that comparing a beta to a mature 4-year old product is a little unfair.

[amigadave]

And another

Originally posted by Matt3k

We are all on the same team here .

That was my friends observations, and it is ok that you don't agree with him.  I do agree and others here do...

I would say that the same difference would be similar with the latest iterations of the OS's.

If the reverse was true, I would be annoyed that I invested in a product  that was being replaced by the other.  But at some point I would enjoy  the benefits and move on...

This community is FAR too small for both MOS and AOS.  If we want to  attract better/more software development it is hard to deny that having  one OS as the standard would be a big step forward.

 

I don't agree with his comments.

That's all I'll say, otherwise it'll all go red vs. blue again - but  that osnews article is misleading because for one thing MOS devs had  more information than AmigaOS devs about the Peg-II, and also because  the osnews article is measuring speed differences between MorphOS 2.3  and AmigaOS 4.1 beta - it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know that comparing a beta to a mature 4-year old product is a little unfair.

[amigadave]

Last post to be moved into this thread from the other thread (I hope).  There has to be an easier way to move forum posts, so I will try to find that method and use it next time.  Sorry if this thread is confusing due to the method used to move the off topic comments here.

Originally posted by spirantho

We are all on the same team here .

That's the main thing.  My experiences are entirely different to yours, but we're coming at  them from different angles, I think. I just get really annoyed when  people say one OS is "better" than the other, it's just not that simple.
So, we agree to disagree, and move on with enjoying our OS's and pushing  both of them forward. This is too small a community for disagreement,  we need to unite.

AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS forever!

[amigadave]

Now for my own comments on this topic.

It will never happen!  At this point in time I am not convinced that it would be the best thing for us even if it could be accomplished, but I understand the desire to have our limited resources all working on the same OS, to improve the speed of progress.  It is just not possible, unless one person or group could buy out all of the groups, and even then there is no guarantee that the community would follow the new path and decisions made by this one person or group who had gotten control of all existing Amiga and Amiga inspired platforms.

There are too many differences of opinions on which direction is the best for any one of those choices to be considered the ONLY right choice for all of us.  Each choice has it's own life now, it's own user base (though many users are involved in more than one of these choices), it's own developers, and it's own vision for the future.

Nice dream, but a waste of time dreaming of something that can never happen.

Edit: Yasu, you beat me to the punch.

[amigadave]

Maybe not a unified OS, but why not a unified AmiStore, with Morphos/AmigaOS versions of every program?

That already exists as far as I know, but it is up to each individual developer to decide which platforms to support, or to allow others to port his work to different platforms than the one(s) he has written his work for.

[amigadave]

INDIEGO Appstore seems to cather for all platforms. AmigaStore focuses 100% on AOS.
Ill let people with expirience with INDIEGO Appstore give details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FhieAkeh2M&list=UUUzG5OUZ3TNHSzjab9ENVjg

My mistake, I thought that AmiStore was going to support all developers of any Amiga or Amiga inspired platform.  I'll have to check into it more closely and see if it actually prohibits developers of software for other platform to submit their programs for sale on the site.  Since AmiStore is an application that only runs on AmigaOS4.x, it does not make much sense to market software for other platforms from that store.

[amigadave]

Exactly, I was always a workbench + VincED + Dirwork user and I prefer OS4 Workbench over MOS Ambient. That's also why I think an unbiased comparison is impossible.
From the other side I do think MOS has some better technical lower level implementations compared to OS4 so as the latters use of .so objects.

@Fats,  Ambient in MorphOS3.7 can be set up to look like and function almost exactly like Workbench of any version, and vice versa.  AmigaOS4.x's Workbench can be set up to look like, and work more like Ambient.  Neither would be 100% the same as the environment they were trying to copy, but this argument alone should never be the sole reason for choosing one OS above the other to use as their preferred platform.  When I see this statement used for the reason a user chooses one platform instead of the other, it makes me cringe and think that these users have not researched either choice very well, or even tried to customize either OS setup, which used to be one of the first things that most Amiga users did to their own systems.  Where has that old Amiga trait of customizing and tweaking the user interface to their liking gone, or have most of us just become too lazy to do that kind of customization these days?  I think that most Amiga users are smarter than that and should use other comparisons of features, performance and available hardware to run the OS on, as better reasons why to choose one OS instead of the other.  The "Look and Feel" justification is one of the easiest differences to point to though, so it is often mentioned.  I just hope it is not really true that users are making their choice on the "Look & Feel" factor, when it can be adjusted so easily on either OS to "Look and Feel" any way they like, even almost exactly like the other OS they are turning away from by making that decision.  I prefer to read that a user has chosen one OS or the other for reasons of cost, or new vs used hardware, or free  and Open Source vs commercial and Closed Source.  At least those reasons make more sense to me, but not because of the "Look and Feel" of the user interface when it can be so easily changed.  This little rant about the "Look & Feel" of either OS is not meant just for you and I am not assuming that you made your choices for that reason, but I have seen other users who have made specific statements like that before and your mention of "Look & Feel" just reminded me.


