What if everyone used AOS4, the rockin' debate and information revealing thread

[beakster2]

If everyone used OS4....

Not everyones desktop would look the same.  Notice how all windows users have exactly the same computer with a different background pic?  Amiga users computers are all completely customised, from the icons, to the window borders, window backgrounds, startup-sequences etc.

People would become more creative.  Amiga users all have at least a little bit of knowledge about creating music, animations, pictures etc.  Alot of modern PC users don't even know how to use Paint and Sound Recorder (what a productivity suit that is Microsoft).  Ever wonder why modern computer magazines don't have Readers Gallery or Readers Games like Amiga Format used to have?

[Hans_]

Trev wrote:
I don't see why memory protection would have to kill backward compatibility or necessarily make the system slower. What you might kill is interoperability between legacy and current software, but even that could be mitigated with the right design.

Full memory protection would require stricter memory ownership rules. However, old apps could easily be run in a sandbox.

Hans

[AeroMan]

Hans_ wrote:

Trev wrote:
I don't see why memory protection would have to kill backward compatibility or necessarily make the system slower. What you might kill is interoperability between legacy and current software, but even that could be mitigated with the right design.

Full memory protection would require stricter memory ownership rules. However, old apps could easily be run in a sandbox.

Hans

Besides this, you need to load the MMU tables every task switch. This may be a big memory area, that´s why a slow down was mentioned.

Blitter and Disk DMA are also a problem, as they don´t pass through the MMU. But this applies only to the original hardware

(I have some crazy ideas about MMUs, but this is way off-topic...  :-D )

[uncharted]

If AmigaOS4 was the dominant OS then the l337 script kiddies would have the time of their lives.  Without memory protection and multiple users (or more accurately, multiple levels of authorisation) it is incredibly easy to cause havoc.  Mix into that the fact that no-ones ever really tried to compromise an Amiga, there are so many possible vectors for gaining access to the system, so much old software for which online security was not about when the internet really took off for home use.

I even seem to remember there being an exploit in MUI a few years back (although it required a bit of social engineering) that could give access to a machine quite easily.  There are probably millions of these kinds of things lurking about.  Security through obscurity was about the best thing we've got.

[shoggoth]

AeroMan wrote:
Besides this, you need to load the MMU tables every task switch. This may be a big memory area, that´s why a slow down was mentioned.

Blitter and Disk DMA are also a problem, as they don´t pass through the MMU. But this applies only to the original hardware

(I have some crazy ideas about MMUs, but this is way off-topic...  :-D )

Shouldn't Blitter and Disk DMA be handled by the kernel anyway? I've seen this remark (blitter & DMA etc.) several times when discussing memory protection in this forum, but I'm under the impression that this is not catered for on other platforms either, since such stuff is not part of any user process anyway.

[redfox]

@Varthall

Ever tried Abiword and Gnumeric under Cygnix?

No ... haven't tried any of these yet.  I'll check further.

---
redfox

[AeroMan]

shoggoth wrote:

Shouldn't Blitter and Disk DMA be handled by the kernel anyway? I've seen this remark (blitter & DMA etc.) several times when discussing memory protection in this forum, but I'm under the impression that this is not catered for on other platforms either, since such stuff is not part of any user process anyway.

Yes, they should, but the software should not mess with other task's memory as well. This is why we have a MMU to protect them.

But a runaway task might set up DMA or Blitter to a wrong address, and it would end up writing someone else's memory. You can legally access blitter registers as long as you ask the OS to "own" it. You can't limit this without compromising backward compatibility.

This is Amiga-only hardware, there is no need to bother about it for other platforms. (well, as far as I know... please, someone correct me if I'm wrong)

[persia]

If everyone used OS4 then the majority of OS4 users would be boring, looking at the same standard background and windows, etc.  The reason Amiga installations are unique is because Amiga users are unique.

OS4 is never going to appeal to the masses.  OS4 is not going to replace PCs and Macs.  OS4 would, if it ran on say PPC Mac Minis, be a great hobby operating system for Amiga enthusiasts, and that's enough.

The lack of memory protection is a serious flaw, there's no two ways about it.  All I want is to be able to play with OS4 at night when I'm bored.

