Despite the recent emergence of several new ways to actually run AmigaOS 4.0, the supply of machines is still extremely small, and not very future proof. As such, one of the most recurring questions within the Amiga community is why don’t they port the darn thing to x86?
The past few days and weeks, Amigaworld.net has been overladen with threads and comments about the x86 question, and it has even driven someone to set up a crude bounty for an x86 version for AmigaOS 4.0. The current x86 thread was started March 19, and already measures 692 posts in 35 pages.
There are several standard replies to the x86 question within the Amiga community. There are people who still see a future in the PowerPC market, even after years and years of utter misery. Sadly, even though the PowerPC platform is far from dead, it simply doesn’t play a role any more in the desktop market. Whenever a company announces an AmigaOS4-capable board, we’re getting hardware that’s 9 years old with an insane price tag.
A number of Amigans even go as far as to say that people shouldn’t be able to get AmigaOS4 so easily, and they complain that people who want an x86 variant of the AmigaOS are just looking for a free ride. The word “elitist” doesn’t even begin to describe this attitude.
There also also people who claim that moving AmigaOS4 to x86 would mean the end of the Amiga operating system, because it would not be able to compete with other x86 operating systems such as Linux and Windows. This seems like a rather odd reasoning to me: we cannot compete if we run on x86, but we can compete if we run on underpowered, overpriced hardware, with no option for people to try it out before buying? Logic is something that has left much of the Amiga community long ago.
Another, much more valid reply is that there already is an x86 Amiga operating system: AROS. AROS is open source, free, and runs on lots of hardware, and can even have other operating systems as hosts. However, it is ‘only’ source-compatible with AmigaOS, not binary compatible. This, however, is a moot point in this discussion since a possible x86 version of AmigaOS4 wouldn’t be able to run legacy software either.
Sadly, the discussion itself seems to be moot since Hyperion, who develop AmigaOS4 might not be allowed to port AmigaOS4 over in the first place. The company is entangled in a legal battle with Amiga, Inc., a battle no one really understands any more. Still, these legal troubles have not prevented Hyperion from releasing AmigaOS4 for the Pegasos II, which raises the question just how much of a limiting factor the lawsuit actually is.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but there’s little anyone can do. It’s really too bad, because AmigaOS4 certainly has something to offer to many enthusiasts. As it stands now, however, getting AmigaOS4 is simply too much of an investment in a relatively old and limited platform, and especially in the economic climate we’re in today, few people will shell out boatloads of money for a toy operating system.
I was hoping this would be an article with an answer to x86 question instead of just a confirmation that the x86 question exists.
The problem with AROS, is that it is not being developed at a quick enough pace. They even say that on their own website. It’s never going to be on par with AmigaOS4, they will always lag far behind in progress.
I can only thank OSAlert for still paying attention to AmigaOS at all ..
In 1994, Commodore Inc. declared bankruptcy (Oh boy.. has it really been THAT long… I feel OOOLLLD now
)..
My basic math skills show that to be 15 years ago!
Only the older generation users are going to even remember such a thing as the ‘Amiga’, and the younger generation are growing up more with the words XBox, Playstation or iPhone coming out their lips then ‘PC’.
It really boils down to this… it is no longer relevent to the computer world today; While the Amiga forums may well scream out for an x86 version.. the writing is already on the wall for it.. even if it WAS released.. we pretty much have proof of that in AROS… a very good Amiga OS clone; and where is the usage for this?.. sadly, I do not see many posts from people when AROS is mentioned here..
To show for instance the article showing AROS gets it’s own webbrowser.. 9 posts in the OSAlert comment section.. VmwAROS v1.0 Released – 12 comments… This really does show the interest is very low. ( AROS – if it wants a voice in modern computing, needs to get some PR and Marketing people onboard. )
Everything moves on, especially in the IT world.. we, as users sometimes just have to grin and bear it and either try to keep up, or take the obsoleted path.. we all have a personal choice here
Indeed…
The thing is that in this field, you blink and things have completely changed.
I can understand the hobby/nostalgia aspect of having an x86 Amiga version. But the ship for Amiga left the dock looooooooong ago.
The reason that people aren’t interested in AROS all that much, is because AROS is nowhere even close to a desktop replacement. It’s not finished, and likely will never be completed. There is too much missing from it. It’s like a swiss cheese OS. Looks solid, but there are a lot of holes in it.
Hmm.. how much months lasted since you looked at AROS the last time, before saying so?
