men.... feck linux!

[pixie]

"AmigaOS is the king of user-friendly". Oh boy! There's a time warp if ever I saw one. AmigaOS was user-friendly 10 years ago, relatively speaking, but not today. By today's standards, even when compared to Linux, AmigaOS is a nightmare for anyone except those who have a decade of familiarity behind them. Not only is quite a lot of stuff counter-intuitive really, but there is little consistency and far too many missing features for a modern OS.

Explain it further please... I used a lot of OSes in recent years, and have to say that AmigaOS does many things right when it comes to UI experience... and altough many things are lacking the back bones are there... Devs for example, shell and gui integration, visual installation (I never saw AmigaOS being installed through monotasked system like them all) ... etc. Many thing could be improved I don't discuss that, but a nightmare!? Please... I had to learn AmigaOS as well as Windows (MacOS and QNX at some extent) and now Linux, and none compare to AmigaOS...

You see I also said nothing at all, but as you didn't specifiedP

[HellCoder]

Could someone define user friendly ?

[stefcep]

My own experience is otherwise...i got my first Amiga (500) in 1996 b/c i just wanted to play games.  One day i decided to boot the WB 1.3 disc and never read the manual.  As a computer novice it wasn't obvious that to get a menu bar to appear i had to push (AND hold) the RMB..  The devs, sys, etc drawers meant nothing to me.  Software failures and corrupted disks were very common but I just put it down to a "virus" whatever that was.

 However using System 7 on a Mac was far easier for me, it felt simpler and more intuitive.  I would argue that for someone who just wants to get the job done, than a Mac is a more intuitive option.

  But once you learn more about AmigaOS you do see that MacOS is more limiting.  It certianly wont easily let you see what it does to system files.  But then most people use their computer as a means to an end ie its a tool so who cares, apart from computer hobbyists?

[Holley]

There's three ways to look at it I guess - From the point of view of user-friendliness that is.  

User 1: As far as just someone getting work done most any modern user-interface is going to be 'ok' - you click on an icon or a menu, click some buttons etc and do your work or play a game.  

User 2: From the point of view of an advanced user how easy it is to install the OS, programs and tweak bits and bobs or whatever is always going to require some manual reading but it varies.

User3: Sorting out when things go wrong (as a user or support person) is another kettle of fish.

System7 on the Mac was about as friendly as it gets for the user 1, and hell on earth for 2 and 3 - ie. not much tweaking without going to extreme measures, and if networking didn't work right off there wasn't much you could do about it.  Workbench/Intuition is a bit of a mix and is pretty good for all three. Windows leans towards User 2 but user 1 can dip their toes in it, while user 3 cries into their MS technical reference.  Linux is heaven for 2, hard work for 3, and fine for 1 as long as they never have to touch anything outside if the GUI or upgrade at all.

[HopperJF]

Holley wrote:
There's three ways to look at it I guess - From the point of view of user-friendliness that is.  

User 1: As far as just someone getting work done most any modern user-interface is going to be 'ok' - you click on an icon or a menu, click some buttons etc and do your work or play a game.  

User 2: From the point of view of an advanced user how easy it is to install the OS, programs and tweak bits and bobs or whatever is always going to require some manual reading but it varies.

User3: Sorting out when things go wrong (as a user or support person) is another kettle of fish.

System7 on the Mac was about as friendly as it gets for the user 1, and hell on earth for 2 and 3 - ie. not much tweaking without going to extreme measures, and if networking didn't work right off there wasn't much you could do about it.  Workbench/Intuition is a bit of a mix and is pretty good for all three. Windows leans towards User 2 but user 1 can dip their toes in it, while user 3 cries into their MS technical reference.  Linux is heaven for 2, hard work for 3, and fine for 1 as long as they never have to touch anything outside if the GUI or upgrade at all.

I think Linux is a bit of a dangerous option for user 1, and there are a lot user 1's out there.
For instance, installation. User 1 probably wont install Linux successfully and when they do, it wont be runing at its optimum because they will be too nervous to delve into preferences optimising things and changing settings.
Linux aint friendly, its scary for user 1.

AmigaOS suits all 3, although user 3 will be at places like amiga.org and not Amiga technical support  :lol:

Mac like AmigaOS is also good for all 3, same for Windows. Not really Microsoft technical support, but the fact that there are so many PC users aroudn that one of them is bound to be able to help you out

[Ilwrath]

I think Linux is a bit of a dangerous option for user 1, and there are a lot user 1's out there. For instance, installation. User 1 probably wont install Linux successfully and when they do, it wont be runing at its optimum because they will be too nervous to delve into preferences optimising things and changing settings.
Linux aint friendly, its scary for user 1.

