Classic AmigaOS On Modern Hardware - A Critical Analysis

[TeamBlackFox]

I see. I'm not into that setup because anything remotely resembling old DOS-type OSes with drive lettering or otherwise aggravates me. That is why on AmigaOS I only use the GUI and never the console for anything. On UNIX its the exact opposite - I use the console more often and the GUI is just a window manager/basic settings system overlayed, most of my control remains in the terminals.

[amigadave]

Not at all.

My favourite UNIX variant is SGI's IRIX which is very Amiga-like on the frontend - same market, different ends of the market though ( SGIs were 10k USD and up )

I just prefer the setup of UNIX and its philosophy ( Everything is a file, device nodes and commandline tools ) But I like AmigaOS for graphical stuff.

Ideally a UNIX variant like IRIX or DragonFly BSD with a Wayland compositor in the vein of Ambient, Zune or Workbench would be very ideal along with graphical tools for those who prefer GUIs ( I'm perfectly fine with console configurations but I know others arent )

Both these variants of UNIX differ from other UNIX in a few key areas:

IRIX is very optimized for graphical usage and therefore supports console and graphics usage equally. DragonFly BSD is still under heavy development and until it reaches the 5 or 6 release mark it will still not be ready for desktop use ( It works great for servers )

Both are designed to fix what others broke and did wrong.

Unfortunately IRIX has been frozen since 2006, but tha

There was a brief moment in time when the AmigaOS was supposed to be updated with the QNX kernel underneath, and I often wondered how that might have turned out.  There is no way of telling what would have happened, but I believe that we all would have been better off if that deal with QNX would have worked out.  Maybe Amiga could have made a comeback at that time, as it was shortly after Commodore and then Escom went bankrupt, when Gateway purchased the IP and patents, if my memory is correct.  Or was it after Commodore but before Escom?  Maybe this new AmigaOS based on QNX would have been more Unix like and similar to what you would like it to be?

My brother-in-law has his masters degree in computer science and is retired now, but he plays with several SGI systems like the ones shown in your signature.  He has no interest in any Amiga or its variants.

[Iggy]

Well Dave,
The QNX micro-kernel is pretty cool.
I was an OS-9 68K vendor in the late 80's and early 90's and I'm still a strong supporter of that concept.
Out of the three NG OS', only MorphOS uses a micro-kernel.
And as there is a stated intent to move it to 64 bit/SMP capability once an ISA change is made, our community still could evolve.

[Thorham]

To TeamBlackFox:

Your example is about normal file access. Where's the 'everything is a file' thing in that? If that's what it means, then it's not true. Everything is a file implies EVERYTHING, and that's why it sounds awful.

[TeamBlackFox]

To TeamBlackFox:

Your example is about normal file access. Where's the 'everything is a file' thing in that? If that's what it means, then it's not true. Everything is a file implies EVERYTHING, and that's why it sounds awful.

Well all devices on your busses be they PCI/SCSI/ATAPI or what have you are accessed as files ( Specifically called device nodes ), /proc or /sys uses files like /proc/cpuinfo to communicate info about the hardware, directories are a file with a special bit set on them indicating they're a directory, interprocess communication is handled by socket files, pipe files and other things.

How many more examples do I have to list? The "Everything is a file" is a good thing not a bad. Unless you like accessing devices with raw binary streams and having to rely on the assumption that no part of the data stream is corrupted so your binary parser can parse the data... I don't know what you're getting at here - what the hell makes this a bad thing?

[Thorham]

what the hell makes this a bad thing?

I wrote that it sounds bad

It just seems odd to me that you'd make things that essentially aren't files, files. Inter-process communication is one such thing: Why not just send a message? Why have this work through a file system?

Perhaps it's time for me to use google

[TeamBlackFox]

I wrote that it sounds bad

It just seems odd to me that you'd make things that essentially aren't files, files. Inter-process communication is one such thing: Why not just send a message? Why have this work through a file system?

Perhaps it's time for me to use google

Sorry I took that the wrong way I suppose (=.=). Message passing is not traditionally the way UNIX does things, both methods have their benefits and drawbacks. This is why DragonFly BSD is a good thing - because they're adding things such as message passing. Its an interesting BSD/AmigaOS hybrid in some manners.

[Fats]

This is why DragonFly BSD is a good thing - because they're adding things such as message passing. Its an interesting BSD/AmigaOS hybrid in some manners.

I researched DragonFlyBSD briefly and from what I thought to understand the Amiga-style message passing is only used in kernel and is not for user space. That's why I prefer to work on AROS.

[guest11527]

How many more examples do I have to list? The "Everything is a file" is a good thing not a bad.

Unix is, however, surprisingly inconsistent with "everthing is a file". I always wondered why network interfaces are not files. There is no /dev/eth0. Instead, you need to rely on "ifconfig" to do the magic for you. Network connections are not files either, they are sockets. Once opened, you can access them as files, but they do not show up in the directory hierarchy. Also pretty inconsistent.
AmigaOs is also pretty inconsistent. There is the "exec device layer" that defines the physical interface, and then there is the "Tripos Handler layer" that defines something similar one hierarchy up. They also use completely incompatible interfaces and communication protocols (IORequest vs. Packet) - mostly because CAOS was not ready in time.
In the end, assigns are IMHO less powerful than mount points. You can link in every device in almost every place in the file hierarchy, it integrates a separate entity as sub-part into the whole hierarchy. Assigns are quite the opposide: They take a sub-entity of the file hierarchy and move it top-level as a new "device-type" thing.

[bison]

Indeed. What hardware do you run? I'd be happy to tell you if its supported. Also HAMMERFS on either MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 would be awesome - it would bring ZFS like behaviours to Amigans. Imagine: snapshots, logical volumes, software RAID - the possibilities!

If I were to build a new box from parts, capable of running DragonFly BSD, what would you recommend?  What should I look out for?  Graphics, sound, and wireless need to work.  Ideally it should be capable of running AROS as well.

[psxphill]

Why have this work through a file system?

There are pro's and con's. If everything is a file you can talk to anything just by opening the file and call a handful of api's on it.
 
With an mmu comes memory mapped files, then access then just becomes memory accesses.
 
If everything isn't a file, then you have to open a different library before opening the thing and potentially calling functions similar to those on a file but just called something else.
 

mostly because CAOS was not ready in time.

I got the impression it wasn't just not ready in time, it wasn't being worked on at all.
 
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
 
"CAOS was contracted out, for the most part, to a company that felt Unix was a better choice and didn't buy into my design. They became history when they started using their Sun development systems for other projects, not the Amiga higher level OS functions. "
 
The CAOS design wasn't great in places, it would have taken someone with real talent to knock it into shape. It's more likely to have ended up worse than what Metacomco delivered.