Ben Hermans Interview - Take 2 - Submit your Questions

[HyperionMP]

Double post, sorry.

[meerschaum]

HyperionMP I'm talking about AOS4 running on hardware that was sold to people in advance for the express purpose of running it....sure those other OS's you mention had their problems moving ahead...but had Apple demod OSX on a 68K mac and called it the future...would the macheads be cheering?

[Marky_D_Sahd]

Software Hut has announced that it is ewxpecting to ship OS4 by October.  Has there been an official announcement of any kind?

[Wain]

Question 2: (this has been asked to death but I'd certinly like to hear an answer direct from you)

You(maybe not YOU Ben but people on the Amiga.inc side of things) claim the purpose of AmigaOne's dongle/rom/whatever you want to call it is to ensure 'quality' standerds and such???... bieng that AmigaOne is only a motherboard and OS how do you make sure every single computer derived from this and sold by a third party meets the extremely high-standerds of Hyperion

do you have field testers?, rigorous VAR school/etc?, secret in-company quality checkers?.. how do you do it...

I'm confused about this question, wouldn't the answer simply be, if someone wants to run AOS 4.0, they contact us and send us the system they want to run it on and we review it along with its white papers with a couple of engineers, and if it looks good, we give them the uboot code and a licensing contract??

Have I grossly misunderstood this question? or is the answer painfully obvious??

I haven't been following all the flamewar politics regarding this particular area so I was just wondering what this question's actually about.

[Wain]

HyperionMP I'm talking about AOS4 running on hardware that was sold to people in advance for the express purpose of running it....sure those other OS's you mention had their problems moving ahead...but had Apple demod OSX on a 68K mac and called it the future...would the macheads be cheering?

I feel here that I must point out from my experience that macheads will cheer for ANYTHING Apple does as long as Apple says it's good regardless of the actual underlying technical issues and quality.

 ;-)

[meerschaum]

Waine the AmigaOne systems go to people who re-sell them right?... I've heard it said the 'Dongle' for OS4 is to ensure 'system stability' etc etc etc...but who is going around checking if the AmigaOne's in all the various configurations that will no doubt be sold...are going to be 'stable' and 'solid' etc etc etc?... thats my point...

[Wain]

@meerschaum

got it, thanks for the clarification.  I knew there had to be something more to it than that.

 :-D

[shIva]

if not too late ... here are my question(s) :

what about nfs/smb support ? (the existing nfs clients/servers are not that good)
is os4 multi user capable with usr/local/world rights ?
will the passwds (if multiuser capable) be md5 coded to be compatible to existing un*x systems ?
will there be a ssh2 shell ?
will the tcp stack support nat, routing, etc ?
will the system be documented (á la sun) ?
will the desktop be exportable via xwin (vnc is not THE solution) ?
will the sysetem be remote configurable ?

(i know, some of them are old :-/ )

[Warface]

In what way can Amiga Inc affect the directives/development of AmigaOS4? Do they have any control over it or your contract leaves so much space for you that they are just watching from the sidelines?

A more straight and shorter version: Do Amiga Inc has anything to do with OS4 development except the name?

Thank you for the answer in advance.

Can we expect a new skin for moovid in OS4?  ;-)  ;-)  ;-)

[bloodline]

Regarding Network support (assuming there is to be any):

-Edit- Question removed because it was a bit lame.

[ksk]

What kind of screensavers and screensaver system will ship with AOS4.0?

It would be nice if there is a superb good looking (and extremely stable) screensaver.

(later it would also help to make AOS machines look more appealing in computer shop's window...)

More ideas to this:
- screensaver could act as a standard benchmark program
- screensaver could also act as a standard multimedia presentation tool (reading scala/hollywood scripts)
- screensaver could work as a world wide Amiga community infochannel system ;-)    (how about amigaworld.net or amiga.org plugin...)  
- it could also be set to show (cycle through) selected web pages
- login/password system for the screensaver could be set to look like the stargate dialing/control screen...     :-o  :-D  
- screensaver could use TV card to show TV channels on screen
- screensaver could also automatically load & show movie trailers from the internet
- screensaver could be used to remind about things and it could automatically remind about viruskiller updates, AOS4 updates, and monitor system(hard disk) integrity and inform if there exist problems
- it could show headers of new received mail

and....  :-D

[ksk]

How will AOS4 tackle viruses? Will existing viruskillers continue to work?  Will there be a viruskiller in the "contributions" folder?

[ksk]

Windows is known from it's standard card game. I bet hundred million people have tried it out and some play it (almost) all day at work.

Will AOS4 include a good card game? Perhaps one that uses klondike card sets?


