Does Linux have an Amiga feel?

[haywirepc]

I think yes of course its similar, but amiga os is much simpler.

I love linux, but I can't stand some things. Like dependency nightmares.

You know what I like? install a program and it just runs.

Linux, as much as I love it has been over complicated by geeky developers.

I personally don't see the need for each distro to maintain a software repro. They should just standardize some things and save so many wasted resources having everyone use the same installs.

Besides that gaming is slowly coming to linux, which I'm real happy about.
Needs some good video and audio editing tools...

Otherwise, I'm very happy with linux as an alternative.
Linux kind of IS the new amiga. Back in the day, amiga was different... Now its windows or mac or linux. Sure there are some other OS systems out there but not many people actually using them.

[haywirepc]

People keep saying that people don't need desktop pc's anymore.

This is entirely not the case. Anyone who creates or manipulates digital data,
graphics, sound, video needs a desktop, and the more powerful the better.

I don't see that changing anytime soon. Content consumers (people who watch videos, listen to music, look at pics) sure, they can use a low spec device to consume that content, but people making content still need a desktop.

[haywirepc]

I totally agree. Seems like "they" are trying to take all digital power away from average people, so its reserved for those who sell the content.

I feel exactly the same way about "cloud computing" - Here, you just need a terminal and you can pay us monthly to use our storage and processing power.

I want the power and my own content in my own hands, not some phantom corporation who will charge me a monthly fee, but it seems thats the way the "industry" is going.

[haywirepc]

There is something most people miss...

Linux can have whatever look and feel you want.

everything you see or interact with can be endlessly customized.

If you want it to look exactly like amiga, you can do that. Exactly like osx, you can do that, windows, beos, riscos, whatever you want.

I have always prefered to take things I like from many different systems and make my own customized desktop.

So if linux does not work or look how you prefer... Its your fault.

Distros are just supposed to be a starting point in my view. I have yet to ever see a distro and think yes this is the way I want things. Rather I pick one that I can customize my way.

I love linux, runs most windows progs fine, amiga programs with uae fine, dos programs with dosbox fine... And of course any linux apps.

I went from red hat to suse to vectorlinux to ubuntu and lately mint. Each time, some of my desktop was highly influenced by my old love : amiga.

[haywirepc]

Relax...

To create any of the things you mentioned can be done completely without recompiling the kernel, or any programming at all...

With ui enhancements, patches, programs, there's a hot key program add on (or 10 of them) You, like many just got frustrated (I've been there) before finding the things to make it work the way you want.

Of course no system is perfect, I don't know anyone who just installed linux and was able to make it do everything they wanted. Takes time, learning, finding new progs and enhancements to facilitate the way you want it to work.

I heard someone say once, (and its very true) Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Its a tradeoff I guess. I kinda like modding my system. With puppy, I keep backups of my entire system, so if I try something and can't remove or fix it back to where I started, I go to the backups I make weekly.

With mint I just copy off my directories, my custom launchers and the like and can remake my usual desktop pretty quickly.

Linux can be extremely frustrating, for a long time it was for me. After awhile though, it gets more comfortable. To be honest I still hate the directory structure. And I especially hate not knowing where some things are or get copied... I hate how it copies various files in various directories when installing something instead of just one directory for each application. (but this is unix)

This can be minimized however if you know how.

To be honest, I wish someone would just use linux as an under the hood solution for drivers and such and simplified everything else, like beos or amigaos on top... AEROS just may be this... But I haven't given it serious time yet...

Still for a free system cobbled together, linux is pretty goddam good.

[haywirepc]

In truth there have been many times I threw the towel in and just went back to windows for alot of my needs. Now I use linux for 90% of things though.
Linux can be awfully aggravating till you get the hang of it.

Still use windows for video editing, because the apps available are just better.

But In the end its about feeling comfortable. I think maybe if I put half the time into customizing windows as I have had with windows, I'd be just as happy. Somhow I've never done that in windows because I just don't like windows in general... But could be done.

Windowblinds, rocket launchbar and some other stuff can make it more appealing... But I don't know I just prefer linux, even with all of its trappings and downsides. Can't stand constantly running spyware sweepers and stuff like that in windows, makes me worry about my data alot.

None of that in linux and also...
I don't know I also just enjoy compiz too, yes I actually use it...

[haywirepc]

"I'd love to be able to use a more Amiga-ish OS as my main OS, but before that can happen, either AROS or AmigaOS would need to take a lot *more* stuff from Unix/Linux, or more Amiga-like features would need to be ported to Linux; there's no way I'd be able to go give up all the things I've come to expect in an OS after using Linux."

I completely and totally agree. I've had an aros box off and on since you could first install and run icaros desktop. I had such high hopes of switching to it for my daily machine. Though, it gave a nice feeling of "coming home" it was and still is so lacking in apps and things I needed to do I quickly realized I could not use it for anything other than I suppose fun and puttering around with.

Once, I dumped all my old mods, s3ms and xm's  to my aros box and with milky tracker tried to use the aros box to compose music again, but found myself wanting renoise fx and virtual instruments, wanting a decent sample editor and so on. I realized milky tracker was just a 90's era tech. 20+ years of better tools out there.

I could not work on videos, watch youtube videos, do decent graphics work, and so many other things. This is why amiga next gen is failing. Amiga next gen machine is a nice toy to put next to your main computer for fun stuff and nostalgia, but thats it.

Sure you can cripple yourself creatively and still do decent work, but better creative work can be done on osx, linux or windows...

And THAT is why amiga next gen machines are just novelties at this point.

But I still HOPE... :pint: