New improved intuition.library version from the Kickstart 3.1

[wawrzon]

I don't think they planned to port it back, or they would have done 68k first.

the aros team might not initially consider it a priority but it has advantages to x86 platform as well, researching and improving compatibility, directly comparing behavior and performance of critical parts and so on. from my rather regular contact with aros devs about it and i know they usually care, only they are also limited on time. unfortunately i know only of olaf reporting back to them on 68k subjects. if more people got involved or at least gave it some time and attention it could take off a little, still it looks like ppc emu on uae gets even more attention. not exactly encouraging.

[wawrzon]

Last time I checked, it was/is missing the entire official AmigaOS GUI (ie. ReAction), as well as some less important components. I suppose those files can be copied over from OS3.9. But in that case, why not just use the proper OS3.9 instead rather than some mishmash of AROS+OS3.9?

reaction isnt particularly necessary, the only software i can recall testing on aros, that needed its classes was aweb. aros contains few appropriate rewrites of those classes and the rest you can obtain from the internet, afair from the class act download page to be precise.

now, aros doesnt provide everything, for instance proper installer tool is missing in c:, but you can just download the commodore version from aminet and put it there. on genuine amiga aros user has enormous advantage against aros x86, that you can use and fill the gaps with genuine amiga software and libraries. for instance you can just use the missing mui classes under zune. i see it definitely as an advantage, not as handicap. aros provides free and open source base to build an amiga compatible system and run amiga software as well as aros software that is not available for amiga (such as aros owb for  example). even where its still bugy, slow or incomplete, it comes with the sources and can be fixed and improved.

beyond that aros contains a lot of components that were missing from the genuine amiga os, eventualla up till 3.9 out of the box. there is a handy editor, not a memacs, you can move the windows off the screen without patching the rom with loadmodule. it contains a unified cpu library that automatically loads appropriate parts of it with setpatch after recognizing the cpu at boot time, and therefore the same installation will work on every hardware without messing with 060 or 040 libraries that might left an inexperienced user confused with not bootable or instable system, wondering whats up.

seriously, i dont understand all these complaints.. with the genuine amiga you had to get and install even mui separately, in contrary to where you have zune with basic set of libs. the system was at bare minimum after installation, yet nobody bitches about this. but when aros is missing some libs and classes, it is the reason to put it completely down and refuse to use it?

[wawrzon]

@olaf
actually its not about doing anything but of a choice of options. minous has chosen the option of inoficial boing bags and asm patching, if im correct. in short therm it is probably more rewarding option, but it is a matter of opinion. once one invested enough effort in something you dont want to resign on it of course.

which brings me to another argument in favor of aros. boing bags are impossible to legally be distributed in one piece and demand experience with patching. people frequently mess up their systems. this disadvantage doesnt exist on aros. you just decompress the iso over to your harddisk and you should be ready to go.

[wawrzon]

If you're aiming to do a proper job of replacing an OS, it is indeed necessary to support all the standard functionality of what you are replacing. This should surely be the first priority, before wasting time doing non-standard AROS-only extensions and crapplets such as a new editor when there is already a perfectly functional editor in OS3.9, not to mention dozens available on Aminet. I don't think it's appropriate to make these kinds of value judgements on the necessity of various components which are already official parts of the OS and hence are depended on by third-party applications. The fact is, ReAction is part of the OS, is used by various components of the OS d third-party applications. (Not just AWeb either.) Certainly more necessary than an unofficial one that was never part of the OS and which isn't used by OS components.

first of all there might be replacements on aminet without proper sources, which is my assumption, secondly aros aims officially at full source compatibility with os 3.1 for starters, whats happens beyond is just what the devs have fun to do, which is perfectly legitimate with me. whoever is not satisfied with the approach may contribute themselves, this is not a guarantee on non open approach.

BTW ClassAct files are generally earlier versions than the corresponding ReAction files, and are missing functionality that is offered by the ReAction files. So just downloading them from Aminet is not necessarily enough.

has not made any difference so far when trying to run any reaction app on aros. care to name me one that doesnt work that way?

In that case, why not just use the official version of *everything*, no need for AROS at all then.

have i not answered that before? aros is for convenience to have the complete system out of the box, but not the whole aminet. if you find the sources for important component it can be included in contribs, otherwise just use it for free under aros 68k.

Development tends to be random, presumably it is more interesting for the devs to expand the system in non-standard ways and ignore the missing functionality. Even 15 years later...

true. for whatever amiga or non amiga development, proprietary or open, but with an open approach you are able to compensate for what you miss.

