I think.........

[Middleman]

Before I begin, yes hi CritAnime and thanks for the welcome.....great to meet you mate!
 

Except that Dell and HP aren't running around pretending to be the resurrection of something they have absolutely nothing to do with, they're just selling PCs. (And I haven't had a kind word for Apple since the Intel switch, I just don't bring it up because Steve Jobs didn't come over to amiga.org and yammer at people.)
 
Again I ask, how is dropping a prefab, unrelated product in a reproduction case "resurrecting?" If that's resurrection, people in the modding community have beaten him to the punch by years.
 
I have little interest in OS4 myself, but it takes me all of one minute to go to Wikipedia and see ten post-Commodore "Amiga" machines capable of running OS4 in their "Amiga hardware" category, going all the way back to 2002. There's also the Efika, which won't run OS4 but will run MorphOS. So...evidence suggests that's a "yes, yes they did."

==Yes I know, there was also the Walker. Fair enough....but the point I was trying to make was they didn't 'buy' the Commodore and Amiga brands like CUSA have and formally bring them back together and create 'real hardware' under those names. Don't you see it's important from a marketing perspective?
 

No, the reason there's infighting is because people made it a holy war. It has nothing to do with meeting in the middle.

==Yeah and it started with the guys setting fire to the cheap PC keyboards in Chester (albeit in frustration when they lost their jobs). Had they been a bit calmer then and try to come up with a real plan to save Commodore (like a management buyout) perhaps old C= might still be here...
 
As I said, it's a failure to compromise on some things that brought them into the mess. Over the years, that chief issue has become a modern CPU/change of architecture. Why oh why can't AmigaOS use x86 as a basis for a new machine now? What is the problem? Look what's happened with Apple now when they've moved over to Intel...they are thriving! Why can't Amiga do the same?
 

No. You can take a Linux PC and slap a sticker on it if you like, but it will not change the fundamental nature of the thing. It will not make it an Amiga, because it has derived nothing at all from the Amiga. That's what Barry, Amiga Inc., and many others refuse to understand, that these names are not just all-purpose labels to stick on things to make them more salable.

==I understand where you're coming from. But you also gotta understand where I'm coming from. By doing what you're saying you've also restricting yourself in saying what a future Amiga 'could be'. That it 'cannot be Linux' is really a restrictive viewpoint in my opinion. As I said earlier, the difference between a Amiga and PC in the early days was that the Amiga won because it was technically superior due to its chipset. Nowadays most chipsets are well past the performance of the Amiga, and software, OS and programming tools has also improved. Why cannot we have a 'modern Amiga' which moves along with the times with these features? Why restrict ourselves to past architecture? Has not the PC market shown to you that 'being technically superior' is what sells systems and OSes?
 

I'm not defending Hyperion. Not at all. I'm just objecting to the idea that one can take two completely un-Amiga-related technologies, combine them, and then label them "Amiga!"

==Then what do you suggest should Amiga as a brand, system and fan-base do? We know the market is ripe for the return of an Amiga and something truly worthy for gamers and such....but £1800 I feel is just too much for a machine based on old technology (X1000).
 

No. No, it's not. I've just spent way too much time trying to get into Linux, myself. And I've come away with one conclusion: I don't want anything to do with it. Let it run the servers of the world, it seems to do a fine job at that, but as a desktop OS it's horrible. UI is schizophrenic at best, configuration's lovely until it's suddenly a nightmare, drivers are only ever written for the popular hardware, and nobody in the community is much help. I don't need that. I don't want it. And I sure as hell don't want it being marketed as "Amiga."

==Well I don't think so. Mac OSX is 'essentially' Linux (albeit BSD-based) but look where after much polishing, it has gotten Apple. It is one of the top sellers now! And no Windows PC can touch it....so why can't CUSA with their version of an Amiga and a 'Commodore OS'? Or a combination of the two with a Hyperion/CUSA matchup?
 

This is what we don't need, this crippling inferiority complex. So many Amigans are unable to see the good in a project because it doesn't bench what their i7 box does. We don't need powerful, we need good.

==Yes, that I agree on principle, but good doesn't sell help machines or OSes unfortunately. Or in the case of software, allow software houses to create great games for the platform. Amiga needs support from the major software houses if it is to make a strong comeback...and you can't do that using the current hardware (unless you want them to recreate retro 16-bit games - but who's willing to do that in this day and age?).
 

