The Amiga has used preemptive multitasking from day one. It has lots of different processes and tasks. Almost everything including most of AmigaOS works in user space which is much faster than switching to supervisor mode for everything. It's not as secure or crash proof because of it but it is fast and it works well enough when programs don't misbehave.
AmigaOS uses cooperative multitasking with a preemptive scheduler. Where it falls short of the definition of preemptive multitasking is memory protection and task protection. Without both, you're going to have badly behaved programs trashing daemons, other programs or the kernel itself. On UNIX, Windows NT and Linux, for example, the worst a badly behaved program will usually do is coredump with a segmentation fault, vs on the Amiga where it will lock up the system or send it into a guru meditation error. Also, the microkernel model has been shown to not always be the most efficient model around: the Mach microkernel has several design flaws which hinder performance vs the System V or BSD kernel designs, which are both monolithic in design
MIPS has the worst code density of any modern processor. The code size is more than twice that of 68k code. I can understand why you need more memory. Can you even boot your Octane with the same amount of memory as the Amiga 3000? My Amiga 3000 came with 2 (or 3 MB?) of memory and I could do a lot with it. I have a 3000T with a little over 100MB of memory with RTG gfx and I can do just about anything I need to with that while multitasking. I can't imagine 1GB of memory not being enough for 95%+ of users on an Amiga.
The 64 bit hype sells computers. Bloated software sells computers. The desktop computer seems to be disappearing though. I wouldn't say 32 bit is dead for embedded and electrical devices. I know a 68k Amiga could do everything a pad and lower end laptop could do with less memory. Most powerful 68k Amiga computers have 64 or 128 MB of memory with happy Amiga users and you are saying that 4GB of memory is not enough for an Amiga? Maybe it wouldn't be for a MIPS Amiga or even a PPC (has good code density for RISC) Amiga but I can only dream of powerful enough apps for a 68k Amiga with 2GB of memory to ever run out of memory.
My Octane doesn't have a small enough module for me to test that, but the Indy I have will boot with 16MB installed, assuming I run it in serial mode, not via X11. I'm not going to fscking argue about code density, because in the end memory and disk space are cheap, and 64-bit CPUs are no where near the memory ceiling for addressing as of yet. Don't get me wrong, both the 68000 and 65C816 are great CPUs, for their class. Scaling the design up won't work. The 6502 and 65C816 are proto-RISC, and arguably the 6502 and derivatives are more successful than the 68000. That's not to say that the 68000 doesn't have advantages, see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUZpF2JLF4s That is done using a Mega Drive, FYI.
But I will quote Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, an idol of mine from my childhood:
"We evolve, beyond the person that we were a minute before. Little by little, we advance with each turn. That's how a drill works...That's your limitation! You sit here closed off, blocking away other lifeforms like some sort of king! That's nobody's limitation but your own!"
If the moment something stops evolving, be it a person, an industry or a piece of software, you limit yourself. Why limit yourself to 32-bit, and only guarantee your obscurity. With the 32-bit limit in mind, you will never be able to, for example, render a 1080p with a high texture resolution: Mathematically, if the textures don't fit into your memory, you're not going to be able to render at that resolution, period. If I am renting out racks of servers, as I have done at previous occupations, (Windows Azure, FYI) all of them had at minimum, 8GB RAM. The render servers? Up to 64GB, and at other datacenters there were 128GB racks. 32-bit is dying for the consumer computer market. For embedded and mobile? Not at all, but then why are people justifying against ARM, the single most used 32-bit architecture these days? ARM64 is out, but its definitely in its infancy. It won't be long, but it will soon creep into the server and the consumer computer markets. The writing is on the wall.
If your texteditor crashes then you loose your work anyhow.
Whether this is on AMIGA-OS or on UNIX it does not matter.
And memory protection does not help here.
Yes, but on UNIX, at least, I don't have to worry about it corrupting my entire running kernel, killing any other processes and threads running, and then have to deal with the potential risk of data loss. It doesn't help that AFFS has no logging or soft updates to deal with the threat of data loss - fsck-type check and repair isn't exactly perfect, nor fast.
First of all - AMIGA OS supports threads.
I never said it did not, I said it wasn't thread-safe. Its like running mod_php with MPM worker on Apache: People do it, but it isn't smart, and furthermore, doing it ups the risk of the web server crashing under load, as mod_php isn't thread safe. It can thread, but as soon as it encounters a lock held by another thread, or a race condition, it is going to crash.
AmigaOS exec kernel has no kernel-level implementation of threading, so the implementations that exist run in userspace, which has been shown to be unstable and be questionable in terms of performance vs a kernel implementation
Your argument is very "simple" but OK lets follow it.
Not happy yet?
Still need more?
What bloated Software do you want to run?
For all I want to do with my computer - 4 GB is enough.
Now you're patronising me. See my above example - in rendering you can't make 5+2=2; mathematics for rendering are as rigid as you get. Furthermore, you can't assume your case, that you'll never need above 4GB, holds up for everyone else here. Don't give yourself that much credit.
Paulone: I find myself nodding in agreement with a lot of what you say - are we running in parallel or something?
Bottom line is - I don't have room for a cooperative multitasking, single-user, insecure, outdated and 32-bit only OS in my daily lineup. I have my 3000, for when I'm manic enough to try using it for something or for playing one of the few Amiga games I've found I enjoy, and also for the rose-tinted, watercoloured memories of my youth. Beyond that? its an expensive old hunk of metal and circuits that takes up space in a cabinet near my desk 99% of the time.
