AROS vs traditional Amiga vs SAM

[paolone]

Hmmm... hasn't thois topic little derailed from its original subject?

Anyway, just my 2 cents on discussions here:

1. AmigaOS 4.1 on SAM440EP is just a replacement for ageing Amiga classic computers with frankenstein expansion boards and tons of system hacks which make them barely intellegible/usable and some sort of "poor men's modern computers" using obsolete but pricey features. What makes this solution "more Amiga" than others is the official support for AmigaOS 4.1. Yes, I mean 'official' because unless Hyperion loses the trial, they are the authors of the software, so it's their right to decide who is gonna use it.

2. At this point of the Amiga situation, everything about "what's Amiga, what's not" is questionable. From my personal point of view, for istance, everything that acts like Amiga and has born within the Amiga community *is* far more "Amiga" than Amiga Inc's actual products (this, unless you think that the AmigaDE and the poor games they're selling are Amiga). So if you're asking me what Amiga I do own today, I'd answer that my actual miggies are my Athlon64 AROS machine and my AmigaOS 4.1 SAM440EP. And IMHO they're both Amiga, even if Amiga Inc. had not endorsed or recognized or licensed any of them. Oh, there's also my copy of Amiga Forever and my old dismissed A1200, but I rarely (almost never) use them.

3. Since I use both AROS and AmigaOS 4.1 I can see their pros and they cons. There are things better done in AmigaOS 4.1, but also things that were better made on AROS. For istance, try to place a PC cdrom on both operating systems, and while in AmigaOS you'll be forced to choose "all files" view in the Window menu, AROS will choose this view automatically, due to a precise design decision took while developing it (AROS uses view > all files on any volume that has no amiga disk.icon file in its root - this will be helpful when Michal has completed his mass storage bounty too). InstallAROS is also far easier to use than AmigaOS 4.1 install procedure. For the rest, AmigaOS is far more complete, but there were people hired and paid to code it, and Hyperion could start from original Commodore sources, which helped a lot.

4. A comparison between AROS and AmigaOS doesn't make so much sense, since one is opensource and the other not. Everyone with proper skill might improve AROS as he/she likes. AROS is not a competitor for AmigaOS, since there is no company targeting their products to the same AmigaOS potential owners.

5. All in all, both AROS and AmigaOS are flawed by an ageing structure and an almost useless API for today's jobs. We can continue adapting ourselves to use ported or rewritten applications, in order to painfully do things that users of other platforms can do in a single click, choosing from dozens of competing apps, using cheap and far more powerful hardware. Other platforms are aiming to hybrid calculations model based on the use of both CPU and GPU (just look at what OpenCL, CUDA and DirectX 11 are), while we're still looking for transparent borders in windows, or enjoying an almost-useless memory protection model in the latest release of the OS (15 years after any other OS got it). Evolution urges.

[paolone]

1. I can't believe the amount of people that are posting with "join" dates of year 2007 and 2008, here and on AmigaWorld.Net.

2. Add to that, the amount of people in the last short while who are posting with join dates of 3 and more years ago, and they have under 100 posts, and many with even less than 20!!!!

As someone else has already pointed out, writing tons of messages or being here since 1985 won't make anyone clever. From my perspective, the fact that many former amigans felt the need to post to these forums is only positive: it means there is still interest in the Amiga platfrom. And, about people sending a few messages in years, I can only say I prefer who keeps his/her mouth shut, if he/she has nothing valuable to say. Regards,

[paolone]

If program is on memory why do the os should care if it is on it's physical location? And while we're here why the hell I'm forbiden to open the same pic on several apps? Evolution?

No, it's the simple need to avoid that program A could modify the file X using an older version, since program B has already modified it before (and program A is not aware of this change by program B). Programs making changes to important files should always lock them while they're open. This might be not true for all kind of files. For istance, when I modify a HTML page with FrontPage, I can open it both with IE and Firefox. But there is a little difference between an editor and a viewer: the latter is not supposed to modify the file.

