AmigaOS 4XX - MorphOS etc

[spirantho]

WHY was my reply to this comment, made yesterday, mysteriously removed???

It was not in breach of *any* terms of service or "netiquette", it was merely a short list of *objective* reasons that could (or even should) affect ones choice, made as a counterclaim to the above "it's entirely subjective", and the post was polite its tone.

Is Amiga.org turning into what AW.net was a decade ago, where threads get locked/removed, posts disappear etc in a subjective manner in order to favor a certain group of people's economical interests?

While I have no idea what you wrote, I stand completely by its being subjective.

To some people, MS-DOS is better than Windows 7, yet on paper Windows 7 is clearly superior.

Horses for courses, and all that.

It is subjective, and the very fact that I prefer using AmigaOS and you prefer using MorphOS is proof of that (and I have a Peg II which dualboots).

[Fab]

@takemehomegrandma

Since I remember a bit what was written, here it is (i hope i won't be deleted as well
- Runs on much cheaper, much faster hardware.
- Faster by design in several areas (3D, JIT, USB, ...).
- Integration and evolution well known standards (CGX, MUI4, Poseidon, ...).
- Better compatibility be it with 68k apps like Magellan, Golded6 or PowerUp/WarpOS/Warp3D apps/games (including Hyperion games that run better on MorphOS than on OS4, which is somewhat ironic).

That's all i remember, feel free to complete.

[takemehomegrandma]

It is subjective

Given that you have already ruled out the classic HW and/or UAE, then you are looking for a NG solution. Given that you have also ruled out AROS, then the choice is between OS4 and MorphOS, and *there are* some perfectly valid objective points of measurements to help you make up your mind (I think Fab managed to relay what I wrote pretty accurate, don’t remember exactly though).

MorphOS *is* faster, it *does* have all the preferred by most and most widely spread Amiga standards integrated and in modern versions, it *does* have a much lower system cost, it *does* run on easily obtainable mainstream hardware with totally OK bang/buck ratio, it *does* have the best Amiga compatibility, it *does* have the most and the best features as a whole – the desktop, the shell, 3D, JIT, etc, etc.

These are objective, measurable, comparable facts. Nothing subjective about it at all. You can make speed benchmarking charts, you can write feature charts, you can make compatibility comparison charts, you can make price comparison charts, and you can put them (the OS4 and MorphOS charts respectively) side by side, in black on white, and then you can draw your conclusions from that.

*OR* one can do as *You* did, and completely discard even the thought of objective, rational comparisons with a simple "it’s entirely subjective" one-liner sentence (making some weird analogy to MS-DOS vs. Windows 7 on top of that (!!!)) – Well, of course you are *totally free* to "want" the slowest system, the solution with the second class left-over Amiga standards, tied to insanely priced low volume hardware, worse Amiga compatibility, worse desktop experience, worse shell experience, worse 3D, worse JIT, etc, etc. But in my book, that is *not rational*, and it's like saying ”I prefer coal power plants instead of power plants that doesn't contribute to the grow house effect, because that's how I want it, and it's entirely subjective anyway”, ”I like slow, expensive, dangerous, polluting cars with no second hand value instead of fast, cheap, safe and environment friendly cars with a high second hand value, because that's how I want it, and it's entirely subjective anyway”, ”I prefer war instead of peace, because that's how I want it, and it's entirely subjective anyway”, etc, etc.

In that sense *everything* can be ”entirely subjective”! But that doesn’t take away the fact that *purely objectively* speaking, using rational comparisons, peace *is* better than war, safe and clean cars *are* better than unsafe polluting cars, and non-polluting power plants *are* better to the environment than coal power plants.

If you would *actually do* an objective comparison between the current best OS4/MorphOS systems, and come to the conclusion that no matter MorphOS's superiority when it comes to price/performance/specs/compatibility (which is the only conceivable outcome) you simply want the OS4 one anyway, *THEN* we are probably talking about a decision made on subjective factors, like taste, emotions, your need of belonging to a certain group, or whatever, instead of purely objective factors based on verifiable facts. But that doesn't say it's impossible to do objective comparisons between OS4 and MorphOS, it only say that *YOU* chose *not* to!

