Yes, we are continuing our new-found fascination with the Amiga platform, by reporting to you straight from the floors of AmiWest and Pianeta Amiga. Chris Handley consolidated all the information from these two Amiga shows into one handy post, and the future of the AmigaOS looks bright indeed! Update: More planned features have emerged. Read on for the update.
Now that the legal issues around the AmigaOS have been cleared up, it is time to look towards the future of the Amiga operating system. At the two Amiga shows, a lot of talk took place on the two upcoming versions of the Amiga operating system – 4.1.1 and 4.2 – and both of them are packed to the brim with useful and welcome new features and changes.
AmigaOS 4.1.1
As the version scheme suggests, this is supposed to be a minor update to the operating system, and as such, it will be a free upgrade, and it will run on the AmigaOne, Pegasos II, and sam440ep-based systems. It’s not finished yet, so any of the below new features might not make it into the final release.
It seems like Hyperion is putting a lot of effort into ‘the little things’ with the 4.1.1 release. In my review of AmigaOS 4.1 on the sam440ep, I mentioned several little ‘Amigaisms’ that while useful and second nature to veterans of the platforms, only served as annoyances to newcomers like me. These Amigaisms are mostly relics from a time when computing power and storage space came at a premium.
Hyperion is looking to address a lot of these small issues – and my favourite one of them all is that contents of folder (aargh) drawer windows will update automatically, so you will no longer have to invoke the update command whenever the contents of a drawer you’re currently viewing changes.
In addition, utilities such as ContextMenus and ClickToFront will run by default on AmigaOS 4.1.1. ClickToFront allows you to double-click anywhere in a window to bring it to to the front of the window stack – a very useful piece of kit. The good thing about changes like these is that veteran Amiga users can easily revert back to the ‘old’ way of doing things, while new users don’t have to feel so intimidated.
The installer will also be made more user-friendly, and the WbStartup folder (used to house startup items) will be replaced by a StartUp preferences panel. A pop-up notification system will also find its way to AmigaOS 4.1.1, so that any application registered to application.library can send notifications to the notification server (Ringhio).
A lot of cosmetic changes will come to the AmigaOS too with this release, such as scalable icons on the Workbench screen – these icons are new, too. It will also ship with a new, more modern theme, but it is not yet certain if it will be activated by default.
I’m still not done here – this really is a big update. It will come with automatic monitor configuration (DCC), better USB support (maybe even USB 2.0 support), a new and improved Intuition, special versions of Tunenet, SimpleMail, and maybe other programs, and lots of bug fixes that should affect sam440ep users especially.
That’s quite the list, isn’t it? Let’s move on to the next big release currently in the pipeline.
Update: The original poster has added some more information about possible new features coming in AmigaOS 4.1.1:
- A “launch handler” that allows you to configure which program opens a specific filetype, or even offer you a choice of several differenr programs. Like OpenURL, but unlike DefIcons, I believe the settings will NOT be stored in the icon, and therefore you won’t have to update every single icon when you change your settings. It also sounds like it will be used to provide an official replacement of OpenURL.
- Automatic tracking of where programs are stored (needs to be a suitably written program like OWB or TuneNet), so that if you move them then the OS remembers their new location the next time you run it. I guess it might be used by the new APPDIR: device that I saw mentioned – so perhaps you can have APPDIR:TuneNet, and it will run TuneNet from where-ever it is stored.
- Better support for GUI Styles/Themes, so that you can easily make OS4 Windows look like a Mac, BeOS, etc. (This had been demoed some years ago, and they are looking to add it back in.) (I suspect this may have to wait until OS4.1.2, but the official word is that it should make it for OS4.1.1)
- The Calculator has finally been improved! Now supports some scientific & programming functions, if you want it to. Personally I will find this invaluable.
There were also a few things that most likely won’t make it into 4.1.1, but which may be held back for a release between 4.1.1 and 4.2. There’s no version number set aside for this one, but it would make sense to call it 4.1.2. It should get a new shell with support for tabs and scrollbars, as well as a command history and auto-completion. It is also said USB 2.0 support might make it into 4.1.2.
AmigaOS 4.2
This will be new release of the AmigaOS, and will most likely not be free. For this one, Hyperion is planning to do some serious plumbing work. SMP support is planned, but this will probably not be completed entirely for the 4.2 release – massive changes like this usually span a number of releases. USB support will be further improved, and, of course, if USB 2.0 doesn’t make it in time for 4.1.1, it will appear in 4.2. A lot of work will also be done improving support for printers,
Then there’s the graphics department. AmigaOS 4.2 will ship with a new graphics subsystem, and more stuff will be moved to the GPU. There’s also talk of Java support in 4.2, but this one will likely also span multiple releases.
