Where Do We Draw The Line?

[MiAmigo]

Almost everyday, I spend a significant amount of time on Aminet looking for applications to enhance my OS3.9 environment. (Note to self: Get my life back!). As the days went by, I noticed that doing this always made me feel a little ‘guilty’ but I never could put my finger on why. It actually took me quite some time to realize the answer to those nagging feelings of guilt. It was because I was kind of uncomfortable with the fact that, piece-by-piece, what I’m actually doing (without even admitting it to myself) is no less than trying to recreate my Windows environment on the Amiga. This idea unsettled me a little, since one of the main reasons I got the thing was to get a break from what I considered all the things that are ‘wrong’ with PCs in general, and Windows in particular.

But, then I had to admit, attempting to ignoring the fact that there are actually ‘good’ things about Windows (that have evolved over the years from customer use and input) is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’, and denying myself some real conveniences. Things like proper handling of long filenames, right-click menus and scroll wheels, ‘auto-arrange’ to keep icons neat and orderly, and controls that allow a user to resize a window without having the drag the damn thing by a corner every-single-time!

So, yeah, I decided, I do like those features, and its actually NOT wrong to want them on my Amiga, but, where do I draw the line? Isn’t it true that the proliferation of such enhancements, taken to the extreme, is actually what bogs Windows down, make it huge, sloppy, bloated and buggy? (And the fact that its comprised mostly of lots of ‘spaghetti’ code, haphazardly thrown together in an inelegantly written mish-mash of C and VB, concocted by a dozens if not hundreds of nameless programmer-drones under the relentless taskmaster's whip of one W. Gates).

Well, while all that may be true, there is some ‘good’ left in Windows, as in all modern OSes. Having reconciled my guilt, now, all I have to do is decide when and where to stop adding ‘stuff’ to my Amiga environment, keeping it lean, mean, and clean, AND modern, and functional. So, I ask myself at each download, “Do I really need that screensaver-photo-rotator? Is it absolutely necessary to have the ‘right’ application pop up, whenever I insert a CD, or double-click on a file? Do I really want ANY application to gobble up my precious clock cycles by running constantly, even when I’m not using it? Can’t I do some of this stuff myself?  Just where DO I draw the line?”
 :juggler:

[JKD]

From a certain perspective, a lot of the fun in owning a personal computer is making it just that....personal!

Just keep going until you can't stand the clutter/loss of speed and then buy a new (faster) machine and start all over again ;-)

[billt]

I think that one of the great things about the AmigaOS is that it IS so configurable. One of its strong points is that you can adjust things to be more the way you are comfortable with. If you happen to tend to like some things the way Windows does them, there's no foul in that, and you have every right to do it that way.

But realize that some of the things you mention aren't necessarily Windows-specific mimicing. You'll find a screensaver photo rotator for any OS, not just Windows. Unix systems has window resize on any edge. I use my mouse scrollwheel under Linux quite a bit...

I myself have done things to make it somewhat unix-like, enabling star-wildcards, aliasing unix command names to amiga shell commands, etc. I'm trying to install an X-window server/client on my Amiga, use openSSH, have Cygwin on my Windows PC, and wish there was X-windows, openssh, and subversion (successor to CVS) for OS4. I don't see why I should feel guilty about this.

Think about it this way. Would you rather have some neat feature running in AmigaOS that isn't put there by the AmigaOS install CD, or would you rather trade your "guilt" for "jealousy" of some other OS that has what you want your Amiga to do? Don't worry. Be happy.

[Hyperspeed]

Haha, nice dancing badger JKD...

:-D

Actually I've been doing a lot of Aminet shopping lately and I often
throw out the startbar style Windows stuff - it's often quite
bloated.

However I don't see any problem in accepting a good idea, thank
heavens we are not being forced to pay a license fee for them!

;-)

I'm sure there are an equal number of Windows owners who feel sheepish
about making their desktop more like the Amiga via PC-based Directory
Opus and UAE.

Can someone tell me though, what is Tools->ResetWB for in the menu? I
never did find it useful in any way whatsoever.

:-D :-D :-D

[MiAmigo]

JKD wrote:
From a certain perspective, a lot of the fun in owning a personal computer is making it just that....personal!

Just keep going until you can't stand the clutter/loss of speed and then buy a new (faster) machine and start all over again ;-)

You made me chuckle!  :-P That's how I screwed up all my Windows machines! (OOPS! I didn't say that! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!).