It is refreshing to see some reasonable discussion about the differences between AmigaOS4.x, MorphOS3.x, AROS (don't know what version range it is currently at these days) and AmigaOS3.x (emulated or native).  Spirantho and I just had a great and rather lengthy discussion about the same topic (differences) via email, where he suggested we copy and paste our pages of discussion into a forum thread as an example of how to express different opinions, without becoming hostile or fighting with each other.  His and my opinions are similar in a few areas, but it was apparent that we had many different opinions and experiences.  His preference is to use and support AmigaOS4.x, while my preference is clearly MorphOS3.x, though I support all flavors of the Amiga/Amiga-Like experiences.

His perception of the pros & cons of each were very different than my own and I learned some new things about both platforms from the things he wrote.  He also reinforced some of my perceptions on some of the more technical aspects of both, as his knowledge and expertise in coding and understanding the under lying structures of the OS itself exceed my current understanding.

(Edited out part of our private communication that should not have been paraphrased by me, out of context)

Some of the most interesting discussion I had with Spirantho (Ian Gledhill) was his perspective on the amount of low level infrastructure work that the Hyperion developers have been focusing on, to allow AmigaOS4.x to move forward to the goals of being able to implement the Protected Memory and SMP features promised for AmigaOS4.2.  Since the MorphOS Dev. Team members have openly stated that those two features are not possible without breaking the legacy support for Amiga 68k software (or at least without undesirable consequences, due to the number or nature of compromises that would need to occur to allow such features to be added to MorphOS, or any platform which has an AmigaOS 68k software compatibility built-in)[/SIZE],

Since the MorphOS Dev. Team members apparently don't think those features are feasible without unwanted side effects, they probably are not doing any work to add Memory Protection and SMP to MorphOS, and instead their plan is to wait until they are forced to make an architecture switch, at which time they will abandon Amiga 68k legacy support, or "Sand-Box" such legacy support and use UAE to provide it, or some similar path forward.

I won't debate which path is better or worse, because I don't think such an argument can be won or lost, but there is no denying that the path that Hyperion programmers have chosen has  taken (and will continue to take) hundreds, if not thousands of programming man-hours to work on implementing these features into AmigaOS4.x, without sacrificing too much of their own legacy support.  We won't know how successful they will be, until AmigaOS4.2, or what ever version number they decide to use for the release version that includes these long awaited features, is finished and available for purchase and testing.

Memory Protection & SMP support are two features that would be very nice to have for lots of obvious reasons, but I am not sure that they are "Make or Break" features for me, with regard to my decision to continue supporting the development of AmigaOS4.x and using my X1000.

I got along very well for years on AmigaOS3.x and MorphOS without those features, so as long as I can still get some newer and more modern software applications (and a few new games) to enjoy on my X1000 running AmigaOS4.x, I probably will never complain if full Memory Protection and SMP support does not work, or never gets finished.  If/When they do get finished, for me, that will be a big bonus, as it should increase the speed a few applications will be able to run at, will allow some applications to work, that currently can't be ported or written without SMP & Memory Protection, and it should reduce the number of fatal crashes we see, though I don't notice many crashes anyway right now.

MorphOS3.x appears to be making good progress without any plans to add full Memory Protection or SMP support, so my expectations aren't really any different for AmigaOS4.x.

Spirantho mentioned that he perceives an "End of the Road" for MorphOS development on PPC hardware, when they have completed support for the last few Mac PPC hardware choices that are not currently supported.  My perspective is very different, and I actually look forward to the day when the MorphOS Dev. Team members are finished with trying to port MorphOS3.x to any other models of PPC hardware, as that will mean that they will have more time to focus on creating or porting more interesting and essential software applications and/or games to MorphOS3.x, as well as further optimizations of the OS itself instead of working on new drivers for hardware which will not improve performance or functionality, but only let us install MorphOS on one more model of existing PPC hardware.