More stuff is in the works, but they’re keeping some things under wraps.
Misc
Hyperion has been talking about something called their “Most Ambitious Project”, but to this date, nobody knows what it’s about. A lot of people think it will be new Amiga hardware, and the focus on bringing SMP support to AmigaOS may indicate a multicore Amiga on the horizon.
Firefox is currently being ported to the AmigaOS too, under the banner of Timberwolf. This is not a commercial project, but there is a 3000 USD bounty for this one. There might be a first alpha release before the end of the year.
Interesting note: between 10 and 30 developers have worked on the AmigaOS4 at any given time. The number is currently “in the high teens”.
I must say, I am very, very impressed with this massive list of improvements coming to the Amiga. I think I speak for all of us here on OSAlert when I say that it is very refreshing to see the AmigaOS4 being so openly discussed, with no legal rumblings going on.
I emailed ACube earlier this week, asking them to arrange for a pickup of their sam440ep machine which I used for the review – it’s still sitting here under my desk, getting some uptime whenever I feel like it. I silently hope I get to hold on to it a little longer, just until 4.1.1 arrives.
Ssssh, don’t tell anyone!
If they dont want it back ill gladly pay for another amiga in my house… allthough Thom as you know the specs of my current amiga i dont think it will that much faster, but i would LOVE to find out. btw there is “red one” reviews on youtube now… get it before its once again “unavailable in your country.”
Hopefully the ambitious crap they are doing is making an x86 port. I’d love to run Amiga on my current hardware.
I am really fed up with this x86 obsession ! Here it appears at the second post on a topic that has nothing to do with a x86 port. More, arguments have been given many times to explain it was a nonsense.
I am very glad about the great improvements made recently on AROS, MorphOS and AmigaOS !
But considering the already small Amiga userbase, this devison is not healthy.
That’s all very well – I was a big fan of PPC myself. But realistically, what’s available as an alternative? Since Apple ditched PPC, there aren’t any other commodity platforms available anymore.
If Amiga OS still has any chance at a comeback, it needs to be able to run on hardware that’s easily available, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
Apple might be able to get away with changing their hardware on a dime, but that’s because they have significant app vendor support and a large install base. Which are luxuries Amiga doesn’t enjoy.
Don’t be pretentious.
Fact is, if you want a user base, you need to run on a platform that people actually have. I don’t even know of any store that I could go to and find pegasos or ppc stuff. If I go to the local computer stores, I get an option of X86, or more recently ARM. I would like to actually run this stuff without trusting my money to an online vendor.
A port of AmigaOS4 for x86 would most likely mean instant death for AROS and MorphOS.
I just bought a Mac mini and a license for MorphOS.
So, please Hyperion, don’t kill my new toy!
I doubt it would kill AROS due to AROS being Free in both senses of the word.
I doubt it would kill MorphOS either as it’s a labour of love for the devs, whether they make much money or not they’ll still develop it.
Have you tried AROS?
http://aros.sf.net
The Icaros Desktop distro of AROS is very good too.
http://vmwaros.blogspot.com/
I tried AROS, and it was very very very not cool. I gave it two days before I got rid of it. I’m an Amiga fan, but I’ll never be an AROS fan if that is their product
I personally would like to see Amiga not port to x86. It’s nice to have alternatives to the norm. Besides computing has become so x86-centric, it makes me ill.
Well, failing X86, they really should port it to something that’s relatively modern, still available, and likely to continue to be available. I’d bet it would fly on ARM-based machines like the Beagleboard.
How about any of these:
* ARM
* MIPS
* Itanium2
Double post – sorry.
Edited 2009-10-24 06:38 UTC
Hyperion wont have the resources to make on a “runs on all motherboards, cpus, graphics cards, wi-fi chips” etc OS like Windows, so they need to choose a platform very carefully and make it work flawlessly on that.
x86 or ARM – doesn’t much matter – just make it a platform that is cheap to build and likely to be available for some time in the future.
If it happens to come in a well designed box with an AmigoOS logo, so much the better.
AmigaOS could be a great OS for low wattage ppc computers ! And possibly ARM, if ppc gave it enough commercial momentum .. If not – Retro computing it is ..
