How is OS4 ?

[itix]

Personally I think the biggest objection to .so files in OS4 are mostly aesthetic in the "Not Invented Here" sense. They are seen as an alien system that has been incorporated into the OS. I actually think that's rather silly seeing as we all decided long ago that ELF was a sensible format and gcc was to be our preferred compiler system. Shared objects are simply something useful that you can readily use from that combination, so why not?

#?.so fits nicely with my GeekGadgets development environment but I dont see use on Amiga side.

[TheBilgeRat]

Urhg.. take Gnome to second last above KDE and then it's much better

Yeah, in this day and age, tho, it's about all that's left out of the decent DE's.  KDE is crap anymore.  

I don't mind gnome at all. Used to hate it, but, like a pestilent fungal infection, it grows on you.

:lol:  that sums it up nicely!

[Karlos]

Anyway, to summarise regarding .so ...

Not all shared libraries can be readily implemented as .library files, at least without someone actually working out how to implement the required features and going on to produce a compiler that can produce the required output and at least porting the most obvious examples (libstdc++ et al) to that target.

So, OS4 decided to meet the problem halfway by supporting runtime linking of .so files as per the linux example (albeit without sharing code in memory at this time). We were already using the ELF specification that defines them as our preferred executable format so to me it seems quite a reasonable way to get started.

I'd like to see an improved .library system that could obviate the need for .so, but seeing as nobody has done it, it seems a pragmatic choice for the time being. It's better than static linking at least.

[drHirudo]

Anyway, to summarise regarding .so ...

Not all shared libraries can be readily implemented as .library files, at least without someone actually working out how to implement the required features and going on to produce a compiler that can produce the required output and at least porting the most obvious examples (libstdc++ et al) to that target.

So, OS4 decided to meet the problem halfway by supporting runtime linking of .so files as per the linux example (albeit without sharing code in memory at this time). We were already using the ELF specification that defines them as our preferred executable format so to me it seems quite a reasonable way to get started.

I'd like to see an improved .library system that could obviate the need for .so, but seeing as nobody has done it, it seems a pragmatic choice for the time being. It's better than static linking at least.

So, everyone agrees that AmigaOS 4 have advantage here, over all the other AmigaOS alikes.

To answer the original poster - how is OS4? - Better than AmigaOS 3.

More:

16. Better preview functions for files in Workbench. Opening drawers and selecting Show->All files and View by->Name shows a resized icons on the left of the list for the different files. There is also the new Type, showing the type of file or drawer - Ascii, Project, Tool, Drawer, Zip, Lharc, Patch and many more.
17. Automatic refresh of drawers. If you download a file to RAM: or anywhere else, no need to go Window->Update to see the new file.
18. Screen Edges resistance - I find it very useful when placing windows near the edges of the screen. I still can put them outside, but it is harder, saves my lots of time.
19. Transpararency effects - for the people who prefer candy effects, they are there, highly customizable.
20. Icons rescaling - built in and supported by Workbench. No need to rely on third party software for this simple task.
21. Better shell - no need to remember exact names. Press the first letter or several letters of the file name you are looking for and then press Tab until you find it.
22. Execute Command from Workbench gives the possibility to search for the file with ASL requester - no more need to remember exact names, paths for the file you want to execute.
23. Detect settings of monitor automatically. No need to search the monitor manual and see what's the max supported modes. AmigaOS 4 will ask the monitor about this. You still can try higher resolutions with different refresh rates, at your own risk.
24. High resolution mouse pointer with dropshadow effect.
25. CDRW support built-in the OS. No more need to rely on third party software for backup to CDRW.
26. DiskImage handler. Click on CD image to mount it like a real CD. No more need to rely on third party software for this ordinary task.
27. Themes - don't like the ordinary AmigaOS 4 look? Click on the present themes or download some of the Internet. Don't like the new look? Double click on the Revert to Last Saved icon to restore your old theme.
28. Boot jingle - done by respected japanese musician.
29. URL handler.

