Does Linux have an Amiga feel?

[nicholas]

"Latent" memories... Hmmmm..


OK, they call it the System i now, but it'll always be an AS/400 to me.. ;-)

desiv

Methinks the marketing drone that thought up the System I moniker was on crack!

Synon 2E was something I never touched,  Magic was the competing "post-4GL" I specialised in.

http://devnet.magicsoftware.com/en/library?book=en/uniPaaS/&page=uniPaaS_for_iSeries_Guide.htm

[nicholas]

I only understand that I used to hear about these expensive Sun and Silicon graphics workstations and I wondered why anyone used them and what they did with them, but it was too expensive to find out. Now it's not too expensive to find out, but I don't know how old any of the hardware on eBay is because these systems aren't familiar to me. As for being "oldschool" I've recently seen videos of Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations with their nice, custom GUIs and they don't look old school to me. I don't know what the difference is between this and totally up to date Sun or Silicon Graphics workstations. Here's a video I watched yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ3eKYXk9EI

Rather than buy some old outdated Sun workstation you could try the Solaris fork Open Indiana on any old PC or VM.

http://openindiana.org

[Madshib]

I guess my answer to this question would be a resounding no.

I demoed a few systems in college(1998) running System V underneath CDE with motif, as they seemed similar to my dad's 3000 running MUI, but did not "feel" like an Amiga.

I use Linux now, and like it(no stones please) but only because I don't have the hardware for running AOS. It is Linux and not UNIX, but they are really very similar. I actually think that Linux has been made to be much more approachable by the community that develops it.

I hope that the Amiga OS goes to a more Open format and adopts a similar strategy of making it more accessible. I miss it.

[AmigaBruno]

if you have a spare PC floating around or one that you are willing to partition- you could always try OpenSolaris  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html
and avoid having to purchase the hardware in the first place.

N

Great! I'd never heard of OpenSolaris before. I've got a laptop with a 320Gb hard drive and a desktop PC with an 80Gb hard drive, but could fit another hard drive to it. I hope I can install Opensolaris on one of them.

[AmigaBruno]

Rather than buy some old outdated Sun workstation you could try the Solaris fork Open Indiana on any old PC or VM.

http://openindiana.org

Thanks a lot for this! I didn't know that Sun had closed and this has saved me lots of money now. I can also stop looking for Sun workstations on eBay.

[apa]

For me, Linux was the natural way to go when Amiga started losing speed. I use both today of course.

[Templario]

No, Linux is different, and use a desktop with icons because it to copy a Windows its natural foe.

[trekiej]

fwiw:
http://xwinman.org/amiwm.php

[fishy_fiz]

I voted no, but really its not as cut and dry as that.
What exactly is an amiga system and how is it setup?
What exactly is a Linux system and how is it setup?

The above is rhetorical of course, but the point being that both are hugely customisable and neither can be said to work a particular way. That's all down to the user. Having said this though a person has to know the systems for this to be true, but at the end of the day both can be built ontop of a very small foundation. It's entirely possible to make either behave similarly, even if theyre typically somewhat different.

So in short, no, but it's ultimately down to the user.

[toRus]

As with most OSes, Linux is not just one thing. It's not just the kernel. It's the system, the interface, the license, the repository, the platform, the community, the philosophy. And no, it does not have an Amiga feel. For the time & effort that has been put on Linux by everybody it has been a complete failure in the desktop and workstation (embedded systems, thin clients, servers, etc is another story). Too much legacy code, no pattern, no consistency, many stubborn or clueless developers with no intuitive ideas or HCI skills. Lack of marketing, not centralised management, forking, openess is NOT the problem with Linux as Micro$oft and Apple insist it is. Strict adherence to the rules and legacy code which leads to stagnation of ideas is.

Hopefully that will change in the future as more young developers have no prior experience on lame L&Fs that forces them to copycat bad ideas from Micro$oft/Apple. Still, there are some key fundamentals in Linux are flawed and need rethinking and redesigning from scratch.

