New improved intuition.library version from the Kickstart 3.1

[OlafS3]

I got it from Ben Hermans' mouth. You can read the interview here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041020081420/http://www.swaug.org.uk/int010402.html

The relevant part is:

"SWAUG: Has Haage&Partner given you access to OS3.9 source code to be used in OS 4.0?
BH: No."

Obviously they have OS4.1 source code, which is what I assume you are referring to. However, that is not going to be very useful for people who are targetting Classic Amigas, even if they were willing to share it which I very much doubt. They've also shown no inclination to release the OS3.1 sources which they also hold. AFAICT there is no legal impediment to it but IANAL.



Last time I checked, it was/is missing the entire official AmigaOS GUI (ie. ReAction), as well as some less important components. I suppose those files can be copied over from OS3.9. But in that case, why not just use the proper OS3.9 instead rather than some mishmash of AROS+OS3.9?

Aweb needs classact not reaction and is easy to include

OS3.9 is suddendly free and the source codes available? Really? Please show me the link? When you are not able to then I do not understand what you are saying. I am a little nerved of such comments, I think most try to find reasons not do anything. The 68k community has the chance to get a successor for AmigaOS, if they are not interested I am fine with it because I can use it very good on UAE, BTW emulated environments will be more important than the "real" ones that many here prefer in my view. So I will see in near future if there is interest, if not I will not push anything in that direction anymore. I am the same opinion as Wawa, the reasons not to do anything on Aros are strange, to say it politely and sound to me more like excuses why people do not want to contribute.

[OlafS3]

Yet, after all these years, aros doesnt manage to implement the functionality AmigaOS had back in 1993. Blame whoever you want, but AmigaOS 3.1 was not even top technology back then, and it is a shame it cant be accomplished in 2014.

So my point is that aros is full of really good objectives, but lacks in its poor execution as a project.

You talk in general phrases... what is missing in your view and I will make a screenshot showing you it running on my distribution. Perhaps you never used it, haven´t you? I saw this already often in the community, the less experience the stronger are the opinions. As I said Aros 68k is really the last chance for the 68k community to get a working AmigaOS successor that is in development. If people are not interested in it and prefer fiddling around with their aging AmigaOS then it is ok for me and I do not need to invest time in anything for real hardware and can concentrate on emulation (what is enough for me personally).

[OlafS3]

Yet, after all these years, aros doesnt manage to implement the functionality AmigaOS had back in 1993. Blame whoever you want, but AmigaOS 3.1 was not even top technology back then, and it is a shame it cant be accomplished in 2014.

So my point is that aros is full of really good objectives, but lacks in its poor execution as a project.

A simple question to you... What functionality is missing in my distribution?

[OlafS3]

Hm, AROS does have "installer", evindently.

http://kolla.no/aros-installer.jpg

On 68k you can use a standard installer by copying the file in C. I use the official installer from aminet and it perfectly works. I only include it not in my distribution because of legal reasons.

BTW examples of GUI toolkits in Aros 68k

http://www.aros-platform.de/html/gui_toolkit.html

[OlafS3]

If you're satisfied with it being able only to run the provided demo (and even then, it sometimes crashes...), then yes. Really, I would guess it's only about 50% finished and still needs a lot of work. But perhaps you were kidding?

Until some developer is interested in finishing it, I would advise people who need those functionalities to use a shell script of course: it is quite stable and evolved on ABIv1 and ABIv0-on-trunk, and so is able to make many tests on installed files and the system in general, and even allows quite comfortable interactions with the user.

What are you talking about? I really use it so i say you tell not the truth or your experience is based on old nightly builds. Nightly builds are NOT what people use or should use and are misleading. They are a backbone for testing new features for devs, not more not less. For users and application devs are distributions.

[OlafS3]

If you're satisfied with it being able only to run the provided demo (and even then, it sometimes crashes...), then yes. Really, I would guess it's only about 50% finished and still needs a lot of work. But perhaps you were kidding?

Until some developer is interested in finishing it, I would advise people who need those functionalities to use a shell script of course: it is quite stable and evolved on ABIv1 and ABIv0-on-trunk, and so is able to make many tests on installed files and the system in general, and even allows quite comfortable interactions with the user.