Of course the list can go on and on. For the last nine and half years, since AmigOS 3.9 was released there are lots of improvements in AmigaOS. They are part of AmigaOS 4. It will take a bigger thread than this to list, comment and discuss all of them.

[itix]

@drHirudo

I dont think OS4 is only Amiga API compatible with .so support, thank you very much

[Iggy]

So, everyone agrees that AmigaOS 4 have advantage here, over all the other AmigaOS alikes.

No, not really. It would appear that a significant portion of the posters believe MorphOS has significant advantages over AmigaOS4.

Frankly, since they're both very similar and MorphOS is more mature (and faster), I see no point in being argumentative.

AmigaOS is nice. Buy it if you have the funds for the hardware and the OS.

I'm sticking with MorphOS because of its obvious advantages and the fact that the investment needed in hardware and software is less.

And, in the long road, any company devoting the time to creating PPC based software is unlikely not to support both OS'.

[drHirudo]

No, not really. It would appear that a significant portion of the posters believe MorphOS has significant advantages over AmigaOS4.

Frankly, since they're both very similar and MorphOS is more mature (and faster), I see no point in being argumentative.

Unfortunatelly, not much people who are interested in AmigaOS, care about MorphOS. If this was not the case, most of the discussion would be on MorphZone or similar forum and all the MOSers, who spam every AmigaOS 4 thread with their unwanted, unnecessary and irrelevant solution, would be gone long time ago.

AmigaOS is nice. Buy it if you have the funds for the hardware and the OS.

I do.

I'm sticking with MorphOS because of its obvious advantages and the fact that the investment needed in hardware and software is less.

Whatever suits you best. I prefer AmigaOS 4 and gave my reasons in previous posts. No need to repeat myself.

And, in the long road, any company devoting the time to creating PPC based software is unlikely not to support both OS'.

Amiga is in the hobby niche for more than a decade now. There are no companies.

[antikk]

Some software doesn't come from mos port.
Owb,timberwolf,ctorrent to name a few. ;-)

I can't think of much OS4 software without better MorphOS equivalent. Most software news for OS4 consist in SDL ports compiled with "make" with almost 0 changes. When the port is slightly difficult it usually comes from MorphOS ports that were done years ago.

[Jupp3]

So, everyone agrees that AmigaOS 4 have advantage here, over all the other AmigaOS alikes.

To answer the original poster - how is OS4? - Better than AmigaOS 3.

More:

16. Better preview functions for files in Workbench. Opening drawers and selecting Show->All files and View by->Name shows a resized icons on the left of the list for the different files. There is also the new Type, showing the type of file or drawer - Ascii, Project, Tool, Drawer, Zip, Lharc, Patch and many more.
17. Automatic refresh of drawers. If you download a file to RAM: or anywhere else, no need to go Window->Update to see the new file.
18. Screen Edges resistance - I find it very useful when placing windows near the edges of the screen. I still can put them outside, but it is harder, saves my lots of time.
19. Transpararency effects - for the people who prefer candy effects, they are there, highly customizable.
20. Icons rescaling - built in and supported by Workbench. No need to rely on third party software for this simple task.
21. Better shell - no need to remember exact names. Press the first letter or several letters of the file name you are looking for and then press Tab until you find it.
22. Execute Command from Workbench gives the possibility to search for the file with ASL requester - no more need to remember exact names, paths for the file you want to execute.
23. Detect settings of monitor automatically. No need to search the monitor manual and see what's the max supported modes. AmigaOS 4 will ask the monitor about this. You still can try higher resolutions with different refresh rates, at your own risk.
24. High resolution mouse pointer with dropshadow effect.
25. CDRW support built-in the OS. No more need to rely on third party software for backup to CDRW.
26. DiskImage handler. Click on CD image to mount it like a real CD. No more need to rely on third party software for this ordinary task.
27. Themes - don't like the ordinary AmigaOS 4 look? Click on the present themes or download some of the Internet. Don't like the new look? Double click on the Revert to Last Saved icon to restore your old theme.
28. Boot jingle - done by respected japanese musician.
29. URL handler.