Not that Amiga universe announcements don’t always pan out, but the post says this stuff is not finished and is only “expected” at this time.
This OSAlert article is a bit overly enthusiastic, IMHO.
Uhm…
“It’s not finished yet, so any of the below new features might not make it into the final release.”
In addition, the word “roadmap” kind of implies that they are PLANS. You would’ve had a point if the above quote wasn’t in the article, and I had said “confirmed feature list” instead of “roadmap”.
Okay, Thom, you said roadmap but when you’re glowing article summaries with “the future looks bright indeed” you’re getting uncomfortably close to the land of the dancing bananas.
I also had to look twice at “The epic news is that this situation is now completely and utterly resolved,” about outcome Hyperion-Amiga Inc. lawsuit. When I read about the outcome of a lawsuit I like to hear from both parties in a joint statement, or a neutral party, or see some concrete agreement terms, but all that I’ve heard about this comes from one side, whose announcement leaves some room for interpretation. But not to fault OSAlert alone, because Slashdot did that too.
As far as I know from the web-boards Amiga Inc does not make any statements anymore and havent got the solvency to affect anything (?)
Hi Thom.
Good to hear you still have the machine. You might want to give the file manager and snapshotting of applications a second look.
Generally AmigaOS has one of the most powerful (but also slower) handling of window setups of any platform. However, once it’s configured it keeps working like that till you change it.
First of all for MUI applications you need to snapshot via MUI (this includes a lot of common applications like YAM, SimpleMail, IBrowse etc.). The easiest way to do that is start MUI and enable the small icon that adds a drop-down menu to all MUI windows. This lets you snapshot to your heart’s content.
The OS itself has the snapshot function, and despite what you wrote in the comments to your review, it DOES work. I’ve tested it on a 4.1 machine myself. What may have seemed like a malfunction could be this, however: If you show hidden files, these are not snapshot’ed, as they are not generally visible. You can add icons or even thumbnails if it’s e.g. pictures and then you can snapshot these as much as you want. You could argue it’s impractical, but it’s a design decision just like many others.
Generally, however, snapshotting works everywhere. Sometimes it’s through MUI, but most applications that are not MUI-based just have their own snapshot-functionality.
You’re of course excused for not having found this, and it’s clearly something that should be improved and more coherent for new users, but the functionality is there, and it’s in a sense more powerful than even MacOS 9 (which had a different icon-centric mentality). It is, however, slightly less consistant than on MacOS due to the number of toolkits on Amiga.
I hope this helps you enjoy the OS even more.
Edited 2009-10-24 13:12 UTC
Do AmigaOS have memory protection now?
I know that the original AmigaOS didn’t have it (not surprising as the original 68000 CPU didn’t have MMU), I hope that this version has memory protection: in this age I can’t imagine using an OS without memory protection..
It^aEURTMs not something switched on by default due to compatibility problems with older software (that Amiga users rightly cling on to). I believe that it^aEURTMs hoped that over time the necessary code will be put in to allow the memory protection to be on by default.
I gave up on the Amiga eons ago. It is going nowhere and trust me, before the OS we all want ever sees the light of day there will be some new twist. A new lawsuit, hardware that never materializes or god knows what else.
The realistic thing to do at this point is to just bury the whole damn thing and let it go.
It is nothing more than a soap opera that replays every couple of years at this point.
Its going nowhere.
Just let it go already.
As a retro platform, AmigaOS has a future in my opinion .. But as any mainstream its a bit of a stretch yet – even though I see that there is now getting to be many useful apps, including a decent webbrowser, that was missed for so long.
AmigaOS is headed for the future more now than anytime during these hard times in limbo.. Only thing that worries me is if there is another financial crisis in the world, that might kill it off for good ..
Amiga Classic might have a future too if NatAmi becomes a reality ! In that case however its a strictly retro platform ..
…for everyone!
Maybe someone will pickup PearPC and complete it enough to be a platform to run AmigaOS and MorphOS on commodity X86 hardware?
I hope to snag a Pegasos II or an AmigaOne someday.
And maybe the PPC Mac Mini would be a good platform for AmigaOS 4.x. I heard they were working on a port.
There’s an Amiga OS 4.0 port for Mac Mini PPC.
Google it
I have seen the file. The readme in the ZIP file says that things like Ethernet, Bluetooth, Wireless and other things don’t work.
It’s either leaked internal code from Hyperion, or someone hacked a boot loader to get it to work. In any case, it’s not usable enough to call it a port.