It's *NOT* "entirely subjective" to everyone!

[commodorejohn]

Internet Debate Handbook, guideline #7: You are objective and rational. Therefore, anybody who disagrees with you is not.

[amigadave]

MorphOS does have several objective advantages when compared to OS4 and that is mostly why I chose to use it, but I agree with Spirantho that many/most OS4 users choose OS4 for subjective reasons, which may be why he feels the choice to use one or the other is entirely subjective.  For him, it is.  For us the choice is not subjective.

You can probably ask all of the OS4 and MorphOS users and will get similar answers, if they will admit it.  Arguing if the decision to use OS4 or MorphOS is, or should be subjective or objective is a waste of time.

[spirantho]

It's *NOT* "entirely subjective" to everyone!

So it is subjective to some people then?
Sounds pretty subjective to me....

By your statements Windows is much better than MorphOS too, so why are you using it?

We're all here because we like using our chosen Amiga-like OS, and the reasoning for this choice is entirely subjective.

Remember, to the outside world, they can't understand why you're using MorphOS when they're using what are - on paper - much better OSes.

As I said, it is entirely up to the user which is "better", and that's subjective.

That's my final statement on the matter, not getting drawn into a futile war of words.

[takemehomegrandma]

Internet Debate Handbook, guideline #7: You are objective and rational. Therefore, anybody who disagrees with you is not.

There is nothing subjective about digits printed in black on white; a 1 is a 1, a 2 is a 2. You don't disagree: "I really think 2 is 7, it's all subjective".

Speed/performance is one example of such a *measurable* variable you can use in an objective comparison. In computer terms, good performance is generally considered a good thing, not a bad thing (well, maybe this isn't true among MS-DOS fans in 2011, I wouldn't know :lol:). So this is *not* about agreeing or disagreeing, *not* about taste or preference. Not "which is the most beautiful color?". Not at all. Good performance is good, worse performance on the very same hardware is worse. Pure, Simple.

There are other variables that are equally measurable. "Price" is one. "List of Amiga applications that works" is another.

You could list all Workbench's features, one by one, in one column of a chart. You could then list Ambient's in a column next to it. You would see that Ambient will match the one of Workbench, but when the Workbench feature list will end, then Ambient's list continue to go on, and on.

I don't mind people liking their OS4 systems, for whatever reasons. But *I do* mind when they say "but when it comes down to it it's entirely subjective". When it comes down to it, I am using MorphOS instead of OS4 simply because MorphOS is the best performing, most backwards compatible, most feature complete Amiga NG options there is! Nothing subjective about it! *I DO*have subjective reasons to *not* using OS4 as well, like my disgust against Ben Hermans&Co, their views that it's OK to mix Linux concepts in Amiga, their view of quality of their releases, and the negative effect I feel they have had on the Amiga in general, but that's a different matter altogether, because *THEN* we are talking about subjective matters (taste, opinions, etc), because I know there are people who actually *do* like Hyperion, their views of how an "Amiga OS" should be done, etc. In that case we are talking about issues of a level like "what flower smells the best?", "what is the tastiest food?", etc (i.e. *SUBJECTIVE* things), and not Quake 3's framerate on MorphOS vs. OS4 on exactly the same Pegasos2 machine (for example).

See?

[number6]

So it is subjective to some people then?
Sounds pretty subjective to me....

By your statements Windows is much better than MorphOS too, so why are you using it?

We're all here because we like using our chosen Amiga-like OS, and the reasoning for this choice is entirely subjective.

Remember, to the outside world, they can't understand why you're using MorphOS when they're using what are - on paper - much better OSes.

As I said, it is entirely up to the user which is "better", and that's subjective.

That's my final statement on the matter, not getting drawn into a futile war of words.