Of course the list can go on and on. For the last nine and half years, since AmigOS 3.9 was released there are lots of improvements in AmigaOS. They are part of AmigaOS 4. It will take a bigger thread than this to list, comment and discuss all of them.

Not trying to say that any of those would be bad in any way, but you can get many of those for 3.x aswell. 3rd party or not, doesn't make much difference to me. In some cases, it's the very same "3rd party program", just bundled with the OS (I guess you mean openurl.library with URL handler, for example?)

But thanks for excluding screen dragging from the list :-)

[Crumb]

@Crumb
But really, OS4.1Up2 has a ton of under the hood improvements and nothing went untouched from the early alphas you helped beta test.  

OS4.1 final is an early alpha?

As for Sam, it was a beginning and mostly aimed at people spending thousands on towerized 1200/4000 only to get clunky systems very prone at breaking. It did a great job and the intended audience is happy, those that were searching for a performance beast were not.

I think it failed since there's still more people interested in spending thousands on classic hardware than buying Sams.

I told you many times at AW that support for such initiatives would make newer HW possible,  and now they will make the 460EX which is more capable and aimed at a certain

So what? Sam460 specs would have been ok-ish 5 years ago but now it's just obsolete before being released. I don't see many reasons to be happy about a machine with amiga-market specs from 5 years ago... last 10 years all amiga market has lagged behind x86 market but now it's getting ridiculous since hardware manofacturers seem unable to produce anything that is capable of performing significantly better than 5 year old (cheaper) hardware.

OS4 population. Power-users will get an X1000

ATM they have failed to deliver the machine for the summer as they promised and you blindly believed.

But please Crumb, say there won't be any new HW again (as you did last November) "it doesn't make commercial sense!" You bring luck!

ATM there's just vapourware (we'll see when x1000 is released... perhaps we'll have to wait until 2011). ACube hardware still doesn't make commercial sense anyway. Otherwise ACube would produce 1000 boards and we wouldn't see spamming-news each time they produce 20 boards.

Actually I live in a world where there is no Amiga or Amiga-like OS that justifies preaching about how cool and modern we are (as you seem to do with morphOS a marginally more mature OS that is still ridiculously obsolete), talk about living in candy worlds...

I don't think I ever claimed that anything amiga-ish has any chance to take the world. Reading your claims about your vapourware x1000 taking over the world is funny. Reading your comparisons of vapourware hardware with real tangible solutions is hilarious.

The bad choices of hardware partners are ruining OS4 chances to be moderately successful in the hobby-OS market. The bad management choices like not releasing OS4.x for existing ppc hardware kill the chances of increasing user base (with the honorable exception of Peg2, although Moana would have made more sense)

The "other OSes" amiga-like have an obvious advantage: if you feel nostalgic or are a little curious about amiga things you can try them out easily (without making big investments) and become an user. And that's the biggest problem for OS4, and the detail some OS4 users try to justify with strange arguments. It's not just about technical disadvantages, my point is that it's too expensive. If they had released Moana at least that problem wouldn't exist for people willing to use 2nd hand hardware. And please note that Moana wouldn't prevent the release of sams, x1000 or whatever vapourware thingie is announced because some people want new hardware.

I see potential in AmigaOS as they are now free to form commercial partnerships

The only potential of AmigaOS is disappearing and giving it's name to a modern OS. If Hyperion ever wanted to sell a modern OS they would need to get rid of almost all amigaos API to make it evolve and put a "compatibility box" like OSX guys did. You may claim OSX is MacOS but well... it's just a label and it has little in common

The long term clear public goal of OS4.x should be jumping to x86. PPC is dead on desktop.

and things are starting to move,

I've heard the same magic mantra last 8 years in the OS4 camp. Since you were not in the community 5 years ago you probably won't understand the frustration of seeing announcements with dancing bananas about an unimpressive hardware that is both slower and more expensive than what we had 5 years ago

while I believe the hermit crumb idea first announced to me at Pianeta Amiga by Guruman (in the sense that he told me there would be the MacMini port) didn't seem that hot to me.