Can I get Java for AROS? I have Java on my phone, and it’s not even a smart phone. Lets assume I connect to the internet wirelessly, does it have wireless drivers? What if I wanted to download music, does AROS have a client for that? Can I Sync my Ipod? Can I run a virtural machine? Last I checked there was a crude Python port, but it wasn’t all that useful. I don’t think I’d be asking too much from a desktop replacement to have all these things. This is what I was talking about when I said that AROS is nowhere near finished, and not a viable replacement OS.
Edited 2009-03-27 23:33 UTC
You can connect an AROS box to a wireless network if you have a prism-II based wi-fi card so yes, there is a way to connect it. You can also run AROS hosted on Linux and take advantage of any kind of ethernet/wireless driver it has, but this would be only a half-step solution. Unluckily we haven’t got yet a Java virtual machine, but AFAIK no other AmigaOS-like flavour has got one, so this is a common problem for people faithful to AmigaOS. Anyway, we both have Java on our smartphones, and even in the operating system laying on the partition next to AROS one, so that’s no problem at all. To ‘download’ music I generally use the music store near home, and for my internet browsing OWB is complex enough to support all the websites I use. We still lack a emule/bittorrent client? Well, it will come, as the email, IRC, messenger, GG and other network clients didn’t exist in the past but they came in the meanwhile. I’m not so worried about all this. I know I could use Linux, or Haiku or many other interesting OSes in the world, but sorry: I prefer AROS. All in all it’s a hobby, not my reason of life, and hobbies can always patiently wait.
45 comments on this. People feel strongly.
I’m 16 and growing up around the ‘xbox’ and ‘PS3’ rabble and I am certainly interested in AmigaOS but alas, can’t take a look on x86 hardware. (For the record i’m that geeky one you find talking about politics and computing while everyone rambles about shopping and COD4. Saying that, it must me happy to be different heh).
As you say, they need advertising people etc. But all that advertising is going to be absolutely useless if people have to fork out ridiculous amounts for the hardware..
Sam
There also also people who claim that moving AmigaOS4 to x86 would mean the end of the Amiga operating system, because it would not be able to compete with other x86 operating systems such as Linux and Windows. This seems like a rather odd reasoning to me
Why? It’ll be no longer any Amiga. Neither Amiga hardware, nor Amiga OS (x86 AmigaOS-like OS instead). Perhaps indeed the better option would be to just use Linux with especially prepared fvwm2 theme (to have AmigaOS “look&feel”)?
Yeah, because a PPC processor with off-the-shelf PC parts is so much more “Amiga” than an x86 processor with off-the-shelf PC parts.
PPC has no more or less to do with the original Amiga than x86. It’s just elitist bullshit.
Edited 2009-03-27 00:55 UTC
PPC support big-endian whereas x86 are only little-endian, so *yes* a PPC is more “Amiga”-like that an x86.
Now, does it means that it was a good idea to choose PPC?
Well, at the time Apple was selling PPC so it was easy to buy a desktop computer with a PPC, now that Apple has switched to PPC, the PPC is dead for desktop computers IMO so x86 is the only option currently.
Sure, PCs have a huge selection of hardware which isn’t possible to support, but just support one configuration and advertise it: users will buy this particular configuration: that’s what I did when I bought a PC and I wanted to be able to run BeOS on it at the time: I selected the components known to work with BeOS..
Enter Anubis-OS
http://anubis-os.org/home/
Offshoot from AROS with some developers from it.
If you think that it was the look & feel of AmigaOS that made it special, you are very sadly mistaken. A Linux distribution that looks like AmigaOS is just that: a Linux distribution. It’d be nothing like the real thing.
As for the “It isn’t an Amiga on x86”, like Thom said, that’s a load of crap. There hasn’t been any “real” Amiga hardware since the mid 90’s, and PPC is no more “real” Amiga than x86.
If x86 AmigaOS would not be Amiga, then nor is PPC AmigaOS..
Both PPC and x86 are incompatible with the original architecture that ran the Amiga, and both would only be able to run legacy apps through emulation.
The original Amiga hardware is gone, dead, buried, too hopelessly outdated to be of any use whatsoever these days… The only thing worth keeping is the OS, and only then if it runs on modern hardware that’s actually available.
Too outdated to be of any use? To *you* maybe. A lot of people don’t need quad core, 4ghz cpus and 8gb of ram to get useful work done.
You don’t watch youtube, do you Helf?
I do… on my work PC.
I think my 16MHz Amiga was considered slow in 1994, and took ages to show a JPEG!
I’m sure it was, I was just pointing out that machine like that are still useful to *some* people.
I still find my NeXT to be useful and it is just a 33mhz 040 with 128mb of ram.