Well, of course. MUI has never been part of AmigaOS. AmigaOS already has a GUI system and it isn't MUI. So I'm not sure why you would put MUI into AROS instead of the official GUI system.

reaction nor class act was not official with 3.1, aros aims at. and it can be easily substituted on 68k qith freely available binaries. there is no apps i can tjink of using it. mui ismuch more an important framework for instance for mail, rss, web clients and a lot mpre and aros zune allows to run them just fine from what i have been testing. i dont recall an reaction app i needed that did nt run on aros 68k, again, care to name one?

[wawrzon]

But then, have you actually run aros on real Amiga hardware?

It sucks horribly (unless you are using a 68060 with graphics card and plenty of ram), and that is why most real Amiga users still prefer AmigaOS 3.1, 3.5 and even 3.9.

for everyday tasks, yes. but this is a vicious circle. too few users or rather testers create too low demand on improvements and deliver too few competent bug reports and the developers go for things that create more interest like ppc emulation on uae.

Aros seems it is the way forward for 68k, but then it also seems that it never reaches that desired state to even replace AmigaOS 3.1 efficiently.

maybe, maybe not. the chance is there, or at least a chance of an improved but legally safe hybrid system such as the one olaf is working on. people must get at least a little engaged to push it forward in order for it to become actually usable alternative on genuine hardware. none will come and serve you full dish for free without the customers cooperation as it was the case when you first bought your amiga from a commercial company back then.

[wawrzon]

Why pick an arbitrary obsolete version like V3.1 and not, for example, V1.1? Seems pretty random. I don't see what's so special about OS3.1.

aros aims at maximal compatibility with the 1.x-3.x range. 3.1 is a reference point, but measures to allow for execution of software that depends of exclusive features of kickstarts since 1.x are being implemented. tonic surely could better comment on this. im only a noob tester. why not ask him on eab?

Report+ and MCE, for example, require BB1 versions of some ReAction components as they use some of the newer functionality.

i seem to remember to try out report+ but i will try to check those if time and patience allows.

OS3.1 never included MUI anyway so I don't see the reasoning behind having it in AROS. If it's missing Installer then it's hardly a "complete system out of the box", even for an OS3.1 clone.

it was quite a reasonable practical decissions in my eyes. there is much more important and complex apps written for mui than for reaction. those could be easily ported having a mui replacement. if im not mistake currently i observe preparations for odyssey, but there is a number of mui dependant software i can just use on aros68k in its genuine amiga version. lets name yam and simple mail, ibrowse and digibooster almost work..

[wawrzon]

Yet, after all these years, aros doesnt manage to implement the functionality AmigaOS had back in 1993. Blame whoever you want, but AmigaOS 3.1 was not even top technology back then, and it is a shame it cant be accomplished in 2014.

So my point is that aros is full of really good objectives, but lacks in its poor execution as a project.

which of amigoid systems is top technology by todays standards? aros is probably least polished on the surface, but it has technical advantages in comparison with mos and os4 in some fields and most certainly in comparison with a bare 3.1 setup. you might simply install a 3.1 system from your floppies and then decompress an aros nightly to another disk on the same machine to try them side by side.you will notice the difference but you will probably notice too that aros will likely run most of the programs ou can run on 3.1 out of the box. in other to run others you will need to download libraries and classes from internet exactly as you need to do on 3.1.

[wawrzon]

What are you talking about? I really use it so i say you tell not the truth or your experience is based on old nightly builds. Nightly builds are NOT what people use or should use and are misleading. They are a backbone for testing new features for devs, not more not less. For users and application devs are distributions.

you did not understand. he is talking about the aros installer utility, and is being correct. therefore we on amiga 68k use the commodore installer. would be cool to have aros installer finished, but since there is free available 68k utility i dont consider it a priority. the x86 is naturally missing on these functionalities, but then to my knowledge there is currently no x86 software that requires it.

[wawrzon]

OS 3.1 users don't have any OS components using ClassAct/Reaction and I don't know any 3rd party software requiring Reaction. AWeb works with ClassAct, so does DirAction and few other I have tried.

OS 3.5/3.9 had almost no improvements (scsi.device with large hd support was only major improvement there) but just 3rd party software you can download from Aminet for free.

aweb.. performancewise ok, but simplistic and completely outdated browser..
dir action, this is really a sort of software completely uncalled for. i wonder if a single person ever used this clumsy, ugly and unreadable another directory manager, while there were already so many good alternatives available.
bah.. i cant really think about much reaction/classact software of any use.. i know its just another opinion..

[wawrzon]

yes, do not forget os4 is extensively funded and even morphos does cost some money.
in comparison people still expect aros to present them just every imaginable feature on a tablet for free and be up to concurrent solutions (which it even mostly is) without them even to lift a finger.