This is one area where I think that A-Eon and AmigaKit have hit a "home-run".  They see the value of now focusing their efforts on supporting the creation of more and better software to run on AmigaOS4.x, is their most important task.  Having the software you need or want is what makes using any computer useful.

I hope that the MorphOS Dev. Team members will soon have more time to work on new, or newly ported software.  More and better content/software applications and games, will probably do more for getting people excited and interested in using their Amiga, and/or Amiga inspired systems, than anything else.

I also hope that Soft-Core Motorola 680x0 CPU's running at speeds equal to, or exceeding 400MHz, loaded into FPGA chips on accelerator boards, inside of original Commodore Amiga computers, or stand alone FPGA Amiga clones, will spur on an increase of 68k software development.  That kind of jump in performance should be able to allow software tasks that could never before be accomplished on any Motorola 68k based computer.

AROS and all of it's variants appear to have some really sharp programmers working on it over the past few years and great progress seems to have been made, with more just around the corner, that will eclipse all of the first 10+ years of work on AROS combined.

What a great time it is to be involved in any part of our remaining community!  Certainly not a time to perpetuate the silly and childish fighting we see all too often.

[amigadave]

......... So people should  concentrate on what they have and help there.

Nice post Olaf.  I did not quote the whole thing, but give you a +1 for all of what you wrote.

If everyone just enjoyed what they have chosen to use and concentrated on how they can help improve any part of our community, things would be much better than they are now and programmers would be more encouraged to work on new code for any of our platforms.  When there is less fighting between users, there also seems to be more cooperation between 3rd party developers, and more software that gets written or ported to different Amiga inspired platforms.

@everyone,

I want to take this opportunity to apologize to Spirantho for paraphrasing some of our private discussion, as it has hung him out on a limb for possible criticism by some users or developers, without the benefit of the context of our entire discussion.  I was going to come back here and just delete that part of my post, but some of you have already quoted what I wrote and commented on it with posts aimed at Spirantho.  His suggestion to copy and paste our private discussion to the forums as an example of how these differences can be discussed without any fighting or hostile words was rhetorical and not literal, and I should not have paraphrased what he wrote out of context, or without his permission.  Please do not attack him for my mistake.

[amigadave]

Uhm, but this is what MorphOS team is doing and what Hyperion is not doing. There is bunch of useful software developed or ported by the MorphOS team, starting from Odyssey web browser to SDL ports. Sketch, Transfer, Scandal, Scribble, RemoteShell, Jalapeno, Jukebox or VPDF are examples from the MorphOS ISO. And dozens of ported or new libraries making porting and writing software easier. And there is new and ported software released externally.

Yes, I know very well that many MorphOS Dev. Team members also create new, or port existing software to MorphOS.  My point was that if they slow down or stop working on ports of MorphOS to new PPC Mac models which are not currently supported, it will leave them with even more time to continue work on more software for MorphOS to run.  In that way, running out of more PPC Mac models to try to support can be a good thing for MorphOS users, not a bad thing, like the "End of the Road", that some might perceive incorrectly.  As itix also pointed out, it will take years before lack of new hardware becomes a real problem for MorphOS.  Perhaps by then, cheaper PPC systems with acceptable performance might be available from ACube or A-Eon, as I see no reason why the MorphOS Dev. Team can't port to new hardware if they believe that it is a viable hardware choice, or no other choices are available and the switch to a different architecture is not ready to happen.

Using old Mac PPC hardware should remain an acceptable choice for a few more years, unless they begin going to recycle facilities or land fills, instead of eBay and Craigslist at reasonable prices, like it is now.  I think my PPC Mac computers will last long enough for me to continue using them, until an architecture change is made by MorphOS Dev. Team members, or until they find other alternative PPC hardware to port to.

My comment was about Trevor Dickinson and Matthew Leaman of A-Eon and AmigaKit respectively, not Hyperion, and the recent efforts to help programmers, plus A-Eon's/AmigaKit's sponsorship of software projects, such as the Libre Office port, and others.  Hyperion appears to have more programming work than they can accomplish quickly, just trying to complete AmigaOS4.2.  I was commenting on A-Eon's & AmigaKit's increase in focus toward supporting more and better software to run on AmigaOS4.x, now that hardware availability is not the problem it was, prior to ACube's SAM boards becoming available and A-Eon's X1000.

