Does Linux have an Amiga feel?

[stefcep2]

I'm not entirely following the Linux bashing that is preceding this post by several comments. It is a multi-purpose OS that has many different flavors giving the end user options. If you don't like what one offers, try another one. It took me six months to find the right distro for me.

I can agree that an OS can be built so it is more suited in a server environment, or for use in specific devices.

And searching for the right apps for us, yes, we all have to do that.

But if you are going to develop and promote an OS as a desktop OS, its not reasonable that a user should be searching to find the right OS flavour to meet their needs.

The fact it took you 6 MONTHS to find the right OS-if that doesn't scream:"Houston, we have a problem", then I don't know what does!

[Crumb]

Amithlon: Best Linux Distro Ever.

[nicholas]

Amithlon: Best Linux Distro at the moment.

Fixed that for you.

[Mrs Beanbag]

But if you are going to develop and promote an OS as a desktop OS, its not reasonable that a user should be searching to find the right OS flavour to meet their needs.

The fact it took you 6 MONTHS to find the right OS-if that doesn't scream:"Houston, we have a problem", then I don't know what does!

I think only Ubuntu is really going for that at the moment.

Mind you when people say to me "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" I roll my eyes because, well, whose desktop? I had to get a Windows 7 laptop for work lately and I absolutely hate its guts. It reboots itself without asking, even when the lid is shut! And I had apps open!

[Madshib]

I can agree that an OS can be built so it is more suited in a server environment, or for use in specific devices.

And searching for the right apps for us, yes, we all have to do that.

But if you are going to develop and promote an OS as a desktop OS, its not reasonable that a user should be searching to find the right OS flavour to meet their needs.

The fact it took you 6 MONTHS to find the right OS-if that doesn't scream:"Houston, we have a problem", then I don't know what does!

It took me 6 months to find the right distribution because there are many options to choose from. I don't think that choice is a bad thing at all. In fact, I think that it speaks volumes to the the kernel's flexibility of implementation. What is truly a downside, is the large amount of stuff that comes along with the kernel, making it well over 100mg at this point.

[Mr_Bumpy]

Long-time lurker here. One of the things that people often don't take into account is that Mac OS and AmigaOS are both written to run on specific hardware, whereas people are trying to run Linux and Windows on a much wider selection of hardware. This isn't a problem so much for Windows due to its market dominance, but there is a lot of hardware that simply has no official support under Linux, and this leads to a lot of people searching for solutions that are sometimes quite complicated. Then desktop Linux gets blamed for a bad user experience because of this.

I am not going to tell you that Linux is perfect by any means. All OS's have their problems. For me it comes down to: which battles am I willing to fight? It's easy to be tribalistic, standing in one corner and exaggeratedly bashing the OS on the other side (Winblow$ BSODs, LAWLZ!... Linux?? So I'll have to recompile my kernel every two hours?, etc.) In the end, I made a decision based on what was the best fit for me. My OS doesn't have to be "the superior OS" for me to feel good about myself for my choice.

[nicholas]

Long-time lurker here. One of the things that people often don't take into account is that Mac OS and AmigaOS are both written to run on specific hardware, whereas people are trying to run Linux and Windows on a much wider selection of hardware. This isn't a problem so much for Windows due to its market dominance, but there is a lot of hardware that simply has no official support under Linux, and this leads to a lot of people searching for solutions that are sometimes quite complicated. Then desktop Linux gets blamed for a bad user experience because of this.

I am not going to tell you that Linux is perfect by any means. All OS's have their problems. For me it comes down to: which battles am I willing to fight? It's easy to be tribalistic, standing in one corner and exaggeratedly bashing the OS on the other side (Winblow$ BSODs, LAWLZ!... Linux?? So I'll have to recompile my kernel every two hours?, etc.) In the end, I made a decision based on what was the best fit for me. My OS doesn't have to be "the superior OS" for me to feel good about myself for my choice.

A rational choice of tools based on what fits your workflow best?  How dare you come here with such reasonable thinking?!?!Eleventyone!!1!

[polyp2000]

It took me 6 months to find the right distribution because there are many options to choose from. I don't think that choice is a bad thing at all. In fact, I think that it speaks volumes to the the kernel's flexibility of implementation. What is truly a downside, is the large amount of stuff that comes along with the kernel, making it well over 100mg at this point.

I think that comment regarding the size of the kernel is a bit of an overgeneralisation. Im not sure where you get your figures - it might be useful to back that up!
(Im running raring ringtail and my kernel is 5.2mb [stock])

I also assume you are not referring to the size of the kernel source (which would contain support for a tonne of hardware , GPU , CPU / Architecture - this naturally wouldnt be included in a compiled kernel)

By and large most common distributions may well have kernels that could be considered larger than needs be - the reason behind this as distribution packagers often compile a kernel that includes a broad range of support for hardware. Some of this may be modules that are loaded at runtime and some maybe compiled into the kernel.

In the case of a fixed platform like the amiga a linux kernel compiled only to support known hardware configuration im sure would be pretty f**n tiny.

I just thought i would provide the bigger picture.

N.

[Madshib]

I think that comment regarding the size of the kernel is a bit of an overgeneralisation. Im not sure where you get your figures - it might be useful to back that up!
(Im running raring ringtail and my kernel is 5.2mb [stock])

I also assume you are not referring to the size of the kernel source (which would contain support for a tonne of hardware , GPU , CPU / Architecture - this naturally wouldnt be included in a compiled kernel)

By and large most common distributions may well have kernels that could be considered larger than needs be - the reason behind this as distribution packagers often compile a kernel that includes a broad range of support for hardware. Some of this may be modules that are loaded at runtime and some maybe compiled into the kernel.

In the case of a fixed platform like the amiga a linux kernel compiled only to support known hardware configuration im sure would be pretty f**n tiny.

I just thought i would provide the bigger picture.

N.

I am referring to the kernel source. I double checked, It is approximately 70 meg now(unmodified/non-optimized/not hardened). Sorry for the confusion.

PS I don't back things up because if it's on the internet, it must be true

[Crumb]

@polyp2000

why not using a directory with drivers and leaving kernel as is? that way you could update easily your OS without worrying much about drivers. I have listened countless times ridiculous stuff like "I'm going to recompile the Linux kernel in order to use the TV*capture card" because hw didn't work even if you copied the damn driver to the driver directory.

I think that having a small kernel and a directories for drivers and libraries would be much more amiga-like, you could update the OS without requiring recompiling all the kernel&drivers. Updating Linux/Android phones could be easier too: you could have a partition named "hal_and_drivers" and all the specific hw stuff there and to upgrade your OS version you could leave that directory as is and simply copy the updated OS to the os/ directory. I don't think it's asking too much. But it seems it is since when you buy an Android phone you have to rely on goodwill of 3rd party kernel recompilers as Google and the phone producer will forget about you in 18 months, Android drivers are so badly planned that they had to change driver format and instead of adding functionality and allowing drivers to report the capabilities they have and allowing older but powerful phones to run latest version of the OS the agreed with phone companies to let their users rot. I hope Ubuntu OS for phones is better, at least I hope it won't require any JITted/interpretted language to work (bad idea for a mobile device IMHO).

[Iggy]

Well Crumb,
That argument has been going on for decades and even Linus Torvalds disagrees with us..
But I wholly agree. Nothing should be in the kernel except the core of the OS.
Anything else you should be able to dynamically load. (or unload).
This works really well for real time process control oriented OS'.
And I've found that this principle work good for general purpose OS' as well.

[haywirepc]

There is something most people miss...

Linux can have whatever look and feel you want.

everything you see or interact with can be endlessly customized.

If you want it to look exactly like amiga, you can do that. Exactly like osx, you can do that, windows, beos, riscos, whatever you want.

I have always prefered to take things I like from many different systems and make my own customized desktop.

So if linux does not work or look how you prefer... Its your fault.

Distros are just supposed to be a starting point in my view. I have yet to ever see a distro and think yes this is the way I want things. Rather I pick one that I can customize my way.

I love linux, runs most windows progs fine, amiga programs with uae fine, dos programs with dosbox fine... And of course any linux apps.

I went from red hat to suse to vectorlinux to ubuntu and lately mint. Each time, some of my desktop was highly influenced by my old love : amiga.

[commodorejohn]

There is something most people miss...

Linux can have whatever look and feel you want.

Oh, not this crap again...

everything you see or interact with can be endlessly customized.

Only to the extent that it will let you customize it. (And don't trot out the "Use the Source!" mantra; if I wanted to rebuild every damn thing I use in order to make it what I want it to be, I'd just write my own damn operating system.)

If you want it to look exactly like amiga, you can do that. Exactly like osx, you can do that, windows, beos, riscos, whatever you want.

