Why Am I excited about Icaros?

[stefcep2]

ChaosLord wrote:

persia wrote:
AROS ... locks it's developments into the late '80s/early '90s."  

Really?

People used 1280x1024 16 million color workbenches in the late 80's and early 90s?

People ran 2000 Mhz CPUs in the late 80's and early 90s?

People used 3000 MB of RAM in the late 80's and early 90s?

I didn't know any of that happened.  You must know a lot more about computer history than me.

these are merely hardware advancements.  AmigaOS supported 32 bit color screens in 1280x1024 since the early 90's, like wise 16 (24 bit as well?) bit audio through AHI, and upto 768 MB ram ( at least?).  For a system built in 1983 thats decent, even in todays hardware terms, when you consider how quickly hardware specs become obsolete.

People harp on about memory protection.  Back in the day, the most tangible outcome of this lack on the Amiga was that badly written program could bring the entire system down as each programs could occupy the memory space of another one.  But most programmers learned to write their software so that this didn't happen nowhere as much as you might think.  The security advantages of memory protection are over-hyped as memory protection is no guarantee to a secure system anyway:  Look at every incarnation of windows that has had memory protection: its THE most insecure system on the planet, always needing to be patched to cover this hole and that hole.  The underlying problem is that home OS's like AmigaOS and Windows and MacOS before it became a Unix GUI is that these OS's were never meant to be used on giant multi-suer networks like the internet, and this where most of the security flaws result.  Conversely as a home computer OS the Amiga has huge advantages in ease of usability ( eg you NEVER NEED to open a shell if you don't want, Linux/Unix REQUIRES you to do it at LEAST some of the time), GUI speed, wonderfully-smooth multi-tasking, fast boot up time. Why can't these things be implemented as well in a system with memory protection?  Does memory protection require the sacrifice of these things?  Why does a core2duo running at 2.8 ghz with 3 gig ram stutter to draw a left mouse click menu just because its loading a web page?

There's still a  lot to like about AmigaOS, and computer OS's haven't come forward nowhere near as much as the hardware they run on.  In fact Windows, Mac And Linux OS programmers should be ashamed.

[stefcep2]

Ok so I note there's a LiveCD and vmware distro.

Any recomendations as which to use.

Will it work on a PIII -450 with 128 meg ram?

[stefcep2]

Einstein wrote:

I must mysteriously have used software from a minority of programmers I take it ? that's a good one

It depends on what software you used.  PD can give you a guru, most commercial software I used was fine. Memory protection still doesn't prevent freezes and hangs, screen corruption,they still happen eg nvidia drives with XP/Vista

Memory protection on its own provides no security, but stability. It's when mp is combined with resource access privilege checking that it shuts the door to malware trying to crawl in from the otherwise open memory.

Acknowledged this, but you gotta have it in the first place to prevent ONE form of security risk.  There are many other holes in Windows that constantly need to be pluggged.  So you still run an insecure system.

Regarding windows security issues, what about linux ?

Linux is said to be more secure but thats probably because its less popular (and not as hated as MS is).  It doesn't attract as much malware development, doesn't necessarily mean its more secure, but it might..

Linux is a kernel. There's nothing stopping a linux based OS from providing GUI for any functionality you'd expect.
It's just that unix geeks have traditionally preferred CLI (aka shell) commands with cryptic and often unrelated names/options etc.

Heard that argument a billion times. Thats a cop out.  Why?  Because it hasn't happened. In 20 years. Linux needs to be assessed on what it is NOW, its had 20 years to mature, not what it COULD BE, if someone gave a rats at some indeterminate point in the future.  Theoretically it *might* be possible to have an intuitive GUI for every function that a user might need to use, but NOT ONE DISTRO provides such a system.  Tried all the big guns: Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, SUSE, ALL REQUIRE eventually that you get your hands dirty with CLI.  You CAN'T escape it.  Linux is still a command line OS with GUI tacked on top of it, no matter how its dressed up.  On the other hand Workbench and CLI are two sides of the one coin.

The amount of times I needed to set some GUI based tasks priority to -1 just to have a responsive keyboard (and other apps) is uncountable.

Really?   What in god's name are you running?  I've run ImageFX, and lightwave renders, whilst typing up an essay in Wordworth, and i couldn't out-type Wordworth on a 40 mhz '030.  Oh I was IRC'ing at the time so a TCP stack was going as well and had YAM open..

