What lessons from the amiga OS are applicable today?

[runequester]

Was thinking about this the other day, while talking to a friend of mine.
 
 
What parts of the amiga OS were good ideas that hold up today?
 
Some things that came to mind (big and small):
 
 
Generally being able to replace and swap out parts of the system (allowing for things like Dopus and the various workbench replacement stuff)
 
Being able to run efficiently on very limited hardware
 
Using plain terms for as much as possible of the system commands, folders etc
 
Extremely well documented software and hardware
 
Applications being able to interact with each other through arexx (well, more or less)
 
Multiview
 
 
Always thought tooltypes and datatypes were good ideas. Im sure there's drawbacks as well but that could be more specific implementation than anything else.

[runequester]

The most unique feature of Amigaos that noone else has got is screen dragging

Screen dragging is pretty rad. I didn't add it since the functionality (multiple screens) is commonplace in linux.
It would be nice to be able to drag them though. As far as I understand it, only AROS really supports it from the "NG" options.

[runequester]

Yeah, somehow the rotating cube screens on linux just isn't the same. It's not useful in any way apart from eyecandy whereas screen dragging is a useful tool.

Yeah,thats what I was trying to say, but kinda bungled it
 
The functionality of having multiple screens is there (desktops/workspaces) and super handy. But being able to work on two of them at the same time would be a nice plus, in terms of actual functionality.

[runequester]

RAM disk is awesome, I forgot about that.
 
 
And yeah, a balance between GUI and CLI is nice too. You can pretty much swing it either way, or mix and match.

[runequester]

well, in the PC world, the assumption has pretty much always been that people will upgrade when new software comes out.

THe old ideals are still out there (coding for portable devices f.x. or things like Damn Small Linux (50 megs, including web browser and word processor, and can run entirely in RAM) but mostly throwing hardware at the problem became the accepted way to go

[runequester]

leave out is another nifty one

[runequester]

ah yeah, assigns.
This kind of also goes back to simple commands. It took seconds to memorize how to do an assign command in amigados. On linux, symlinks can do it to, but the command is mostly gibberish, and I have to look it up.

No idea how to do it in windows, so I dont know if its easier or not.