[paolone]

drHirudo wrote:
Shutdown is one of the biggest issues and I HATE it on the systems not being Amiga. I hate it on Windows and I hate it on Linux. Many times when I am in hurry to get away and have to shut down, in non Amiga computers I always have to wait till the computer is really turned off, because many times when I simply press the off button, some apps is not closed, or some process and the shutdown is not finished and the computer works for whole night, or even weekend. On the Amiga I simply turn it off. Even if my Amiga saves me only 2 minutes per day, for a year that is more than 10 hours - more than a working day, saved by the Amiga, only by the shutdown process. ;-)

Really, do you stay in front of your PC when it's shutting down? I generally cast the command and go away, letting it... stop the procedure 'cos "there is this program which doesn't allow Windows to shut down. Should I terminate it right now?" (no, sort of a silly operating system, don't close it now. Why did I decide to turn off the PC, instead?), so many times I found it still turned on when I come back again. :lol:

Getting serious, there is a motivation for the shutdown procedure, and this motivation is integrity of filesystem. We all love caching systems 'cos they speed up dramatically loading of files and apps, however we pay this with the necessity of shutdown procedures. FAT32, NTFS and EXTn filesystems can suffer from sudden power offs and, maybe this can be a news for some of you, Amiga filesystems too! If you turn off your Amiga during a write process, you can mess up many things. And, when you turn it on again, you'd surely prefer a proper shutdown procedure which would have avoided this.

When I use my SAM with AmigaOS 4.1, I feel the lack of a "shutdown" option in Workbench. SAM is an ACPI aware machine, powered by a standard ATX supply, so I can't understrand why I shouldn't be able to turn if off with my mouse, like I'm doing for years on PC and I ever did on Mac. This doesn't mean there should be a long boring shutdown procedure, but at least a simple one which checks if there are processes accessing to the drives and silently stop them before turning everything off, should be mandatory in year 2008.

PS: AROS just adeed one a week ago.

[paolone]

persia wrote:
Given that new Amiga sales have been zero for a decade and a half, this is a significant number, enough to prove that Amiga still can exist as a hobbyist computer.  

The day that Amigas around will be only PPC boards (no more classic hardware to support), and Amigans will get a more modern and robust API, it won't be necessarily a "hobbyst computer" only.

[paolone]

Piru wrote:
@paolone

MorphOS supports shutdown on Pegasos2 and EFIKA (and Mac Mini).

In fact, MorphOS calls the resethandlers before powering down. This way for example AmIRC will quit before the system actually shuts down.

The shutdown is lighting fast, too. If there are no slow resethandlers around the shutdown is immediate.

I wish I had some device to play with MorphOS a little, but unluckily I haven't money to waste in computers I don't really need...  :roll:

So please forgive my ignorance.

[paolone]

And why do you have a Sam then?

You wouldn't ever believe.  :roll:

[paolone]

by Gebrochen on 2008/11/27 3:24:11

@ Paolone:  It seems like you have simply gotton used to the sheepish off style system.  Personally what you say is rubbish, using and clicking with the mouse already wastes seconds versus push of off Button.

I could answer you haven't yet evolved and you're still handling a mace instead of using kindness, if you like this style of discussions (it wouldn't be a surprise anymore, though), but I prefer to point out that using a mouse or a push button to turn off computers is only a matter of habits. If my computer is placed under the desk, it is far more handy to shut it off with a menu command, than going down and look for a damn button near the foot of the case. So I propose to make peace and allow people turning off their computer how they like without stupid prejudices and silly assumptions.

[paolone]

JJ wrote:
And it takes at least 4 seconds when holdding down the power button to switch it off.

It generally depends on a BIOS setting. You can generally decide to turn off computer either instantly, or by pressing the PWS button for some seconds. Operating systems, however, generally have the option to "bind" the shutdown procedure to PWS button.