AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4 News

[Daedalus]

@takemehomegrandma

Catastrophic? It seems that most people had no issues with update 3, and of those who did, most were down to messiness with 3rd party libraries etc. Given the small numbers of developers and testers involved, there's always a risk an update like that won't work with someone's setup, simply because there are so many different setups out there. We have issues in my job where we roll out an update to supposedly identical machines and it just fails on some. Not ideal, but that's how it goes.

I agree about the ISO though - a full, clean ISO would be nice as an option for those who want to or need to do a clean install. Personally, I'd like both to be available - an upgrade so I don't have to do any messing with ISOs and reconfiguring my machine after installation, and a full ISO, just in case I ever have a need for it...

[Daedalus]

Oh, and...



...there are *no reasons whatsoever* to why you shouldn't be able to upgrade from an ISO. Every single one of the public MorphOS releases (v1.0+) came packaged as an ISO, and it was only on one or two occasions (1.4->2.0?) that you were recommended to do a clean install instead of upgrading. The only downside (and it's really a minor one with today's Internet bandwidth standards) is that file size may be bigger with an ISO, but the upsides are so much bigger. Clean install or upgrade - it's a matter of how the installer is set up (and then how the user decides), *not* if it's an ISO or not. With a properly put together ISO you will have a choice, without it you never will.

Absolutely, that should go without saying, but wasn't my point. Maybe you were so eager to disagree with me (I am an OS4 user after all) that you failed to understand what I was actually saying.

I'd like to be able to download an upgrade package, double-click it, and it goes ahead and upgrades my installation. Not to have to mess around burning CDs or mounting virtual CD devices. Update 3 worked like this for me, and I would much prefer future upgrades to work that way too rather than being ISO-only.

And, as for your previous point, yes, it's a shame the issues with the update were handled the way they were; I'm not denying that. As you pointed out, other systems have issues with updates too, and it's not unique to the Amigoid world either. The company I work for has several parallels with the current Amiga world: custom hardware, userbase measured in the hundreds or maybe low thousands, software updates maybe once or twice a year. There should only be 2 different configurations of our machines in the field, and we thoroughly test each software release on both, yet issues still crop up because: a) we have no control over what the user changes on the machines, and b) sometimes the updates show up obscure firmware or hardware bugs on specific setup and usage combinations. These things are just expected, and happen no matter how much validation we do on our systems.

What might even scare you is that these machines are used in hospital labs for testing patient blood samples prior to and during surgery! That's a far more regulated and tested product than some unheard of hobbyist OS, but still suffers from the same issues.

[Daedalus]

Well, on MorphOS, ISO's are perfectly clickable, no hazzle! :p

*shrug* Same on OS4.

IMHO there is a certain "beauty", or "cleanliness" if you like, of releasing the OS as a complete ISO that contains everything needed, hence every new release becomes like a new lowest common denominator, increasing the predictability, and making it easy to do a clean install of any version if you want to. Releasing a series of incomplete/partial patches that each builds on the previous one, isn't really "kosher" in my view. I can understand why this is done on Windows, where sizes counts in gigabytes, but on Amiga? Since the bigger size of an ISO is the only rational argument *against* ISO-style releases I can see, it obviously comes down to a matter of taste of the OS4 devs. They simply don't like ISO's. Or maybe Hyperion don't want to distribute complete releases in any other shape and form than a physical CD with a boing-ball printed on it (isn't that one of the most important parts of their product after all - the boing ball (TM)? ). I don't know. But even if you "have to" burn a CD (and given the frequency of OS4 releases - how much of an effort can this really be for a user? It's not a daily, not a monthly, heck, mostly it isn't even a *yearly* chore!), this "one time" effort must surely have a lot of benefits as soon as you decide to do a clean reinstall with the latest version, in comparison to first install the latest ISO, then one update, then another, then a third, etc.

Well, it looks like it just comes down to your opinion then, fair enough. It doesn't make ISO distribution a better system, you just prefer it. Perhaps it would be good to make that distinction more clearly in future. As you point out below, Hyperion did release an ISO for one of the updates which did require a full install, so it's not to do with physical CDs. I do think download size is a reasonable argument - I'd prefer a 10-minute download to a 15-minute download when the end result to me is the same, and purely as a matter of opinion, I think only providing the updated components in an archive is a much more elegant solution than providing an ISO.

I can see many voices in favor of an ISO on various forums, so I'm getting quite sure they will give in and finally release their OS as an ISO this time; it was many revisions ago they did this (was it OS4.1.1?). And given that OS4.1.4 will (supposedly) be the last revision in the OS4.1.x branch, I think it makes sense to "wrap it up" in a nice and clean ISO that marks the end of the "OS4.1.x era", before "OS4.2.x" enters the scene with all its groundbreaking, mythical improvements that will change the Amiga paradigm forever...

And you wonder why people accuse you of not being positive when it comes to OS4? I know it's only your opinion, but using language like 'groundbreaking' and 'mythical' makes you come across as quite sarcastic and dismissive. Some might even consider it trolling, even if you did put a smiley face on the end.

[Daedalus]

OS4.1.3 boots multiple times slower than OS4.1.2, there are no rational reasons to explain this vast speed decrease other than something must be borked.

Interesting, first time I've heard of that. You present it as a fact though, like it's normal behaviour, when you haven't even tried it out yourself. You really should qualify that with "some users have found" or something, or else some people might think you're trolling again. I noticed no difference in boot times when I updated my machine, and if I had, I'd try to see if it's a funky 3rd party app or network setup that's causing the stall, and report my findings, possibly helping out others with the same issue. You know, generally being constructive and helpful. Something you should try sometime.

[Daedalus]

LOl! Half this thread is blocked on my ignore list. takmehomegradma must be at it again......

Indeed...

Now I remember why I don't check this site very often anymore.

Chris

Yep, I wonder why I ever bother...