What lessons from the amiga OS are applicable today?

[Khephren]

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

[vidarh]

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

The multi-resolution screen dragging is unique, but not very useful on modern monitors. Single-resolution screen dragging exists for Linux using Enlightenment as the window manager.

[Kesa]

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

You mean someone actually likes this? I thought everyone hated it! Why do you like it?

I read a review by someone trying out AOS4.x and he kept complaining about it and then he said that Hyperion made it so you could turn it off if you want to.

[vidarh]

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?

There's tons of window managers for X (Linux etc.) that supports it if you want to enable it. I'm not sure many of the newer ones do, though.

[Kesa]

The multi-resolution screen dragging is unique, but not very useful on modern monitors. Single-resolution screen dragging exists for Linux using Enlightenment as the window manager.

Why isn't it useful or modern monitors? What's the difference apart from the larger screen sizes today? :confused:

[vidarh]

Desiv summed a lot of it up. For myself:
Datatypes: allowing old software and the OS to use the latest formats, great idea.

This is one I'm still astounded nobody seems to try to copy.

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

This is a big deal for me on my laptop. Configuring a Linux system to use equally little space for folders is possible, but it takes a lot of work and "unusual" settings. E.g. I had to install a separate program to get Nautilus - the Gnome file manager - to use a global menu instead of littering every folder window with a menu bar, since it doesn't have an option to turn the menu bar off. And by default it opens with a side bar, location bar, status bar, menu bar *per* folder/drawer. Then you need to pick a different window theme, and a bunch of other things.

On the upside, I now have a Linux desktop with sort-of halfway Workbench functionality + Ken's icons.

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

Linux and OS X has FUSE which gives pretty much the same thing, but it was a very long time coming.

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

Most other OS's have a similar solution these days...

Apart from datatypes and AREXX, one of my favourites is assigns. You can halfway copy the concept with symlinks on Linux (but not multi-assigns), and could clone it fully with FUSE (implement a filesystem for assigns), but it's not the same. And special assigns like PROGDIR: as well makes a big difference.

[vidarh]

Desiv summed a lot of it up. For myself:
Datatypes: allowing old software and the OS to use the latest formats, great idea.

This is one I'm still astounded nobody seems to try to copy.

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

This is a big deal for me on my laptop. Configuring a Linux system to use equally little space for folders is possible, but it takes a lot of work and "unusual" settings. E.g. I had to install a separate program to get Nautilus - the Gnome file manager - to use a global menu instead of littering every folder window with a menu bar, since it doesn't have an option to turn the menu bar off. And by default it opens with a side bar, location bar, status bar, menu bar *per* folder/drawer. Then you need to pick a different window theme, and a bunch of other things.

On the upside, I now have a Linux desktop with sort-of halfway Workbench functionality + Ken's icons.

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

Linux and OS X has FUSE (no idea if FUSE has been ported to Windows too) which gives pretty much the same thing, but it was a very long time coming.

Anyway...

Apart from datatypes and AREXX, one of my favourites is assigns. You can halfway copy the concept with symlinks on Linux (but not multi-assigns), and could clone it fully with FUSE (implement a filesystem for assigns), but it's not the same. And special assigns like PROGDIR: as well makes a big difference.

[vidarh]

You mean someone actually likes this? I thought everyone hated it! Why do you like it?

If you run with lots of windows open and want to be able to see what goes on in one window while typing something into another one, not having click-to-front is massively helpful.

Being able to easily get the window to front is useful, but so is being able to easily avoid it going to front when activating.

[vidarh]

Why isn't it useful or modern monitors? What's the difference apart from the larger screen sizes today? :confused:

Because most modern monitors *can't* switch resolutions on the same frame (many CRT monitors can take *seconds* to resync), and for LCD/LED screens it makes no sense at all since they have a single native resolution and everything else is just scaled.

The benefit in having it originally was that it saved a lot of memory to be able to run at low resolutions in cases where it made sense. These days mainstream OS's run on hardware that can rarely support less than 8GB and rarely come with less than 2GB memory, and some x86 hardware supports hundreds of GB (was looking at motherboards the other day that supports 512GB, though that's not exactly for a common desktop system...). In that situation most people aren't interested in running at lower resolutions than what their screens can handle in any case.

To do it on a modern system you'd end up mapping the different resolution screens to textures on a graphics cards and scaling them using the 3d engine in the graphics card because of the lack of monitor support, so it's not a memory or resource saving method any more. So people don't really care about the multi-resolution variation much any more.

[bloodline]

You mean someone actually likes this? I thought everyone hated it! Why do you like it?

I read a review by someone trying out AOS4.x and he kept complaining about it and then he said that Hyperion made it so you could turn it off if you want to.

Yup, I hate autorise. Windows should stay at whatever depth I put them at... Unless I double click... Hence I always run the "ClickToFront double" option

[danwood]

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.

OS 4 supports screen dragging too, has for years.

[kolla]

Being able to run completely without any filesystem available without panicking, and being able to swap different filesystems in and out of devices in a sane matter, informing the user in a friendly way what it needs. And assigns of course.

[Amiga_Nut]

Loading files based on actual content not some rubbish 3 letter extension or whatever. A program should know a JPEG file is a JPEG file from the header information inside the file not because it is labelled .JPG

Also a kernal that fits in a few kilobytes NOT megabytes and gigabytes of memory for a real OS not this Windows bloatware crap.

AMIGA = 100mph Go-Kart......Windows 7 = 150mph Articulated Lorry. Sure it's faster but handles like crap

[runequester]

ah yeah, assigns.
This kind of also goes back to simple commands. It took seconds to memorize how to do an assign command in amigados. On linux, symlinks can do it to, but the command is mostly gibberish, and I have to look it up.

No idea how to do it in windows, so I dont know if its easier or not.

[mongo]

Because most modern monitors *can't* switch resolutions on the same frame (many CRT monitors can take *seconds* to resync), and for LCD/LED screens it makes no sense at all since they have a single native resolution and everything else is just scaled.

No monitors can switch resolutions on the same frame.

[lsmart]

While I sure like the features listed in this thread, I understood the question in a differnt way.

My lessons ´d be:

1) A friendly and helpful team can produce great work. You don´t have to be elitist to win.
2) If you have a lot of cool public domain software, you will grow your user base.
3) A single man can write a better programm than a huge company.
4) Most business computers and software is a complete waste of money.
5) A killer game machine is really a killer machine for almost every task.
6) look at the low end to decide where to place your defaults.