I think Holley was meaning that User 1 could use a Linux system, if it were first configured for that user.  Say something like a work computer at the office.  User 1 should have no problem using OpenOffice.org instead of MSOffice, and Firefox instead of IE.  For user 1, installing and configuring ANY computer would be a very scary and un-optimal event.

Basically, I agree with all of these ratings.  Though, honestly, I think Mac OS X hits the sweet spot of balance nowadays.  A pretty interface for user 1, some tinker space and the ability to run many linux apps with a simple recompile for user 2, and a nice unix-like core for user 3.

I'd run a new Mac as my primary system, if I didn't have such a games addiction.

[HopperJF]

Believe it or not, Mac's are gradually improving as games machines as the user base increases along with the demand for games.

You like Unreal Tournament 2004? You can get it on the Mac.
You'd be surprised how many PC games are available on the Mac, although granted there isnt enough games coming out for the machine.
Then again we dont want the danger of Mac becoming another Amiga, being regarded as merely a games machine with a keyboard and mouse ;-) by one half, and a great creative machine by the other half.

[jeffimix]

I find the Amiga to be a very usable system and I have much less than 10 years of epxerience under my belt with it. Some parts of the OS do need to be explained, but it would perhaps take ten or fifteen minutes to do so. Then, if you want, and I haven't bothered yet except changing a filesystem once, you can get into really fancy things like custom editing the drivers for your devices, or moving just about any folder on the system drive around. Between the way Miami works and the way windows handles TCP/IP stuff, I choose Miami, having done plenty in both. Amiga is pretty spartan though, and the amount of workbench hacks needed to make it look slick is annoying, but on the other hand it runs on slow processors with almost no memory.

My experiences with linux lead me to believe you can have A) a fast newish computer running something like Fedora B) An older computer running an Xwindows session that looks worse than vanilla Workbench 3.1 and C) a very powerful text shell. Nonetheless, I think Linux is a great server operating system, and great for home use if you can afford to run a big distro, mind you, a 1GHz cpu with 128 to 256 megs of RAM will do the basics in even Fedora... seemed to work fine on a 1.3GHz Duron/128MegRAM/ATI Rage system. Most people I know don't have a system that powerful even though, although they certainly aren't expensive.

I don't have much experience with macs really, but the times I have used them they seemed very nice, although the dang dockbar always autohid, and if you left it alone to go get lunch (used some G4 OSx machines at an art class) the screen would blank into some kind of power saving mode that often involved photoshop crashing.

Windows. Windows can be a PITA. Windows users like to use IE and Outlook. The barely realize how many virii and trojans they get on their system, it gets buggy stable and inconsistent, also the way Xp and 2000 work are different enough to make help docs for one often worthless because of some undoable step for the other. That said, with the free AdAware, and AVG Antivirus, plus firefox and Thunderbird (and optionally stuff like gAIM) I find windows works very well. It's finicky about hardware, but so is every OS. I can get along in Xp with 128 megs of RAM easily, and 64 if I stay off've the games (with 64megs Gnome is sluggish). I use all that free third party software, and one a nice Vaio machine (1.4GHz P4, 384 megs PC800 RDRAM, Geforce 2 MX; 400MHz FSB *IIRC*).

Then there's FreeBSD, very stable but a less userfriendly than windows or linux or amiga or mac for desktop use. Also less binaries floating around.

I find QNX to be very nice, although you'll have no RAM left for apps, it'll run without swap in under 32megs of RAM, it's very easy to get a basic desktop setup, but I have yet to be able to find all the boot scripts and whatnot so I can't edit them. Like BSD QNX lacks binaries (I know they have linux emu, but that's still a hassle then, yeah yeah yeah GCC Makefile my butt ) :-P

Linux is perhaps put in an unfair light. Amiga OS 3.1 is very old, that's why it can run on a 68000. Windows is rarely upgraded on a machine, and usualyl comes with, so it's rare to find someone whining about Xp on some ancient machine. MacOSX certainly won't run on a 604 either, which is about equivalent to Linux not running on Pentium 1s. QNX is efficient and modern though, and OS4 seems to be too.

My thoughts anyhow, Jeff

[HopperJF]

I don't have much experience with macs really, but the times I have used them they seemed very nice, although the dang dockbar always autohid, and if you left it alone to go get lunch (used some G4 OSx machines at an art class) the screen would blank into some kind of power saving mode that often involved photoshop crashing.

Like a lot of irritating things in operating systems, this can be easily solved.
Dock > System Preferences > Screen Effects and switch the screen saver off.
In that same preferences panel you can switch power saving mode off, just like you can on a Windows machine.
You can even turn the dock off auto hide. :-)

[trochej]

pixie wrote:

Exactly my feelings... Even when Amiga crash you know what you'd done 'wrong' so you wouldn't do it next time, heck even my father could spot what he could or couldn't do... :-D on Windows (and on linux too), most time you get an halted application which one doesn't know if it crashed or is just hanged up for no apparent reason...

