Dominant future AmigaOS? MOS vs OS4 vs AROS

[bloodline]

AmiGR wrote:
It's silly for one reason... The one who dominates the
Amiga market is NOT the winner. Every team will start
targeting other markets, thus following other paths.

Hahahaha, I like that: "The one that gets the Amiga Market is not the winner", talk about cussing the Amiga community :-D

A better Topic is: "Which Clone is the most interesting and/or has the most interesting future..."

[jdiffend]

I don't know that dominant is the word I'd use for an OS that very few people use.

However, in the long run I do have a pick.

AmigaOS has pretty much been abandoned by Amiga Inc in favor of a new hardware/software solution because it should be more profitable.  The only reason they support the old one at all is they needed money.  It will continue to have a good sized but ever shrinking user base.  Old hardware dies sometime.

Amiga Inc just doesn't have the money to push a new platform.  OS4 will be cool but few people will spend that much on hardware.  No killer app... few sales.  DE will continue to give them cash in small doses but none of their stuff will gain wide use.

MOS... Amiga Inc part two... and these guys don't even have a name they can live off of.

AROS... has a life of it's own.  It isn't dependant on a company to give it life.  It will have to go through a phase where the current developers give up some control to new developers or it will plod along at a snails pace till they have to move on.  *If* it can do that and provide runnable, easy to install  releases with actual applications then it will gain a steady following.  

So... who's the winner?  Right now and for some time it will be AmigaOS.  WinUAE will become the platform used to run it thanks to attrition killing off old hardware.  Actually, if you count kids pirating games to run on UAE it's already the dominant platform and will probably stay that way.  But then they aren't really using AmigaOS... just running games.

Long term?  There are a few things that have to happen in order for what I'm going to say to come about but I'm going to go out on  a limb.
AROS
It's going to be two years before these guys figure out they have to start doing releases that work like Linux distros, take time to fix the build system so that the more hacker types stop killing the nightly builds and someone will actually have to port a couple apps to it.  But I think it has to happen for the project to continue.

I also say this because UAE under windows isn't really using the OS.  Their dominant environment is Windows.  Most people will run one or two programs every now and then or a favorite game but never really use the OS.

[AmiGR]

MOS... Amiga Inc part two... and these guys don't even have a name they can live off of.
--

They don't have THE name, but they do have 10(100?)
or even more times more money than Amiga Inc, have
a plan and have the connections. They even have the
connection to get a very good name (that will let many
people down)  and many stuff that come with that name,
for the last few years. Take a look at www.morphos-news.de...

[jdiffend]

And who outside of this board has ever heard of them?
You can rant, stomp your feet, jump up and down and say mine is better than yours till hell freezes over and it wont change the fact that over 90% of the people that have even heard of the Amiga have never heard of them let alone people that haven't heard of Amiga.

100 times the money of Amiga Inc?  100 times nothing is still nothing.  Chicken feed.  It takes a lot of money to become a niche player in this business and they don't even have something to put them in that position.

The only reason AROS can succeed is it's free and can outlive it's original developers.

[jdiffend]

Oh, and cheap hardware you can find anywhere.

[AmiGR]

You ignored half my posting...
Take a look at morphos-news.de and morphzone.org
to see which name I'm talking about.
And no, this is no joke, they have the connection to get it.

[wonea]

MorphOS does seem to be going places, espicially with 1.4.  As stated before, to run it on a Mac would be awesome.  Why don't they release it for the AmigaONE and finish Amiga Inc off for good.  I would pay <£50 for a copy.

AOS4 isn't even out the door yet.  How are they going support it, if they can't even pay the programmers to write it?

[Atheist]

The BEST way for AOS4.0 to get strong FAST is, upon release, start working on 4.2, BUT at the same time, maybe ask Amigaworld.net to set up a section, for ONLY reporting bugs.

That way, everyone can see which bugs have been reported, and if they face the same ones, can maybe add something extra to how it may have occurred.

Then Hyperion should address that bug immediately, and re-release that C: command or whatever it is.

Not wait and release a group of programs, as a boing bag, or implement it in 4.2.

The KEY to selling more machines will be "rock solid stability", not features, in the first 6-12 months.

Who cares if they add 35 features in 4.2, if 4.0 is unreliable???

AmigaOne! MTBF = Infinity!

[Hammer]

AmiGR wrote:
Nahlepuh and stuff like it are mostly MMU hacks.
Such MMU hacks are not even considered, as they
will slow down everything significantly.

Did you forget 68K CPU emulation? One could use sound blaster emulation within WinXP’s dos box as another example.

Every poke to Paula would produce MMU exceptions that would have to be handled with multitasking disabled. Such stuff have no place in a clean OS.

What about newbaer.lha (Paula-to-AHI redirector for AMIthlon)?  

The goal with both solutions is not only to produce a
compatible and extended OS but to clean it up as well.

Nice goals but how does one reach that goal in a realistic fashion?

[AmiGR]

Did you forget 68K CPU emulation? One could use sound blaster emulation within WinXP’s dos box as another example.
--

Depends on the implementation. For example, MorphOS uses emulation traps instead.
Newbaer uses the mmu stuff outside of the emulation box, on the linux side.
It still slows stuff down, but on a 2ghz machine it's not visible.

[Dan]

"Which Clone is the most interesting and/or has the most interesting future..."

AROS because
1. Can be made run on every current amigaowners hardware( except if you only own an A1000 or A500)
2.Linux is becoming to mainstream....
which means no geekfactor, tons of viruses and no community

[jdiffend]

You ignored half my posting...

Well... if you would narrow down what your talking about it might help!

And until whatever your talking about is signed, sealed and delivered... I'll believe it when I see it.

[gary_c]

90% of the people that have even heard of the Amiga have never heard of them let alone people that haven't heard of Amiga.

Every idea/company/product starts out small. Well OK, not every, but many. You have to start somewhere. Whether or not n people have heard of MorphOS/Pegasos on June 3 2003 is not in itself a determining factor for success. Exposure grows fast if there's something interesting to say.  MorphOS got a pretty good review overall at osnews.com, for example. Of course the rough spots were noted, but, coming from a reviewer with no Amiga background, it was actually more positive than I expected, as it's easy to shoot down "for all the usual reasons" products that aren't based on cheap, commodity hardware, etc. This exposure in the alt OS geek community is the logical next step beyond the Amiga starting point. One step at a time. No one expects Pegasos boards at WalMart next week.

It takes a lot of money to become a niche player in this business and they don't even have something to put them in that position.

That remains to be seen. The Pegasos board is a really neat device that has generated good  feedback from different kinds of users, and Pegasos II should be a big step forward. Niche players don't have to have unlimited funding, just a product line that produces solutions for a sufficient number of people. The fact that Genesi is encouraging other OS ports to Pegasos and has other hardware devices and projects to leverage Pegasos development bodes well for the future, I'd say.

-- gary_c

[Ogun]

Take a look at morphos-news.de and morphzone.org  to see which name I'm talking about.  And no, this is no joke, they have the connection to get it.

I would actually think that Atari themselves might be a bit reluctant, but that is just a hunch.

In case you did not know Infogrames (one of the largets game publishing companies in the world) renamed themselves into Atari about a month ago. So I really have a hard time seeing Genesi being able to use that name

//Johan

[bbrv]

Unless of course we are working together...:-o

R&B ;-)

[AmiGR]

And what if I tell you that that's their connection? :-)