Best things about owning an amiga?

[lsmart]

Except for the fact that the desktop and window manager suck big time. This has to change!

I can't understand this statement, since my way of working is much more compatible with Workbench than KDE, Windows, Finder, GNOME and FVWM combined. You are confusing your preference with superiority!

If you take Workbench from me, you are taking a part that I really love from Amiga. I´d pay 60 bucks just for the "click to back" feature in Windows alone. I miss IconEd on a Mac and tooltypes beat registys & .ini any time!

So tell me how to make other OSs more like Workbench and you will find me grateful.

[lsmart]

In fact if it did change this would be the last day I'd be using the box.

[Daedalus]

One thing I could never figure out is why they added more letters to the drives, A: is a lot easier to type than df0: and the sentences they used to make a diskcopy or copy a file. Later it just came natural and never noticed the extra key steps.

Funny, moving from DOS and Windows 3.1 to my first Amiga (a bare A1200), I loved AmigaDOS and very quickly couldn't understand why Microsoft didn't add extra letters to the drive letters to make them more intuitive. And the flexibility of the commands compared to DOS made it just so much nicer to do anything. Entering a directory name without having to type CD for example, and so on.

Today I still much prefer using the Amiga's command prompt over all others. Some are more powerful, sure, but using the Windows, Linux, Mac and QNX consoles regularly I always find AmigaDOS so much nicer to work with. And ARexx, the amount of times I curse not having ARexx on other platforms! Double-click to bring a window to the front is another one, I could go on...

[commodorejohn]

One thing I could never figure out is why they added more letters to the drives, A: is a lot easier to type than df0: and the sentences they used to make a diskcopy or copy a file. Later it just came natural and never noticed the extra key steps.

I like the Amiga's approach better because (like the Unix/Linux /devs directory) it provides a coherent, standard approach to enumerating physical storage devices, and it also provides access-by-volume-label, which is woefully underused. Single letters are convenient until you're choosing from half a dozen partitions and drives and trying to remember which is which without looking it up.

The extra verbage in some of the commands, though, is pretty unnecessary.

[Thorham]

I can't understand this statement, since my way of working is much more compatible with Workbench than KDE, Windows, Finder, GNOME and FVWM combined. You are confusing your preference with superiority!

No, I'm not confusing preference with superiority. The AOS desktop and window manager are very primitive and slow, many of the current features are missing, and I find this a pain.

As for your preferences, there's absolutely no reason at all why a modern desktop and window manager (written from scratch for AOS) can't work in a way similar to AOS' desktop and window manager, and it's actually quite important to be able to configure such a system to work in the way the user wants.

This means you get to use the system in the way you use Workbench, while still getting all the new features, while others can configure it to work more like other GUI systems if they want.

[B00tDisk]

'sfunny...I immediately glommed onto the drive lettering convention (and the generalities of maneuvering around the filesystem) on the PC when I switched.  Even though the HD I upgraded to when I got the PC was 3x bigger, I didn't feel compelled to have the mess of partitions everyone kept suggesting I have for my piddly little 60mb HD in my 1200, plus "C" (vs. DH0, DH1, DF0, DF1 etc. ad nauseam) just made more sense to me.

I think I'm extremely lucky to have gotten into PCs when I did - you can go back and read Info World online, going all the way back to 1980, and yes, really until around 1994/1995, IBM clones (and Mac systems but to a lesser degree) were shit.  As it was the box I built when I sold my Amiga gear, while not great, was the best combination of gear for the easiest transition from the Amiga to the PC I could ask for - and indeed in many ways simpler.  I had a 2x CD-ROM drive, 170mb HD, DOS6.22 and Windows 3.11.  As lousy as Win3.11 was, many things in it "just worked".  For me, anyway.

Had I "grown up" with PCs I probably wouldn't feel that way.

[lsmart]

The AOS desktop and window manager are very primitive and slow, many of the current features are missing, and I find this a pain.

Most Features you might be missing can be installed with commodities. If you are missing something like mac´s QuickLook - well make multiview a hotkey.

As for speed - on comparable hardware you won´t find anything that is faster than Workbench.

What is your favorite WM? I used WindowMaker in the late 90s and I think it is among the best of them. I have however never found a filemanager that satisfies me. Also many X11 software really isn´t designed for click to focus or focus on background windows...

it's actually quite important to be able to configure such a system to work in the way the user wants.

But neither KDE nor GNOME nor Windows nor Mac OS let you even control the Z-order of your windows properly. You can´t tell Windows to open two files of the same type with different programms. You can`t leave out icons on your desktop or snapshot a window or icon. All this is just on Workbench and I bet if someone implements "modern" features into Workbench, he is going to break some of the old stuff. Why not let these be commodities?

I don´t get your meaning of "modern" anyways. Or do you mean multitouch?

[fishy_fiz]

Never heard Of Dopus Mag ?  

To this day there's pretty much nothing any other Windows Manager does that Dopus Mag cant do, only DopusMag is much more efficient and more flexible than most. Even those that like Workbench can make it behave much the same, but with whatever extras they like.

To this day I find it surprising how little a lot of "amiga" users know about the system (not just referring to DM here). If you want to do something there's pretty much always a way if you take the time to learn how. This is "power" as much as any of the more typical definitions people give the word.

[Jope]

What were the best things about owning an amiga, back when you got yours?

The immensely creative and productive demo scene.

Whats the best things today?

Nostalgia.

[tone007]

The A3000 holds my monitor at just the right height.

[Thorham]

Most Features you might be missing can be installed with commodities.

The desktop and window manager should be replaced, trying to fix old software seems pretty pointless to me (in this case).

As for speed - on comparable hardware you won´t find anything that is faster than Workbench.

Doesn't mean a faster gui system isn't possible.

What is your favorite WM?

I don't really have one! I'm just complaining about the AOS gui lagging behind, while this isn't necessary from a technical viewpoint.

But neither KDE nor GNOME nor Windows nor Mac OS let you even control the Z-order of your windows properly. You can´t tell Windows to open two files of the same type with different programms. You can`t leave out icons on your desktop or snapshot a window or icon.

Those are nothing but flaws in those gui systems, and there's no reason why we can't have a gui system that does it all right.

All this is just on Workbench and I bet if someone implements "modern" features into Workbench, he is going to break some of the old stuff. Why not let these be commodities?

Better to replace Workbench.

I don´t get your meaning of "modern" anyways. Or do you mean multitouch?

No, I mean far less limited than what's available for AOS. Mui is a nice attempt, but can still be done better, and certainly faster.

[Buzzfuzz]

For me it's also games, but also the speed at which they start, some Amiga's are a lot faster than my PC rig, which isn't a small one either.

[runequester]

a machine that comes on in 10 seconds or less and is actually ready to roll at that point, is nice.

[Karlos]

A machine I can write high or low level code on and still enjoy it to the extent that it doesn't even faze me when I crash it

[lsmart]

Those are nothing but flaws in those gui systems, and there's no reason why we can't have a gui system that does it all right.

I used to think that as well, but my optimism faded. Good if you have kept yours. I can remember how I was amazed by Daves Jazzbench it replaced my Worbench for some time until 2.0 came. So yes, I have seen somebody who really understood the Amiga way and was able to improve on it. But I haven´t seen this kind of skill in recent times.

Oh, and don´t bash commodities, because they are a great way to make a GUI adapt to some users preferences, without bothering the others.

If someone really does something to advance GUI in general it´s probably Apple and the iPad. But I don´t think this way will fit the Amiga.

[commodorejohn]

A machine I can write high or low level code on and still enjoy it to the extent that it doesn't even faze me when I crash it

Word.