Some raytracer I have tested on it:
http://www.aros-platform.de/html/raytracing.html

But of course not even demos are running. Perhaps I am just daydreaming and making screenshots of it

[OlafS3]

you did not understand. he is talking about the aros installer utility, and is being correct. therefore we on amiga 68k use the commodore installer. would be cool to have aros installer finished, but since there is free available 68k utility i dont consider it a priority. the x86 is naturally missing on these functionalities, but then to my knowledge there is currently no x86 software that requires it.

Yes I know what he was talking about. But we are talking about 68k here and he is saying it is 50% because of important parts missing and example here is installer that can be easily solved. I read that people on MorphOS and AmigaOS use the original 68k libs to add AREXX, then both are only 50% finished too? People here partly are talking nonsense, based on non-knowledge or halftrue based on very old experiences to have reasons to stay where they are and not needing to contribute. That may sound a little harsh but that is my view in the meantime.

[OlafS3]

Sorry Olaf I may not have been clear. I was only answering to Kolla's post and his screen-shot of AROS' installer. I am totally convinced that your distribution is perfectly usable on emulators, and polished even. Congratz BTW.

ok sorry then for my answer

I am only a little nerved because people seem to search for any reason not to do anything or invest time (even testing would be something). If people would show interest I could perhaps motivate developers to improve Aros 68k, if not there is no reason for anyone to invest time in it. It is a wasted chance then for the 68k community, but then they should stop moaning about the situation because obvious they are happy about it otherwise they would act differently. Thomas has said that he cannot directly contribute because of legal reasons, that is regrettable but nothing can be changed about it. Others could but obviously do not want and try to find excuses why they do not. If people have a alternative but do not help they earn the situation and should stop moaning.

[OlafS3]

>Hack&Patch were doing 3.5/9 on the cheap, scamming contributors left and right.

Allegedly. It's odd that no one was ever able to provide any proof of this; if they had had a case they would have been able to sue H&P and get lots of money from them.

>Doing those few actually new tools in 3.5/9 based on just plain GadTools+BOOPSI was no option.

Why not, if they were just doing it on the cheap?

>So they had to find a 2nd class GUI system that could be aquirred at next to 0 cost, and hell did ClassAct fill that bill.

I've never seen any evidence that it was acquired "at next to 0 cost". Do you have a source for this claim?

>The reality even today is that it is 100% possible (and not even hard) to setup a useable Amiga without ever touching ClassAct/ReAction. Try the same without useing MUI (yes even on OS4)...

I don't use any MUI programs, I keep it installed just for trying out new programs but have never found a MUI-based one worth keeping...I can't see how you could possibly have a usable Amiga without ReAction, considering that important OS components require it. At least for OS3.5/3.9.

@olsen:

Yes, I agree that OS3.1 is a big improvement over OS1.1, I don't think anyone is disputing that.

You need Reaction? For what?

I use f.e. Simplemail, what Mailprogram do you use with Reaction?

[OlafS3]

Your distro is really okay, it does what it says on the tin. The problem is performance, and is something you cant solve (it is an aros based issue).

I have tried it under WinUAE and I liked it and works reasonably well. But it tortures real amiga hardware (performancewise), So you see that is my main gripe with aros: it works reasonably well on x86/x64 and even in 68k emulation, but is as slow as a snail on a real Amiga. And this is not opinion based, it is just reality, that ends up with the fact that users are willing to pay for ancient unsupported AmigaOS versions, than to use the free aros alternative.

I know it is a chicken and egg situation (little money/users/devs = little development). But it is what it is.  

I really wish aros could match in performance 3.1, so everyone could get a better OS, but unluckily this seems so distant...

Aros devs and (in case of Aros Roms) Toni Wilen are basically idealists, they do things for fun and to get some positive feedback (and perhaps some donations ). When people always say I "would" use Aros 68k but first it must be as fast as AmigaOS on classic hardware, have all the drivers, and of course all patches of aminet then I "would perhaps" use it how motivated do you think they are to invest additional time in it (they all have a bunch of projects already) and others who could jump in and help with it or do at least testing and make logs and send it to Toni say it is still not good enough to use (functionality using it on UAE I would say not true, speedwise running on classic hardware yes it is still not fast enough). I could make a bet with you... it will never be optimized then and there will be never a amigaos successor if nobody helps. I am running it on emulation outperforming a Sam 440 speedwise (and I do not need any optimized libs to do that and there are tons of in my distribution f.e. graphical libs, game libs, Chunky and 3D libs and so on). For me it is perfectly ok now but I think it would potentially of big benefit for all the 68k community, being adaptable and in development unifying everything 68k related. But people seem not to share my ideas.

