what makes an OS version?

[Will-i-am]

Here's a question that came up recently when I was unable to get my install script to install os 3.1 in happy preparation of installing os 3.9. Got that? So parts of the install were done by hand and eventually I got it up and running. Bad floppies are such a pain and I have a couple of grocery bags of decaying disks.

I got to wondering what all in all constituted an OS install, insofar as say you had an A4000 and it had 3.1 roms and you were going to install the operating system 3.9 without a script, say you never had a script for some curious reason, cosmic rays ate your CD or something, but you had all the files and all... at what point of copying the files onto your machine could you say "I have installed OS 3.9 on this machine...."? you could leave out the fonts probably and some of the libraries maybe? But at what point would the machine boot up to OS 3.9 rather than OS 3.1? That's the question, talk amongst yourselves.

[lempkee]

can be alot of things and it can be a smaller amount of things...as for 3.1 to 3.9 ... huge update but from 3.1 to 3.5 not that big :-P

[Xanxi]

I don't think 3.9 should be consider a major version step toward 3.1.

It is a small upgrade because of the libs, i think, no more.

2.1 to 3.0 was a major system upgrade, introducing new concepts in the OS, but 3.1 to 3.9 don't change anything important, but eventually add more bugs :p

I usually call my 3.1 system on my main amiga a 3.7 version, because it is so heavealy patched that it is not a mere 3.1 but nothing like 3.5 or 3.9

[mr_a500]

..at what point of copying the files onto your machine could you say "I have installed OS 3.9 on this machine...."?

You can say you've got 3.9 when you can use programs and prefs using Reaction GUI (damn thing won't work with 3.1), when you can see Colouricons (without converting) and when you see Amiga International in the Workbench>About instead of Commodore-Amiga.

Without this, you're still running 3.1 (...and you're probably better off anyway).