What we are missing is a company that is willing to write an x86 Amiga OS allowing for legacy support and adding much needed updates to modernize the OS.
 
AROS for x86, if made to do it all could give us what we want.
If I only had the money to buy the rights back, form one company, my dreams would be to assemble the best developers and accelerate the Classic Amiga OS into the modern age using the best of x86 components today.

==That's what Commodore USA has been trying to do for the Amiga community for the past 2 years, to try to bring the community under one roof using x86 components. Except Amiga Inc. had other ideas about how AmigaOS should be used (only on Motorola CPUs and issued legal warnings to CUSA if they went Aros way) and as a result there was bad vibes received on both sides and why CUSA is now looking to Linux instead as a platform...

[fishy_fiz]

"No Windows PC can match it"?. In what sense? Performance wise Windows beats a Mac 9 times out of 10 (remember the malloc probs anyone?). Not to mention better drivers on Windows and various other areas where support is superior.

This aside though Apple actually put thier own flavor on BSD/Next. They have thier own apis and many of thier own technologies. It's not a bog standard *nix distro. Cocoa, Obj-C, and so on. Ive seen no indication that C-USA are intending to do the same. OSX was, from the very 1st release it's own product, COS isnt. Heck, theyve not even bothered to update thier UAE core, and instead rely on the open source community to hopefully one day do it.

There's absolutely nothing to make it stand out. Licensing a name simply isnt enough.
Im all for a new OS that has its own features and advantages, but nothing C-USA is doing suggests that's thier plan. If I wanted to use a standard Linux distro, Id use a standard Linux distro.

Additionally, again, it wasnt A.Inc that had any influence on C-USA's choice to use Linux. Amiga Inc. themselves arent even allowed to create an AmigaOS inspired system.

[haywirepc]

If commodore usa wants to defend themselves, why don't they just grow some balls and post publicly? Why do they need to create shill accounts all the time with fake people to defend themselves and preach the CUSA gospel?
 
Personally, I think they have some fantastic ideas but I can't stand their behavior. Threatening to sue a writer from osnews.com, then questioning his sexuality... Because he told the truth...
 
Stealing one of their earlier websites from apple word for word, but cutting out mac computer names and pasting in their computer names in...
(this one is probably my favorite of the bull**** they've spewed)
 
Stealing graphics without the authors permission and pretending thats their new "amiga" computer design...
 
All these hyped up vaporware computers that never make it to the real stage, getting caught just slapping stickers on existing computers and renaming them too, shows their true character, or lack of it.
 
Their treatment of AROS, an effort I highly support, has been atrocious.
 
Their insulting and alienating the os4 camp...
 
Claiming their new "amiga" will cost 10,000$+ (and be worth it!)
 
Deleting posts (or accounts) of people on their own forum for asking a valid question, or questioning them on anything they say.
 
Slapping a theme on linux mint and calling it a new operating system...
 
Encouraging people not to buy software or old games, or mess with floppy disks because software is available for free! (From pirate sites)
 
Posting fake pictures of their computer factory in china...
 
The list goes on and on.
 
All these things, taken singly, could be forgiven as a young startup making mistakes as they find their way, but the effect all these things added up (and many more I didn't mention) Just turns people off from them instantly. You can't trust anything they say when all the lies and bull**** and hype for 3 years straight. Shut up and make computers worth buying, stop the hype and bull**** already.

[commodorejohn]

Yes I know, there was also the Walker. Fair enough....but the point I was trying to make was they didn't 'buy' the Commodore and Amiga brands like CUSA have and formally bring them back together and create 'real hardware' under those names. Don't you see it's important from a marketing perspective?

No, I don't. I find the question of actual substance to be vastly more important than whether a particular system's creator has shelled out to Bill McEwen for the rights to put a particular sticker on the case - and even a thing like the PPC boards that's really only Amiga-like in software is still infinitely closer to being "Amiga" than a bog-standard PC board running Linux.
 

Why oh why can't AmigaOS use x86 as a basis for a new machine now? What is the problem?

I never said it can't. I just said that unrelated hardware + unrelated software does not equal "Amiga." Unrelated hardware + Amiga-related software has a lot stronger case to be made for it.

Look what's happened with Apple now when they've moved over to Intel...they are thriving! Why can't Amiga do the same?

