Ultimate Amiga environment utilities

[cv643d]

Statram, it gives you a Ramdisk called "SD0:". You can unpack DMS archives to it or LHA archives, and the content wont disapear if you reset your Amiga. And it will increase its size automatically. Every time I set up a new Amiga system I add Statram.

[pVC]

The biggest, the best, most beautiful: DirectoryOpus Magellan 2 ! Absolutely must for maximum usage. Installed here on A1200/everything, A1200/030, USB stick for UAE use and on A2000/010.

Also in use, at least on main a1200: MCP, Birdie2000, TitleShadow, MagicMenu, VisualPrefs, FullPalette and Executive.

[SuperTurbo]

I try to avoid such patches because they make my computer crash. I´ve had too much trouble with MCP, Visualprefs and others, like frequent system crashes memory loss, and slower overall performance. I only use the ones that comes with AOS 3.9 and the boing bags and of course the ones that my blizzard 060 needs to function properly (forgot the name of it).

[Amiduffer]

Cool topic! I hope to try a few of the programs mentioned. :eureka:

[AmigaMance]

MUI doesn't count. It is considered part of the system.

 Install SystemPatch http://web.tiscali.it/ziosante/ right after FBlit http://www.tpec.u-net.com/ and throw away BlazeWCP, FText, CopyMemQuicker and possibly other patches. Just read the manual.

 MCP is a very good idea but not the latest version as it is very buggy. Prefer to install the Aminet version or at least an early version from the MCP website.

 For less memory fragmentation i suggest MemOptimizer and FragCure installed after it. Get them from Aminet.

 As others suggested, download BlizKick, have a good read at the manual and install it with some of the included modules that you will find useful. Then install Exec44. Both are located in Piru's website.

 Iirc, FastIPrefs is only useful if you don't have OS3.5+

 Executive is good, specially if you tend to run many programs at the same time. If you don't, it's better not to install it.

 HappyEnv is highly suggested. Read the manual and try it!

 Imho, and as SuperTurbo said. PowerIcons, birdie, VisualPrefs and the rest of the eye-candies is a wonderful way to waste system resources. (Mainly memory and CPU cycles)

[keropi]

you all seem that do not know the best amiga filemanager, ClassAction.

ClassAction Homepage!

ClassAction is a multipurpose filemanager for AmigaOS.  If you have an Amiga, you can't work (fine) without ClassAction !!!!  If you try it, you won't be able to trash it !!!!





 :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D

[Tenacious]

On my lower spec Amigas, I like the dirutility ORDERING.  I think it's mostly written in assembler because it's very faaassst.  It's very nearly as configurable as Dopus 4.xx.  

I also like ScreenTab.  Start bars can be a good thing when done well.

[Amiduffer]

Oh!! Should throw a good word for ToolManager here, since it's a capable utility that I have little trouble with.

[LoadWB]

I just tried Directory Opus 4.17pre21 (versions itself as pre20, though?) and it corrects a number of complaints I have had about DOpus 4.12 (which also began crashing on my 4000/060 recently for no apparent reason.)  I also downloaded and tried Class Action -- it will take me a while, I think, but I think I can transition from DOpus (the biggest delay will be converting my pain-stakingly hand-crafted classes, whever necessary.)  And it's great to see a newer version of FTPmount, LOVE IT!

In addition, I downloaded the latest version of IconBeFast from AmiNet.  HOLY COW this is an excellent patch.  I changed my icons to the AbandonMI set downloaded from OS4 Depot a couple of weeks back.  They're REALLY nice but take a long time to load (reminds me of a slow Windows ME machine.)  With IconBeFast they seem to just pop up instantly.  GREAT job on this program!

And speaking of icons, PNG icons are fantastic.  If you're interested in making some for yourself, I found that The GIMP 2.2 for Windows (and presumably Linux and Solaris) does a great job of editing pictures (especially removing backgrounds) and making proper PNG images which PowerIcons easily converts to icons.

At some point I think I will create a clean load of OS3.9 on my 4000 (need to clean out some decade-old libraries, dontchya know!) and put all these utilities in a scratch-bare system.*  I started this thread with the intention of putting together a list of well-received and recommended utilities, and I think everyone has made that happen.  Thanks to all, and I hope more will share their experiences.

* - My Amiga 4000 is actually the end-of-the-line for a system which started out on Workbench 1.3.  It was upgraded to 2.04, 3.0 (warezed, sorry!,) 3.1, 3.5, then 3.9.  Sure is a mess, but the system runs spectacularly.

Amiga -- I think even my girlfriend "gets it" :-)

[pVC]

"MCP is a very good idea but not the latest version as it is very buggy. Prefer to install the Aminet version or at least an early version from the MCP website."

Yep, I like older versions too. 1.32 in use here. And there's only certain patches which may cause problems. Like with OS3.9. But don't blame whole program for those, you can disable non-working patches

"Executive is good, specially if you tend to run many programs at the same time. If you don't, it's better not to install it."

...unless if you want make fancy dashboards etc


"HappyEnv is highly suggested. Read the manual and try it!"

I used this earlier, but at the time it had some bugs, don't know if it's updated after it. env-handler is similar to it and works fine here.

"Imho, and as SuperTurbo said. PowerIcons, birdie, VisualPrefs and the rest of the eye-candies is a wonderful way to waste system resources. (Mainly memory and CPU cycles)"

But if you have enough memory (I have 128M) and fast cpu (I have overclocked 060) then those are acceptable for prettyness