What the hell happened?

[smithy]

I don't want to open a can of worms here (so delete this if neccessary) but why is the Amiga community so fractured?

Simple.  In 2000 Amiga Inc announced that AmigaOS was "effectively dead as a platform".  MorphOS then appeared, and later Amiga Inc changed their minds.  But it was too late and the damage was already done.

This was well before Bill Buck was on the scene, btw.  In fact, in those days Ralph Schmidt (MOS lead programmer?) occupied the position of Evil Bogeyman that Bill Buck does today.  People seem to have forgotten about that though.

[smithy]

So OS wise the Amiga is split into AmigaOS and MorphOS camps then? Does MorphOS run on Classic Amiga's BTW.

Yup - that's basically the dividing lines.  MOS only runs on the Pegasos.  There was a version that ran on PowerUp years ago, but I think they were just using the classic machines as a temporary development machines until the Pegasos was ready (please correct me if I'm wrong someone!).

Who is Bill Buck and why is he soooo hated then?

He's the current public figurehead of the "blue" (MOS) camp, so most of the hatred is directed towards him.  Before Bill, it was Ralph who got all the flack.

The split was unfixable before Bill Buck came onto the scene.  He can't be blamed for that.  Personally, I blame the decision to kill off AmigaOS made by McEwen, Fleecy & co.  If it wasn't for that, MorphOS wouldn't have any legitimacy and would probably only have a fraction of the following it has today.