Apple's re-emergence has a lot less to do with switching its computers to Intel (Macs are still at about the same general portion of the market they've always been) and a lot more to do with its shift in focus towards consumer electronics. And frankly, I have even less interest in Amiga-like OSes on a phone than I do in Amiga-like OSes on PCs.
 

I understand where you're coming from. But you also gotta understand where I'm coming from. By doing what you're saying you've also restricting yourself in saying what a future Amiga 'could be'. That it 'cannot be Linux' is really a restrictive viewpoint in my opinion.

And? Any definitive categorization is restrictive by nature. If we know what "Amiga" as a concept is, then we also know everything that it isn't. A Linux PC has nothing, in terms of hardware, software, or even more than basic superficial similarity of user interface, in common with any flavor of Amiga/Amiga-like. Saying that we should agree to call it "Amiga" means that "Amiga" is essentially a meaningless term; since it has no real definition, it can therefore be affixed to anything. Why not take that all the way? Have Amiga kitchen appliances, Amiga hardwood flooring, Amiga tampons! Does it mean anything, or doesn't it?

Why cannot we have a 'modern Amiga' which moves along with the times with these features? Why restrict ourselves to past architecture?

I never said anything of the kind. I'm all for advancement, just not at the cost of sacrificing every single thing at all unique about a system.

Has not the PC market shown to you that 'being technically superior' is what sells systems and OSes?

No. It's shown me that being cheap, open, freely manufacturable, and backed by industry titans is what sells systems.
 

Then what do you suggest should Amiga as a brand, system and fan-base do? We know the market is ripe for the return of an Amiga and something truly worthy for gamers and such....but £1800 I feel is just too much for a machine based on old technology (X1000).

Excellent question. Myself, I favor what I see happening with the NatAmi project, and I'd love for it to be inexpensively available to a large audience. If I had any means to help that happen, I would do so. But I don't, so it's going to depend on what the existing NatAmi team can manage.
 

Well I don't think so. Mac OSX is 'essentially' Linux (albeit BSD-based) but look where after much polishing, it has gotten Apple.

And I hate it less, but I still don't much care for it, for a host of different reasons. And in any case, I'm not aware of a Linux distro that uses OSX-like underpinnings - FreeBSD, maybe, but even that's stuck with the clusterfun that is X11 and eight quadzillion interface toolkits with their own different UI guidelines that developers ignore or heed utterly at random.

It is one of the top sellers now!

...? OSX's market share is somewhere in the 6-10% range.

Yes, that I agree on principle, but good doesn't sell help machines or OSes unfortunately.

I don't care. Good is good, bad is bad, and I've had well and truly enough of pretending otherwise.

you can't do that using the current hardware (unless you want them to recreate retro 16-bit games - but who's willing to do that in this day and age?)

*raises hand*

[WolfToTheMoon]

I never said it can't. I just said that unrelated hardware + unrelated software does not equal "Amiga." Unrelated hardware + Amiga-related software has a lot stronger case to be made for it.

That can only happen on retro pojects like Natami, OS4 and similar. As soon as you venture out to use modern technologies, using "Amiga related software" doesn't make sense, since you'll not be using that technology to it's proper limits(no SMP, no resource tracking, no protected memory, ancient IP/TCP stack, partition or process size limitations and so on and on and on). And if you venture out to try and modernize that ancient amiga-related software(and if the history of the platform is any judge, you'll be smart not to try), you'll end up with something, that again, doesn't have anything to do with how classic AmigaOS does things because you'll have to break pretty much everything, include alien APIs, File systems, new modules...
So you can do 2 things... clean break or years of "bleeding" your platform while you (try) to bring your software to modern standards.

in short... today, it's impossible to make sense of a project that would marry amiga-related OS with modern hardware... But if you object, just use AROS on x86, done deal.

[Fab]

@Iggy

Hey! I like Odyssey. Except for Flash support (which is rapidily becoming irrelevent) it has all the features I need in a browser.

Well, it *does* have Flash support, up to Flash 8.

[commodorejohn]

And if you venture out to try and modernize that ancient amiga-related software(and if the history of the platform is any judge, you'll be smart not to try), you'll end up with something, that again, doesn't have anything to do with how classic AmigaOS does things because you'll have to break pretty much everything, include alien APIs, File systems, new modules...

I don't buy that. I don't see any reason why a new, Amiga-like but fundamentally updated OS with a protected environment for original Amiga software couldn't be written. Hell, that's basically what Win32 did for Win16. The choices aren't limited to "never progress" or "throw out all semblance of inspiration."

