Classic AmigaOS On Modern Hardware - A Critical Analysis

[TeamBlackFox]

Seems like Agami has some of the right ideas but I want to refute one in particular:

> Amiga OS is the only OS I have had the pleasure of knowing that did this well, without the overbearing control

I'll have to disagree here. AmigaOS is HEAVILY biased towards the user. Consider that UNIX was developed in the 1970s, and with it and Berkeley UNIX you get the following things Amiga still lacks:

Memory Protection
Privilege separation
Multi-user support

Plus there is a balance between the user and the developer in UNIX. Just most people are too dense to see it. Let me explain, but first:

> Don't even get me started on Unix and Linux.

Please don't make the mistake of blobbing these together. GNU/Linux is horribly biased to developers, and it promotes bad, bloated, lazy code.

Modern UNIX descendants like System V and BSD are primarily hindered by the horrible display server that is X11. Each variant of BSD and System V variant addressed this differently:

Sun developed NeWS, a Display Postscript variant, for SunOS, their Berkeley UNIX derived OS ( Berkeley UNIX refers to historical versions of BSD here ) but it failed horribly in the market due to X11 being very entrenched

NeXT Computers developed their variant of Display Postscript. Even though NeXTSTEP is not a true Berkeley UNIX derivative ( Based off Mach, not UNIX ) it does maintain UNIX compatibility, and their Display Postscript server technology was passed into OS X as Quartz.

SGI developed XSGI, their variant of X11 which addressed its flaws by optimising it for SGI hardware and stripping out what wasn't needed.

The others adopted X11 and dealt with the shortcomings. AMIX being a System V derivative was among these, notably.

However with Wayland under development we should see all the inherent flaws of X11 be corrected. Wayland is a proper display protocol which doesn't treat all hardware like a big dumb framebuffer ( What X11 does without the hacks like DRI and such that people have been working on )

The reason I say UNIX proper can balance user and developer focus is simple:

Its well known that UNIX itself is one of the most developer friendly OSes of all time.

Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.

The biggest issue in my opinion today is that most consumers are morons and are afraid of working in the console. Thats why I point newbies to UNIX to FISH, the Friendly Interactive Shell. Useless for scripting, but really assists new users by being actually helpful and interactive rather than biased towards developers. You throw together Wayland X Enlightenment X FISH and most users after the initial learning curve won't have any issues.

Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.

I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.

I rest my case in the matter at this point. Take it however you will.

[KimmoK]

Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.

I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.

Silly how heavy Enlightenment was on 200Mhz PPro. Time has done miracles.
I tried bodhi on 10year old 2.4Ghz Celeron machine, it was pretty fast even without HW accelerated graphics. But the the SW support stopped and new bodhi is too picky with HW, so:
Is there a live CD to try DragonFlyBSD + Enlightenment combo?

[OlafS3]

Seems like Agami has some of the right ideas but I want to refute one in particular:

> Amiga OS is the only OS I have had the pleasure of knowing that did this well, without the overbearing control

I'll have to disagree here. AmigaOS is HEAVILY biased towards the user. Consider that UNIX was developed in the 1970s, and with it and Berkeley UNIX you get the following things Amiga still lacks:

Memory Protection
Privilege separation
Multi-user support

Plus there is a balance between the user and the developer in UNIX. Just most people are too dense to see it. Let me explain, but first:

> Don't even get me started on Unix and Linux.

Please don't make the mistake of blobbing these together. GNU/Linux is horribly biased to developers, and it promotes bad, bloated, lazy code.

Modern UNIX descendants like System V and BSD are primarily hindered by the horrible display server that is X11. Each variant of BSD and System V variant addressed this differently:

Sun developed NeWS, a Display Postscript variant, for SunOS, their Berkeley UNIX derived OS ( Berkeley UNIX refers to historical versions of BSD here ) but it failed horribly in the market due to X11 being very entrenched

NeXT Computers developed their variant of Display Postscript. Even though NeXTSTEP is not a true Berkeley UNIX derivative ( Based off Mach, not UNIX ) it does maintain UNIX compatibility, and their Display Postscript server technology was passed into OS X as Quartz.

SGI developed XSGI, their variant of X11 which addressed its flaws by optimising it for SGI hardware and stripping out what wasn't needed.

The others adopted X11 and dealt with the shortcomings. AMIX being a System V derivative was among these, notably.

However with Wayland under development we should see all the inherent flaws of X11 be corrected. Wayland is a proper display protocol which doesn't treat all hardware like a big dumb framebuffer ( What X11 does without the hacks like DRI and such that people have been working on )

The reason I say UNIX proper can balance user and developer focus is simple:

Its well known that UNIX itself is one of the most developer friendly OSes of all time.

Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.

The biggest issue in my opinion today is that most consumers are morons and are afraid of working in the console. Thats why I point newbies to UNIX to FISH, the Friendly Interactive Shell. Useless for scripting, but really assists new users by being actually helpful and interactive rather than biased towards developers. You throw together Wayland X Enlightenment X FISH and most users after the initial learning curve won't have any issues.