(about 7 years ago when I worked at computer shop and sold Amigas, I noticed that a lot of (older) people disliked Amigas because it did not include card game as a standard)   :-o

[lempkee]

ksk: good point..

question to ben: or answer .. we really need
some sort of game in it ... standard installed as minimum... maybe PAIRS NG (demo on aminet) , i play it alot... , its nicely designed and additive, still in dev.... i regged even...
can we have this in os4? or maybe something else? better? or for worse? ...please no windows pinball

question answered i guess....btw hyperion demos of older games wont do really, as it aint apealing to all... especially girls and we do need more girls on amiga dont we?

(i guess i made u smile now

[Floid]

Hate to steal any thunder, but... Some of these are pretty answerable.

shIva wrote:
is os4 multi user capable with usr/local/world rights ?
will the passwds (if multiuser capable) be md5 coded to be compatible to existing un*x systems ?
will there be a ssh2 shell ?
will the tcp stack support nat, routing, etc ?

Unless any big surprises are coming, we pretty much know 4.0 will be a single-user OS, though the little-used file ownership features of FFS may've been maintained in the 'FFS2' reimplementation.  (I honestly can't remember.)  MD5 is popular and free, so if and when anyone did require a strong hashing solution, they'd have to be a little nuts (QSSL) to roll their own.  The Roadshow stack has been claimed very modern, and should certainly handle routing, at least - maybe Ben can remind us of the featurelist for that.

will the desktop be exportable via xwin (vnc is not THE solution) ?

This is what troubled me to reply... Unfortunately, VNC *is* 'the solution' for exporting GUIs not intrinsically X11-based.  Some sort of X11 wrapper might not be impossible, but it'd be a heck of a lot of work -- consider how much code it'd take to 'translate' things like non-rectangular windows, unless you're talking export of the entire desktop like an X client, in which case it would be little different than using VNC anyway.

Now, if you really must have the X protocol, I was blathering about NoMachine a while back... Well, I dropped them a line, and received a friendly response.  Basically, their focus is elsewhere at the moment, but they *are* interested in supporting PowerPC Linux at some point (three letters: IBM), and they'll see where they can go from there as the marketplace evolves.

[olegil]

@Floid:

I suggest you also read the Roadshow feature list:

http://os.amiga.com/os4/OS4FeatureSet.php?p=11

Quote:
Compatible with software written for AmiTCP V4, Miami, Miami Deluxe and Termite TCP.
Written from scratch, incorporating the 4.4BSD Lite2 TCP/IP kernel.
Compact and efficient design; fastest Amiga TCP/IP stack to date.
Automatic configuration via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) supported through built-in DHCP client; activate a networking interface and your Amiga automatically becomes part of your local network. This enables you to use cable and DSL modems with your Amiga.
Uses a small, but comprehensive set of Amiga specific administration tools and configuration files; easier to learn and use than plain Unix style commands and files.
Just one command required to start up and make your Amiga part of your network; no need to configure routes, IP addresses and domain name system servers separately.
Supports Ethernet (broadcast) and PPP, SLIP, CSLIP (point-to-point) networking.
Completely localized, with error messages and reports printed in your native language.
Built-in Internet Superserver ("inetd") to start server application software in response to client requests (e.g. Apache web server, Samba file server, etc.).
Built-in "TCP:" device handler which makes it possible to use the TCP/IP stack functionality from within shell scripts or Arexx programs.
Integrated IP packet filter (IPF) and network address translation (NAT); build your own firewall or use your Amiga as a network gateway.
Uses the SANA-II standard for networking drivers; supports the release 2, 3 and 4 extensions such as for direct memory access and dial-up networking.
Multicasting supported.
Built-in support for the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF); monitor the local networking using your Amiga.
Greatly enhanced application programming interface which gives developers control over the networking interfaces, routing and kernel behaviour, allows for data to be filtered, monitored and reshaped; create your own firewall, check which requests your Amiga receives from the network, deny incoming or outgoing connections. The enhanced application programming interface is still backwards compatible with AmiTCP V4.
Comes with special networking drivers for dial-up networking (asynchronous PPP; for modems and ISDN adaptors which behave like modems) and DSL access (PPP over Ethernet).
Driver for PPP over Ethernet supports the SANA-II standard for networking drivers including the release 2, 3 and 4 extensions such for as direct memory access. A special "low overhead" mode increases networking performance by cutting the path short which lies between the Ethernet driver and the TCP/IP stack.
Both PPP drivers (asynchronous PPP and PPP over Ethernet) support automatic configuration of local and network addresses, routes and domain name system server addresses. Link quality monitoring and testing, authentication with plain text and encrypted passwords (CHAP and MSCHAP) are supported.
Driver for PPP over Ethernet includes security features to discourage password sniffing on the network.

Now, could we have some questions which were NOT answered on os.amiga.com in January 2003? ;-)