[OlafS3]

What I really like with OS3.5/3.9 (dont remember when it came) is AREXX support in Workbench - finally, and the "resize window to fit" menu entry I also like shell improvements and fixes, the H protection flag working again and various other minor things. Regarding preferencs, I could do without the Reaction toolkit, and I really do not see the point in 020+ requirement. From my experience with trying to get as much of OS3.9 as possible to work on (a mighty fast) 68000, it is largely just the preferences programs that require 020+ - that is, resource.library is 020+.

I use Magellan as desktop and Magellan has extensive AREXX support. Most of what is included in 3.5 or 3.9 can be added from aminet because available freely or there are similar replacements available (I tried that as much as possible in my distribution). That not means that I want to downtalk what people did with 3.5 or 3.9, it was certainly a big effort but from todays view I would say it is replaceable and not unique like some here claim.

[OlafS3]

@psxphill:

>>Not that there is anything sacred about Commodore.

>In terms of Provenance there is.

I suppose you think that an Amiga Technologies (Escom) A1200 is not a real Amiga then? Or that eg. a ZX Spectrum +3 isn't a real Spectrum, etc. because Amstrad had bought Sinclair. With that Ship of Theseus analogy, that was about whether it was still the real thing after every single component in it had been changed. OS3.9 is a big upgrade with lots of new features, but of course not every single byte in it is different from OS3.1.

>If it's not in ROM then it's taking up RAM.

I should point out that OS3.1 and even earlier versions used SetPatch to patch the ROM.

@wawrzon:

>im not so much advocating to attract regular customers to aros 68k at this point, but people who care, and are able to contribute in some way.

You seem to be suggesting that there are no regular users left in the community, only programmers. But I think the majority of Amiga users are still non-programmers. Maybe we should have a poll about this.

>finally informed statement about the matter from someone who knows not only aros but os4, mos and genuine amiga from application programming standpoint.

I've programmed for all these systems, so I believe I qualify...granted that for OS4/AROS there are other users that help with testing etc. Several of my programs are available for AROS x86. The rest would also be available, except for the fact that AROS is missing ReAction. How is software supposed to get ported to AROS when AROS lacks basic functionality that is part of the OS (not even undocumented functionality!) that the application absolutely depends upon? (In the interests of fairness, I should point out that both MOS and OS4 are missing some OS3.9 functionality too, but AROS is missing the most though.)

@BSzili:

>I don't understand why people are so fixated on the fact that AROS strives for 3.1 compatibility. This doesn't mean that they won't implement anything beyond V40.

Well, we've been waiting 15 years already...maybe if we wait another 15 it will have complete V45 support...? *Then* there might be a reason to switch to AROS...

If you talk about X86 or ARM branches maybe, I do not think that they ever tried to implement everything (or could because much is closed source including Reaction), on the other side they added lots of features never part of 3.1., including some of the patches, 3D and many others.

But again this thread is about 68k so we talk about Aros 68k where you can add almost everything (similar to the PPC platforms) so again what features are missing. I want 1. and 2. and 3. and 4. then I can say it is possible or not (in my experience). You only talk in generalizations that are not true.

[OlafS3]

>Why would you suppose that? Once you have reverted the floppy disk motherboard hack then it's mostly equivalent to a commodore A1200.

Well, if you revert enough of OS3.5/3.9 you can turn it back to OS3.1. After all, 3.1 is even included on the CD, so it's just a matter of replacing files. I'm really trying to understand your reasoning but it doesn't seem consistent. It seems to be that if OS3.5/3.9 was almost the same as OS3.1 it would be OK (like an Escom A1200 compared to Commodore A1200) but since it is a significant upgrade, it's not OK? What about Amiga Walker, would that have been a real Amiga if released?

>The AmigaOne isn't an Amiga though.

Well, I'm certainly no OS4 fanboy, and it's tangential to the issues at hand, but IMHO an AmigaOne is a real Amiga, it's just not a "Classic Amiga". Which is why we have the term. It's a bit like saying that a PPC Mac or Intel Mac isn't actually a Mac, only a 68K Mac is a real Mac. I suspect that if anyone went to a Mac forum and claimed such a thing there would be howls of derision.