Zbigniew – in order to understand the difference, you would have to use AmigaOS for some time. Pity the OS feels so old, but otoh it even feels fast responding and simplistic. And simplicity is, what nowaday’s system designers do forget about. You get the feeling after some time of usage though. But – I think, that just Linux with some window manager will not do it, no?
The Amiga was an amazing machine, both in hardware and software. It offered features in the mid-1980s that most personal computer users wouldn’t see until the mid-1990s, or even later. The fact that it would do that on hardware that was pathetic compared to a mid-1990s PC (never mind a current PC) is beyond amazing.
But there are two problems with AmigaOS 4 and later. First of all, it is not doing amazing things on limited hardware. It is doing stuff that we now consider quite routine on hardware that we consider as obsolete. Worst yet, it isn’t really compatible with older software. (The last time I checked: AmigaOS 4 users were using E-UAE to run most older software, or they were depending upon software developers to port it.) The hardware is dead in all but the hands of a few collectors of vintage computers, so we will never get the full Amiga package back again.
The second problem, again from my understanding, is that the operating system’s architecture is quite antiquated. BeOS and NeXT deserve to live on because their architecture is not antiquated. At least not antiquated in the sense of AmigaOS or Win32. So what is the appeal of a new AmigaOS from the technical perspective? I cannot see any.
So just fire up WinUAE, E-UAE, or (better yet) a vintage Amiga and enjoy it for what it was.
All I can say is don’t try the scatter gun approach; focus on a market and make it work the best it can for that particular market. For example, if it were me I’d focus on the Netbook market – focus on just that; there is a limited array of hardware used so making sure it works properly shouldn’t be much of a challenge. If it is done right the first time and a viable alternative to Windows is provided – you’ll win customers over.
Edited 2009-03-27 01:24 UTC
I cut my teeth on Commodore computers: first a C64, then a C128, then an Amiga 500+ and finally an Amiga 2000…and then it all came crashing down. I was always convinced that if Commodore hadn’t bit the dust, then Amigas would dominate creative and scientific desktops far and wide (and many home desktops too.) If Amiga OS were ported to x86 then I would probably kiss Linux goodbye (having already bid adieu to Windows six plus years ago!)
Or is it the interface and programs that most people desire out of the AmigaOS?
I would really like to know.
It’s the responsiveness of the OS that makes it popular. And, years ago, the custom graphics accelerator chips made it very well integrated. (Read that: No drivers necessary since the the hardware came from the same company as the operating system.)
Although I have a MicroA1-c that runs AmigaOS 4.1, the technology I’m watching is the Natami which promises to have an improved Amiga compatible multimedia chip set and 68030 compatible processor all in an FPGA. My only complaint about that design is that it will be running AmigaOS 3.9 since 4.0+ requires a PowerPC accelerator board.
@thread
As far as I’m concerned about AmigaOS on Intel architecture, Intel can go fly a kite. Multicore processor support isn’t present in AmigaOS so that’s out of the question. Intel used this wierd idea called “little endianness” which will reduce the performance of AmigaOS to the current PowerPC performance levels anyway due to all the BSWAP opcodes required to emulate big endianness on an x86.
If Hyperion Entertainment VOF was going to port to any new architecture at all, I’d recommend LLVM. It runs on either x86, PowerPC, or ARM with roughly equal efficiency. It’s open source so any new architecture that comes out can be supported without requiring the entire source code of the OS (assuming they distribute it as LLVM bitcode-format rather than straight binary).
Considering that the Intel 8080 is widely considered the first usable general purpose microprocessor, and that it and nearly all of the early CPUs (VAX, MOS 6502, Z80) with the exception of the 6800 were little endian – I find it odd you call it a “weird idea”. PowerPC isn’t big endian anyway, it can do either. There are pros and cons to both approaches imo.
Regardless, any competent port of Amiga OS to x86 would I would hope switch the implementation to little endian to avoid the issue entirely. It might make porting of some low level code a bit more difficult than it otherwise would be, but it would be better in the long run imo.
But still, if you think the comparatively minor overhead of byte order swapping would in any way negate the HUGE performance advantage modern x86 hardware has over the dinky PowerPC hardware currently available for AmigaOS your nuts.
Little-endian mode support was dropped from the PowerPC 970 series and therefore may be considered obsolete although the 970 series isn’t supported by AmigaOS.
Little-endianness would kill any backward compatibility that AmigaOS would have ever hoped to have had. Since every version prior to 4.0 was a white-box implementation meaning that the internal data structures were open for the applications to access, it is impossible to make a backwardly-compatible version of AmigaOS in little-endian mode or with full memory protection. If you want little-endian and memory protection join Anubis-OS.