A Mac Mini/Peg2 release and the release of new hardware are not mutually exclusive.

But make no mistake, what I saw were 3 OS very far from todays standard, all

Sure, trying to take over the world with AmigaOS API would be ridiculous and won't work. Claiming it's progressing a lot doesn't make much sense since the API limits all the future evolvement of the OS.

have a long road to travel making those differences, quite frankly, highly laughable (and that is what I think every time I see you so adamantly writing about them, get real Crumb).

Then it's strange you don't notice that spending 1000Euros to be able to try out a limited toy OS and claiming that it's evolving a lot, that it's "the real one", that it's based on some unimportant old sources of an 80s OS no one knows and getting nervous when another hobby OS beats it in all benchmarks is no less laughable.

As for your clinging to the past read my lips: from the end of September 2009 (the day they signed the settlement) things have changed, you had a glimpse in the past 6 months, you will notice it even more in the next 12, and if that won't be enough, it will slap you in the face a little further down.

Yeah, I just have noticed how they promised to release a board this summer and they failed. I have also noticed that they released 2 updates for OS4.1 but they are still unable to get USB2.0 working. I have noticed an evaluation motherboard running a FPS at 4fps (wohooo!). I have noticed some cosmetic changes like startup managers and some eyecandy but little deep changes in the core of the OS. In the meanwhile I had to read claims made by people like you praising a vapourware motherboard with unknown specs and praising "new hardware" that is five years late. BTW, the idea of anouncing x1000 using a web-mistery is highly unprofessional and sad. The owners of amigaos think that they have the golden goose, don't realise that the world has evolved last years and try to milk the users.

[takemehomegrandma]

Unfortunatelly, not much people who are interested in AmigaOS, care about MorphOS.

Wrong, but perhaps you meant to say "not much people who are interested in OS4, care about MorphOS"? Then it would probably be a correct assumption.

But every single MorphOS user is an Amigan, and MorphOS is way more Amiga compatible than OS4 so it definitely gives you a superior Amiga experience, which is partly why we made the choice we did...

If this was not the case, most of the discussion would be on MorphZone or similar forum and all the MOSers, who spam every AmigaOS 4 thread with their unwanted, unnecessary and irrelevant solution, would be gone long time ago.

Wrong again, the red trolls are all over, but they simply lack competitive arguments, they have nothing to put on the table in a comparison or discussion about various alternatives. But that doesn't mean they sit quiet, their way to go is to say "but it isn't TEH REEEL!!11!" as soon as they can. This basically boils down to some blind brand following.

And about your claim that no red trolls spam MorphZone.org; "Ssolie" had some spasmodic outbreak there some time ago, his fixation at the time seemed to be the fact that the MorphOS team even asked for money for the key file, but he was soon put right.

I have many times asked myself (and I asked user "DAX" in another thread here), why would anyone even consider something 1/2 as good at 10x the cost? The answer: A boing ball!

[DAX]

OS4.1 final is an early alpha?

last time we talked all you had was OS4 alpha experience since when you became a 4.1 final user?

I think it failed since there's still more people interested in spending thousands on classic hardware than buying Sams.

And you think wrong, as all Sam533, Sam667 and Sam800 are sold out with a few remaining 733. Much more than towered 4000 system on ebay (very sporadic and selling around 2 pieces per year).

So what? Sam460 specs would have been ok-ish 5 years ago but now it's just obsolete before being released. I don't see many reasons to be happy about a machine with amiga-market specs from 5 years ago... last 10 years all amiga market has lagged behind x86 market but now it's getting ridiculous since hardware manofacturers seem unable to produce anything that is capable of performing significantly better than 5 year old (cheaper) hardware.

You seem to forget that having a system with no expandable GFX card is way more limiting than the lack of VMX, I would take a powerful PCI-E card over that any day (much more potential, as in INFINITE more potential).

ATM they have failed to deliver the machine for the summer as they promised and you blindly believed.

I didn't blindly believed anything (ho and summer anyway, finishes September 20th, some 3 months from now).