[MiAmigo]

billt wrote:
I think that one of the great things about the AmigaOS is that it IS so configurable. One of its strong points is that you can adjust things to be more the way you are comfortable with. If you happen to tend to like some things the way Windows does them, there's no foul in that, and you have every right to do it that way.

But realize that some of the things you mention aren't necessarily Windows-specific mimicing. You'll find a screensaver photo rotator for any OS, not just Windows. Unix systems has window resize on any edge. I use my mouse scrollwheel under Linux quite a bit...

I myself have done things to make it somewhat unix-like, enabling star-wildcards, aliasing unix command names to amiga shell commands, etc. I'm trying to install an X-window server/client on my Amiga, use openSSH, have Cygwin on my Windows PC, and wish there was X-windows, openssh, and subversion (successor to CVS) for OS4. I don't see why I should feel guilty about this.

Think about it this way. Would you rather have some neat feature running in AmigaOS that isn't put there by the AmigaOS install CD, or would you rather trade your "guilt" for "jealousy" of some other OS that has what you want your Amiga to do? Don't worry. Be happy.

You are correct sir, on several points. As a matter of fact, while adding capabilities to my machine, I, too, have added a few Linux/Unix like features, that I find very useful on those machines on my network. Things like a bsh shell, and a full suite of TCP/IP commands. I also added several search wildcards, which come in very handy if you cut your teeth on DOS, like I did, in those days following my move from the Amiga to the PC camp, way back in the day. But there's just so much on Aminet! I think its the largest centrally located  collection of downloadable software for one platform on the Internet! And sometimes, I feel like I want it all! Oh, what to choose!  :-o  :crazy:

[MiAmigo]

Yeah, what is that thing for, anyway? (Tools->ResetWB). I ofthen hit it when I'm bored, but it doesn't really do anything.

[Trev]

Uh, ResetWB forces a refresh of your Workbench screen and its windows. You know, like hitting F5 in most Windows applications, including Explorer (which hosts the desktop) (not *Internet* Explorer--that's a separate control).

Trev

[Ilwrath]

Yeah, what is that thing for, anyway? (Tools->ResetWB). I ofthen hit it when I'm bored, but it doesn't really do anything.

It'll clean up any graphics corruption or glitches on your workbench screen.  Also, IIRC, if you manage to copy a workbench configuration file over your current one, hitting "ResetWB" will cause the settings in the new file to become active.

Not terribly useful anymore, as it's fairly rare that something corrupts your workbench screen, and the new ENV: / ENVARC: system makes more sense than the old "system-configuration" file.

Now, as an interesting piece of trivia, if you edit your startup-sequence and make the "LoadWB" line into "LoadWB -debug" you'll get a new item below "ResetWB" that is "flushlibs".  That'll scan your resident libraries and free any that aren't currently in use, thus giving you more free RAM.    

I think you also get an item named "romwack" which you don't want to pick unless you like freezing your Amiga while it waits for a special code on the serial port.  (The only way out is a three-key salute.)

[MarkTime]

Well despite the fact that many of us want to describe our old hero's as philosophical genius's...the fact is, the legacy doesn't include much in the way of philosophy.

That is why we are left with a few generalities that might relate to a philosophy...reject bloat, stay lean, etc.

But you know, one of the common issues, is that the RAM, bus, processor limitations of yesteryear, were understood as limitations at the time.  Those were limitations that would have been gladly overcome, had it been practical.

Now, as the last remnants of this old religions, we kind of have a {bleep}ized understanding of what was trying to be accomplished back then.

The original Mac OS was fairly lean...it had to be to run on a machine with 128k of ram and only a floppy drive.  But the Mac OS philosophy has nothing to do with being lean (or custom chips, or a specialized bus)...

Mac OS X, could never run on minimal specs,  in fact to run it nicely you really need a G4 with AGP....does that mean Mac OS X has no relationship to the original system software?  Of course, not...but its easy in the Mac world what to adopt and what to not adopt.  

If something is appealing, if it is easy to use, if it doesn't frustrate the user, if it makes you more productive in your work...need to consider that as an option.

I did always like the idea that there is something different about the Amiga.   I used to address this very concern, before I realized no one cares anymore.   It's about treating the user with intelligence, that they are capable of understanding complex ideas, at the same time, appreciating ease of use.

Does it all sound too generic?  Well, the practical application is...did the author of the program make it scriptable..i.e. extensible to the user, allowing at first glance, a newbie to operate it in its essentail features, but allowing the expert user to both expand on it, and even call its functionality from their own programs.

This is an amiga like program...  if you want to keep the faith, you expand your amiga similarly.  If a program is clearly nothing more than a windows hack, dumbed down in everyway...I don't like it.

