Amiga OS 5 prediction

[jarroyo]

I have been speculating and trying to piece together how in the world Amiga Inc. can claim to have a new OS, so called “OS5” in what can be perceived to be a relatively short period of time with limited resources, and claim that it will be better than Mac OSX.

My 2 cents, and pure speculation

Amiga OS5 will be based on QNX’s Neutrino along with all the related tools, Photon GUI, IDE, etc. The development effort on behalf of Amiga Inc is probably focused on “Amigafying” that environment and bringing the Amiga look and feel, as well as some software basics to said platform.

Supporting information

In the following article dated Feb 6, certain claims are made by PA Semi, namely that:

“The Neutrino real-time operating system from QNX Software Systems and its related Momentics Development Suite have also been ported to the PA-6T platform”

http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb020607-story01.html

In an article authored by Thom Holwerda back in 2004, the merits of QNX where outlined as well as its potential to be a fully featured desktop OS.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php/8911/QNX-The-Unexpected-Surprise/

While other OS’s and IDE’s are slated to run on the hardware platform, they are mostly Linux / Unix based, and similar to Mac OS X “Darwin / FreeBSD” Based microkernel.

The only way Amiga Inc. can claim to be better is to be different. A linux clone would not provide this for the company. Additionally Linux on top of a microkernel may not be a good thing. The article goes on to say..

"[...] Unix's syscalls all are synchronous. That makes them a bad target for a microkernel, and the primary reason why Mach and Minix are so bad - they want to emulate Unix on top of a microkernel. Don't do that."

In this respect AOS 5 would be better…….

Why then all the hoopla over OS4? simple, market fragmentation. Two different dev environments as well as the fact that Hyperion would market the OS as an “Amiga” brand, and A Inc would be heading towards a different direction.

Thoughts?......

[jarroyo]

I am talking about OS5 because Bill did. Additionally, the QNX Neutrino is already running on the PA Semi hardware. This means the "amigafying" of Neutrino/Photon GUI is all A Inc would be spending time and resources to bring to market.

In essence, OS5 already exists, and is running on the hardware.

A Inc would simply need to make sure OS4 does not ship, hence the lawsuit, because it would fragment the market.

If A Inc does have the money, giving Hyperion 25K to make it go away would be cake..

[jarroyo]

It is open source....

The reason why they would not do Ubuntu is because of the similarity between what Apple did with their OS, which is essentially a flavor of Unix.

Bill's prior statement was that it would be superior to Mac OS X, hence my "prediction" that AOS 5 would be a "flavor of Neutrino"

I cannot believe Bill and company would be able to build something from scratch with limited time and resources.

[jarroyo]

Correct!

It is different enough from the Apple / Unix pedigre.
It is, based on my reading, better than Mac OS X.
It is, already running on the PA Semi hardware, at least since February of this year from a dev perspective.
It is something that A Inc in its current state could "handle."

Think about it, why would A Inc choose such a robust piece of hardware, and then place the existing Hyperion OS4 on it?

Is OS4:
SMP enabled, 64 Bit, etc...?

[jarroyo]

For those interested in how I came to this prediction

PA Semi News
http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb020607-story01.html

Eval of QNX as a desktop OS. This one is a bit old.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php/8911/QNX-The-Unexpected-Surprise/

Bill calimed superior audio capabilities
http://www.qnx.com/products/middleware/multimedia.html

Superior architecture over Mac OS X
http://fusion.qnx.com/3/8483/246.07_Neutrino_bro_P5.pdf?tid=385329_bH_1006044735&ending=246.07_Neutrino_bro_P5.pdf

I can only wish.....

[jarroyo]

Lets be honest, starting an OS from scratch is not an easy thing.
There is a plethora of OSes out there that are far superior and further established, but little known. A unix clone would simply not suffice, and was done already by Apple.

A company like AInc can simply re-brand one of these as their own, and focus on software / features to add value and set itself apart from the rest.

Apple did what I am predicting A Inc will do if they want to keep things afloat. Mac OS X is Jobs old Next Step OS company that he created after he left Apple. When he returned to Apple he bought is own company, dressed up the Pig and called it Tiger..:-)

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but we can beat them with their own tactic. Jobs probably did it to pay himself, A Inc could do it to leap frog everyone.

[jarroyo]

What Amiga Center...;-)

[jarroyo]

QNX Neutrino would be in many ways superior to the Mac OS X provided it could be brought to the desktop world in an elegant way. It would also give A Inc the ability to scale from embedded devices  all the way up to server class equipment.

The question remains however, is A Inc the kind of company to make it happen? That is another matter altogether..

Cheers

[jarroyo]

I do not believe they, A Inc, could make this a Linux Distro and get away with it. That would be the final nail in the proverbial coffin for this community.

The benefits of a QNX "distro:"
OS5 on QNX would be different enough from a Linux distro.

The source code has gone open source, see the announcement below.
http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2519_1.html

The development effort would be realistic enough for a company like A Inc to undertake in a short time span.

Its proven technology in the embedded space. Can scale to be a full desktop OS and above.

The India company already has experience in the embedded space development.

ACK Systems, the developers of the motherboard already have a presence and experience in the embedded space

Amiga Anywhere would run on this platform, very easily.