And you want to improve it more?  Download Executive for free and customize task scheduling to suit your needs.

fast boot up time.

And faster crash down time.

Blue screens happen at ghz speeds, GURU's at MHZ...

Also some browsers utilize multi-threading badly, or (almost) not at all.

Oh you mean the programmers haven't yet learned how to program their software in a system-friendly way so that they make way for higher-priority system tasks like responding to a command issued by the user to open a Start Menu?  Why doesn't the OS over-ride this? Isn't it a PRE-EMPTIVE multi-tasking OS as opposed to a co-operative one?  Why does the OS allow an application to take priority over system tasks?  Also its OK when programmers program badly on Windows, thats the programers fault, but not when they do it on Amiga, thats AmigaOS's fault?

There's still a  lot to like about AmigaOS, and computer OS's haven't come forward nowhere near as much as the hardware they run on.  In fact Windows, Mac And Linux OS programmers should be ashamed.

BeOS which implements/-ed memory protection, and even more, QNX, which does that plus security haven't been accused of being unresposive (me exluded, haven't used any of them). So why should the three named mainstream OS learn from Amiga when all it does is next to nothing:

* No user mode/supervisor-mode context switch upon entering exec (exec is a library that is called like a library, but when it absolutely must it triggeres the cpu to enter supervisor mode
* Passing pointers, the IPC simply adds the message nodes to which the pointer points into the massage list (port)
* Scheduler completely discriminates and starves tasks as long as any higher priority one has an appetite for over-consumption
* No virtual memory
* And I must have forgotten (and be nonaware) of tons more.

Like I said, exec is a fancy task-switching utilty API[/quote] :lol:

You know nothing about Exec:  its employs true pre-emptive multitasking, and its scheduler will only "starve" tasks if you prioritize something to an extreme: no programmer in his right mind would do it that way, but if you want you can try.  And even then the system will still be responsive to the user as system tasks are prioritised highest anyway.  Task switching is what you got in Pre-OS X days on Mac, and Win 3.11 days.  Since then Windows has had pre-emptive multi-tasking but its not as responsive as AmigaOS Exec, not unless you have a factor of 1000 more ram (thats why Win and Linux NEED Virtual memory, ) and CPU cycles.  


And Amiga doesn't have virtual memory because it doesn't NEED it.  I've never run out of RAM and the most i had was 128 meg. But if you want it can be done, you could buy
GigaMem to do it...

I stand by my earlier conclusion  Windows OS, OS X and Linux OS programmers should be ashamed at the total misuse of hardware resources in creating the worst user-experience versus computing power in the history of computing.

Sorry to bore everyone.

[stefcep2]

You also forgot that linux is Open Source, and people wanting to stay away from malware tend to be using distributions. There you have two valid reasons why there should be far more malware for linux systems than there appears to be at the moment.

Wrong!! 90 % people intending to stay away form malware use Windows and buy security software.  Its a fact, no matter how dumb that may be. Now consider that writers of malware must have a MOTIVATION to write malware eg to steal personal information from users for gain, and in this case 90-95% of computer users use Windows, which OS would they target for vulnerabilities?  Windows ofcourse,  as there is better chance of success. So not as much effort goes in to exploiting Linux potential vulnerabilities.

You can't infiltrate a proper implementation of a good design, but a faulty implementations by a coder you can. Now, as long as coders properly implement system components, it won't matter how bad code the application developers write.

No system is foolproof, forever.  Given enough time and desire ANY system can be breached.

You are talking about a *distribution*, realize a distribution contains tons of software packages needing to be configured with tons of configuration utilities, usually that's the shell commands on linux, nothing prevents GUIs for those, and nothing prevents rewriting any fundamental CLI command to a more amiga-like look/syntax if one must either.

I know what a distro is. But, oh I see, users should not use a distro, but compile Linux themselves and write GUI's for all of the operating system functions, and any software that doesn't have a GUI.  Real user-friendly that is.  You *could* do all of this, and someone somewhere at some point time *could* make Linux a totally GUI driven system.  But 20 years later NO-ONE, ANYWHERE has.  The point remains:  Linux is all about what it *could* be, but in reality never *will* be.

Really? What in god's name are you running?  I've run ImageFX, and lightwave renders, whilst typing up an essay in Wordworth, and i couldn't out-type Wordworth on a 40 mhz '030.  Oh I was IRC'ing at the time so a TCP stack was going as well and had YAM open..