Anyway, we had our chance to do it right when BeOS, QNX, Elate (Java) were around but we didn't. Instead of joining forces with MorphOS people and move forward we turned into a personal vendetta. Instead of retaining the pirate and underground spirit we tried in vain to figure out legislation and IPs for too many years. We now have to accept that a AmigaNG with a rich API and capable of a smooth transition from legacy AmigaOS is not going to happen. We concentrate on emulation for running 20years old software, on recreating limited AOS3.x in order to run it on boring x86 hardware, on doing boring software ports for underpowered and expensive AmigaOS4 hardware. The userbase and the community is shrinking. And it's not always about money or hardware. We need richer APIs and more developers. And we need to decide if it's only retro we want to go or we want something more. I don't get it why FFPGAs should be used strictly for emulation reasons and we shouldn't try to build a non-linux transition path from AmigaOS3/4/MorphOS/AROS to AmigaNG on that hardware.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I have a feeling Linux may get another chance at the desktop. Microsoft
fired their pc software manager and they are now all under the Windows phone division.
Thanks, I'll have a 27inch videophone instead of a computer.

[persia]

@ElPolloDiabl

Who care about the desktop?  Look at the post PC market, both Android and OS X are UNIX based and they control over 90% of the market.

[commodorejohn]

I have a feeling Linux may get another chance at the desktop. Microsoft fired their pc software manager and they are now all under the Windows phone division. Thanks, I'll have a 27inch videophone instead of a computer.

The Windows 8 debacle is an open invitation for a good alternative OS, alright - but so was the Windows Me debacle, and the Windows Vista debacle, and Linux isn't really any better-suited to fill that gap now than it was then, because the guiding forces behind Linux still don't get usability or simplicity of design.

These are people who, faced with the problem of a complex and arcane directory structure in which any one application might conceivably have files spread across child folders of half the root-level directories in the system and installation and uninstallation is consequently a nightmare for less technical users, come up with complex package managers to automate it instead of working towards a less cryptic directory structure. Their response to needless complexity is not to simplify it, but merely to hide it behind an automated interface, because as toRus says, they're slavishly devoted to crufty legacy standards from the days when Unix was driving serial terminals on PDP-11s. Hell, they're only just now starting to move away from xserver.

These are people for whom "user-friendly" is the same thing as "idiot-oriented;" the kind of people who give the world things like Gnome 3. They don't get usability, they don't get ordinary users, and Linux is never going to get anywhere in the desktop market until they do.

[commodorejohn]

Who care about the desktop?  Look at the post PC market, both Android and OS X are UNIX based and they control over 90% of the market.

Keep repeating "post-PC" to yourself, man. Maybe one of these days the power of belief will make it true!

[Mrs Beanbag]

These are people for whom "user-friendly" is the same thing as "idiot-oriented;" the kind of people who give the world things like Gnome 3. They don't get usability, they don't get ordinary users, and Linux is never going to get anywhere in the desktop market until they do.

Here here.

Back in the day I used to run Slackware with Fluxbox windows manager, because it ran nicely on my low-spec PC. But it had its shortcomings in the user experience department, so taking up the Open Source spirit I thought I'd delve into it and fix some things myself. And nobody was interested. I added something so simple as a button on the toolbar to return to the desktop, and nobody saw the point of it because there is a keyboard shortcut for that already, why would you want to use the mouse? The word "shortcut" ought to imply that it's supposed to be the alternative way to do things. I had people seriously tell me that since Fluxbox was intended to be lightweight, making it user-friendly was missing the point somehow, and if I wanted usability why don't I just use Gnome or KDE?

So, frankly, as for the "fix it yourself" mentality, well I can do that but if that's the response then screw it. I don't want to spend weeks staring at somebody else's poorly-documented code trying to work out where to put a single line fix that would have taken the maintainers five minutes, only to be told I shouldn't even have bothered.

[nicholas]

Here here.

Back in the day I used to run Slackware with Fluxbox windows manager, because it ran nicely on my low-spec PC. But it had its shortcomings in the user experience department, so taking up the Open Source spirit I thought I'd delve into it and fix some things myself. And nobody was interested. I added something so simple as a button on the toolbar to return to the desktop, and nobody saw the point of it because there is a keyboard shortcut for that already, why would you want to use the mouse? The word "shortcut" ought to imply that it's supposed to be the alternative way to do things. I had people seriously tell me that since Fluxbox was intended to be lightweight, making it user-friendly was missing the point somehow, and if I wanted usability why don't I just use Gnome or KDE?

So, frankly, as for the "fix it yourself" mentality, well I can do that but if that's the response then screw it. I don't want to spend weeks staring at somebody else's poorly-documented code trying to work out where to put a single line fix that would have taken the maintainers five minutes, only to be told I shouldn't even have bothered.

Feature!=Fix