But if you object, just use AROS on x86, done deal.

Quite. A hell of a lot more convincing as an "Amiga" substitute than using completely unrelated software like Linux.

[Fab]

The opposite situations pertains here, I'm fairly sure I don't have any MUI programs installed at all except Scout.

So, mmh, tell us which Reaction applications you use, exactly.

Let's assume you use AmigaOS for daily stuff. Is there a Reaction mailer? A Reaction PDF viewer? A Reaction audio/video player ? A Reaction IRC/MSN/Whater client ? A Reaction filemanager ? Are there even Reaction replacements for the quite simple preferences programs of OS3.x?

The only serious Reaction (well Classact) applications I know is AWeb, and Codebench under OS4. The rest is rather simplistic tools.

[WolfToTheMoon]

I don't buy that. I don't see any reason why a new, Amiga-like but fundamentally updated OS with a protected environment for original Amiga software couldn't be written. Hell, that's basically what Win32 did for Win16. The choices aren't limited to "never progress" or "throw out all semblance of inspiration."

Well, go than and code one. Or better, tell Apple they should have stayed Mac OS classic and just "update it". Or tell Microsoft that Windows Millenium was their best effort :lol:.

When something is as outdated as AmigaOS is today, you're much, much better off with a clean break. For numerous reasons, but the most important being that you'll lose a helluva lot time just to play catch up, which pretty much ensures you'll never be able to compete with architecturally newer software designs. Not to mention that you'll probably end up with a substandard product, even if you could cram AmigaOS and modern features together(which has never been done up until now and most devs will tell you it's nigh impossible).

Quite. A hell of a lot more convincing as an "Amiga" substitute than using completely unrelated software like Linux.

Understandable... but you'll be limited by it and by what you can do with it.

[commodorejohn]

Well, go than and code one. Or better, tell Apple they should have stayed Mac OS classic and just "update it". Or tell Microsoft that Windows Millenium was their best effort :lol:.

Millenium wasn't their best effort. 98se was ;P

In all seriousness, though, I'm not saying "try to endlessly tweak the existing codebase and API to sort of work with architectural updates." What I'm saying is, you can do something like NTVDM or OSX's Classic environment and provide a compatibility layer for older software without pulling an OSX by ditching the design entirely and switching to Unix.

You could have a new OS design based on the Amiga API, but not tied strictly to it to the point of impairing modern improvements; new software could be written to run natively on it, and original Amiga software could run in something akin to OSX's Classic environment. Unix isn't the only possible solution (or, in my opinion, the best.)

[WolfToTheMoon]

What I'm saying is, you can do something like NTVDM or OSX's Classic environment and provide a compatibility layer for older software without pulling an OSX by ditching the design entirely and switching to Unix.

Well, you're advocating exactly the same thing as I am. A new OS with emulation for old apps. Though, since the vast majority of commercial Amiga software dates from 80s and 90s which any hardware today will run easily, a simple emulation would do.

Unix isn't the only possible solution (or, in my opinion, the best.)

It's the most suitable solution, code portability wise. You go in a different direction, unless it's significantly superior to what already exists, you'll make it less appealing to devs and far less likely to get ports/versions of popular apps from other OSes. Today, only 2 families of OSes are successful on personal (or mobile) computers... UNIXoids and Windows. I can't see that changing anytime soon.

[Iggy]

@Iggy


Well, it *does* have Flash support, up to Flash 8.

Sorry Fab, I tend to make that mistake because I avoid Flash based sites.
It lacks good Flash support.

[commodorejohn]

Well, you're advocating exactly the same thing as I am. A new OS with emulation for old apps. Though, since the vast majority of commercial Amiga software dates from 80s and 90s which any hardware today will run easily, a simple emulation would do.

Emulation will do fine for games, but for other software it'd be nice to have a more integrated solution.

It's the most suitable solution, code portability wise. You go in a different direction, unless it's significantly superior to what already exists, you'll make it less appealing to devs and far less likely to get ports/versions of popular apps from other OSes.

That's not necessarily true. Haiku is nothing like Unix internally, but it has POSIX compatibility (and GTK and Qt ports) and thus can get a lot of Linux software as a simple recompile. There's no reason a new Amiga-like OS couldn't do the same. Even if it was more work than that, it'd still be preferable to redefining "Amiga" into meaninglessness.