Good for you, not everyone could afford those luxury hw.

Luxury?  Its clear from this post and your posts about Exec that you are a relative newcomer to Amiga.  Thats good, I welcome that. 68030's and 8-16 Meg RAM were commonplace in the 90's.  A1200 and 68030 and ram: $500 or less, when Win95 PC was $2000.  The A1200 ran rings around that.  Apart from Lightwave the SW was free Mag coverdiscs.  

And you want to improve it more?  Download Executive for free and customize task scheduling to suit your needs.

Like that doesn't add overhead. And still no mp, no vm.

Yep all of 250k RAM and NO additional CPU overhead.  See again: you don't get Amiga. You have a Win/Linux POV on things.

Oh *start* menu huh ? You could've included the word start and not making me think you are talking about the browser one..

See you miss the point again:  In a good pre-emptive multitasking system the OS decides who gets what share of the CPU time, not the Apps.  Pushing a mouse button to make a menu appear is a basic OS FUNCTION, not a basic Application function: the OS ought to give priority to this before rendering a fricken' web page!!  A start menu ought to be an even higher priority OS function than an Application menu: the fact the Start menu stutters when downloading a web page is therefore an EVEN worse indication of a poor multi-tasking system. And this all happening on  multi-core, muti-ghz cpu with gigabytes of RAM!!!  Its NOT about multi-threading parts of an app to run separately in separate cores in separate memory spaces, its about good pre-emptive multi-tasking DESIGN of the OS

Since when have I defended windows way of implementing things.

Oh yes and Linux is a multi-tasking fiend??  As a server yes, as desktop? Yeah right: wasn't that long ago that playing an mp3 would stop the mouse pointer from moving. On a 1 ghz 512 Mb PC.  A joke.

Also Explorer, although a system one, is still an application process.

Which in a good Pre-emptive multi-tasking design would be prioritised ahead of other apps, but isn't.

Like I wrote earlier, I had to set a task priority to minus -1 in AmigaOS to ensure other app's (who happened to for the most part be io-bound) to get near-instant schedule, I don't remember the names after all these years, but on AROS last time I tried it (more than a year ago) at least ScummVM (set task to -1) and Lunapaint (slowed workbench menu down alot of times).

Not sure what you were doing, but 3D rendering is as demanding task you can get and as I've said a 40 mhz 68030 didn't lock up the system doing a lot more besides.

You are confusing me or yourself:  AROS DOES NOT RUN AMIGAOS and doesn't run Exec, except under emulation through UAE AFAIK.  Scummvm is some sort of software interpreter.  These things have high CPU demands. Classic Amiga was never about the CPU: thats why a presentation running a 14 mhz A1200 with 4 meg ram would bring a 200 mhz PC to a grinding halt. And AFAIK Lunapaint is not a native AmigaOS 3 application.  A better test would be Brilliance, PPaint or Dpaint. Load and run them all at the same time (in 4 meg or less, mind).   Workbench doesn't skip a beat..

, and its scheduler will only "starve" tasks if you prioritize something to an extreme: no programmer in his right mind would do it that way, but if you want you can try. And even then the system will still be responsive to the user as system tasks are prioritised highest anyway.


Thanks for the lecture, tell me something new.

Yes, but YOU implied that Exec was to blame for "starving" tasks of CPU time, when you NOW agree it was the programmer or user setting things that way.

Task switching is what you got in Pre-OS X days on Mac, and Win 3.11 days.

oO what are you talking about ?

i am talking about the fact that pre OS X and Win 95, MAc and Win did NOT have pre-emptive multi-tasking: they used a simple task-switching implementation.

Software provides more funcionality with time, resolutions increase, modern kernels have page tables and other contexts that need memory, they have services (many really unnecessary) that need memory, when you add all these to amigaos it won't stay as small anymore.

It will ALWAYS be smaller than the Win or Linux or OS X.  AND it won't get slower the longer you use it...

I stand by my earlier conclusion  Windows OS, OS X and Linux OS programmers should be ashamed at the total misuse of hardware resources in creating the worst user-experience versus computing power in the history of computing.

But AmigaOS due to its many incapabilites cannot provide many of these experiences at all.

Its all relative, innit? At the moment on a relative scale, the improvements in software functionality relative to the hardware advancements are about 1 to 100.  Thats the REAL tragedy.