As with most OSes, Linux is not just one thing. It's not just the kernel. It's the system, the interface, the license, the repository, the platform, the community, the philosophy. And no, it does not have an Amiga feel. For the time & effort that has been put on Linux by everybody it has been a complete failure in the desktop and workstation (embedded systems, thin clients, servers, etc is another story). Too much legacy code, no pattern, no consistency, many stubborn or clueless developers with no intuitive ideas or HCI skills. Lack of marketing, not centralised management, forking, openess is NOT the problem with Linux as Micro$oft and Apple insist it is. Strict adherence to the rules and legacy code which leads to stagnation of ideas is.
Hopefully that will change in the future as more young developers have no prior experience on lame L&Fs that forces them to copycat bad ideas from Micro$oft/Apple. Still, there are some key fundamentals in Linux are flawed and need rethinking and redesigning from scratch.
Anyway, we had our chance to do it right when BeOS, QNX, Elate (Java) were around but we didn't. Instead of joining forces with MorphOS people and move forward we turned into a personal vendetta. Instead of retaining the pirate and underground spirit we tried in vain to figure out legislation and IPs for too many years. We now have to accept that a AmigaNG with a rich API and capable of a smooth transition from legacy AmigaOS is not going to happen. We concentrate on emulation for running 20years old software, on recreating limited AOS3.x in order to run it on boring x86 hardware, on doing boring software ports for underpowered and expensive AmigaOS4 hardware. The userbase and the community is shrinking. And it's not always about money or hardware. We need richer APIs and more developers. And we need to decide if it's only retro we want to go or we want something more. I don't get it why FFPGAs should be used strictly for emulation reasons and we shouldn't try to build a non-linux transition path from AmigaOS3/4/MorphOS/AROS to AmigaNG on that hardware.