    Well, actually, when Guru meditation happened, it looked like a lottery. On A500 I wasn't able to tell the reason most of the time. On Linux, when application hangs, in most cases you will know after you issue ,,ps''. A sittuation when whole system hangs or crashes is a rarity. It's true, that Linux distros that I know seem to be a bit harder than Windows, but I think that it's a good trade for stability and abilities.

trochej

[HopperJF]

Isn't there a list somewhere of Guru meditation codes where it explains what each one means?
I think that would be how you find out what is wrong  :-)

[Roj]

No, AmigaOS is only a panacea in the mind of the few and the ignorant, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. They say "ignorance is bliss", and in this case it is most certainly true.

If the "ignorant" Amiga users are getting the things done with their Amigas that PC users who can only get work done if they're in front of a 3 GHz Pentium do, then the choice of the word ignorant is as poor as you can get. You may diss people who get work done with less. I've got nothing but respect for them. Having a faster computer doesn't make you a better person. A more arrogant person perhaps, but certainly not a better one.

I've always said, the less you know about computers, the faster they need to be. The only exception to this rule is the playing of games. I've worked with people who got more work done in a week on <20MHz processors (not Amigas) than many people with 3GHz systems will get done in a year. Which of those deserves more respect?

And, of course, I post this with only the nicest of intentions. :-D

[HopperJF]

Roj wrote:

No, AmigaOS is only a panacea in the mind of the few and the ignorant, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. They say "ignorance is bliss", and in this case it is most certainly true.

If the "ignorant" Amiga users are getting the things done with their Amigas that PC users who can only get work done if they're in front of a 3 GHz Pentium do, then the choice of the word ignorant is as poor as you can get. You may diss people who get work done with less. I've got nothing but respect for them. Having a faster computer doesn't make you a better person. A more arrogant person perhaps, but certainly not a better one.

I've always said, the less you know about computers, the faster they need to be. The only exception to this rule is the playing of games. I've worked with people who got more work done in a week on <20MHz processors (not Amigas) than many people with 3GHz systems will get done in a year. Which of those deserves more respect?

And, of course, I post this with only the nicest of intentions. :-D

I've been waiting for something like that to be said, and now you said it!  :-D
I would of but I would of phrased it badly.

[jeffimix]

@HopperJF yeah but many of them don't make sense, or are difficult to figure out from the lists I've seen :/

[bhoggett]

@Roj wrote:

If the "ignorant" Amiga users are getting the things done with their Amigas that PC users who can only get work done if they're in front of a 3 GHz Pentium do, then the choice of the word ignorant is as poor as you can get.

Like what? Hmm? What do Amiga users do that PC users need 3 GHz for?

You may diss people who get work done with less. I've got nothing but respect for them. Having a faster computer doesn't make you a better person. A more arrogant person perhaps, but certainly not a better one.

I diss people who talk BS. Spreading ignorance and myths to make themselves appear smarter or more savvy than your average user. I don't diss people who do more with less, but judgung by this thread what you have is people who diss other operating systems on the basis of their own prejudice and ignorance.

I've always said, the less you know about computers, the faster they need to be.

Really? How does that match up with the general ignorance of many Amiga users? They may know a lot about AmigaOS and Amigas, but they know nothing about anything else.

The only exception to this rule is the playing of games. I've worked with people who got more work done in a week on <20MHz processors (not Amigas) than many people with 3GHz systems will get done in a year. Which of those deserves more respect?

Neither. It has to do with their familiarity with their tools, not with the quality of what they are using.

Sure, a 3GHz processor won't make for a much better text editor, but you won't get much rendering or modelling done on that 20MHz processor. See?

And, of course, I post this with only the nicest of intentions. :-D

I'm sure you do. I'm not against efficient systems, or people who know how to use them. What I object to is people taking advantage of ignorance to spread a load of FUD and outright BS.

AmigaOS is small and efficient. It is also primitive by modern standards and does a lot of things very badly indeed, if at all.

[HopperJF]

AmigaOS is small and efficient. It is also primitive by modern standards and does a lot of things very badly indeed, if at all.

Because the latest version available came out in 2000, and wasnt much of an update over 3.1 (10 years ago).
Give us a break!
Don't expect a limping donkey (Amiga) to compete with the industry leaders at the drop of a hat, these things take time.
Amigas as they are, are small fast and efficient. If they dont do what the user wants, the user sticks around and makes do or switches to Windows/Mac/Linux.

For what Amiga users are still here for, the Amiga suits them fine clearly.