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Author Topic: One unified OS for the future?  (Read 36378 times)

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Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« on: November 20, 2014, 11:59:10 AM »
Quote from: Duce;777804
I've not tried AROS for some time, but I hope it gets to the point where I can build a new PC and simply install AROS on the machine.

Good! So please learn the needed coding, and start writing drivers for the hardware you own. I'm afraid even if everyone here (and I mean anyone reading this) will do the same, we won't see AROS supporting ALL available PC hardware anyway. There's too much hardware to support, and too little people writing drivers, so the best we can do is trying to support all common standard and then hope that specialistic code will be brought by somebody else. Maybe, why not, some from the people currently just complaining that AROS does not work on their PC, that they had to buy (cheap, often already used) components, and maybe at the same time dream about buying that blazing, rare and uncommon $3000 hardware needed to run other operating systems (to basically do the same things, btw).
p.bes

 

Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2014, 04:08:19 PM »
Quote from: wawrzon;778136
exactly. if you have to sandbox 68kand start over from the very beginning, why try to create another os at all? what unique concepts of amiga could be reimplemented in that os, that wouldnt be present in another modern os or couldnt be derived from some linux distribution?

correct me if i am wrong, but i guess: none

Happy to correct you: datatypes, assigns, user interface.

My receipt would be quite simple (actual cooking wouldn't). Take FreeBSD (or Linux, but I personally prefer BSD licensing model, than GPL), keep everything except UNIXoid file structure and add Amiga volume/device names, assign, datatype system, MUI, then port from AROS missing components like intuition, amiga shell commands, DirectoryOpus 5 and/or Wanderer, or straightly Ambient from MorphOS. You'll end up with a modern operating system, on-par with MacOS X, with Amiga user interface.

Yes, it wouldn't be compatible with sources, but you can host AROS for them.

Yes, it wouldn't be compatibile with binaries, but you can port UAE for them.

Yes, it wouldn't be an AmigaOS-like system anymore, but if you want a MODERN "Amiga like experience" then you have to deal with a MODERN operating system and no, you do not need to reinvent the wheel again, even Apple didn't with MacOS X. Please bring me a Mac user that would now turn back to OS Classic, please.
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Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2014, 10:39:09 AM »
Quote from: matthey;778179
Then you have the wrong OS and the wrong processor for a laptop. A 32 bit x86 with 2GB of memory and a little older OS is very happy for most uses needed for a laptop. I like your pic but I think that guy may have something to do with the problem.

Great. You summarize in a few lines of text what I actually hate about retrocomputing-minded people like you, here and on other IT fora. Your absolute knowledge about other people's needs about hardware specs and computer uses. Your "for most uses" clearly don't fit the needs of the person you're talking with, and, for your info, they don't fit mine either. My laptop, which incidentally is the machine I use to develop and build Icaros Desktop, is a 8-GB 64-bit Windows 7 PC hosting the Ubuntu Linux virtual machine I use to develop and all needed target AROS guests. Ubuntu VM takes 2 GB of RAM and every AROS VM at least 512-1024 MB each one. For my main job, however, I need Windows. Current 8 GB are fine, but I had to add 4 GB to the ones I got with the laptop at the beginning, since 4 GB only were plain not enough to perform similar tasks.

We're ending yar 2014 DC and we're now paying less than 50ยข per gigabyte on mainstream SSD devices, while 8 GB RAM modules generally cost less than 100 euros. There is no practical, no economical, no moral need to save clock cycles and memory cells anymore. There's no need to be afraid of paging files and memory protection: our SSD, but even our fastest hard drives, can perfectly live with them, fastly and reliably. Being so conservative in resources can be good for embedded applications, but neither with mainstream operating systems, nor with Android, nor even with post-Amiga OSes, we're even remotely targeting to embedded uses. Scalability can be good, but we're definitely using our computers to perform more and more resource demanding tasks. If you still think 4 GB are "just enough" for today tasks, it simply means you haven't ever worked with huge images, with HD movies, with virtualization, with most of CURRENT "computer tasks" that 15-20 years ago we could just dream about.
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Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2014, 10:59:57 AM »
Quote from: biggun;778184
If your texteditor crashes then you loose your work anyhow.
Whether this is on AMIGA-OS or on UNIX it does not matter.
And memory protection does not help here.

It does matter, indeed, if you were performing other tasks while using your text editor. For instance, if you were compiling your sources on cpu #2, downloading files and running other tasks on processors #3 and #4, having your stupid text editor crashing on cpu #1 and brin ging all other tasks to death with the rest of the OS, actually MAKES the difference between amigoid and unixoid OSes. Are you really still performing a single operation every time? Curious to hear, from the "we have had the first and most powerful mainstream multitasking machine in computer history" kind of people.


Quote
First of all - AMIGA OS supports threads.

And they would work far better if they only could be parallelized on different CPUs (or CPU cores, that's quite the same), as any other operating system already proved, without any chance of saying the contrary.


