What lessons from the amiga OS are applicable today?

[runequester]

Was thinking about this the other day, while talking to a friend of mine.
 
 
What parts of the amiga OS were good ideas that hold up today?
 
Some things that came to mind (big and small):
 
 
Generally being able to replace and swap out parts of the system (allowing for things like Dopus and the various workbench replacement stuff)
 
Being able to run efficiently on very limited hardware
 
Using plain terms for as much as possible of the system commands, folders etc
 
Extremely well documented software and hardware
 
Applications being able to interact with each other through arexx (well, more or less)
 
Multiview
 
 
Always thought tooltypes and datatypes were good ideas. Im sure there's drawbacks as well but that could be more specific implementation than anything else.

[Kesa]

The most unique feature of Amigaos that i can think of that noone else has got is screen dragging

[runequester]

The most unique feature of Amigaos that noone else has got is screen dragging

Screen dragging is pretty rad. I didn't add it since the functionality (multiple screens) is commonplace in linux.
It would be nice to be able to drag them though. As far as I understand it, only AROS really supports it from the "NG" options.

[Kesa]

Yeah, somehow the rotating cube screens on linux just isn't the same. It's not useful in any way apart from eyecandy whereas screen dragging is a useful tool.

[runequester]

Yeah, somehow the rotating cube screens on linux just isn't the same. It's not useful in any way apart from eyecandy whereas screen dragging is a useful tool.

Yeah,thats what I was trying to say, but kinda bungled it
 
The functionality of having multiple screens is there (desktops/workspaces) and super handy. But being able to work on two of them at the same time would be a nice plus, in terms of actual functionality.

[desiv]

For me, the whole "intuition" programming API was incredible...
Even someone like me was able to write Screened and Windowed based programs that interacted with the OS in a fairly uniform way...
And, once I realized what well structured programming was truly like, it made me realize that, as a programmer, I would be a great SysAdmin!
;-)  (OK, that's not quite how it happened, but basically.. ;-)

What I really loved was the "balance" that it provided...
There was the "ease of use" of the GUI and the power of the CLI.
The ST and the Mac both had GUIs.
DOS had power and configuration..  (I still prefer INI files to registry entries or (God Forbid) XML config files..)
But the Amiga proved that you could provide both and make almost every user happy.
You could get your Amiga and something like CLIMate or DirOpus and never touch the CLI. (WB 2 and 3, you probably didn't "need" the file managers either.)
Or you could live in the CLI.
Or you could hover around both...  (My personal favorite..)

And anywhere in between...
I think that's why I was much happier in the Windows world (even tho I had/have my issues) than the Mac world after the Amiga.  Yes, I honestly think the Mac GUI was a much better GUI (especially early on), but I just feel like I need the command line on a computer to be happy with it...

Amiga was the first desktop machine (not counting some of the Unix variants or other lesser known offshoots..  I did use GEM on a PC WAY back too  ;-) to get that "right" in my opinion..

And add in something like ARexx to make it easy for programs to interact with each other without having to write that interaction into your programs from the start...
(Meaning you didn't write your Word Processor to interact with your Spreadsheet.  You just made sure it was ARexx friendly so to speak and all programs, including yours, could benefit..)

It was just such an OPEN (in the interactive sense, not the sourcecode sense) feeling...

When I got back into the Amiga recently, I was just amazed how incredibly good WB 3.x really is, even compared to OSes nowadays..
Honestly, if my Amiga supported a current browser with Flash (I know, not going to happen with 68k, but this is "IF" world), I could use it today and still be happy...

Just how the OS works, it still does what I need an OS to do mostly the way I want.

OH YEAH!!  The RAM disk!!!  LOVE the RAM disk!!!  :-)

desiv

[runequester]

RAM disk is awesome, I forgot about that.
 
 
And yeah, a balance between GUI and CLI is nice too. You can pretty much swing it either way, or mix and match.

[Franko]

The simple fact that it has an OS that you can run & operate in 2MB of ram and still allow you to do almost anything on it...

Why one earth does this iMac I use need over 200,000 files just to have an OS on it and even with 2.5GB of RAM it still has to use the HD as virtual RAM...

That's what I don't get about todays OS's and so called umpteen GHZ processors what kind of rubbish are they that need all that RAM and thousands of files just to boot up in the first place ...

Myself I reckon it's down to the folk who write or wrote these OS systems not having any talent to be able to actually code something as efficient as Kickstart & Workbench...

Reckon they should have looked at the Amiga first before writing such bloated rubbish and then maybe one day they'll have a system that is worthy of my attention...

Until then I'll live quite happily with me old antiquated but truly efficient Amigas...

[runequester]

well, in the PC world, the assumption has pretty much always been that people will upgrade when new software comes out.

THe old ideals are still out there (coding for portable devices f.x. or things like Damn Small Linux (50 megs, including web browser and word processor, and can run entirely in RAM) but mostly throwing hardware at the problem became the accepted way to go

[Roj]

Are there any OSs that make use of a depth gadget, which allow the active window to stay at whatever depth the user left it at?

What about the snapshot ability? I'm kinda getting tired of OSs wrongly guessing where I want my windows to be when they open.

Never knew how much I'd miss those two features, but sadly I really do.

[bloodline]

The Amiga's lack of "Autorise" (where a window will move to the front when it becomes active) was probably the thing I missed most moving to the PC. If you hold down the left apple key on a Mac you can force the window to stay at its current depth while dragging... But it's not the same

[Khephren]

Desiv summed a lot of it up. For myself:

Datatypes: allowing old software and the OS to use the latest formats, great idea.

Public screens: A bit like linux workspaces.

Fast multitasking: I know it has it's faults, but it works very well for me
RAD and RAM

well organised: Everything has it's place, and you can explain to a layman how the OS is organised in 5 minutes. Unlike the mess a windows folder is as soon as you install windows.

Fits a lot on screen: seems higher resolution than it is.

DosDrivers: A great way of adding new filesystems, again, easy to understand.

startup-sequence: I know it's not drag and drop, but it's easier to understand than the registry.

WBstartup: no hunting around for what the hell is bogging your comp down on startup. Check WBstarup and S: and your done.

Low resources: Does not need two gig to get out of bed in the morning

Fast boot time: each PC I get boots slower than the last, despite being much faster ( I guess HDD speeds have not kept pace with data needs?)

[Retro_71]

I like win 7 BUT my main problem with it is that it only remember the last screen location and size.. (at least XP you could taylor different folders to load in different areas providing of course you made short cut for them on the desktop and set them up from there..
One feature i like and use is the leave out option...

[runequester]

leave out is another nifty one

[Khephren]

Yep, forgot that one.
AREXX is pretty cool as well.