Colani1200 wrote:
All this is already there. Any common Linux distro can easily be customized to the above. But it doesn't make any new Amiga plus since you want to throw compatibility out, it is pretty much useless.
The point wouldn't be solely based on making a "new Amiga". Throwing out compatibility at this point wouldn't really hurt anything, in my opinion. In most cases, the Amiga as we know it, is dead. Few of us are still left hanging around the vintage hardware, and a more rare few of us have paid out the ass to adopt the new hardware and software. Amiga Inc. is doing nothing more than delivering what should have been last decade's product at a cost that makes a new Mac look cheap in comparison. As far as compatibility goes, UAE tends to fare better than most new Amiga-derived operating system offerings, so compatibility has been somewhat thrown out the window.
Eventually, at some point, backwards compatibility just holds you back. Just ask Apple.
Now, while I'm aware of AmiWM for *NIX systems, it doesn't really do the job 100%. You'll notice many of the menu options in the "Workbench" are greyed out, and simply there for cosmetic look-alike reasons. It does a good job at looking alike, but it's definitely not Workbench.
I see that in reality, this approach could prove to be more useful, to us and to people outside of this small niche.
Backwards compatibility would be gone, but what about the huge slew of good and useful *NIX programs? Sure, some would need rewrites for the custom windowing system. (Example: Aside from AmiWM, nothing responds to right clicks in order to show their menubar, and AmiWM only shows its own anyways).
Evolution is necessary for a race to survive. You may lose a few things, but ultimately, what you gain, you will need, and what you lose, you didn't really need anymore. Given that the custom chips are out of date, and have been long out of production, you'll never find them in any modern PC hardware, and without the custom chips, you'll never have full compatibility anyways. Moving to X86 hardware will sacrifice more compatibility as well. I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but that bathwater is awfully old and dingy now, and the baby outgrew the tub, is now a 23-year old woman, and is still being dressed in diapers. You can either try to hold onto every last shred of compatibility in the OS itself, or you can let it go, take the important concepts, let the Amiga concept grow and move into this century, and have more useful things at hand, specifically technologies like java, flash, etc. It saddens me that any attempt to modernize Amiga hardware or software seems to be made under the assumption that I want to use PPC hardware that isn't all that modern to begin with, a very small selection of supported hardware, and an OS that 99% of developers ignore completely, and isn't very useful for admiring, and doing things we already did 10 years ago. I'm seeing the legacy of the Amiga being relegated to just a toy.
As for AROS: I like AROS, I agree having set hardware specifications (EEE would be a great platform for AROS) would be good for the sake of coherence between machines. It would help for people wanting to run AROS natively. However, I'm not going to be watching Youtube, using Google docs, or watching Homestar Runner on AROS anytime soon, regardless. Nor will I be doing those things on AmigaOS 4, or MorphOS. And I most definitely won't be doing them on WB 3.1.
