How about creating a Open AMIGA Consortium?

[Einstein]

A6000 wrote:

We also need a reverse engineered operating system.

There already is one, what truely is needed is an *evolved* amiga like OS that's also FLOSS, anything else is a disappointment and a proof of "the Amiga curse", sorry, but that's the inconvenient truth  :-)

[Einstein]

HenryCase wrote:

"Evolved" being the key word there, i.e. it needs to grow from our existing tech.

The OS is second in priority to the hardware IMO, need to draw up hardware tests first.

HW is irrelevant to me, as long as the OS is robust and has a nice thought out API.
Still, that does not mean I don't respect the efforts put into these HW projects, including this one, unfortunately though some of us are still waiting for the software (OS) counterpart to this project.

[Einstein]

persia wrote:
You know I'm starting to change my mind on this whole thing.  Chasing state-of-the-art isn't really preactical, how long much effort to write code to take advantage of multiple cores?  How much to link machine to combine cpu power like xGrid?  Memory protection and all the other issues AmigaDos has are too hard to address.

The Amiga is retro-computing at it's best.  I spend all day working on state of the art equipment.  When I come home and turn on my 2000 it takes me back to a simpler time.  Low end graphics, simple games and OS that really doesn't do anything but load programs.  It pulls me out of the 21st Century and back to my youth.  That's the Amiga magic.  Going state-of-the-art would ruin that.  The Amiga is like Amish furniture, nobody asks why the Amish don't use naugahyde!

Why then developing and maintaining three OSs with the goal of being 3.1 compliant at the expence of modernity, why not just use the #?UAE, there are ports for almost any platform out there, should give the 3.1 lovers least trouble to make out with the 3.1 API :-)

[Einstein]

freqmax wrote:
There's a huge software base for Amiga that I don't want loose. Most newer versions just don't have that software base.
And in any case there's nothing to prevent loading another OS.

Like I wrote, why not just use #?UAE ? Use it as X-Amiga or launch it on top of the other real OS that I *know* amiga/3.1 lovers run.

If modernity is the way. Then we might aswell dump all Motorola CPU/OCS/ECS/AGA and go for MIPS/ARM/etc.. + Intel graphics (most open atm).

No I guess we better get back to live in caves while we are at it, or consider what I wrote above..

[Einstein]

A6000 wrote:
For anyone who is happy to abandon everything that makes the amiga special, the answer is obvious, get a PC.

I take it as you use an A6000 for your personal computer needs ?

[Einstein]

A6000 wrote:
I have no real need for a computer, I don't even play games much, I use a PC ONLY to access the internet,

If you have a PC solely to access the internet then you *do* need a computer do you not ?

[Einstein]

A6000 wrote:
When I can get a webbrowser for the amiga/natami that does "everything" then I can put the PC in the back of a cupboard.
I can use a library computer, so no, I don't NEED a computer.
I feel a rant coming on about all these "new fangled gadgets". :roll:

You still need a computer, that's what you're implying  :-)

[Einstein]

persia wrote:
Ok, let's get a state of the art machine, an eight core Penryn, 1 TB hard disk, 8 GB Ram, 512 MB graphics card with a RW Blu-ray drive.  Do AmigaDos hand the multi-cores?  No.  Can it use the video card? No.  Can it access the entire hard disk?  No.  Can it burn a Blu-Ray disk? No.  

What am I going to switch my picture editing from Photoshop, Lightroom & Aperture?  Deluxe Paint? Not bloody likely!  Video Editing from Final Cut to what?  Word Processing colaberation?  Nope.  Spreadsheet with mathematical routines?  Un-un.  Host a PHP website like WordPress or a Java Exo? Sorry mate, no can do.

There's no killer app out there for the Amiga and frankly why would someone bother to write one when it would probably crash the OS, the OS lacks the basic functionality of a modern OS and they could make several orders of magnitude more money with a PC or Mac version.

This is pretty obvious isn't it ? not many would write killer apps for an OS that's technically inferior to alternatives (and with alternatives I'm not implying the overbloated trinity).

What would need to be done is that the entire OS would need to be rewritten on top of a Posix OS such as Linux, that is a GUI that approximated Workbench. Who's going to do that?

You're implying a near impossibilty for that, but you're forgetting the existence of things such as Syllable (Desktop), SkyOS, and Haiku, first two with custom kernels AFAIK, and the third using a prewritten kernel named NewOS, none relying on a #?x kernel.

[Einstein]

AeroMan wrote:
So why bother about this discussion ? All the "modern" OSs have all those drivers.

You can buy a cheap PC, install your favorite Linux distro and pick the drivers and apps on the net. Then if something goes wrong (it will...) you just have to spend the entire day typing huge commands in a terminal window. Pretty modern, like my TRS-80.

Great observed, except you are referring to the UI, I'm talking about the internals. :-(

You can instead install Windows and be graced with the blue screen of death from times to times, find out that some of your software does not like Vista, or just delight yourself trying to find out why your state of the art PC is as slow as my TRS-80. After some time you will find out you need an upgrade.

I run windows xp, and have never encountered a blue screen of death, on the other hand so many colorful and non-colorful screens of AmigaOS death that I'm wondering if all amiga users did something really really bad in a previous life.

I feel the need for the Amiga ! All the "modern" OSs does not satisfy my expectations for a computer as Workbench did at its time.