Enlightenment is my choice of GUI due to its minimalism, yet simplicity of use while being eye appealing and not a resource hog.

I am far from a critic of Amiga, I'm an advocate actually, but I think its best chance of not fading into obscurity relies on the promotion of DragonFlyBSD.

I rest my case in the matter at this point. Take it however you will.

I have nothing against Linux but I do not see how DragonFlyBSD will help the Amiga platform. We had a lot of people recently who promoted Linux, one company relabeled PCs with a special Linux distribution on it, one person promoted his own distribution, you are now recommending your favorite distro here. We all use PCs with Windows/MacOS or even Linux now for our everyday work. You said what are the shortcomings compared to modern platforms but we are all aware of that and they are addressed already in different projects (except MP). In good marketing you do not stress the limitations but search for the strength and how to go on. Are you interested to invest time (like many here do) in the project (whatever platform)?

[TeamBlackFox]

I have nothing against Linux but I do not see how DragonFlyBSD will help  the Amiga platform. We had a lot of people recently who promoted Linux,  one company relabeled PCs with a special Linux distribution on it, one  person promoted his own distribution, you are now recommending your  favorite distro here. We all use PCs with Windows/MacOS or even Linux  now for our everyday work. You said what are the shortcomings compared  to modern platforms but we are all aware of that and they are addressed  already in different projects (except MP). In good marketing you do not  stress the limitations but search for the strength and how to go on. Are  you interested to invest time (like many here do) in the project  (whatever platform)?    

First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.

DragonFlyBSD is designed as a high performance UNIX OS that is inspired by the design of AmigaOS. Which in my opinion means it has the best chance of ever bringing the good aspects of AmigaOS to the modern UNIX market. Its design as an OS is such that it is suitable for servers and workstations, with limitations on driver support.

I'm not saying I want to invest time in developing for it - first off my experience with C and code in general is pretty weak. I develop in my spare time where I'm not working 50-55 hours a week at my dayjob as a data center tech for Dell/MS Azure - its a hobby and a limited one at that.

I'm merely championing the benefits DragonFlyBSD brings to the table and once Wayland makes its way to the BSDs, that will be the time for me or someone else to strike with this. Its not the right time and I'm not currently in a position financially or experience wise, but maybe when Wayland is matured the situation will be different. We will see until then.

[agami]

First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.
...

From the DragonFly BSD Web Site:
"DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and Linux."

As you acknowledge, X11 is a dog; This is where the user end has been let down of the UNIX/Linux/BSD OS paradigm. Kernel modulation and X11 are not user friendly aspects of any of the OSs that use it.

Wayland, when finished baking, may tip the scales somewhat, but there are still many aspects of UNIX/Linux/BSD OS paradigms that are not abstracted enough to make them worthy of the description "user friendly".

[amigadave]

Oh, I'm looking to get a PowerPC card for my in the mail 3000, but that will be later on once I'm in  better financial shape to afford one. I also would like an X1k but if I ever get the cash for one .......

If cost is a consideration, I would suggest that you NOT bother buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator card for your A3000D.  There is very little software for the Amiga that uses the 603e/604 PPC chip on those accelerators and if you wish to run that small amount of PPC Amiga software, there is another alternative that is much cheaper, and gives you additional options as well.

I am referring to running MorphOS3.6 on a G4 or G5 Mac model that is supported, as MorphOS3.6 has a good deal of compatibility with much of the WarpUp & PowerUp Amiga PPC software and demos.

The cost of those old Phase5 PPC & 680x0 dual CPU accelerators is prohibitively high still, and there is no guarantee that such boards will work much longer (or work at all when you receive it).  Plus, the performance of the 603e and 604 PPC's is far below what you will get from any of the G4 or G5 PPC's in a used Mac.  Lastly, the A3000D is cramped for space and the cooling for your proposed Phase5 PPC accelerator will be limited at best.

Just my 2 cents of advice, as an Amiga user who has owned every model of Amiga made, including a couple of those expensive Phase5 PPC accelerators, regarding you possibly buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator for your A3000D computer.

[wawrzon]

i must here confirm the opinion pf the previous poster. ppc cards for amiga are rather neat collectibles than actually practical. the best thing they offer os a 40mb/s scsi controller. there is little use one can make of ppc on amiga, just few datatypes and few applications take advantage of ot. i have never seen morphos on action but it is probably better to invest in it or even in the native os4 hardware, however the latter comes at a higher cost again.

as for bsd, i can understand your personal bias. there is quite well maintained netbsd for amiga, with a lot of native hardware support:
http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/amiga/
but im sorry, i dont think, that it somehow helps to conserve amiga (concepts) for the future. it starts already with installation procedure (i did not came much further beyond anyway admittedly). on bsd i have to spend at least half an hour to get my drive set and basic installation up and running. with aros in comparison i just decompress the system image to the disk and it should start on any amiga.

[guest11527]

Once the shortcomings of X11 are gone we are left with only one major issue - a lack of a standardised toolkit. That can be addressed down the line, for now ditching X11 is by far the most imperative issue, its almost 20 years late after all.