I hope that all flavors of Amiga and Amiga inspired platforms will soon enjoy increased software development, for various reasons, and that was the main point I was trying to express.  New content could be the best thing to happen for us in a long while, now that we have a fairly large number of hardware models to choose from.  Even the Amiga 68k users and programmers appear to be getting new hardware soon, and hardware has never been a big concern for the AROS users and programmers, as their choices have been fairly wide for a long time already.

I just hope that enough programmers are still alive (we keep losing old Amiga users and programmers to natural causes and old age) and/or still interested in our community, and that some of our younger users will take this opportunity to learn how to program on one or more of the Amiga & Amiga Inspired platforms (I am going to improve my own meager coding skills within the next few years, so maybe even I will be able to produce something useful or fun in the near future).

[amigadave]

Nope, ARIX doesn't use the Linux Kernel, but rather a shiv.
Aeros is an interesting oddity in my opinion, but given the Linux hosted AROS side is what is amiga-oid about it, it fits the description of Linux distro more than anything, rather than an additional OS.

I will have to check out Aeros more closely to see if it emulates, or copies the "Look & Feel" of the original Commodore AmigaOS3.1 computers for my taste.  I don't personally care if it is a Linux distribution or what name it has applied to it.  If it can run all of the old Amiga software seamlessly by using UAE in a way that makes it almost transparent, or at least very easy, but not transparent, and I can also run new AROS native software, plus the huge library of Linux software, without requiring a reboot, or restart of the system each time I want to run software from a different platform, it will probably satisfy my needs and desire to run an Amiga Inspired platform. Has Aeros been ported to the X1000 already?  I would use it on mine, instead of any alternative Linux distribution.

@Fats,

Similar to what I just wrote above about Aeros, if AmigaOS4.x needs to lose all ability to run AmigaOS 68k binaries and only rely on using Run-in UAE as the only method to run old 68k Amiga software, so that they can implement SMP and real Memory Protection, I would vote YES!  Do it ASAP and dump the partial binary compatibility that Petunia provides, if it will give us real SMP and Memory Protection.  I have a feeling that this is not the case and there are other things that are holding them back from providing SMP and Memory Protection, or they most likely would have done it already.

[amigadave]

Genesi used to sponsor developers with free hardware but many just took free hardware, sold it and then quit. Some developers did develop something and then quit. Only few lasted longer so personally I dont see it viable option. Even when developers have good intentions it gets easily wasted, like with Spotify.

Bounties work better but someone must get committed to update software regularly.

Bounties are a good solution for funding some software projects, but as you pointed out, they don't guarantee that the software created will be maintained in the future.

With our needs for new software being so huge, I believe that any and all means to support and encourage new software development should be used, including bounties, sponsored commercial projects, and maybe even a few Kickstarter projects, along with donated hardware and the creation of sites like the AmiStore or other online services which make it easier for programmers to sell their work and continue programming for our platforms.  There is no single solution and I guess we will always be struggling to get more and better software for our platforms, until such time when we are large enough to make it more financially desirable to program for any of the Amiga inspired platforms (if we ever reach that point again is doubtful).

[amigadave]

As I said, A-EON should partner with TYAN to adapt some of their CPU designs to a newer, less expensive AmigaNG system,since TYAN already manufactures POWER hardware.

With A-Eon's investment of more than 1 million dollars to Vari-Sys to design and build PPC motherboards for running AmigaOS4.x (and possibly some embedded markets), I don't see them changing directions any time soon, or switching to a different company to do design work, or manufacture boards for future A-Eon computers.

I think they are committed to the road they have laid out in front of themselves for many years to come.  This decision has it's own pros and cons, but one of the pros is that the direction they are going for the next few years anyway, should be stable and predictable, for users and developers who are interested in continuing development of AmigaOS4.x on PPC hardware.  I am not personally convinced 100% that this is the best path forward, but it might turn out to be the best choice we will have for future NG Amiga hardware.  I would like to see MorphOS also ported to future A-Eon motherboards, so we could have a new common hardware for both PPC NG Amiga inspired OSes, besides the SAM460, which I still consider to be a bit low powered (and there is no telling when the port of MorphOS will be finished for the SAM460).