Today, only 2 families of OSes are successful on personal (or mobile) computers... UNIXoids and Windows. I can't see that changing anytime soon.

News flash: The Amiga is not "successful." It's not even the teensiest blip on the map of OS market share these days, it hasn't been for nigh-on two decades now, not since Windows was a 16-bit, unprotected, cooperative-multitasking DOS shell and Linux was just a quirky Finn playing with a 386 and sharing his experiments on Usenet.

It's not going to be "successful" any time soon, because the only people who are still interested in it these days are nutters like you or I on the lunatic fringe of computing. Even if one were to hire a wizard to magically reverse its decline as if time were running backwards, by the time the Amiga got back to representing any significant fraction of the market, who knows where the mainstream would be?

There's no point in trying to reinvent yourself by simply copycatting the big players. All you're going to do is turn into another wannabe. (Google managed it, but that's because A. they're farkin' Google and B. they actually had points of comparison with iOS like "actually kind of open." But mostly A.) Maybe you'll be up-to-date techologically, but you'll still be "playing catch-up" in terms of actually getting anybody to ever use it.

And given that, why bother? Why not spend that effort on making something new?

[Middleman]

No, I don't. I find the question of actual substance to be vastly more important than whether a particular system's creator has shelled out to Bill McEwen for the rights to put a particular sticker on the case - and even a thing like the PPC boards that's really only Amiga-like in software is still infinitely closer to being "Amiga" than a bog-standard PC board running Linux.

I never said it can't. I just said that unrelated hardware + unrelated software does not equal "Amiga." Unrelated hardware + Amiga-related software has a lot stronger case to be made for it.

==Well you 'can' run AROS (albeit unofficially) on a CUSA Vic Slim or C64x. That certainly gets us closer to an 'Amiga' than ever before. Then again the same can be said when you plug a Soundblaster Live card into a SAM460EX - totally unrelated to Amiga initially, but brings you all the features we wanted in our dreams. Yes, that I agree...

Apple's re-emergence has a lot less to do with switching its computers to Intel (Macs are still at about the same general portion of the market they've always been) and a lot more to do with its shift in focus towards consumer electronics. And frankly, I have even less interest in Amiga-like OSes on a phone than I do in Amiga-like OSes on PCs.

==Well, Apple's been clever with their management and marketing (and moving away from computers to actual electronic software/music delivery), and so far been lucky with how they went about with the development of OSX. I still consider it 'very sly' the way Steve handled the transition from PowerPC to x86, but I guess it was their luck how it turned out.
Funnily enough I learnt this week from a friend that most of the world's oldest PowerPC Macs have all mostly ended up in South Korea. Apparently it's to do with how their font systems work. In the Korean publishing industries their fonts are controlled by a few tiny companies who had their since the System OS days. And what happened was they refused to open them up/port them to OSX so the printing and publishing companies have no choice but to use older OS9 setups, Postscript and closed systems like Quark and Pagemaker. Because these machines are well over 10 years old (and still running, even today) sales of new Apple machines are flat and there's a huge secondhand market there for older spare Mac parts.
So the irony is, some people still needs a PowerPC machine in some places in our world..... But yes I agree with you too on the Ami-phone thing. Amiga OSes DO NOT work well on things...

And? Any definitive categorization is restrictive by nature. If we know what "Amiga" as a concept is, then we also know everything that it isn't. A Linux PC has nothing, in terms of hardware, software, or even more than basic superficial similarity of user interface, in common with any flavor of Amiga/Amiga-like. Saying that we should agree to call it "Amiga" means that "Amiga" is essentially a meaningless term; since it has no real definition, it can therefore be affixed to anything. Why not take that all the way? Have Amiga kitchen appliances, Amiga hardwood flooring, Amiga tampons! Does it mean anything, or doesn't it?

==I've seen the term been misused before on other things, but at least with a Linux-based PC it is still relevant (as its computing). But God forbid the day we get Amiga tampons! That'll really be the end of the world....

I never said anything of the kind. I'm all for advancement, just not at the cost of sacrificing every single thing at all unique about a system.