ATM there's just vapourware (we'll see when x1000 is released... perhaps we'll have to wait until 2011). ACube hardware still doesn't make commercial sense anyway. Otherwise ACube would produce 1000 boards and we wouldn't see spamming-news each time they produce 20 boards.

Tell me where you did get the 20 number, I'm curious...

I don't think I ever claimed that anything amiga-ish has any chance to take the world. Reading your claims about your vapourware x1000 taking over the world is funny. Reading your comparisons of vapourware hardware with real tangible solutions is hilarious.

Glad to amuse you (as I hope you are glad you amuse me)

The bad choices of hardware partners are ruining OS4 chances to be moderately successful in the hobby-OS market. The bad management choices like not releasing OS4.x for existing ppc hardware kill the chances of increasing user base (with the honorable exception of Peg2, although Moana would have made more sense)

Keep your love for dead ends for yourself

The "other OSes" amiga-like have an obvious advantage: if you feel nostalgic or are a little curious about amiga things you can try them out easily (without making big investments) and become an user. And that's the biggest problem for OS4, and the detail some OS4 users try to justify with strange arguments. It's not just about technical disadvantages, my point is that it's too expensive. If they had released Moana at least that problem wouldn't exist for people willing to use 2nd hand hardware. And please note that Moana wouldn't prevent the release of sams, x1000 or whatever vapourware thingie is announced because some people want new hardware.

We'll see about that, 2 of my friends I'm trying to convince to come back tryed Icaros desktop and found it of very little use, while they are interested in AmigaOS, you see "free" not interested at all (maybe not everyone runs his life on 3rd world country budgets as to be that concerned about money).

The only potential of AmigaOS is disappearing and giving it's name to a modern OS. If Hyperion ever wanted to sell a modern OS they would need to get rid of almost all amigaos API to make it evolve and put a "compatibility box" like OSX guys did. You may claim OSX is MacOS but well... it's just a label and it has little in common

The long term clear public goal of OS4.x should be jumping to x86. PPC is dead on desktop.

You should talk with Vidarh about this, he is not convinced it is the only solution, not one bit.

Sure, trying to take over the world with AmigaOS API would be ridiculous and won't work. Claiming it's progressing a lot doesn't make much sense since the API limits all the future evolvement of the OS.

Amiga back comers don't care about that, i run Blender a modern software that needs a modern API and it is ROCK SOLID. Never crashes even after an 8 hour render I can pick it up and continue. Guess that many other modern app will work the same without any mystical api change (just what's needed is the motto

Then it's strange you don't notice that spending 1000Euros to be able to try out a limited toy OS and claiming that it's evolving a lot, that it's "the real one", that it's based on some unimportant old sources of an 80s OS no one knows and getting nervous when another hobby OS beats it in all benchmarks is no less laughable.

I do not reply to your comparisons because of that, but because it wouldn't be the first time I see you hijacking a thread.
Both OSs have along way to go, when one will claim it can do anything the "others" can, we'll talk about it. I believe AOS will get there first now that it is free to run and commercial partnerships can be formed, we'll see about this down the line...

Yeah, I just have noticed how they promised to release a board this summer and they failed. I have also noticed that they released 2 updates for OS4.1 but they are still unable to get USB2.0 working. I have noticed an evaluation motherboard running a FPS at 4fps (wohooo!). I have noticed some cosmetic changes like startup managers and some eyecandy but little deep changes in the core of the OS. In the meanwhile I had to read claims made by people like you praising a vapourware motherboard with unknown specs and praising "new hardware" that is five years late. BTW, the idea of anouncing x1000 using a web-mistery is highly unprofessional and sad. The owners of amigaos think that they have the golden goose, don't realise that the world has evolved last years and try to milk the users.

Crumb, can you just stop being antagonistic? You know the graphics subsystem isn't there, they were using a 33Mhz PCI bus (radeon 9200) on debug.
You know it and keep attacking the X1000, give these guys a break.