For anyone to survive and expand their horizons, I think they would be wise to focus on new users who are unfamiliar with anything Amiga.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59581
^^That's where the discussion could be and that's where the comparisons could be drawn.

btw-Morphzone is having a discussion about this.
MorphOS promotion and support team

Survival depends on getting out of the existing community, not fighting for nor trading the dwindling users within it.


#6

[commodorejohn]

There is nothing subjective about digits printed in black on white; a 1 is a 1, a 2 is a 2. You don't disagree: "I really think 2 is 7, it's all subjective".

Math is math is math, yes. But it's a general truth that benchmarks are a guideline at best; they depend on a wide variety of factors and thus mean different things to different people with different requirements. Remember what people say Mark Twain said but Twain said Benjamin Disraeli said but Disraeli may not actually have said about "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

None of which has anything to do with my point, which is that using "it's objectively better!" as a go-to argument for OS flamewars is naive. People pick their OSes for many reasons other than strict performance, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[takemehomegrandma]

@amigadave

Yes indeed. There are actually no technological, no economical, no rational reasons whatsoever to use OS4 instead of MorphOS. The only reason I can think of is: "OS4 is teh reeel!!1!!", in other words, the good old Amiga(TM) brand loyalty. Of course the answer becomes "it's all subjective which is best" when there are *no* objective arguments that supports your own decision or choice. AROS and MorphOS users on the other hand has freed themselves of the brand loyalty (often a long time ago already), that's no longer of any importance, that's not why we are here. Maybe that makes it easier to compare the merits of the three Amiga NG OS's in a more objective way, not having to resort to subjective "arguments"? And in my case, it also makes it a bit annoying when any objective arguments are constantly being disposed by the same subjective arguments, time after time. Sure, taste can (and will) play a part (as I said in the post above, it surely has played a part for me in my choice of NG OS), but there is no need to "feel" which OS has the most and best merits! That can easily be *measured*!

[Zerohero]

@takemehomegrandma

Yes indeed. There are actually no technological, no economical, no rational reasons whatsoever to use OS4 instead of MorphOS.

You keep saying this, but lets look at things objectively then:

* The MorphOS community is way less active than the AmigaOS 4.x community

* There aren't more MorphOS users than AmigaOS 4.x users

* AmigaOS 4.x actually being AmigaOS, MorphOS is unknown

I have a bonus one for you as well:

* You still making too much noise, making people move on from the larger amiga-community

BTW, I just love your rhetorics when you're upset... Love it!

Regards,
Joachim Birging

EDIT:
Spelling!

[Daedalus]

@takemehomegrandma

There are both objective and subjective elements here, and much as you would like to, you cannot rule out the subjective side of it. Nobody's arguing with the objective merits of MorphOS, but some people prefer the feel of OS4 which is why you shouldn't try to rule it out for new users. And, if you're going to stick purely to objective reasoning, as someone else asked, why are you using MorphOS when you could just use Windows? Objectively speaking, Windows kicks the living daylights out of MorphOS and OS4 combined on pretty much every metric you listed.

To bring up the obligatory car analogy, lots of people think I'm nuts for driving the car I drive. There are so many cars I could've bought which would have lower tax, lower emissions, better fuel economy, better reliability, better acceleration and top speed and so on. But they don't feel like my car. You get waaay too wound up on this subject, and whether you mean it or not, it looks like you're making people out to be idiots for picking OS4 over MorphOS, and carrying on the same argument doesn't help you one bit.

[takemehomegrandma]

Math is math is math, yes. But it's a general truth that benchmarks are a guideline at best; they depend on a wide variety of factors and thus mean different things to different people with different requirements. Remember what people say Mark Twain said but Twain said Benjamin Disraeli said but Disraeli may not actually have said about "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

So slow performance is actually fast? A high price is actually low? A short feature list is actually longer than a long?

Of course you can *prefer* slower performance, higher prices, and shorter feature lists, etc, only because "it's teh reel!!1!!" (or for whatever other subjective reason). I know that, we see that daily here on Amiga.org and elsewhere. Then we are talking about subjective arguments as ground for your decisions, like feelings, emotions, etc. But that doesn't make objective arguments non-existent. It only makes them disregarded.