I think Intel chips are only faster because of more compact instruction set and therefore more efficient use of the cache. If AmigaOS is going to compete in any market, it would not be the desktop one so the only Intel processors that would compete in the Amiga marketplace are the Atom series which don’t perform nearly as well as their desktop equivalents. Therefore the PowerPC 440 series found in the current platforms is competitive for the markets Hyperion Entertainment VOF are targeting.
(Furthermore, for the record, I DO have a mental disability known as paranoid schizophrenia and therefore I am nuts. Do you have a problem with that?)
If you have to change ISAs, the byte ordering is the last of the concerns regarding “performance” hits.
You have to recompile your code anyways… so what was your original point regarding endianess.?
I specially love this gem:
“I think Intel chips are only faster because of more compact instruction set and therefore more efficient use of the cache”
Really? I assume you have little to no clue regarding computer architecture. But by all means do not let that stop you from making authoritative statements regarding porting an operating system across different architectures.
Edited 2009-03-27 21:48 UTC
Thanks, didn’t know that.
Use an emulator for existing code – there are already a few that work well… I dont think anyone seriously would consider porting to x86 without first fixing all the broken bits of AmigaOS… Backwards compatibility is a moot point imho.
Higher clock speeds, bigger caches, faster caches, better memory controllers, faster memory, higher bus speeds, more bandwidth, better fabrication resources, etc. etc. etc. PowerPC is dead outside of the embedded market (and that may not last much longer)…
I think that is kind of the point everyone is making though… Sure, what you said makes some sense, but outside of a few die hards no one wants to be limited to such archaic hardware. Porting to generic x86 is the only way the OS could ever possibly get wide exposure. Im not saying it should be done, I personally dont care (and concede that it would be very very painful to do) – just saying not doing it is dooming it to failure.
No, I don’t. I am perfectly ok with you being nuts
Interesting. Are there currently any LLVM operating systems out there?
I thought that Apple was working on something like an LLVM-based OS for the iPod Touch and iPhone but I may be mistaken. There was also a mention of a Linux version on http://www.llvm.org/ called LLVA that was going to be such a thing. I don’t know how successful it was.
Amiga Inc. had something like that up on their website based on an early LLVM equivalent called AmigaDE but it was overpriced and delivered underrated performance. AmigaOS 5.0 was supposed to be cross-platform and I think that’s the whole reason that Hyperion is fighting this.
Conceptually, you’d still need enough OS to bootstrap LLVM anyway even though it supports static compiling like a regular compiler, it would have to do the final code generation at install time.
Nope. Apple uses LLVM to do things like OpenGL shaders and OpenCL kernels. Which is the sort of applications LLVM makes sense.
I have no clue what you mean by a LLVM as an OS. That is not the target of LLVMs at all…
My idea is to use LLVM as an installer and packager for libraries and applications. Most of AmigaOS fits into one of those categories. All that would be needed is for enough OS to boot the LLVM command line version of llc to allow the bitcode files representing some of the higher-level functionality of AmigaOS to be installed as a thin binary.
The only time you’d need proprietary binary codes is to access the BIOS/Kickstart/UBoot-level functionality and the filesystem required to install the supporting OS functions that are required to load the llc command. This would include HD-Toolbox and the CD-ROM and hard-disk FFS2 filesystems, Dos.library, and the Exec.library kernal. Since most of the libraries in LLVM compile statically into the llc command, there would be most of the operating system that could be made at install time into the hard disk from bitcode.
Its so much nostalgia for what it WAS back then,
with its for the time so unique custom chips, pretty good if not the best.
It was the last of the “home computers” before the split between consoles and PCs finally happened for the mainstream.
And with the demise of the Amiga the large demoscene went in a steady decline, never to be the same – thats atleast how it feels for me, the demoscene is still there, but the time when virtually ANY geek could hack on the bare metal of a computer and understand it fully from top to bottom must have ended back then.
Now computers are too complex for the average joe to start hacking. Sure anyone can get into webscripting and such, and there are plenty of BASIC compilers out there , but its not the same.
With the C64 and the Amiga virtually anyone could have a total image of the computer in their conscious mind, its capabilities and how to utilize them , now thats left to experts IMHO and you need these high level programming languages for everything, gone are the days of “banging the metal” (or silicon that is) ..
Amiga for me was the tightknit custom chips and the OS and the SCENE around it. The OS was just a part of it.
