Fading Dreams

[transami]

What is Amiga? Barely even a dream these days --only a few dedicated spirits yet hold tight to her. But it is only a matter of time. The efforts have been great and honorable, but the foolish and greedy have over powered. The last remaining hope it that OS4 is open sourced. Failing that, not even this forum will remain in a few more years. How sad. For nothing was ever more enjoyable than working with my Amiga.

Amiga Owner #51

[Karlos]

Nicely phrased, even if I don't agree with the prognosis.

I hardly think that OS4 will, or should go opensource. A lot of effort has gone into it, the developers deserve to be rewarded for that effort.

As it goes, if you want an Open Source amiga compatible OS, you could try AROS. It's the most fun you can have with a PC :-)

[kd7ota]

 :lol: Hahahhah! Did someone just have a funeral?  :-D

Really, I can careless what Amiga will serve in the future. Who cares if it never becomes a mainstream OS.  I like to use the Amiga because I personally like it.  If you don't want to use it. Nobody is telling you to. :-)

[gizz72]

Greetings Transami,

No need to be sad! :-) As long as I live I will always use Amiga(emulated or not). It's just darn FUN to use one. It just makes me wanna go back to it like a magnet! It's just plain FUN! :-D

Regards,

Gizz72

[gregthecanuck]

transami wrote:
What is Amiga? Barely even a dream these days --only a few dedicated spirits yet hold tight to her. But it is only a matter of time. The efforts have been great and honorable, but the foolish and greedy have over powered. The last remaining hope it that OS4 is open sourced. Failing that, not even this forum will remain in a few more years. How sad. For nothing was ever more enjoyable than working with my Amiga.

Amiga Owner #51

Wow, what pessimism.

OS 4 is an easy-to-understand, lightweight, compact OS. It has a legacy application base that is upwardly-compatible for the most part.

Y'know what?  I work with UNIX and Windows all day at work.  Neither are easy to understand.  Only getting more complicated as time goes on. It's like a breath of fresh air looking at OS4 again.

To me OS4's biggest challenges are:

a) Continuous memory handling improvements
     - protected memory
     - de-fragmentation strategies
     - intelligent VM support

b) Consistent UI model
     - at the moment we have Reaction, Gadtools,
       MUI, ClassAct etc...  BAD, BAD, BAD
     - my pet peeve is "Ok" vs "OK" in requesters.
         It's "OK" da**it!  

c) New cleaner APIs for graphics, audio
     - these are coming for OS4.x, apparently

d) More POSIX support - enables easier porting of
   open-source apps from other platforms (ie Linux)

This is all from a developer's point of view.  Note that I have not developed any applications for OS4.  I do have an old copy of the latest SAS/C in storage somewhere but that's about it.

Give this OS a chance. We're back at the A1000 days again. Once we get to 4.1/4.2 and an A500 equivalent comes along things will start rocking again.

I expect someone will come up with an integrated motherboard with a low-end G3, very similar to the uA1-I but in a more cost-reduced form.  Perhaps the next generation of Articia chips will help this along.


That's my 2c for now...  


Cheers.

[c64_d0c]

:lol:  congratulate... you have won the biggest pessimist of the year award  :lol:
________
URUGUAYAN COOKING

[rayt]

Who cares if it never becomes a mainstream OS. I like to use the Amiga because I personally like it. If you don't want to use it. Nobody is telling you to.

Yeah thats my opinion, too, couldn't have said it better.. My amiga is anything but fading away, its right beside me running Os3.9 very nicely.. and maybe it will run 4.0 in the future, maybe not..
And I think thats the only reason why most of us are still here, because we still enjoy using our amigas.. don't get me wrong, but people who still hang out on amiga forums because they think amiga or pegasos will take over the world must be seriously sick in the head or something..

[ikir]

Uh? I power on my A1.... OS4 boots in few seconds... news and software everyday.... i don't see this platform so death, yet at least.

OS4 OpenSource? No thanks.

Try Aros, it is growning slowly but steady.
Or simply buy a Micro and enjoy the new version of our beloved operating system :-)

[transami]

A lot of effort has gone into it, the developers deserve to be rewarded for that effort.

If OS4 were opened then many could enter and those now involved would be richly rewarded. But remain closed and others will do what they do not, and they will remain bankrupt. Just as they have been for 20 years. Has Her history not yet taught this?

I am not as pessimistic as much as I am wishful for that which I love.

[MiAmigo]

The Amiga WILL go on. Why? First of all, its probably the only 'failed' platform from the 80's that has actually gotten more popular, and more sought after, with the passing of time, and not less. Even the (sometimes) outrageous prices for the 'vintage' hardware hasn't kept US from collecting, tweaking, building and DROOLING over this wonder. IF twenty-something years of PC development hasn't killed it, then nothing will, not even a somberly turned phrase of poetic pessimism. (If all the forums disappeared tomorrow, would any of us abandon our Amigas? Probably not.) 8-)

[HopperJF]

Karlos wrote:
Nicely phrased, even if I don't agree with the prognosis.

I hardly think that OS4 will, or should go opensource. A lot of effort has gone into it, the developers deserve to be rewarded for that effort.

As it goes, if you want an Open Source amiga compatible OS, you could try AROS. It's the most fun you can have with a PC :-)

I agree, definitely.

[Azryl]

Anyone remember the BOING demo.. written by the early Amiga designers to show what the curcuits could do, dual playfields, full screen animation, sound etc

I tried this disk once in all my Amiga systems
A1000, A500, A3000, A1200 and A4000
no early bootup etc.. just plain disk inserted on cold start

it ran FINE !

Now this demo was written before the chips or OS were finalied, yet it ran fine on machines generations later in architecture and OS

This backwards compatibility is what makes Amiga and AmigaOS very special in computing!

[transami]

So then you would be just as satisfied (perhaps even more so) as the ONLY Amiga user left in the world? You see, all of these answers convey the same lifelessness, a placid acceptance of the status-"low". There really was once a dream that She would reach great heights and prevade the world. Now and then I still dream that dream.

[Holley]

At the moment I'm hearing more news of fresh development on the Amiga platform all the time, being done by people ranging from pros to bedroom coders.  

I think most Amiga users (who still are Amiga users) know that there's no way to take over the world, one only has took look at the small amount of public knowledge out there about Linux, and compare it to the number of people involved with it's development, to realise thats never going to happen.

So whats left?  to have an active platform thats useable and above all efficient compared with the industry's lumbering giants - you don't need to take over the world to do that!

[Waccoon]

This backwards compatibility is what makes Amiga and AmigaOS very special in computing!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!  Oh, that's damned ironic.  :-)

That's because it was coded properly, something that went awry shortly after the games started pouring in.