The only way for MOS and AOS to get along is to progress on their own and for users to stop being antagonistic. i do that unless an AOS4 thread gets hi-jacked, all AOS4 users do, why don't you return the favor?

[DAX]

Wrong, but perhaps you meant to say "not much people who are interested in OS4, care about MorphOS"? Then it would probably be a correct assumption.

But every single MorphOS user is an Amigan, and MorphOS is way more Amiga compatible than OS4 so it definitely gives you a superior Amiga experience, which is partly why we made the choice we did...



Wrong again, the red trolls are all over, but they simply lack competitive arguments, they have nothing to put on the table in a comparison or discussion about various alternatives. But that doesn't mean they sit quiet, their way to go is to say "but it isn't TEH REEEL!!11!" as soon as they can. This basically boils down to some blind brand following.

And about your claim that no red trolls spam MorphZone.org; "Ssolie" had some spasmodic outbreak there some time ago, his fixation at the time seemed to be the fact that the MorphOS team even asked for money for the key file, but he was soon put right.

I have many times asked myself (and I asked user "DAX" in another thread here), why would anyone even consider something 1/2 as good at 10x the cost? The answer: A boing ball!

The problem at amiga.org is that there are some MOS "professionals" spamming every AOS4 thread and deliberately changing the topic, while AmigaOS expert don't visit here since forever (just a very few, maybe because it is becoming similar to moo bunny every day that passes).

Oh and the reason why people prefer AmigaOS over MOS is the same I told Crumb, they all have a modern system, so they are not as desperate as you think for a feature or two, don't be surprised if they don't care for an unofficial project that runs on Apple scraps.

What they care is for Amiga to have dignified future made of front page news items (see if you can get that with your emac port) and dedicated machines.
The features will come and i bet that now that AOS is free to run and form commercial partnerships, will reach a "decent point" far earlier than any other Amiga-like option.it's inevitable.

[takemehomegrandma]

And you think wrong, as all Sam533, Sam667 and Sam800 are sold out with a few remaining 733.

What, all 30 of them?

[Fab]

Oh and the reason why people prefer AmigaOS over MOS is the same I told Crumb, they all have a modern system, so they are not as desperate as you think for a feature or two, don't be surprised if they don't care for an unofficial project that runs on Apple scraps.

Just for the record, the x1000 is also based on Apple scrap CPU. How do you feel about that? I wouldn't care, but you certainly should.

[the_leander]

You seem to forget that having a system with no expandable GFX card is way more limiting than the lack of VMX, I would take a powerful PCI-E card over that any day (much more potential, as in INFINITE more potential).

I disagree. It's all well and good having "INFINITE" potential (which actually isn't), but what value is it if you've neither the software nor the drivers to make use of it?

I didn't blindly believed anything (ho and summer anyway, finishes September 20th, some 3 months from now).

If you seriously think that you will get a final, shipping X1000 in 3 months from now you should think about stopping whatever it is you're huffing.

Keep your love for dead ends for yourself

Because the X1000, with it's PA6T cpu totally isn't a dead end...

You should talk with Vidarh about this, he is not convinced it is the only solution, not one bit.

There are some people who truly believe that anything more advanced than 8bit was a bad idea. Doesn't make it true however.

Amiga back comers don't care about that, i run Blender a modern software that needs a modern API and it is ROCK SOLID. Never crashes even after an 8 hour render I can pick it up and continue. Guess that many other modern app will work the same without any mystical api change (just what's needed is the motto

Which is fine up until you get an application that haemorages memory... Like Firefox or WebKit. Firing up either of these on a system with little effective memory protection is just asking for trouble.

Crumb, can you just stop being antagonistic? You know the graphics subsystem isn't there, they were using a 33Mhz radeon 9200 on debug.

The 9200 came in 250 and 300Mhz flavours. If yours is running at 33Mhz you have serious issues over and above the fact that you were running your OS with full debugging enabled on it's public debut.

The only way for MOS and AOS to get along is to progress on their own and for users to stop being antagonistic.

Aparently pointing out the truth is considered antagonistic these days.