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Your argument is very "simple" but OK lets follow it.
Just say stop when you think you have enough CPU power

2 Cores have theoretically more power than 1
4 Cores have theoretically more power than 2
8 Cores have theoretically more power than 4
16 Cores have theoretically more power than 8
32 Cores have theoretically more power than 16
64 Cores have theoretically more power than 32
128 Cores have theoretically more power than 64
256 Cores have theoretically more power than 128
512 Cores have theoretically more power than 256
1024 Cores have theoretically more power than 512
2048 Cores have theoretically more power than 1024

Not happy yet?
Still need more?
What bloated Software do you want to run?

It does not depend on software bloatness, but on how tasks you need to open in order to get your results as quickly as possible. This is the exact reson why we're talking about etherogeneous computing for 5-10 good years now, using GPUs to perform parallel computation instead of CPUs. And yes, 2048 cores are far better than 1024 for chemistry simulations and scientific computation, as like as 4096 would be better than 2048 and so on. And, believe in me, software running on Tesla-based servers are far from being bloated, since the algorhithm sent to every stream core must be as neat as possible.

There's also, indeed, a break even point for "normal" CPU core parallelization on home computing tasks. But this heavily depends on user needs as well. The more tasks you open, the more CPU cores you'll need to keep responsiveness, altohough the rest of your hardware should also cope with that (configuration balancing). Having 16 cores would be pointless without a huge amount of RAM and a good disk subsystem, since some tasks would end up filling available resources and place others on the to-do list, waiting for resources to be available again.


Quote
For all I want to do with my computer - 4 GB is enough.

As I said, I love people pretending their poor computing needs should be just enough for everyone.
p.bes

 

Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2014, 11:15:02 AM »
Quote from: OlafS3;778195
I use PC for programming and have never had any problems with 4 GB. I do not use it for professional video editing and when I did that I would definitely not use anything amiga-related. Even new games do rarely need more RAM so, 4 GB is enough for "most" users not power-users using it professionally. Many users even use tablets instead of desktops, certainly not for video editing :9. But who here does that at all and where do you get the "power-software" needing that to use on amiga? People use their computers (or tablets) for web-browsing, email, facebook and so on and gaming.

I use my virtual machine for the same purpose (programming, if we can call this way what I do) and I need just 2 GB of RAM. This does not make me any better and does not absolutely means 2 GB should be enough for everyone doing the same things.

But I specially love your bold statement, and the following reprise: "who here does that at all and where do you get the "power-software" needing that to use on amiga?". I can only answer: you won't EVER find the needed software on amiga to do that, if you still keep resources and goals on the lowest possible bar. Lack of ambitions is part of the issue. I would really love to have at least QEMU ported on Icaros Desktop, and SMP added to AROS because my ambitions are higher. I guess all this discussion started because AmigaOS/clones lovers do have the same ambitions, and finally start feeling sad these ambitions are still... well... delusions.
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Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2014, 11:23:15 AM »
Quote from: OlafS3;778197
Counterquestion

Why do you think your "bloated" needs are representing everyone? I am just a application developer, perhaps I have no clue...

My "bloated" needs are just higher-resources hungry ones than others. I perfectly know I don't represent the normality, but I hereby constitute a case where yours/Matthey's/Biggugn's target resources for the OS are just too low. Obviously I wouldn't use a classic Amiga or a FPGA reimplementation to virtualize Linux, but I wouldn't keep the OS underpowered and "cut off" to the bare minimum needs of 68K apps just because they may be "enough" for most people. I would love the OS being right for ALL people, no matter how low or high hey needs are.

I start being polemic because I don't like, really, this "it's right for me, it should be right for everyone" attitude. I consider it utterly unpleasant.
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Offline paolone

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Re: One unified OS for the future?
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2014, 11:29:46 AM »
Quote from: OlafS3;778200
I am realistic, ambitions are all nice but we see at Arix what happens when amibtion is too high. Perhaps we should be more realistic, when full SMP is not possible (or too complicated) why not doing something less ambitious. I would have wished Arix project would have (at first step) only added missing drivers, that alone would have helped a lot. And if "real SMP" is too much why not doing it less complicated (even if it is not "true" and needs adapted software). More than 4 GB are only needed for professional graphic software (including video editing). In reality there are not many people doing that (even on their work systems). But even if you say 4 GB is not enough for "everyone" you can also say it is only relevant for a minority (that needs it professional).

No, you're not realistic at all. 4 GB and 32 bits are not enough anymore. single processing is not enough anymore. lack of memory protection is not enough anymore. inability to parallelize tasks is not acceptable anymore. It may be still somehow true today, it won't absolutely be tomorrow, and since - for instance - ARIX is not available today, but it will (hopefully) tomorrow, your target shoud not be todays, but tomorrow's ones. Today games use more CPUs, use huge amounts of memory, expecially for hi-def textures on consoles, and keep resources under an "acceptable" level only on Android devices, but just for the fact they don't share the same specs of computers and consoles.
p.bes