Well, of course not! There are probably *too many* standardized toolkits for X11. The athena widget set was probably the first. Motif another. Nowadays, we have gtk and Qt as the two most prominent. I love standards! There are so many to pick from!  The reason for all that is that the "cut" between the display manager and the application is made in a different way, compared to AmigaOs. AmigaOs makes the cut at "widget level". The operating system provides standardized widgets, the application uses them, and all interactivity goes through the Os level in the form of high-level events: Gadget pressed, menu openend.  X11 works differently. The cut is made at "raw event level". The application receives events like "mouse pressed", and triggers activites as "draw line". Of course, no application ever wants to use events at this level to build a graphical interface, and thus X toolkits help to implement high-level elements like boxes, scrollbars and so on. However, the boxes, gadgets, menus and scrollbars are all implemented at the application side, and each application can pick whatever toolkit it likes to implement such functionalities. The result of which is the very diverse universe of user interface designs and UI toolkits.  The reason for this decision back then (at Xerox) was to keep the terminal (the X server) as lightweight as possible, and rather offload anything complex to the X client, which would be a stronger multi-user mainframe machine. It did make a lot of sense.   AmigaOs does not have this issue - it was "designed" as a single-user single-machine system to begin with, so the problem did not even appear.

[buzz]

First off BSD is NOT LINUX! Please use proper terminology and don't lump BSD users with the GNU/Linux projects. We don't get along with them at all.

no - you don't. Most people put the ridiculous platform wars behind them. Most software I am interested in works well on BSD and flavours of Linux so what's the problem?

It's really stupid to not get along with someone because they use a different operating system from you.. You realise that right ?

[ElPolloDiabl]

Can I ask what the dire need for multi-user support is? Isn't there a third party add on that will accomplish this?

[OlafS3]

Can I ask what the dire need for multi-user support is? Isn't there a third party add on that will accomplish this?

I know why Linux and Windows need it. Why does Amiga need at all?

[TeamBlackFox]

If cost is a consideration, I would suggest that you NOT bother buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator card for your A3000D.  There is very little software for the Amiga that uses the 603e/604 PPC chip on those accelerators and if you wish to run that small amount of PPC Amiga software, there is another alternative that is much cheaper, and gives you additional options as well.

I am referring to running MorphOS3.6 on a G4 or G5 Mac model that is supported, as MorphOS3.6 has a good deal of compatibility with much of the WarpUp & PowerUp Amiga PPC software and demos.

The cost of those old Phase5 PPC & 680x0 dual CPU accelerators is prohibitively high still, and there is no guarantee that such boards will work much longer (or work at all when you receive it).  Plus, the performance of the 603e and 604 PPC's is far below what you will get from any of the G4 or G5 PPC's in a used Mac.  Lastly, the A3000D is cramped for space and the cooling for your proposed Phase5 PPC accelerator will be limited at best.

Just my 2 cents of advice, as an Amiga user who has owned every model of Amiga made, including a couple of those expensive Phase5 PPC accelerators, regarding you possibly buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator for your A3000D computer.

What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?

Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.

[Boot_WB]

What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?

Any accelerator for the A3000/4000 slot which allows ram expansion is going to cost you.
Imho the Cyberstorm mk3 is the sweet spot - you still get the 40MB/s scsi bus, the fast and wide ram bus, and the 68060, but without the extra complication and heat production of the 604e + associated components.

Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.

All true*, especially considering the unused processing power of the quad G5. For me, a single processor of a dual 2.7GHz G5 should be plenty enough for now though (ideal machine would be a single processor 2.7, but I'm not sure the DP G5 logicboard willl even operate with only one processor module present).

* Depends how you define 'the hardware.' Driver support for onboard peripherals is mostly complete now - certainly for most of the the G4 range of models/form factors, not sure about the G5 onboard goodies, as mine is still sat on the side awaiting a coolant change before installing MorphOS.

It'd be nice to be able to have more Ram available, but it's only Odyssey that really eats that up for me.

[OlafS3]

What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?

Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.

then take a look at this:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arix-OS/414578091930728

and:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arix-OS/414578091930728

as I said... in work

[TeamBlackFox]

Thanks for the links Olaf I'll take a look at it after work ( They don't care as long as I don't go on facebook. )

[OlafS3]

Thanks for the links Olaf I'll take a look at it after work ( They don't care as long as I don't go on facebook. )

I have not found another link. It is showing SMP working in ARIX (the commercial version of AROS) with two cores. Additional AROS using Linux kernel for driver support. There is also a 64bit version of AROS supporting (if I remember right) right now 128 GB RAM. Only MP is not possible at the moment but also promised for the future. There are versions for X86/X64/ARM/PPC and 68k. ARIX is in test right now so if you are interested you could certainly take part (after signing NDA).

Aeros is running using a Linux kernel (Linux hosted) with Linux Apps and WINE added. And then there is AMINUX (my distribution) running in FS-UAE started on a stick (with Linux) but not updated yet. Perhaps a more interesting playground for you.