[wawrzon]

I'm wondering: if we exclude the fact that it's opened (that's already huge, yes), can be fixed and improved by anyone, and is portable, what are the benefits of running AROS instead of original AOS on 68k hardware? It seems most AROS developers don't seem to be that interested in seeing it run correctly (ie: at least on par with original AOS on 68k hardware) but why would they? What's the motivation? What would it bring?

for amiga userrs aros brings additional functionalities, like built in usb stack, network stack, rtg support, gallium/mesa, css capable browser, ability to move windows off screen, a number of contributions, apps and games, capable of running on 68k. aros basically runs on every system without patching and reconfiguration, which allows to have centralized effort in improvement, everybody may contribute to according to his abilities, instead wasting time on multiple concurrent and uncoordinated projects. the goal is that you can download aros and just run in on whatever amiga hardware you own or under uae without spending weeks to set up the system to your satisfaction. i know for many this is a pleasure itself to fiddle with it, but it may be redirected to common effort that results in amiga characteristic easiness of use and plug and play abilities that have been long lost unfortunately. also aros kickstart aims at mutual compatibility with the 1.x - 3.x range as far as it can be done, so genuinely incompatible amiga applications can be run side by side. as far as i know it provides also improved posix compliance, that allows easier porting without ixemul library, which still remains an option though.

aros devs are taking aos compatibility serious as i said, but it is not their priority to have perfectly working hardware drivers for each and every amiga system out there. except perhaps for toni. but without testing, cooperation on the part of the (potential) users and educated bug reports they certainly are left with nothing. im sorry, if you want to see aros as upgrade alternative to aos, its your move now.

[wawrzon]

I think AROS on Amiga HW is having sort of same problem than OS 3.5/3.9 had. If you had USB/network/gfx board or other expansion HW you already had required drivers and programs installed. Probably bunch of WB enhancers too which allow most of those candy features and given that Amiga hardware is quite limited it is difficult to build new enhancements.

If there was new/old 68k hardware supported only by AROS 68k then it could be different game. I guess it is too late to support old 68k Macs now ;-)

in fact someoneseems to attempt just that;)

otherwise i think you are right, though i have a well tuned 3.x setup myself all aling with custom kick and set of libs in flash, still ive seen the opportunity in aros. as for new hardware, who knows.. perhaps gallium supported rtg cards could be used on pci extended systems one day.

[wawrzon]

Open source status isn't really a reason for an ordinary user to want to use something. They will make that assessment based on other factors such as as features, speed, etc. which AROS lacks.

you are talking about regular customers, such as those buying regular products on regular therms such as warranty or comparable prices and so on. there is no users/customers in the amiga community by this definition. judging by features such as speed amiga nor its offshots are an option anyway. putting people that only fire up their 500 now and then to play a game aside, people like you, me, olaf, terminills, itix and others are obviously interested in what is going on with amiga, beyond that regular usage (whatever it would be), otherwise they would not be taking part in the discussion.

im not so much advocating to attract regular customers to aros 68k at this point, but people who care, and are able to contribute in some way. but in the end we cannot enforce it.

[wawrzon]

It's a shame that AROS hasn't been more focused on 68k in the past, I think that had the most potential for bridging the gap between old and new hardware.

yes, perhaps its too late.

[wawrzon]

@bszili
+1. finally informed statement about the matter from someone who knows not only aros but os4, mos and genuine amiga from application programming standpoint.

[wawrzon]

@wawrzon:

>im not so much advocating to attract regular customers to aros 68k at this point, but people who care, and are able to contribute in some way.

You seem to be suggesting that there are no regular users left in the community, only programmers. But I think the majority of Amiga users are still non-programmers. Maybe we should have a poll about this.

i am talking to you, among other contributors to this thread, i assume most of whom have some programming experience. in fact its me, who is basically a plain user, occasional but rather incompetent tester and have been trying to make few simple ports to amiga.  i agree that most of the plain users who just sometime play a game do not count much in this case even if they could actually motivate aros68k development if there were any.

>finally informed statement about the matter from someone who knows not only aros but os4, mos and genuine amiga from application programming standpoint.

I've programmed for all these systems, so I believe I qualify...granted that for OS4/AROS there are other users that help with testing etc. Several of my programs are available for AROS x86. The rest would also be available, except for the fact that AROS is missing ReAction. How is software supposed to get ported to AROS when AROS lacks basic functionality that is part of the OS (not even undocumented functionality!) that the application absolutely depends upon? (In the interests of fairness, I should point out that both MOS and OS4 are missing some OS3.9 functionality too, but AROS is missing the most though.)

okay, but in case of aros you even could substitute missing components of the system on which your software relies if you really wanted. you dont have such a possibility on closed source alternatives.

so to exemplify and invert your reasoning, you who blame aros developers for the state of aros, namely not working enough or fast enough for you are actually even more to blame if you dont even contribute. aros developers are the same situation as you, making it in their free time, working on what they have fun working on. neither you nor them are on any duty.