Anyway...too each their own.   There isn't any consensus of what 'amiga' is, and there won't be now.

[Hyperspeed]

I never did grasp AREXX...

Maybe I need a book on it.

[PMC]

It's been difficult using AmiagOS primarily for fifteen years, before using WindowsXP and finally going back to AmigaOS again now that WinUAE is working satisfactorily.

There are things about XP I like, the task manager being one as killing an unstable program without having to reboot your system is a luxury.  Multi-user support too is welcome, as is the way that XP treats media files and pictures (ie showing them as thumbnails in directorys).  

And then I think of all the things that frustrate, like slow boot times, the spyware issues and MS's obsessive need to be the biggest name, if not necessarily the best quality...

If you flip between my PC and Amiga desktops, you notice similarities, but that's because I like to tweak my desktop a certain way, with certain colours.  

I love the way that Amiga's OS is so damn configurable, the way that Visual Prefs and Birdie seem to produce stunning results with little or no CPU overhead (which let's face it is critical on the vast majority of our systems).  I have spent hours tweaking the GUI to a fine degree and am mostly pleased with the results.

If only I could remember how to get Birdie to work!  

The problem with the above is that it isn't integrated into the Amiga's actual OS.  It would be nice if it were, as we'd all have destop eye candy to rival anything else out there, but the downside is that fiddling is required to get Birdie to work, to make sure the palette in Visual Prefs is locked etc.  So many times I've got the colours spot on, only to save my preferences and be greeted with Magenta window borders.  

[TheMagicM]

I dont think you're doing anything wrong.  Windows, while bloated, has alot of cool features that you want to have on a obsolete OS.    If you want different, run Linux on your x86 box.

It's really a catch-22.

I like XP.  It does everything I think an OS should, and everything I think AmigaOS should have done.  I don't think XP is perfect by any stretch of imagination, but I like it because it includes a lot of things that I don't have to even think about, like multi-user support, an IP stack, browser (even if I choose to use Mozilla), and media players.  

On the other hand, AmigaOS has none of that stuff to make it end-user friendly (like mom and pop friendly, not Amiga-geek friendly), but Amiga users always whine about how "putting all that crap in would add bloat and eliminate choices which is anti-Amiga" but that's really short-sighted.  Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.

My choice is to take the time to write the damned OS correctly, where -- on installation -- the user can decide whether he wants a base (pretty much non-networked) stripped-down AmigaOS 4 (so they can add their own toys) or they can choose to add in an IP stack and a browser, media players, etcetera.  In other words, bundle absolutely everything with the OS, but make it 100% user-choice to install any part of it (where possible).  

In that respect (and don't start in on this but) I think Genesi initially had the hint of the right idea with the Superbundle.  Unfortunately their licensing and execution is pretty much kerplunkt.

Wayne

[B00tDisk]

Wayne wrote:
It's really a catch-22.

I like XP.  It does everything I think an OS should, and everything I think AmigaOS should have done.  I don't think XP is perfect by any stretch of imagination, but I like it because it includes a lot of things that I don't have to even think about, like multi-user support, an IP stack, browser (even if I choose to use Mozilla), and media players.  

On the other hand, AmigaOS has none of that stuff to make it end-user friendly (like mom and pop friendly, not Amiga-geek friendly), but Amiga users always whine about how "putting all that crap in would add bloat and eliminate choices which is anti-Amiga" but that's really short-sighted.  Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.

My choice is to take the time to write the damned OS correctly, where -- on installation -- the user can decide whether he wants a base (pretty much non-networked) stripped-down AmigaOS 4 (so they can add their own toys) or they can choose to add in an IP stack and a browser, media players, etcetera.  In other words, bundle absolutely everything with the OS, but make it 100% user-choice to install any part of it (where possible).  

In that respect (and don't start in on this but) I think Genesi initially had the hint of the right idea with the Superbundle.  Unfortunately their licensing and execution is pretty much kerplunkt.

Wayne

All very well said, Wayne.  I, too, like XP.  Issues with IE aside, it does everything I want very, very well.  It's installation is turnkey.  I've always said that while you can fault MS for a great many things, at least they've helped drive technology: I'd much, much rather be playing with a 120gb HD than the 170MB hard drive my first PC had (it eventually wound up with bad sectors, and I had doublespaced it, and installed Win'95...what a mess).

If AmigaOS had a big footprint and had the features of WinXP, I wouldn't mind in the least.  These are not the days of $200 per megabyte RAM any more.  Bring on the features!