==Well if you're talking about sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice had already been made when Commodore International had gone bankrupt. Most of the loyal fanbase had lost everything when the parent company went under - we lost everything then. Talent, money, knowledge - everything that was C=. What we're trying to do now (in CUSA's case) is not 'resurrect' the old 16-bit platform per se, but to start off with a completely new sheet. Since everything's been so convuluted anyways, we might as well start off with a clean-sheet right (as Wolf To The Moon says)?

In this sense (in CUSA's case - I'm not talking about anyone else) it is 'doing things in the spirit of Commodore and Amiga' which was doing it creatively, imaginatively and powerfully. Doing things in 'the spirit of Amiga' is more important (and relevant) I feel to the markets today than ever before. Because as Leo, Barry, Terminills and the many Ami folks that I've talked to discussing this at length, as former Amiga users we are tired of Windows and tired of OSX/Macs/Apple revisionism. We just want something else 'different' on the market, something that will still give us that nostalgic feeling but still allow us to run the latest and greatest stuff, primarily games and creative stuff. Classic Amiga is certainly established now, but the idea of a new machine is to move 'beyond' that. It's still performance driven and modern, but with a unique character that is 'Amiga'.

No. It's shown me that being cheap, open, freely manufacturable, and backed by industry titans is what sells systems.

==EXACTLY....backed by industry titans. And you can't do with without a powerful, affordable and adaptable architecture. At the moment it seems, nothing can touch x86 right now in terms of bang for buck or platform support. Just look at how many copies of Battlefield 3 got shifted recently.....8 million copies!

Excellent question. Myself, I favor what I see happening with the NatAmi project, and I'd love for it to be inexpensively available to a large audience. If I had any means to help that happen, I would do so. But I don't, so it's going to depend on what the existing NatAmi team can manage.

==I've looked at NatAmi too and it looks interesting. There's a lot going for it, but sadly it's still based on the older architecture. Unless they can create a PPC/Cell board which can connect to say, a PCI Express slot on a PC like Yellow Dog Linux did (which can then allow AmigaOS to run natively within Linux) I think we're a little far off...

And I hate it less, but I still don't much care for it, for a host of different reasons. And in any case, I'm not aware of a Linux distro that uses OSX-like underpinnings - FreeBSD, maybe, but even that's stuck with the clusterfun that is X11 and eight quadzillion interface toolkits with their own different UI guidelines that developers ignore or heed utterly at random.

==Perhaps then FreeBSD should re-evaluate their position? But I certainly know NetBSD could be a contender because it can read AmigaOS files natively. POSIX support is important for a better OS for Amiga I agree...

...? OSX's market share is somewhere in the 6-10% range.

==Yes, but not when you include iOS as part of the make-up. The potential for Apple to utilise this as an underpinning is huge...just look at how the new iOS5 update has 'freed' people from their computers when updating their phones/iPads.

I don't care. Good is good, bad is bad, and I've had well and truly enough of pretending otherwise.

==I think there's a lot more potential for Amiga to develop even further now as a new system than ever before. Just look at Aros' latest posting. They are now supporting Nvidia's Fermi cards right out of the box! Now that's what we need to revitalise the brand and userbase....

*raises hand*

==That's a tough wish....but would be interesting if it did happen!

[commodorejohn]

I've seen the term been misused before on other things, but at least with a Linux-based PC it is still relevant (as its computing). But God forbid the day we get Amiga tampons! That'll really be the end of the world....

But what's the difference, really? If anything computing-related counts as "Amiga," then the name is still watered-down to the point of uselessness. By that logic, you could have "Amiga" Macintoshes, "Amiga" programmable calculators, or "Amiga" software-as-a-service web platforms. If that's how it work, is it really such a great difference between "Amiga = computer thing" and "Amiga = thing?" You might as well have branded hygiene products.

Well if you're talking about sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice had already been made when Commodore International had gone bankrupt. Most of the loyal fanbase had lost everything when the parent company went under - we lost everything then. Talent, money, knowledge - everything that was C=. What we're trying to do now (in CUSA's case) is not 'resurrect' the old 16-bit platform per se, but to start off with a completely new sheet. Since everything's been so convuluted anyways, we might as well start off with a clean-sheet right (as Wolf To The Moon says)?

But what's the point? CUSA employs nobody that made CBM or Amiga what they were, nobody even remotely comparable in knowledge or vision, has no interest in doing any of the things Commodore did, and to any outside observer seems basically to be in the biz to sell overpriced same-old to desperate retro-obsessives. If you're going to "start off with a clean sheet," you could at least have the decency to not pretend you're following up on something entirely different.