I really hope the NATAMI guys manage to relase something btw. http://www.natami.net , They are recreating an Amiga in an FPGA chip, and this Amiga has additional features ! A product targeted for anyone wanting to revive the demoscene and do some Amiga Retrocomputing the way it could have been as the next step for the legacy .. ! SuperAGA and a highpowered 68000 class CPU core.
Probably not, the last message is from October (not counting the server move) saying something that “soon!” there will be hardware. That’s almost half a year ago.
Sadly, these projects seem always doomed to fail. Jens S. and his Clone-A also seem to have disappeared (well, the Clone-A at least, I saw Jens last year at Breakpoint, but no mention from Clone-A, which he so proudly presented the year before) – there’s also no mention on his site.
JAL
The Clone-AA project seems to have been used to produce the Indivision AGA scandoubler as it seems to replace the functions of one of the AGA chips with a separate board. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
Since the Clone-A project aims/aimed at replacing all of the original Amiga chips by reverse engineering on a hardware level, no doubt that knowledge was used to create the Indivision AGA. Note however that the Indivision AGA, as far as I can see from the website, is used not to replace the AGA chip, but to snoop the AGA on a hardware level, and output the signal flicker free to a modern monitor.
JAL
I think what’s keeping the Amiga state of affairs from flowing any faster is the legal case they have on hands. It has gone for way way too long. Recently, I’ve been reading a very good book on mediation. There are a lot of interesting mechanics involved in a negotiation handled by means of mediation. If I had a shred of influence in any of these two companies, I would suggest to them to find a REALLY GOOD MEDIATOR and finally find a solution to the case. What do you prefer, an eternal fight or a solution? Years and years of lawsuit can only drain the coffers on both sides — can you imagine what could have happened if all that money was actually spent developing Amiga? Can you imagine if the case continues and years from now we think of that very same question? And by that I don’t mean just AmigaOS, but the whole Amiga package — support software such as IDEs, marketing, merchandise, licensing, porting to systems such as PS3 or even the Wii, etc etc etc. Once an agreement is reached, AmigaOS might be capable of surfacing on any CPU under the sun, not just x86. Think about it for a moment — is the current AmigaOS written in assembly… Fully? Mostly? Lots? I don’t think so. It’s probably written mostly in a high-level language; likely C++. If Apple could port a much bigger OS, then so can the Amiga guys. The issue is not technical. Even if they decided never to jump away from PPC, every person related to Amiga in any way has something to gain when the case finally ends. SOLVING the case should be the number one priority. ‘Nuff said.
Edited 2009-03-27 02:11 UTC
The biggest problems with these alternative OSes are:
1. 3d graphics support. Without it whatever you’re trying to do is pretty meaningless. Unless you want to go embedded and even there 3d is starting to take off so your OS will become irrelevant at some point. If they ever port to x86 they had better have some 3d hardware developers if they want anyone to use their software at all.
I don’t use AROS purely for this reason. Software 3d isn’t good enough any more. Hardware acceleration is assumed. It’s 2009 not 1985. Hell Amiga was primarily used for multimedia so it’s kind of stupid to not have 3d support. Nvidia has gpu acceleration of video on windows and linux and there’s highly optimised code on mac to get all the 1080p vids working on that platform.
Aros and Amiga will need this before they can begin to look half serious.
2. Windows software compatability. Yeah I know this is unpopular but it needs to be said. Both wine/Linux and Mac/bootcamp have this nailed down as best as can be done and they both have issues. Any new comer is going to have to be able to provide compatability with windows equal to linux/mac’s. Of the top 5 operating systems I can list Linux, Mac, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris. 4 of them use wine to provide compatability. I doubt we’re going to suddenly see an aros wine port but it should be possible and I’d welcome it.
I’m a subcontractor by trade 90% of my clients are using windows.
Why not put that Bounty to better use and support AROS. If essentially it already meets the need.
the body just hasn’t stopped twitching yet. Having said that, I owned an Amiga in one form or another from 1986 till 2004. Without hardware, and more importantly, spare parts, no OS can survive. I really miss the Amiga OS, because every other major OS has too much “complexity by design” for my taste. Anyone with a year’s worth of applied study could understand the entire Amiga OS, which is why there were so many games written for it. Currently, I’m using gentoo Linux in a custom PC table of my own design (http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimbot/allsparkproject.htm).
It’s been a severe uphill struggle to figure out how to use wxWidgets or GTK+ in my own programs. Most of the struggle could be avoided if libraries such as these would simplify their design philsosophy — why does every Linux program/library have to be able to network, for example? If AROS would just bite the bullet and COMPLETE their first goal of making a port of Amiga OS3.1 for the x86, more people would use it. “Swiss Cheese” OS’es are of no benefit to anyone.