I think you are misunderstanding a few things, I'm talking about the internals and you about the (G)UI !!

We just can't wait for a killer app to be written for a non existent platform. It is like a chicken-egg situation.

Some time ago, one might say the same about Linux. "Who is gonna write a driver for my XXXX video board for Linux ?? Does it have Excel? Word? Doom? At least a decent GUI?". Time proved there were people willing to do it.

I guess we'll have to see, good luck though with the killer app writers swarming around a crashfrienly OS

[Einstein]

abbub wrote:

Sig999 wrote:
If they can recapture the fun of the old machine, they'll have a winner. My PC doesn't keep me up till midnight flipping through old books and wading through pages of 68k assembly.  Linux doesn't make me stop mid-coffee and run to the keyboard to give something 'just one more try'...

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but part of the 'fun' of it for me is the simplicity.  When you start introducing modern hardware, the features of a modern operating system, etc., that simplicity has a tendency to vanish.

Explain please!

I'm still curious as to what the modern features people want to add to Amiga OS, and how they intend to implement these without the Amiga OS morphing into the existing operating systems they're seeking to avoid.

If you havent noticed what features some people want in the OS then it's pretty hopeless explaining forever and ever ...and ever, isn't it ?

[Einstein]

biggun wrote:

Likewise, the OS required to support this modern hardware scales up quickly in terms of complexity and needed resources. Look at linux.

I fully agree. Linux has of course many nice things.
But some of its "modern advantages" are paid with by serious complexity and performance issues.

If on Linux a application uses a device then there is for security reasons no direct connection between the application and the device.
This means that if a user application wants to write something to this device it will write this in its user space buffer. The kernel is than called to copy this user space buffer into the kernel space device buffer. The same complex handling is done when the packets return form the device.

This way is "more secure" of course but also twice as slow as the AMIGA solution.
We are writing 10G Ethernet drivers at work and the way Linux handles this is seriously impacting performance.

The beauty of the AMIGA solution is that its more elegant, simpler and faster!

Faster huh ? then why not just use TOS or MS-DOS, I bet no AmigaOS app will ever be as fast as one under these, and due to the non-multitasking nature it means one is less likely to loose data in some running app(s) because another one just did bring down the OS, MS-DOS rulez I guess.

[Einstein]

abbub wrote:

Einstein wrote:
Explain please!

It's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?

When you start adding features to an operating system, the complexity of that system goes up.  Want to add a web browser?  Well, you'll also need to add a TCP/IP stack and the network drivers for your supported hardware, as well as a way to configure all of that.  Then someone says, "well, we now have built in networking, so why not go one more step and add wireless? , which opens a whole other can of worms.  You add something like simple USB support, but why doesn't the mouse wheel work when I have my USB mouse plugged in?  You'll have to add support for that so that the wheel is  standardized throughout all of the programs.  And third mouse button support that's also standardized.  And I want those multimedia keys on my USB keyboard to do something, so we should have a way to configure those in the OS, too.  And so on and so fourth.  

Before long, adding all of these little tweaks and add-ons results in an OS that now has a 500 MB footprint and needs a half a gig of memory just to boot.  All of the simplicity (and speed) of the OS is gone.

So you mean it will be more complex *internally*, I could swear it sounded it would get more complex for end users. But what did you expect, on the other hand if yuo hate complexity then why not not just ditch the OS in favour of MS-DOS, or better yet, hardware hitting application framework (+ drivers), and just get rid of the overhead that's added to he OS b/c the need of multi-tasking ?

You're left with yet another operating system in a sea of operating systems,

Yea, just like AmigaOS like systems, yet other OSs in the the sea of OSs... (!)

and chances are, you've also left real Amiga support somewhere behind you, because convincing programs written in 1988 to play nice on a modern system is a daunting task.  Of course, you could probably port UAE to your new Amiga, and run your Amiga software on your Amiga under emulation...?!

Not on "my Amiga". All these efforts put into all these projects, only a fraction of it is needed to integrate UAE at a clearly acceptable level into a clearly advanced OS and get on with life.

If you havent noticed what features some people want in the OS then it's pretty hopeless explaining forever and ever ...and ever, isn't it ?

One person on here (Sig1999) has answered my question with regards to what he feels are modern features... >4 GB support and the ability to use PS/2 keyboards.  (Though I'd argue that PS/2 keyboards are just a stop gap, and for real future proofing you'd need USB.)  In any event, I'm not sure how you expect me to 'notice' something that very few people have commented on.

Than it's possible that you started reading this board (and others) yesterday, in that case it's understandable.

[Einstein]

Sig999 wrote:

I'm not in the camp of 'The Amiga will rise and kick arse once more!'

Not me either, but I just cannot hope on something that will get its arse kicked by anything, anytime, anywhere

[Einstein]

@abbub, since you've not read the board long enough then it's a good start to search for the relevant keywords (dunno, memory protection, x, y, z..)with the search form

[Einstein]

Sig999 wrote:

Einstein wrote:

Sig999 wrote:

I'm not in the camp of 'The Amiga will rise and kick arse once more!'

Not me either, but I just cannot hope on something that will get its arse kicked by anything, anytime, anywhere

agreed we're kind of like agnostics at mass

Could've agreed back to that, if I only knew the meaning of that expression :-D