In this sense (in CUSA's case - I'm not talking about anyone else) it is 'doing things in the spirit of Commodore and Amiga' which was doing it creatively, imaginatively and powerfully.

But they're not. They're not creative - they haven't created anything. They've reproduced a case, bulk-purchased existing boards, slapped the two together, and stuck a re-paletted Linux Mint on it. The only thing differentiating a C64x from any other ITX board in a C64 case running Linux is that it shows a chickenhead on boot, which is just a tweak on a feature a lot of BIOSes already have.

They're not imaginative, either - Barry's "vision" as stated thus far consists solely of riding the "overpriced retro-packaged Linux box" horse until its legs fall off. The real Commodore went from calculators to PET to VIC to C64 to Amiga in under a decade - Barry's line of two PC clones and plans for a third doesn't come within a light-year of comparison.

And they're not all that powerful, either - certainly not for that kind of money. So they've got an i7 board in it now - big freakin' deal, you can put together your own i7 system for a lot less, and put it in a better-cooled case while you're at it. Hell, you can buy i7 laptops now.

as former Amiga users we are tired of Windows and tired of OSX/Macs/Apple revisionism. We just want something else 'different' on the market, something that will still give us that nostalgic feeling but still allow us to run the latest and greatest stuff, primarily games and creative stuff.

There's nothing nostalgic about Mint. There just isn't. I mean, if it shipped with a stripped-down System-V-clone distro that displayed amber text on a terminal emulator and didn't know what X even was, that wouldn't be good, but it could at least conceivably be claimed to be "nostalgic."

It's still performance driven and modern, but with a unique character that is 'Amiga'.

But it isn't. It doesn't work like an Amiga, it doesn't play like an Amiga, it doesn't feel like an Amiga, it doesn't have anything Amiga-like under the hood, it doesn't have anything Amiga-like in the bare metal, it has nothing at all in common with anything that forms any part of any basic consensus of what "Amiga" is. Even if you feel that there's some undefinable "character" that makes the Amiga, Linux does. Not. Have. It. It is its own separate thing, with its own separate merits, but it is not Amiga.

EXACTLY....backed by industry titans. And you can't do with without a powerful, affordable and adaptable architecture. At the moment it seems, nothing can touch x86 right now in terms of bang for buck or platform support. Just look at how many copies of Battlefield 3 got shifted recently.....8 million copies!

Uh...Battlefield 3 is not x86-exclusive, it runs on the 360 and PS3. In any case, x86 was established long before it actually got good, back in the bad old days of 640KB conventional memory, labyrinthine ISA configuration, and segment registers. I'm not saying it doesn't have its merits now, I'm saying that it didn't get where it was by being the best.

Perhaps then FreeBSD should re-evaluate their position? But I certainly know NetBSD could be a contender because it can read AmigaOS files natively. POSIX support is important for a better OS for Amiga I agree...

Any Linux distro can read Amiga files natively, it's right there in the kernel build options and easily done through FUSE even if it's not compiled in. Hell, Windows can read Amiga filesystems with some finagling. And what would you mean by FreeBSD "re-evaluating their position?" They could ship some non-X environment, but all that would mean is a lot of work building an X compatibility layer. X apps would still be poorly designed by people who know nothing about good UI. Unix technology isn't (most of) the problem, it's Unix culture.

Yes, but not when you include iOS as part of the make-up. The potential for Apple to utilise this as an underpinning is huge...just look at how the new iOS5 update has 'freed' people from their computers when updating their phones/iPads.

I thought we weren't counting phones/tablets? I certainly wouldn't, they're even less of an either/or proposition than computers. Lots of people have a Windows machine and an iPhone or iPad.

I think there's a lot more potential for Amiga to develop even further now as a new system than ever before. Just look at Aros' latest posting. They are now supporting Nvidia's Fermi cards right out of the box! Now that's what we need to revitalise the brand and userbase....

Yeah, no argument there. But that's kind of exactly my point - projects like AROS and MorphOS are actively developed, support newer, more powerful, more available hardware, and are still infinitely closer to being "Amiga" than a PC running Linux with a sticker on the box.

[spirantho]

I think we all want the Amiga to be successful....

.. but finding a successful platform and sticking an Amiga sticker doesn't make the Amiga successful. It just makes it look like you can't accept the fact that the Amiga isn't successful.