Right now, I could use a utility that would read my saved Amiga-formatted hard disks so I could get all of the data off of them and into my Linux PC.
This is pretty simple. I did it in Linux, because it was handy. It was about 10 years ago, so I don’t remember the exactly command I used, but you can simply copy the data from the raw disk device to a file.
IIRC, this disk image file worked fine for me in UAE without modification.
Linux only supports DOS1 format, NOT DOS7, so the ability to read Amiga Hard Disks is limited at a very low-level.
You don’t need to mount the filesystem.
You can just use a shell command (I think it was either ‘dd’ or ‘cp’) to read the entire disk contents from the disk device (e.g. ‘/dev/hda’, ‘/dev/sda’, etc.) to a file.
This copies all the data on the disk (including RDB, partition info, and all partitions) directly into the disk image file. This disk image file can then be used in an emulator like UAE, and all the partitions will be available to the emulated system, just as if it were the original disk.
If you back up the file before using it in the emulator, you should never need to use the original disk again.
“Right now, I could use a utility that would read my saved Amiga-formatted hard disks so I could get all of the data off of them and into my Linux PC.”
The affs switch in the linux mount command will allow you to mount full Amiga formatted hard drives under Linux. If they are SCSI you need a scsi pci card.
here is the format for the command that I use to mount a a partition from an Amiga drive under Ubuntu linux on my Desktop in a folder :
sudo mount -t affs -o setuid=1000,setgid=1000 /dev/sdb1 /home/me/Desktop/AmigaWD/amigaWD-00
sudo is because root has to mount
mount -t affs gives the switches to mount
-o setiod=1000, setgid=1000 sets the owner and user
/dev/sdb is the location of the drive – it is the second drive in my system. sdb1 means it is the first partition on that drive
/home/me/Desktop/AmigaWD/amigaWD-00 is the path to the folder on my desktop where i will access the partition.
i have been running Amiga OS 3.9 using Amithlon for 5 years now on a 1.3 GHz Athlon intel architecture machien as a dual boot with Ubuntu Linux. I use the linux ability to read the Amiga drive to allow me to share files. Mostly I still use the Amiga for graphics as I really like ImageFx. However the lack of memory protection means I crash fairly frequently when I do too intensive a graphics manipulation. On the athlon according to sysinfo the Amiga OS is running at least 1000 times faster than it did on a standard Amiga. Graphic manipulations that used to take hours take seconds.
The success of Amithlon in running the OS sitting ontop of a linux kernel shows that Amiga OS can operate on intell hardware. Amithlon is much faster on my machine than is E-UAE and I can make full use of a wide screen lcd monitor.
When I initially had Amithlon running I was using the specially formatted “amithlon hardfile” but since then I have discovered I can put the Amithlon kernel and boot files in my linux boot partition and boot Amithlon from the multiboot linux booter GRUB. Once Amithlon boots it finds my native Amiga harddrive and uses the OS from there – no more hardfile and full access to all my amiga files from either OS. The only problem I am currently having is that I seem to have lost my ability to use USB from amiga. Of course I cannot read an Amiga floppy/
use x86 but they are brave/proud enough to stay away from mainstream. However my opinion is that ARM and especialy MIPS64 are viable alternatives if no new PPC boards come out. Though AMCC has some nice though very expensive designs.
ARM is more realistic than MIPS64, IMO. There is a large choice of processors and boards, and ARM is getting competetive for desktop use (again). And several of the new ARM processors come with integrated graphics processors, which AFAIK MIPS does not.
But I’m sceptical of seeing AmigaOS as a mainstream or even substantial non-mainstream desktop/laptop OS. If it has a future, I think it would be in a dedicated portable game machine like the Pandora. And here ARM is definitely the obvious choice.
AmigaOS’ contemporay, RISC OS, eems much more alive than AmigaOS, but even this has little chance of gaining much momentum except in specialist platforms (or, possibly, low-end netbooks).
The Amiga was far ahead from the other computers 25 years ago. So, in order to be the leader again, Amiga needs the following:
1) full 64-bit
2) raytraced 3d graphics at 60 FPS
3) fully multicore – thousands of cores
4) programmed with a modern functional programming language – all processes to be garbage collected
5) an SSD storage system.
6) fully distributed – hooking the machine to the network allows the computer to share its computing power with all the other machines on it
7) a user interface which renders stuff on it as realistically as possible…meaning true WYSIWYG.
8) voice recognition.
9) an object-oriented database file system.
I don’t think you included enough buzzwords in your previous post… LOL
This has to be on of the most amusing post I saw in -years-.
