Wither Natami?

[HenryCase]

@all
Just finished reading through all your posts so far, I get the feeling this matter (though rather pointless) is getting people down, hopefully my POV can help change this.

What is an Amiga computer? It is the A1000. There were no other computers ever given this name. What followed after were members of the Amiga computer family. The A1200 is just as much a part of the Amiga family as the Natami is/will be.

As for the whole Amiga software vs Amiga hardware issue, of course they are both useful. What we must understand about ourselves is that some Amiga fans are more drawn to the classic hardware architecture whilst others are more drawn to the Amiga software side. It's about what we find interesting, rather than what is more useful.

Speaking personally, I never really used AmigaOS/Workbench much, I was much more interested in games back in the day, and later I came to appreciate the hardware that made those games possible. Running software through emulation, whilst perfectly usable, doesn't give me quite the same buzz, as I  like the classic Amiga hardware design, and would rather be running the software on a computer with that architecture.

We all have different reasons for liking Amiga computers, let's not delude ourselves that these reasons have to be based on "what's best". Use the Amiga and its related technologies/applications to give yourself maximum enjoyment, forget about how other Amiga users may prefer to spend their time. Often progress in one area of Amiga development is loosely beneficial to another area, so be glad for all Amiga development.

[HenryCase]

the_leander wrote:
Haiku, like BeOS took some of the best ideas from AmigaOS, things like the datatypes system and brought it bang up to date with things like video codecs etc.

Apart from datatypes, in what ways is BeOS/Haiku similar to AmigaOS?

bloodline wrote:
Hans... no offence meant here, but have you ever done any Amiga development at all?

No offence, but... do you intend to stir trouble or are you just naive? In any case, just so Hans_ doesn't have to rise to your bait himself, he is working on OpenGL stuff for AmigaOS4 IIRC.

@all
I'm sure you're all aware of CAOS, the operating system the Amiga was destined to have from the start. Here's some information about it if you need a refresher:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
Now from what I can tell from that synopsis CAOS was very similar in design to what we now know as AmigaOS, but with a few key differences that allowed for better MP, better file system, etc...

Two questions:
1. Will copying or adapting some of the design features from CAOS allow us to move into a more stable AmigaOS without having to rewrite all the subsystems from scratch?
2. Will these CAOS features restrict us in building the application sandbox Hans_ is proposing?

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
That was a legitimate question

Maybe, but what did you intend to achieve by asking it?

bloodline wrote:
What "OpenGL stuff"?

Adding functions/features to TinyGL.

bloodline wrote:
CAOS was totally different from AmigaOS. And guess what it didn't work and it couldn't be made to work in budget or in time.

Those reasons were financial rather than technical, as far as I can tell. See this quote from Carl Sassenrath: "CAOS was contracted out, for the most part, to a company that felt Unix was a better choice and didn't buy into my design. They became history when they started using their Sun development systems for other projects, not the Amiga higher level OS functions."

bloodline wrote:
CAOS was a fundamentally different system built around our beloved exec. Oh and it didn't work...

...because the coding wasn't finished. That doesn't mean we can't apply some of the ideas from CAOS to our newest AmigaOSs.

bloodline wrote:
if you read what is left of the specs, you can see it was an odd system... probably even less compatible with the all pervasive POSIX than what we have now...

Not everyone sees POSIX as a good thing. Seems to me the more you strive for total POSIX compatibility the more you turn your OS into a UNIX variant. As long as apps aren't super difficult to port why care about POSIX?

bloodline wrote:
rather than these silly pipe dreams, which serve to do little more than make our favourite OS look really stupid.

This goes back to the can it be done/should it be done split I outlined in our last MP discussion. Should it be done? Probably not. Can it be done? That's the interesting part. Forget about logistics, discuss the technical details.

[HenryCase]

@the_leander
Thanks for the BeOS/Haiku information. I liked Haiku before, but now I have even more reason to like it!

@Piru

Piru wrote:
No

The reasons these topics tend to go around and around is useless answers like this. Ok, you say no to CAOS functions, I say why? You have to explain your point of view for me to take it seriously.

@bloodline

Your reaction to the question is far more interesting than either my question or Hans's answer could ever be!

I was interested in what experience Hans had, so that I could answer his questions better, perhaps he has experince in VxWorks... I don't know, but his questions were not those of someone who has spent many a bored evening messing around with an Assembler trying to get stuff to work...

You rection though, immediately makes me think there is far more to this than you are letting on, and not a good way. Someone is bullsh1ting us here!

Why would you believe someone is bullsh1tting you? Bloodline, from conversations I've had with you in the past I know you can be a helpful guy, but let's face it, you were not going to help anyone by asking if Hans_ had ever programmed for AmigaOS before (comments like that just make you seem like your looking to put people down, though you may not have meant it this way). If you wanted to him see your point of view you would have given him an example of why his ideas wouldn't work with AmigaOS, just like you had helpfully done when I was talking up MP stuff.

bloodline wrote:
Bug fixing a library that is not native to the Amiga is hardly a way to learn about the internals of AmigaOS.

I don't claim to be Hans' biographer, I was just giving you an example of Amiga programming he has done.

It couldn't be finished. It wasn't possible to get it done in the time frame/budget that Commodore had, to get the Amiga out in time. If they had stuck with it and the project had rolled on for 2 more years... too much money would have been spent, and every other computer company would have had a chance to make something better. The Amiga would have failed before it even left the stable.

Granted, it is quicker to adapt an existing OS like Tripos than start from scratch. If the CAOS developers hadn't wasted time during the development process they may have had time to get it done for the A1000 launch, who knows. We are not working to those same time restrictions, and I doubt there would be much resistance in the Amiga community to the idea of resuscitating CAOS. So exec is the same in CAOS and AmigaOS, and other functions are similar, we don't have to throw everything away to get the job done do we?

bloodline wrote:
99% of all free software is POSIX, and a new operating system needs free software to be in any way useful.

How hard is it to port a POSIX compatible app to a non-POSIX OS, in terms of libraries missing and other needed infrastructure?

bloodline wrote:
AmigaOS is what it is. If you want to make a new OS go right ahead. But I like our little dinosaur.

I think this is the core of why these discussions get you (and others) worked up. In my opinion we are not defiling the memories of AmigaOS by discussing new ways we can take our OS's. The classic AmigaOS architecture will always be what it is, but new Amiga compatible OS's can take the OS in new and interesting directions. Why not look at what all of those possible directions are? You don't have to hate the new to preserve the fondness for the old.

@Hans_

Hans_ wrote:
Correction, I'm extending MiniGL. I have worked on other stuff, but none of that is released yet (and some of it is discontinued).

Thanks for the correction.

Hans_ wrote:
Like it or not POSIX is now an official standard and a lot of code has been written that uses it. Any new system that ignores POSIX is doomed.

I'd still personally resist a 'one size fits all' computing world even if there were significant drawbacks. Got to give the world a true alternative to POSIX one day IMO.