Open Source Amiga OS

[psxphill]

I could be wrong on that, it's what I recall being told but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, there aren't Haiku forks, so there's still no confusion over which of a multiplicity of distros is good for what; there's just Haiku.

There are no AROS forks or Linux forks either.
 
Linux is the kernel, the distro is not Linux.
 
There are several AROS distros, although usability wise they are pretty much the same.

[commodorejohn]

Linux is the kernel, the distro is not Linux.

That argument would be meaningful if a kernel were the same thing as a complete operating system.

[Fats]

I always find it funny that people think Stallman actually says these things. ...
Stallman himself has said that there are use cases where proprietary software is understandable, but nothing he'd really use.

What Richard does say is that non-free software is unethical; main reason I am open source proponent but I am not a follower of the free software church.

[Madshib]

It's funny how the questions asked brought about a separate discussion on it's own about open software. I don't know enough about the organizations referenced to make any arguments for or against. I do like using Linux though.

One thing is for sure, I like using Amiga OS much more! Reading everyone's comments, I knew AROS would come up eventually. I have tried to use it in the form of Icaros Desktop and that is partially why I asked the questions of everyone in the first place.

AROS may be an alternative that is modern to AOS, but it just doesn't seem as fast and responsive as AOS. Now that I know that AOS was written in Assembly(I thought it was C and Asm combo), I suppose that the genuine 68k code really doesn't do anyone any good since the instruction sets are different.

I just can't help but think that the mechanical concepts behind what make AOS work so quickly could be re-implemented in another form, or clone, of AOS.

So regardless of what everyone thinks about this organization or that group or whether or not Hyperion will release the code, what would the community do with it once it was released?

(If anyone can help and show me how to make AROS as fast as AOS, I'm all ears. I tried it and was completely lost from the door, so I didn't really give it a fair shake, so to say.)

[persia]

@ommodorejohn

Without open source there would be no Gimp, no Open/Libre Office, no Firefox...

[vidarh]

AROS may be an alternative that is modern to AOS, but it just doesn't seem as fast and responsive as AOS. Now that I know that AOS was written in Assembly(I thought it was C and Asm combo), I suppose that the genuine 68k code really doesn't do anyone any good since the instruction sets are different.

I just can't help but think that the mechanical concepts behind what make AOS work so quickly could be re-implemented in another form, or clone, of AOS.

Of course it can.  But AROS is written to be generic and portable, and has mainly targeted much more modern systems until recently. It's only been working on real Amiga's for something like a year or so by now, and is very much a work in progress. So you're comparing apples and oranges.

There's nothing conceptually that'll prevent optimizing AROS until it's as fast as genuine AmigaOS. Whether anyone will be motivated to push things that far (which would also mean stripping out functionality) is another matter.

[vidarh]

Comes from multiple attempts over a solid seven years and change to try and get a really usable, pleasant user experience out of any of the eleventy billion mutually-incompatible Linux distros.

My experience is that in recent years, installing Ubuntu is easier than getting Windows to run reliably at anything than snails pace, and things like getting it to recognize printers requires far less voodoo (what a change from a few years ago..).

More importantly, even if it isn't suitable as a desktop OS for you, the immense success of open source is demonstrated quite well in that most of us have at least one device running Linux (or less likely another open source Unix clone) in our house - even if you don't know it. Most routers and set-top boxes run a Linux version these days, for example. And of course any Android phone.

Both open source and proprietary software is hit and miss. The big difference is that if a proprietary product doesn't measure up, the company goes bankrupt and the product disappears, so you mostly get to see those which are at least modest successes, while for open source you get to see all the in-progress and failed projects too.

[commodorejohn]

Without open source there would be no Gimp, no Open/Libre Office, no Firefox...

Firefox is the only one of those worth its filesize, and that was open-source but also managed and coordinated by a semi-traditional (if nonprofit) company. And even then it got off to a rocky start and had to learn the hard way that, to quote erstwhile Netscape/Mozilla developer Jamie Zawinski:

Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea.  If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of ``open source,'' and have everything magically work out.
 - jwz, "nomo zilla"

As for GIMP, that shıt is the final, monstrous UI nightmare that crystalized all of my various frustrations and finally drove me away from Linux.

My experience is that in recent years, installing  Ubuntu is easier than getting Windows to run reliably at anything than  snails pace, and things like getting it to recognize printers requires  far less voodoo (what a change from a few years ago..).