While not an Amiga buff (I stopped @commodore 128) one can safely say that no existing OS can measure up to your requirements. Nothing comes even close.
Far worse, a large number of these requirements are more-or-less impossible using normal technology. (e.g. Ray-tracing @FPS has nothing to do with the OS – it’s more or less an issue with CPU power; I’d hate to be one to design a scheduler that handles 8192 cores, etc)
In short, dreaming is nice, but I wouldn’t bet my house on flying to Mars anytime soon…
– Gilboa
The amiga and amiga-related platforms stopped making any sense a long time ago.
The only people left in that community are only people who don’t make sense either since they can’t realize that amiga is an obsolete technology that don’t have anything interesting to offer anymore. There’s not a single useful concept left in that technology that hasn’t been superseded by something equivalent or better in modern OSes.
Edited 2009-03-27 10:22 UTC
concept: “settling for a unified versatile container file format”
implementation: the IFF chunk based format that could be used for graphics, audio, document, or iirc executable files
superseded by: the current plethora of completely independent formats each with their own (and sometimes not efficient) parsing formats
concept: “allow applications open or read files types (be they audio, image, document, or other files) they may not natively know, granted application can query the system to do it”
implementation: the centralized DataType filters, available to all applications once installed
currently replaced by: on BeOS / HaikuOS, Translators; on Windows, codecs (that in turn only cover the needs for multimedia files and streams) and, to a certain extents, browser plugins; on *nix, nothing
concept: “when changing some settings (Preferences) let the user try alternate values without altering the saved one”
implementation: “Use” option to use apply the new value only for the current session (iirc saving the setting to the RamDisk instead of permanent storage) and be reassured that even if things got messed up, they’d be back to normal on restart – and “Revert” companion option that restored the last saved value in case of necessity
superseded by: the current ubiquitous, less useful and flexible “Apply” paradigm
but i’m sure there’s much more…
In defense of the *nix platforms, they also use codecs, and through gstreamer it’s very pluggable, not to mention Nautilus does use mime-types for identifying what files actually are.
Granted the DataTypes that AmigaOS has is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in an OS, but they’re really only a ‘driver’ file for different formats. Though it definitely makes applications slimmer, because you don’t need to have every program have it’s own libraries for displaying jpegs (for example). But in that respect again, they are like shared libraries that Unix systems have. It was Commodore’s answer to DLL hell, before it really became an issue.
This is in fact quite simpel.
1). The Amiga Community will not be smaller. Will you stop using Amiga OS just becouse it is x86? No! will old Amiga users want to install this? Yes!
2). Old software will no longer work. True. You have to use UAE for that.
3). Apple did this transission very successful. It can be done.
It should not run in 80×86 or anything else. It should run on bytecode, and interpreted to the native format on the fly.
In this way, the O/S can be transferred any machine an interpreter exists.
My general take is, that anyone claiming that move to x86 would kill an AmigaOS, is actually an idiot. I belong to the older Amiga generation, remembering many things, and working 4 year for Amiga Review as well se helping with Czech Amiga News, I got good insight into the agenda.
The only reason why Amiga Inc. kept to PPC was:
1) they were not interested in AmigaOS at all – all they started to care in 2000-2002(?) was AmigaDE, Tao Intent based environment
2) For AmigaOS itself, there was a strong agenda. And the agenda was a political one – allow to survive to few Amiga HW companies, namely EyeTech at that time. Ask yourself, where are they now, with their A1?
I understand when someone wants to support own companies, developers. But – that is not the situation nowadays. PPC is over, period. Freescale will not surely to talk to you, unless you quote for 200K chips. So don’t expect any new PPC chip developments, unless meant for embedded devices.
I think, that port to x86 would surely not kill an AmigaOS, quite the opposite would happen. And in fact, there was one solution, using underlying Linux kernel – an Amithlon. It was the fastest Amiga ever, and it was so good, that AInc. decided to kill it, because they were scared, that this emulator could ruind their business.
Nowadays, if Amigan’s still want to have their niche, I at least suggest to move to ARM, because few nice netbooks are about to appear.
Cheers,
-pekr-
Edited 2009-03-27 13:34 UTC
… but it’s way too outdated ATM anyway.
We would rather need something in the same spirit but fresh and modern which would make it incompatible.
Something like Syllable or Haiku I guess, or even better ..
it only took infinity billion years to get OS 4.0 out on any system. So what doesn’t Amgia Inc do what they always do and just tell them it’s comming and start “the waiting game.” Amiga users are gluttins for punishment, they love the waiting game
.
all kidding aside though it needs to happen if they want mainstream adoption. that or put it on this ( http://www.genesi-usa.com/efika ) and start updating that board to newer specs.
