Open Source Amiga OS

[nicholas]

That is disappointing, AOS would run on a 68000 and 512K ram, what more does AROS do to justify the faster cpu and 6M ram?

The same reason that Amiga OS 3.9 won't run on a 68000 with 512K RAM.

In short, C vs Assembly.

[nicholas]

If you build a 3.1-alike setup with almost only 3.9 components, what would you call that?

http://kolla.no/minimig/

I'd call it a "3.1-alike setup with almost only 3.9 components" running on an A500 with 1.5MB Chip RAM and a 16MHz 68000.

[nicholas]

Also AROS isn't just two decades old, there's lots of new stuff there too. So it's as useful as any of the three AmigaOS 3.1 clones.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's getting there.

[nicholas]

You need to take remedial set theory. There are how many closed-source OSes out there? For all you know I could be a fan of BeOS, OS/2, or (*gasp*) Windows.

Actually, I don't love closed-source so much as I have been quite forcefully disillusioned from buying into the FSF propaganda that open-source is magic pixie dust that makes everything better unilaterally and has no disadvantages whatsoever. Comes from multiple attempts over a solid seven years and change to try and get a really usable, pleasant user experience out of any of the eleventy billion mutually-incompatible Linux distros.

I do like Haiku as it's shaping up, but then Haiku takes the unorthodox but eminently sensible approach of allowing open access to the source but forbidding forking, so you actually get a single cohesive user experience.

What makes you think the Haiku licence forbids forking? It's MIT licenced which is even more permissive than the GPL.  You can literally do whatever the hell you want with it, including refusing to release the source to your own changes.

We've been here before John, your problem with the *nixes is that you don't know how to use UNIX to do what you want to do, nothing to do with the licencing model of the code*. Different strokes for different folks.....

There's a big difference between Free Software as defined by the FSF and Open Source as defined by the OSI too.

*Correct me if I'm wrong but you'd be just as baffled by the closed and proprietary HP/UX and AIX as you are by GNU or OpenBSD.

[nicholas]

Ladies!

Just use the tools that fit your workflow best, whatever they may be. End of.

[nicholas]

AROS may be an alternative that is modern to AOS, but it just doesn't seem as fast and responsive as AOS. Now that I know that AOS was written in Assembly(I thought it was C and Asm combo),

It is. (Pre-2.0 it was full of BCPL too).  MorphOS, OS4 and AROS are all rewrites of the OS in mostly C.

If you are a coder you could sign up to the AROS Dev mailing list and volunteer your services to help Toni and Jason improve the performance of 68k AROS.

https://www.hepe.com/mailman/listinfo/aros-dev/

[nicholas]

http://xkcd.com/386/

[nicholas]

Ha ha, thank you for that, nicholas.  Best way to start off the day!

@commodorejohn  There really aren't any OPEN SOURCE alternatives to the Gimp.  It's the only thing out there even remotely close in functionality to the "industry standard" of Photoshop.  So if the UI is the only thing bothering you, rewrite it.

People who generally call open source supporters as 'freetards' and then turn around and complain that free software sucks and everyone should use something else just don't get it.  Much like the hippies of old didn't get that if they wanted to be actual world shapers, they needed to stop sitting around in drug circles and get out there and change the world.  Unfortunately when they did that they mostly became greedy yuppies.  Stallman remained a hippy neckbeard, but started a huge movement to real software freedom.  And for this he is mocked.

I like that he doesn't own a cell phone

slaapliedje

As the late Ghandi once said: "Be the change you want to see in the world".

[nicholas]

See thats the Linux mantra.  

Linux users are happy to tell people how much "better" their platform is but when users tell them "You know there is stuff here that from a users point of view is actually ****.." the response is:

"well fix it yourself, you have all the tools, all the source, to make it work exactly how you want it, for free that's the really good thing about open source"

To which the user thinks:" I'm not a ****ing programmer, I just want to use the damned thing without tearing my hair out...how do I remove this **** off my hard drive."

BTW people don't RUN operating systems, they run applications.  And any free app on Linux usually has good or better app on Windows, for free as well if you want it.

Well use those apps yourself and STFU dictating to everyone else what they should or should not be using.

[nicholas]

This has gone bad because of the personal attacks against the people who use the above mentioned operating system.

You should have a debate without making personal attacks.

If someone has a complete loathing of Linux because it wouldn't install, I will leave that be.

It's like: Windows is buggy, I think I will try Linux.
 Linux wouldn't install, I will go back to Windows.

+1

[nicholas]

Yes, yes... but 2 out of 3 were born as commercial products (StarOffice and Netscape Navigator).

Yes, and they were both complete market failures.

Once they were opened up they both became massive successes.

It's interesting to note that OpenOffice lost most of it's market share to the forked LibreOffice not long after Oracle started to close up it's development.

[nicholas]

we have more than two "closed source" OSs? Which?

Amiga OS - Closed and dead. The only OS with the legal right to be known using the trademarks "Amiga" or Amiga OS".
MorphOS - Semi-Open and semi-closed. Doesn't have the legal right to be known using the trademarks "Amiga" or "Amiga OS".
OS4 - Closed. Doesn't have the legal right be known using the trademarks "Amiga" or "Amiga OS" either but does have the right to use the trademark "AmigaOS".

[nicholas]

I think memory fragmentation is a bigger issue, isn't it?  (Having so many different banks of memory, some slower than others can't be all that fun to write around in.)

Put this as the first line in your startup-sequence.

http://www.platon42.de/files/util/TLSFMem.lha