None of which has anything to do with my point, which is that using "it's objectively better!" as a go-to argument for OS flamewars is naive. People pick their OSes for many reasons other than strict performance, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Of course, and I am one of them. But that doesn't mean that no objective arguments exists, or that you should discard them. As an example, my own reasons to use MorphOS instead of OS4 is:

1. Because MorphOS *does have* better performance, *it has* a lower price, *it has* a more extensive feature list, *it has* better Amiga compatibility, etc, of the two.
2. AND *my opinion* of the Hyperion crew is that they are a band of bandits, and *I feel* that being "official" is of no importance (and I even don't agree with that)

What's listed under point 1 was objective (and really can't be argued with, since it's all measurable), point 2 was subjective (and is argued all the time).

[number6]

So slow performance is actually fast? A high price is actually low? A short feature list is actually longer than a long?

Of course you can *prefer* slower performance, higher prices, and shorter feature lists, etc, only because "it's teh reel!!1!!" (or for whatever other subjective reason). I know that, we see that daily here on Amiga.org and elsewhere. Then we are talking about subjective arguments as ground for your decisions, like feelings, emotions, etc. But that doesn't make objective arguments non-existent. It only makes them disregarded.



Of course, and I am one of them. But that doesn't mean that no objective arguments exists, or that you should discard them. As an example, my own reasons to use MorphOS instead of OS4 is:

1. Because MorphOS *does have* better performance, *it has* a lower price, *it has* a more extensive feature list, *it has* better Amiga compatibility, etc, of the two.
2. AND *my opinion* of the Hyperion crew is that they are a band of bandits, and *I feel* that being "official" is of no importance (and I even don't agree with that)

What's listed under point 1 was objective (and really can't be argued with, since it's all measurable), point 2 was subjective (and is argued all the time).

That's odd that on one hand you believe in objective vs subjective when comparing the operating systems, but when it comes to a court decision, which would be likely called factually objective by said court, you take the reverse stand and go with your *subjective* feelings. You don't see the basis of how you form your opinions as being contrary?

"But that doesn't make objective arguments non-existent. It only makes them disregarded."

#6

[commodorejohn]

Of course, and I am one of them. But that doesn't mean that no objective arguments exists, or that you should discard them. As an example, my own reasons to use MorphOS instead of OS4 is:

1. Because MorphOS *does have* better performance, *it has* a lower price, *it has* a more extensive feature list, *it has* better Amiga compatibility, etc, of the two.
2. AND *my opinion* of the Hyperion crew is that they are a band of bandits, and *I feel* that being "official" is of no importance (and I even don't agree with that)

Of course I don't mean that factual arguments are valueless; they're perfectly relevant and solid arguments, assuming you've done your homework in gathering and analyzing the data. I just mean that they're not the be-all/end-all of OS choice, so acting as if "it performs better, end of story" is a discussion-ender is naive.

(And I'm certainly with you on point #2.)

[eliyahu]

You still making too much noise, making people move on from the larger amiga-community

as a (until recently) outsider, i'd have to agree. i considered morphOS in the beginning due to the low cost of entry, but the biggest turn-off -- by far -- was the community. the way certain morphOS users, and at least one developer, behaved on the forums was a huge negative. i've since used morphOS in the flesh a few times, and, while very performant, just wasn't enjoyable to use (for me). but people need to try it and make up their own minds.

the best approach is the one taken by amigadave: sane, rational, understanding, and helpful.  morphOS isn't my cup of tea for any number of reasons, but it's a perfectly good choice for folks entering and/or returning to the amiga world and i still have an interest in it. if the OP was in the northeastern US, i would have been happy to travel and allow him to play on my SAM and on my old power G4 (which still has MOS 2.7 installed on it) so he could check out amigaOS and morphOS and make up his own mind.  both are excellent choices.

-- eliyahu