So this comes up constantly. "Amiga should move to x86 and everything would be way better".
I don't think its all that simple really. Here's some things that'd at least warrant exploring:
I think you got all the points exactly right, even if almost no-one else posting here agrees!
1: Time and money required to port the operating system. I have absolutely zero idea how long this would take, but I am assuming it'd be a pretty significant endeavour.
Yes, mainly because:
(a) AmigaOS assumes a Big Endian CPU (and x86 is Little Endian). I think there is a way around this, but most people seem to disagree with me, or at least recoil in horror at my suggestion!
(b) AmigaOS4 apparently assumes a PPC architecture, and reworking the low-levels for x86 would be a significant undertaking. I'm a bit surprised about this, given it's supposed to have a HAL, but then again the if they added too much CPU abstraction they might have (i) terrible performance, or (ii) have spent a lot of money without any apparent gain when PPC was the only goal.
2: Time and money required to port applications.Without app's, an OS is worthless.
Contrary to the glib "just recompile" replies, AmigaOS4 has a nice library of (OS4 specific) software, and recompiling these would:
(a) be extremely time consuming (OS4Depot currently has 2700 packages).
(b) wouldn't actually work without a lot of fixes, due to Endian issues.
(c) not be possible in more than a few instances, due to lack of source code (not everyone has stayed around for the entire rollercoaster ride of OS4 development, even if things are looking good in the last year or so).
(d) some software authors would refuse to recompile for x86 (perhaps stuidly, but it's their perogative).
3: Oh hey there AROS! What functionality does os4 give that AROS doesn't ?
I think quite a lot (especially feature wise), but any answers would likely be construed as an attack on AROS, so I decline to list anything specific.
4: Most overlooked:
Hardware support.
AROS has been around for years and still supports a fairly limited range of hardware.
When it comes to hardware there's two options: The linux way (support it all in the kernel, which requires massive amounts of work from a large number of people) or the windows way (have the hardware manufacturer write drivers for you).
OS4 would have neither.
Glib answers like "use OSS drivers" overlook the fact that Linux drivers are virtually useless for AmigaOS, due to the extremely different driver models.
The only solution would be to hand-pick a few specific x86 motherboards, but you better be damn sure they will still be produced in a couple of years time, or the cost of supporting them might not be worth the effort.
The assumption in these threads tends to be "we could run amiga OS on any PC and it'd be rad". And that would rad, but it won't be reality.
Absolutely - I'd love to see AmigaOS4 running on a cheap x86 machine. But it's simply not practical.
Pessimistic ? Maybe. But I think the choices that were made (powerPC) were good choices at the time. I think it's too late at this point to go back.
I think you are right. This means the price of entry for AmigaOS4 is higher than a dirty little PC that runs Windows, but then I bash my head against the wall all the time when I use Windows for all it's stupid idiosyncrasies, and coming back to AmigaOS4 is such a relief! I'm not unhappy to have paid a higher price of entry...