I would not consider the EFIKA to be mainstream by any stretching of the concept of “mainstream” that is possible.
Want mainstream adoption? Very simple, support a mainstream HW platform. The EFIKA is not one of them. Simply pick a platform which starts with P and ends in C
It really does not take a genius, and that was true all the way back to the late 90s. It is too late for Amiga anyways, it is dead Jim.
“Simply pick a platform which starts with P and ends in C :-)”
you mean like a PowerPC? that does fit your argument
so the board i posted fits under your guidlines. man that was close and here i thought I had made an error lol.
I know what you mean and your right.
Personaly I would rather see it ported to ARM. with all the ARM things comming out these days and the ShivaPLUG and the ARM netbooks, it would be a great way to move into an emerging market sector. HINT Genesi and Amiga Inc, HINT
Mainstream PPC platform is PS3. Powerful, well made, high quality hardware. Unlike garage-crafted custom PPC boards.
It is aleady sold in quantities more than Amiga users count of all time.
Some cosmetic changes should be enough to run OS4 / Morphos on PS3. And it has some great games BTW.
you have abviously never coded for the cell architecture. its not easy, not even a little bit, it is easier for me to code for Itanium. Not to mention that the 3d graphics on the PS3 is completely proprietary so there is no true suport.
I do it for money =)
3d graphics support on Amiga is “somewhat lacking”.
i too do it for money, (sigh) what helps you make it through the day? lol
I don’t see anything complex in Cell.
Yes, legacy apps porting is annoying experience, but writing from scratch is fun.
I appreciate the need for different OS’s (competition etc…)
What does AmigaOS do that Linux/Windows/OSX/BSD/(add others here..) can’t do?
Maybe its not a functionality thing, but I would like to know what it is? I my self have a vista desktop, OSX latop (leopard), Linux desktop.
I use mainly my OSX machine, because I use it at work. Windows Machine at home is maily there for windows stuff, like gaming, Linux because I prefer it as a developing platform (Python).
I still dont see the thrill of Amiga or Acorn, apart from that they run on very small amounts of memory to be honest this isnt a big deal anymore most machines have gigs of memory.
You’re still thinking as a desktop user. Amiga’s small memory footprint would have made it a good handheld OS at one time. The problem is that as AmigaOS 4.1 started to embrace modern programming practices their memory footprint started to grow. The more features they add the less competitive they become.
I think we should go with the Natami team and try to rejuvenate AmigaOS 3.9 and AROS 68k if we’re going for any sort of Amiga platform integration that we had going for us back in the day.
Why do we need huge amounts of memory in the first place? How can AmigaOS and Haiku run great with a small amount of memory, while Windows, OS X and to a certain extent Linux need gigabytes of memory to run well?
Heck, how could BeOS play 10 videos, record one, rip an audio CD at the same time and still respond quickly to user input – all without a hardware accelerated desktop – on 1998’s underpowered hardware while Windows’ UI still hangs sometimes?
And if Hyperion can’t port AmigaOS to x86, what about MorphOS?
It was a beautiful time back then, when I had an Amiga500. And I’d like to keep that way.
Please AmigaOS guys, let the old lady rest in peace!!!
The AmigaOS developers should put their effort into Haiku, if they want something similar on a x86 platform.
Amen.
No. As much as I love Haiku, it doesn’t have that AmigaOS feel to it. And they don’t even have an alpha released, while AmigaOS / MorphOS are stable.
Still, between the stubbornness of not porting AmigaOS / MorphOS to x86 and helping Haiku, I’d prefer the latter.
Well, don’t be so quick. Allow people to do what they want to, not what you would like to see them doing. If you’re right, for sure there will be plenty of followers, am I right?
That, say, Mac or KDE does not ?
It seems like an idea whose time has come and gone.
Do they have something like the Data Translators from BeOS, which originated from AmigaOS?
Do they boot up in 5 seconds?
Do they have a logical, easy to understand file structure?
Do they offer the user complete control over the UI? By that I don’t mean themes. I mean letting me choose exactly how I want each element to look like.
Do their apps start in an instant?
Even though most of AmigaOS’s features were implemented in other operating systems, it still has some interesting features not present in Windows/Linux/OS X.
Haiku, at least, seems to be on the right track.
enough said…
Well, I’m feeling, that no one really got the thing. It’s not that simple trick, to switch system, which in his very roots was designed for different platform. There are many aspects inside the AOS 4 or MOS that prevent fast and simple conversion to, as mentioned earlier, dramatically different platform.