Mated to the hardware spec already published by A Inc, it would make a hell of a platform. 64 Bit OS, Dual Processor cores, low latency architecture with all IO / motherboard components in one chip, low power / quiet system, etc.....

I can dream can"t I?.....:-)

[jarroyo]

"Do you really think it's about this community honestly or is it about A Inc making money"
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Businesses need to create a value proposition in order to be successful. An Amiga linux distro, I feel is not compelling enough in that respect to make it worth while; I would probably just get a Mac if this is the route they take.

QNX is different enough and arguably architectually superior to Mac OSX to make the kind of value proposition required for a successful platform.

Of note, Bill claimed that the India team is not developing OS 5; and while they do develop for Windows, they also do a significant amount of development in the embedded space that is not windows
http://www.amigadevindia.com/html/technology_embedded.htm

[jarroyo]

It sounds based on your description of the events that the bad blood was between H&P and Amiga Inc, not entirely against QNX.

Additionally, the situation internally at QNX could have changed since H&P and A Inc where going at it. It looks like from the link below that even as early as April 2007 things have changed at QNX.
http://www.qnx.com/company/qnx_harman.html

Besides, this is business, and any savvy business person knowns that grudges take a back seat to money. After all, who would have tought that McNeely at Sun and Gates at Microsoft would have ever gotten along?...:-)

Money make strange bedfellows....

[jarroyo]

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dentunes wrote:
Just for the record, Jobs didn't BUY his own company when he returned. He returned because Apple, under Gil Amelio, bought NeXT and the employees to go with it. Gil being the guy with the famous quote
"Apple was a ship with the hole in the bottom, and my job was to point it in the right direction"
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You are correct, that last fact escaped me.

[jarroyo]

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iMacMiga wrote:

Why the hell not? If it's a good OS who cares who did it first, or what it's based on. The quality of the product and it's technological advantages are the key issue, not, as many Apple users would have you believe, who copied who. The entire industry spends it's whole time copying each other. Some companies still remain better.
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Why would anyone buy a what essentially amounts to a linux distro? I would get a Mac if this is what A Inc turns to.

In my opinion, A Inc as a company needs to provide a value proposition that takes them in a direction different than just another Linux distro.

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iMacMiga wrote:
UNIX is a robust and standardized base, and is widely trusted and respected. An OS with modern features based on that sort of reputation could propel the Amiga name back to the limelight. Good though I'm sure it is (I've never used it),
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I won't argue the success and robustness of Unix, but QNX is no slouch. It may not be a household name, but their software is running medical instrumentation and mission critical systems in a variety of markets. I do not know what you do for a living, but serious IT proffesions do respect and hold QNX in high regard.

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iMacMiga wrote:
QNX is niche OS with only a fraction of the reputation.
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A reputation and market penetration that is much greater and respected than what we Amigan's currently have....

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iMacMiga wrote:
writing off a UNIX variant-based Amiga OS on the basis of other companies getting there first is ridiculous.
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Why would anyone buy it? Apple got away with it because they sell "art", not computers. The crowd that follow the Apple products are generally not technologicaly savy when compared to this Amiga crowd. I believe this community cares, and would be disappointed if the Amiga turns out to be nothing more than a linux variant. I could see it now; "All these years and in the end I get a Linux distro?"

Just my 2 cents......

[jarroyo]

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Steril707 wrote:
But Apple had hardware as well to support their Unix driven OS, giving some identity to the whole thing.
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I encourage this crowd to look deeply into the platform A Inc has chosen to host OS 5 on. It is quite different than what is out there, extremely powerful, when you consider that a significant amount of typical PC components are integrated into this single chip solution. It is a very balanced piece of hardware with ability to scale beyond what what current PC solutions are able to achieve today.

Don't let the 2 GHZ speeds fool you. This processor was designed for low latency transactions from end to end. A significantly more efficient architecture than what the PC and Mac has out there today.
http://www.pasemi.com/downloads/PA_Semi_PA6T_1682M.pdf

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Steril707 wrote:
An Unix based Amiga OS is still uninteresting to the average Joe imo
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I 100% agree with you on this point.

[jarroyo]

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BooBoo1200 wrote:
Now that Amigas will not have any custom chip the Os is the only thing that remains Amiga and a Os based around the source code of Workbench - Os 4 -I would argue that is Amiga But an Os based around QNX,Linux or any other Os this is not Amiga
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QNX would represent the microkernel much the same way "Darwin / Mach?" represent the Mac kernel with OS X sitting on top. Atop QNX you could develop many of the same feature set the Amiga is known for, including the Workbench paradigm. Microkernels in fact lend themselves to this type of implementation.

As far as the custom chipset, the PA Semi processor is oddly enough a custom chipset in its own right. It has a feature called the "Conexium Interchange."

From their site you read about Conexium:
"Interconnects the two 64-bit superscalar CPUs, two DDR2 memory controllers, a dual-ported L2 cache and the ENVOI I/O subsystem to deliver on-chip symmetric multiprocessing with coherent I/O"

From a custom graphics and sound point of view, this would be nearly suicidal. Unless you are Nvidia or AMD/ATI, you would be hard pressed to come up with a comparable solution that the average joe would not think its inferior inside of an Amiga.

Amiga was built at a time when custom chipsets where required to have the platform do what it became famous for. Those days are long gone and the economic landscape does not support this model any longer.

My 2 cents....