@runequester
These are the sort of questions I have been more than happy to discuss on Commodore-Amiga.org for quite some time as the technology go to, and I have been quite open about many things. I invite interested parties to come and chat there. But please be civil.
It's not like we don't understand your concerns, especially as an a A.org member for the past several years, but in most cases there isn't much that can be done to address them for various reasons. Please don't make me regret posting information here in a thread asking for information.
Barry is a smart guy, and he designed the new C64 over many months with the assistance of a design company and Motorola, both of which are situated in Florida. It was not as easy as you all think. We are poised for production of the cases and close to shooting off a huge order for hardware. I'm actually in charge of IT, hardware and software selection and the development side of things, so it would be more appropriate for me to answer your specific tech questions.
Linux distro yay/nay
Yay of course. We spoke to MorphOS team, we spoke to Hyperion, I posted on AROS dev forums on Commodore's behalf. You know the threats from Hyperion that are getting in the way of our original intention of further "developing" an Amiga-like OS. No-one is stopping AROS or any alternative OS from being installed on our machines if that is what you want. *I* personally may even fund bounties to support this and other things once things solidify regarding our line-up, although I do not anticipate many surprises. We will incorporate in Workbench 5/X, everything required to facilitate the multi-boot of IcAROS later.
I have said on Commodore-Amiga.org that we will be using 2nd Gen Intel Core(Sandybridge) technology with a focus on NVidia graphics throughout our Amiga line-up. This is a strategic choice, that may allow infiltration into many industries as workstations. An Amiga 2000x running at 5+Ghz with multiple overclocked NVidia graphic cards, and OS flexibility, is a very attractive machine in my eyes, and puts the Amiga brand up with the best desktop computers in the world once more. That is only the beginning, as we may even be able to provide super computing performance on our premium model. And of course there will be opportunities with Newtek Video Toaster integration (which they're calling something else now) on a special Amiga Video Toaster edition. So many avenues can finally open up for the Amiga brand.
While Workbench 5(or X) will not be promoted as Linux any more than Android is, it is common knowledge that it is Linux, and we have this in our FAQ. But don't get too hung up on Linux, as we could just as easily switch to a different platform architecture down the track as alternatives advance and suit our needs.
What distro will it be based off ?
Sorry, you'll have to wait for that info. Gotta keep you interested.
Sign an NDA and I'll tell you. ;-)
I think it is a very good one and we are dealing with prominent members of that community behind the scenes.
We will differentiate our offering by providing an installer for a large set of common applications, which will become central to the "Creativity and Entertainment" promise of our mission statement. I imagine many are opposed to this, and perceive this as bloat, but just think about what Apple offer, and how great it would be to have quite a bit of that functionality available for Workbench right out of the box. You can always uninstall after the fact. But we are planning to provide a common and expansive software collection from the outset, and champion the open source software cause.
Will it use Deb or RPM for packages?
Yes.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. ;-)
More info on that later, and a proposed list of apps that will be included. With the aid of the community at Commodore-Amiga.org this app list will be weeded down or built up further. We aren't saying we know everything there is to know, and we actively seek community participation. We want everything to work out of the box. We believe a potential killer app in a mainstream market will be the expansive functionality and application stack that comes pre-loaded. Everything will be at your fingertips, with as minimal resource usage as possible. Hard disk space is super cheap these days. The Amigas will not be cheap, but our high-end premium model. We will have solely Commodore branding for our lower cost hardware. We are actively pursuing interesting design features for the Amiga cases beyond what you see on the website. Hopefully, more on that later.
What modifications will it include?
You have to understand that our primary concern is time to market, particularly for the C64, so initially not many. We wanted to provide Ubuntu initially, so a branded solution is really an addendum to our plans. We never promised an entirely new OS, and we will never be able to meet the extraordinarily high expectations that many in this classic community have. We will have to see how the OS side if things develops further.
The community, that is is growing around our products, have demonstrated a desire to work on adding retro features, and there are a few people doing stuff behind the scenes, which I will not comment on until they are ready to. In future Commodore USA will focus on integrating more advanced, and likely proprietary features and apps, in either open or closed source as need be. At the moment we are leaning towards our distro being exclusive to Commodore and Amiga machines and that will be required for support and updates.
Commercial OSes like MacOSX and Windows will not remain the same, and we want to have a hand in creating the 2020 computer interface many years before that. Retro will only go so far, and our Amiga Workbench 5/X development will be forward thinking, integrating the best features from open source projects as well as our own innovations. You have to let go to take off.
Will it be based on an existing desktop environment with a different theme (gnome, kde etc) or be a unique environment?
We have stated on the Commodore-Amiga.org that it is Gnome based. We believe that provides the most common and consistent desktop paradigm similar in many respects to the original Amiga. This will lessen the learning curve for both new and old Amigans. It also will provide stunning effects and eye-candy second to none which is important in attracting the masses to our products. There are various people in the community working on Amigafying the interface further, but just as the Amiga cases are not replicas nor will the UI be a replica of the original or any of it's more recent offshoots. Reminiscent yes.
If its debian based, will there be repo's specific to this distro?
Oh yes, the intention is to have our own repos for both the OS and applications stack and likely a rolling distro either initially or on a subsequent release. A repository is essential to ensure hardware compatibility. We want to preserve system stability, and we won't be absolutely bleeding edge as it is too risky. Remember this is Linux for the mainstream and we need to also provide support for this. We will test updates on our hardware before it is pushed to the users. Many people have expressed an interest in being beta-testers and they will be more bleeding edge. We will be announcing a Beta-testing program at the appropriate time. It isn't as big a deal as it would be in the case of entirely custom hardware.
Will the OS be entirely open source or open source with proprietary parts added?
Proprietary parts, either closed or open sourced in future, as well as community driven open source projects will be added at a later stage.
We anticipate an commercial App store before the end of the year, which may also include Windows programs that work through WINE, as well as Flash, Mono, Java apps and any other framework we can provide etc. That App store will be open to all Linux distros but will be a standard fixture on Workbench. Other distros also have plans for a common app store, and we will see how we can integrate and provide further value to commercial developers as well as bedroom coders.
If all goes well, I anticipate, that we will be sponsoring demo parties in 2012, if not sooner.
The bleeding edge PC with a C= logo has been done and it barely raised a blip.
We're doing things differently and our success will not hinge on a narrow set of products.
We will also be offering a range of lower end hardware with our compact VIC line. The Amiga name will be associated with our OS efforts across all products, and with our high-end high-performance line. The Retro line will be somewhere in the middle in terms of performance, and we'll do a C64cx and Amiga 500x, once the C64 and Amiga desktops are out.
So the roadmap is, C64x and the compact VIC line first, including a VIC-Book netbook, then Amigas, then more retro cases, and all the while with the OS maturing. By christmas 2011 hopefully things will look entirely different and your doubts about us will have been well and truly quelled. Hopefully, in this time we will have poured siginificant resources into our OS which will slowly mature to provide sufficient interfaces for a tablet and other touch based technology. The upcoming VIC-Touch may even be a test-bed for this tech.