That's lovely for you then. My experience is that I had to  struggle endlessly with a nightmare of dependency issues, libraries that  just plain broke other libraries, assorted random failures, and a  user/developer culture that lives by the mantras "works for me," "you  don't need that," and "you have the source, fix it yourself!" all in  order to have a full complement of software that wasn't even as good or  as usable as the software I can get for free for my Windows  machine.

More importantly, even if it isn't suitable as a desktop OS for  you, the immense success of open source is demonstrated quite well in  that most of us have at least one device running Linux (or less likely  another open source Unix clone) in our house - even if you don't know  it. Most routers and set-top boxes run a Linux version these days, for  example. And of course any Android phone.

The fact that stripped-down Linux-kernel builds with a custom userland  (i.e. not the nightmare that normal distros use) have seen  success in embedded applications means jack shıt about its usefulness in  any other setting. Maybe it runs my toaster; I don't care, I don't want  to compute on my toaster.

And Android is a perfect example of exactly the point you aren't  trying to make. When the single most important step you can take to make  something good from Linux is to completely jettison  everything except the kernel and roll your own entirely different  replacement, maybe that should tell you something about the quality of  the Linux userland.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I can vouch for having an easy Linux install. I wrote it to DVD, so I didn't have to fiddle with a USB install. After about half an hour KDE was up with all drivers installed.
 Also heaps of third party apps like mp3 player, pdf reader etc.
 It takes about two menu clicks to search for all the installed apps and remove the ones you don't want.

Compared to Windows 7, I have to install the ATI drivers, the sound drivers and also the network drivers.
  I will spend the next hour uninstalling features, installing third party software and adjusting all the default settings.

[commodorejohn]

Oh, any distro will give you a working install fresh from the CD. It's when you decide that you want something different than the default applications that the dependency shıt hits the package-manager fan.

[spirantho]

That was always the problem I had.
Whenever I want to install a repository package under Linux, it's great - just point and click.
But I've found myself in dependency hell just too often - when I want to install a package that's a few years old, or even build from source - it can get really messy trying to find the right package to install.

With AmigaOS, if you need a library to run software, 99.9% of the time it's a matter of an Aminet search, copy the library or whatever and you're ready. With Linux it just gets messier and messier the more you install.

That's my experience anyway.

Personally I'm glad AmigaOS is closed source. It's the best way to keep things consistent and clean - too many times I've seen Open Source stuff cluttered and inconsistent.

All IMHO, naturally!

[Manu]

Inskcape and Gimp, Blender is very cool programs. Takes a few turns to master them, especially Blender but complaining about UI's is like complaining about other peoples rugs. They might look awkward to you at first, but have another look at them and you may start to like them.

[commodorejohn]

No. Just no. Blender is insane, though at least they're making efforts to get better. GIMP is just wretched. I've gone over it in detail in another post, but really it's just inexcusably bad. It doesn't even know where its own windows are. That's braindead. GIMP displays every symptom of having its UI hacked together by programmers who really only care about the backend functionality and only include an interface as a begrudging concession in order to get people to actually use their software, and while it's an extreme case that's really true of the vast majority of Linux software to one extent or another.

[stefcep2]

See i don't get why a computer thats got multiple cpu's running 100x faster clock with massive on board caches, and 500x more memory doesn't feel 10's time faster, and brings up wait pointers more often. What the F-ck is it doing?

 I was drawn to Linux in the hope i would find a system as responsive and as resource efficient as my 68060 A4000. I was told windows was inefficient and bloated compared to Linux.  Well thats bull****.  Windows XP blows out of the water every full featured distro I've tried.

And I'm yet to find and hardware that doesn't have a driver written for XP.  I can't say the same for Linux.  Download, click install and I'm done.

I've wasted too many months of my life getting (simple) things to work in Linux to ever go down that road again.

[ElPolloDiabl]

It's about bottlenecks. CPU to cache. CPU to RAM. RAM to hard drive.
It's also about bloat. A Windows 7 install is 10GB. There are about 40 processes running before you install anything.
If you can hack the OS, you might be able to turn off some of the processes that are slowing things down.
Are you running on an SSD? Very fast for the OS.

[spirantho]

 I was drawn to Linux in the hope i would find a system as responsive and as resource efficient as my 68060 A4000. I was told windows was inefficient and bloated compared to Linux.  Well thats bull****.  Windows XP blows out of the water every full featured distro I've tried.

The days of the popular Linux distros being faster and more efficient are long gone, I'm afraid. Most of the Linux distros like Ubuntu are now actually substantially less responsive than Windows! They've tried so hard to beat Windows they've lost their man in advantage.

That said, I believe there are Linux distros which are centred around speed and responsiveness, and a light weight. Take a look at some of the smaller distros and you may find one more suitable for you.