>the only parts that rely on Reaction in OS3.9 are the preference programs - is the API of OS3.9 open enough to allow third party prefs programs to be written?

There are other parts: some that spring immediately to mind are AWeb and various items on the Workbench menus (eg. "Execute command...", "Information...", etc.). As to preferences files, they are mostly just IFF files and are mostly documented, eg. Report+ can interpret most of these files.

>After they died there haven't been anyone who has been universally agreed upon to hold all the rights to the fallen empire. If someone had stepped in and taken command then I would have agreed.

Escom bought everything important. IIRC they bought everything except some trademarks and patents.

>True(partially), but then again the 3.5/3.9 releases didn't really update the ROM parts much so not so much of a upgrade to the ROM contents?

Quite significant upgrades to the ROM-based components actually.

>The Amiga being what it is is also more vulnerable the more of the code that lives in ram instead of rom, but I'm not suggesting to limit updates because of that.

That's an interesting point, ROM is indeed not susceptible to being overwritten with garbage. However if a program is writing garbage to arbitrary addresses you will likely have problems regardless of whether Kickstart is in RAM or ROM...because most of the time statistically such accesses will be hitting RAM.

It was already written a number of times here but I repeat it

AWeb does NOT need Reaction, it needs Classact and both Classact and AWeb work perfectly on Aros 68k. But you seem not to react on the comments of others

[OlafS3]

I don't? Read through this thread again and you will see that I have responded to the comments of various people. Without resorting to ad hominem attacks as you are doing now. I've made this point before, but again: yes you can add extra bits to AROS to get a semi-usable system. That doesn't make it a usable system. Someone could get a bare CPU and add various bits to it to make it a usable system, that doesn't make it a usable system in its own right. You have to download extra bits to make it equivalent to something that already works fine out of the box. What good is that?

Also with AROS x86 you can't even do that; if a piece of software is not available in an AROS x86 version you can't use it at all. Unless they finally have working 68K emulation, which they didn't last time I checked. And like I and others have said before, there's no reason for any 68K user to bother with AROS: it's slow, missing features and ugly. Really, it has next to nothing to recommend it except for copyright issues, which seemed to be the main reason Toni Wilen was bothering with it, because it could be distributed freely with WinUAE, not because it was actually better. The same applies to various BIOS replacements that are included with various emulators. For best compatibility you use an authentic BIOS which, by definition, is 100% byte-for-byte identical. Substitute BIOSes are included for legal reasons only, generally the first thing one does is get an authentic ROM dump.



The main one is that they aren't palette independent. So users have to keep the default colours; if the user changes their palette all their old-style icons will look awful. And if the developer used a non-standard palette to begin with, you have to match your palette to theirs. Not everyone runs MagicWB. MagicWB doesn't even define more than 8 colours IIRC. The original icon format was designed for OS1.x which didn't support deep screens. Even if you assume that neither the developer nor the user has modified the colours from the default, you still can't guarantee what palette is in use. Eg. 1.x has a different default palette as compared to 2.x.

You install a distribution (OS3.5/3.9) and then compare it to a backbone that is aiming to reimplement 3.1. API and not suited for users and then make your judgements? I have shown you screenshots of 68k software running on it no reaction from you.

AmigaOS is not in development anymore, 3.9 was the last update and then there will be no updates in future. 4.X is another branch for me because it needs completely different hardware. So if anyone wants development then there is only one potential chance.

And to make some comments about what you wrote about X86... there IS a working emulation in AROS but only in certain distributions (Icaros Desktop and Aeros), not in nightly builds. They are for testing for developers not users. 68k emulation runs in a kind of box with UAE, integrated but not the same as on MorphOS or AmigaOS. I do not know when you last checked it but it seems to be very long ago or you have just looked at a nightly build (that has no 68k emulation integrated).

"no reason for any 68K user to bother with AROS: it's slow, missing features and ugly."

Really? Who has said that before? It is slow? Where and when? On real hardware yes, that was this discussion about, on emulation (what certainly most use today) no. Missing features? Which? I work for a couple of years on my distribution that is based on Aros 68k, which features are missing? As I explained before distributions are for users (not nightly builds). Ugly? Really? How that? Show me a example of that? I have a nice RTG 24bit background from Wawa, use Magellan as Desktop Manager and support almost any GUI technology inside that was ever available.