Yeah, yeah, you can throw any coat of paint imaginable over software that remains exactly the same regardless. Tell me, how do I customize the behavior to anywhere near this extent? How do I get all the software to use human-readable sort in directory listings instead of plain ASCII sort? How do I make Alt toggle me into and out of menu context without having to press a specific menu accelerator, as it works in Windows? How do I disable raise-on-focus in window manager Foo, if I want Amiga-style behavior? How do I apply any changes consistently when there are at least three major UI toolkits and any number of window managers and desktop environments?

The extent to which the Linux developer community has focused on mere graphical skinnability as a stand-in for real customization is symptomatic of the fact that they just don't get usability. If they did they would understand that making Linux look like something it doesn't act like is, simply, deception. (To be fair, it's self-deception in the case where the user is the one trying to pretend that throwing an Amiga coat of paint over things changes anything about the actual user experience, but in any case, it doesn't make Linux a different thing any more than putting on a slinky flesh-tone dress would make me Marilyn Monroe.)

So if linux does not work or look how you prefer... Its your fault.

Of course it's our fault. It's always our fault, always the fault of the user, because it's just impossible that it could ever be Linux at fault. Linux is pure, Linux is blameless. After all, if the user would just force themselves to believe that they're having a good experience, they wouldn't have anything to complain about!

And you wonder why desktop Linux hasn't even cracked Apple's level of market share. Maybe it's because every time anyone has a problem with it, you tell them thatit's their fault for not liking it.

[haywirepc]

Relax...

To create any of the things you mentioned can be done completely without recompiling the kernel, or any programming at all...

With ui enhancements, patches, programs, there's a hot key program add on (or 10 of them) You, like many just got frustrated (I've been there) before finding the things to make it work the way you want.

Of course no system is perfect, I don't know anyone who just installed linux and was able to make it do everything they wanted. Takes time, learning, finding new progs and enhancements to facilitate the way you want it to work.

I heard someone say once, (and its very true) Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Its a tradeoff I guess. I kinda like modding my system. With puppy, I keep backups of my entire system, so if I try something and can't remove or fix it back to where I started, I go to the backups I make weekly.

With mint I just copy off my directories, my custom launchers and the like and can remake my usual desktop pretty quickly.

Linux can be extremely frustrating, for a long time it was for me. After awhile though, it gets more comfortable. To be honest I still hate the directory structure. And I especially hate not knowing where some things are or get copied... I hate how it copies various files in various directories when installing something instead of just one directory for each application. (but this is unix)

This can be minimized however if you know how.

To be honest, I wish someone would just use linux as an under the hood solution for drivers and such and simplified everything else, like beos or amigaos on top... AEROS just may be this... But I haven't given it serious time yet...

Still for a free system cobbled together, linux is pretty goddam good.

[Mrs Beanbag]

How do I get all the software to use human-readable sort in directory listings instead of plain ASCII sort?

How do I do it on Amiga? I have lots of Amiga software that behaves this way.

How do I make Alt toggle me into and out of menu context without having to press a specific menu accelerator, as it works in Windows?

How do you do it on Amiga?

How do I disable raise-on-focus in window manager Foo, if I want Amiga-style behavior?

Actually this is an option in every window manager I've used. How do you do it in Windows?

How do I apply any changes consistently when there are at least three major UI toolkits and any number of window managers and desktop environments?

Well you only ever have one window manager running at once. But the Amiga always had that problem too. The widget types that come with Intuition are very basic and not very customisable, so people made MUI and ClassAct/ReAction, and NewIcons.

The extent to which the Linux developer community has focused on mere graphical skinnability as a stand-in for real customization is symptomatic of the fact that they just don't get usability. If they did they would understand that making Linux look like something it doesn't act like is, simply, deception.

This much is true. I think the average Linux developer doesn't even see the point of usability, let alone understand it. They think you just have to make it look more like Windows and it won't scare the average user off, then throw in more special effects, because "real" users just want to use the terminal anyway.

At least Linux has a decent terminal, which is more than you can say for Windows. And you can always fall back on old fashioned text mode if your X install breaks.

[psxphill]

At least Linux has a decent terminal, which is more than you can say for Windows. And you can always fall back on old fashioned text mode if your X install breaks.

Windows has a better shell than Linux.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell
 

I love linux, runs most windows progs fine, amiga programs with uae fine, dos programs with dosbox fine... And of course any linux app.

Windows has better compatibility with Windows software and can also run any Linux app. http://www.colinux.org/
All with industry wide driver support.