[redfox]

@All

Sorry for the off topic reply.  Just updating Varthall.

@Varthall

Ever tried Abiword and Gnumeric under Cygnix?

OK ... if I this understand correctly, I require the following software:
X11-R6.3 prerelease 3 for AmigaOS 4 (Cygnix)
Update for the X11 environment Cygnix prerelease 3
AbiWord 2.5.1 + osb-browser for AmigaOS 4 (Cygnix)
AbiWord 2.5.1 update
Gnumeric - a spreadsheet for AmigaOS 4 (Cygnix)

Sadly, things did not work out very well.

I got a yellow (amber) GURU message while I was installing
X11-R6.3 prerelease 3 for AmigaOS 4 (Cygnix)

After clicking the left mouse button, my system sat there with the busy pointer, became very sluggish, and I had to reboot.

Tried a few more times, same results at exactly the same place in the install.

Even tried the completely automatated setting with no feedback from the user.  Machine hung part way through the install.

Needless to say, I did not get a chance to try Abiword or Gnumeric.

---
redfox



--(shooting the dancing banana was a bit much ;-) ...)--

[weirdami]

DON'T KILL THE BANANA!!!!

[weirdami]

From the "full" AmigaOS4.1 "announcement", I add, perhaps:

Required hardware: AmigaOne
Required graphics card for hardware compositing: Radeon 1xx or Radeon 2xx
Recommend graphics card: Radeon 9250

to the mix.

[weirdami]

So, I got to wondering if the Commodore 64 OS, whatever that is, was able to work on these fancy quad core dealies, would it be capable of having something like Halflife run on it. I mean like is there something in the OS that would make it not possible or is it just that the hardware is too slow? Does the OS really matter?

[uncharted]

weirdami wrote:
So, I got to wondering if the Commodore 64 OS, whatever that is, was able to work on these fancy quad core dealies, would it be capable of having something like Halflife run on it. I mean like is there something in the OS that would make it not possible or is it just that the hardware is too slow? Does the OS really matter?

You don't NEED an OS for a single application or game, you could just hit the hardware directly.  If Valve were insane they could have released a non-OS version of HL2 that drove all the hardware directly, but the amount of work required would have been huge.  Back in the day, when you were looking at a single, static hardware platform such as the Amiga, ditching the OS and banging the hardware made sense.  Now you really need the abstraction of the OS to be able to support all of your potential customers.  You also really need the OS to be able to multitask.

[weirdami]

If Valve were insane they could have released a non-OS version of HL2 that drove all the hardware directly

There's a quote from one of the Valve programmers about the XBox version of Halflife to the effect that that version is much better because the hardware is standardized across the platform. I guess that console games can be OS ditchers, except, maybe, for the whole online score keeping thing.

Perhaps, though, since Amiga is big on multitasking, then the OS is important. That leads back to me wondering about AOS4's modernyness.

[bloodline]

uncharted wrote:

weirdami wrote:
So, I got to wondering if the Commodore 64 OS, whatever that is, was able to work on these fancy quad core dealies, would it be capable of having something like Halflife run on it. I mean like is there something in the OS that would make it not possible or is it just that the hardware is too slow? Does the OS really matter?

You don't NEED an OS for a single application or game, you could just hit the hardware directly.  If Valve were insane they could have released a non-OS version of HL2 that drove all the hardware directly, but the amount of work required would have been huge.  Back in the day, when you were looking at a single, static hardware platform such as the Amiga, ditching the OS and banging the hardware made sense.  Now you really need the abstraction of the OS to be able to support all of your potential customers.  You also really need the OS to be able to multitask.

All the game developers really use the OS for is as a nice big HAL... The OS is just one big hardware driver. :-)

Most of the other services offered by an OS not important... Thus the minimal OSs supplied with Game Consoles...

[Trev]

@weirdami

Regarding hardware, you could port Half-Life to the C64, but you'd be bound by the speed of the processor and the limitations of the audio and video subsystems and main system memory. With enough storage, there's nothing that would prevent a port or even a full simulation. The user experience, though, would be quite horrible.