Classic AmigaOS On Modern Hardware - A Critical Analysis

[wawrzon]

well. i dont think amiga os can be concurrent to the mainstream options available out there, but availability of mainstream hardware  to run "amiga os" might be an improvement to "amiga os users" themselves.

from my perspective which is actually pretty bound to the amiga and related hardware and having a limited experience with os4 and arosx86 everybody needs to find the solution that suits his interest most.

here i am slightly biased towards aros, especially aros68k as i suppose it offers opportunities at least in some areas, a fair trade of research in others while it still conserves the legacy where its important, that means in therms of open source code and binary compatibility.

[wawrzon]

AROS is a great project and I will use it once AROS68k surpasses the original AmigaOS in terms of performance and stability

that may still take quite a long time as the lack of quality feedback likely does not motivate the developers to improve on it.

- as long as the Linux kernel stays off my desktops. Does AROS68k use the Linux kernel at all?

no. aros (and particularly aros68k) does not use linux kernel except of linux hosted versions. the fork of aros that is aimed to use linux kernel for hardware abstraction is arix.

[wawrzon]

Surpassing it in speed on ECS/AGA? I do not believe that this will ever happen.

while it is not a priority this side is being optimized and bugfixed as well.

[wawrzon]

The most modern OpenGL/Mesa and 3D support is on AROS but it requires big resources too. It supports hardware rendering through Gallium but there is limited gfx card drivers.

limited? im not sure how limited it is in comparison to other gfx card solutions on amiga like systems, it supports a number of models, namely those that are supported by gallium, and it supports 3d hardware acceleration. sure it might not be optimal, i cant tell, i dont run aros native on x86.

[wawrzon]

Nice to hear :-)

perhaps you could do a step-by-step manual how to install Aros 68k (nightly) on real hardware. I was often asked but I cannot help there.

there is one instruction for instance here, if you scroll down a little:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support
must have been literally copied from my post, since it ends with "thats all folks" (without apostroph).

now it might not be exactly up to date as things change all the time, for instance you need additionally edit the startup sequence now, but roughtly it still stands i guess.

[wawrzon]

i must here confirm the opinion pf the previous poster. ppc cards for amiga are rather neat collectibles than actually practical. the best thing they offer os a 40mb/s scsi controller. there is little use one can make of ppc on amiga, just few datatypes and few applications take advantage of ot. i have never seen morphos on action but it is probably better to invest in it or even in the native os4 hardware, however the latter comes at a higher cost again.

as for bsd, i can understand your personal bias. there is quite well maintained netbsd for amiga, with a lot of native hardware support:
http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/amiga/
but im sorry, i dont think, that it somehow helps to conserve amiga (concepts) for the future. it starts already with installation procedure (i did not came much further beyond anyway admittedly). on bsd i have to spend at least half an hour to get my drive set and basic installation up and running. with aros in comparison i just decompress the system image to the disk and it should start on any amiga.

[wawrzon]

What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?

Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.

it was just an advise, bwb has mentioned csmk3, this might be sensible choice, in fact sticking ppc into an amiga is not any better than any of ng alternatives.