A lot of work would need to be done to it, to make it a marketable product.
I’d much rather see a finished, supported OS from Hyperion than a hack.
The AOS4 version for the Mac Mini is unfinished and ilegal. But there is a more powerful, legal and supported replacement available: MorphOS. And it _flies_ on the Mini! Furthermore it is more compatible than AOS4 and generally faster and more stable. Versions for the eMac G4 and Powermac G4 are underway, probably iBook and Powerbook versions will appear later on, too. Plus, the demo version is freely available!
The PPC Mac Minis aren’t being manufactured anymore, even if you can still find them very easily. They need to stop worrying about platforms and machines that are essentially dead and start porting it to something that is alive and will remain so. A PPC board that’s still available (and I mean brand new, not through Ebay), X86, ARM, MIPS like the Loongson, whatever they wish but it needs to be current. You can’t expect to keep your user base for long if you continually cling to dead or dying machines.
Did you miss my extensive AmigAOS4/sam440ep review? You can buy the sam440ep from ACube – they’ve released like three models in various configurations already.
Quite current.
Thom, didn’t your review say that the Sam440ep board had only 128mb of memory, and was non-upgradeable?
They need to address that. Either by having the board come with 1gb standard, or put a RAM socket on it.
128mb in the year 2009 is silly. I think my cell phone has more memory than that.
That was MorphOS on the EFIKA. Try to keep up.
LOL!
Trying to… The EFIKA isn’t available anymore, correct?
So, that leaves the SAM as the only currently produced board to run both AmigaOS and MorphOS.
The Efika is still available newly – it runs MorphOS, but not AOS4.
Sam is also avaialble newly and runs AOS4, but not MorphOS.
Mac Mini is cheaply available and runs MorphOS, but is not new. An illegal semi finished AOS4 port is reported to exist, too.
PegasosII is available used only and runs MorphOS and AOS4.
Pegasos 1 is available used and runs MorphOS, but not AOS4
A1 & ^AuA1 are available used and run AOS4, but not MorphOS.
ppc cards for Amiga 3000/4000 and 1200 are availabe used and run MorphOS 1.4.5 (free of charge) and an outdated version of AOS4.
IMHO the smartest choice is a Mac Mini. It is super fast and runs very, very stable.
Edited 2009-10-25 23:15 UTC
Even if, contrary to reality, this was true, compare it to running MS-DOS on a machine with 1GB, that is plain nonsense, isn’t it? For the same reason, AmigaOS does not require as much memory as your brand new Windows 7 system.
The Sam440 is not exactly a current machine, it’s effectively a low spec embedded board, only much larger, more power hungry and slower than your typical embedded board…
It may well be “available”, but it is low performance and ridiculously expensive. It would be trounced by a used powermac available at a fraction of the cost, and hasn’t a hope against current x86 hardware available for similar cost. The G4 mac mini cost less than the sam440ep when it was new, and it was much quicker… These same machines are now considerably cheaper to buy used.
You can’t trust to a platform that is proprietary and in the hands of companies that can’t hack it. That’s what Commodore and the Amiga taught me.
The only way the Amiga could have gone anywhere in the fifteen years would have been either to be bought by a company with some serious oomph, or to be open sourced. Cest la vie.
Good news, but there is no way I’m buying new hardware to run this. I would like to play with Amiga again, but if they do not port it to x86, terribly sorry, I’m not interested.
You say it as if it’s that easy.
I’m sure Hyperion has looked at porting it to x86. Common sense. However, they probably ran into the following roadblocks:
– I’m pretty sure AmigaOS is optimised quite heavily for the PowerPC. Mac OS X, to name one, has always been running on x86, even since the NEXT days, so that wasn’t really “porting”. With only about 10-30 people onstaff, it would be a monumental task.
– They’d need to design and write an x86 PPC AND 680×0 emulation/virtualisation layer into AmigaOS. Again, no small feat. Without it, the x86 version of AmigaOS would be without ANY applications. At all.
– x86 Isn’t easy to support – there’s too much variation, too much stuff to support, too many variables. It’s not something a 10-30 man group can effectively handle. It makes much more sense to focus on a tight few PPC machines.
This is admittedly a purely optimistic view: fishing out my Oct 95 issue of Macworld, the six-man strong Quix company based outside Zurich, Switzerland, managed to port the then current version of Mac OS to IBM’s PReP specification for the PowerPC, which had it been approved by Apple would have made it possible for users to build a Mac OS box using off-the-shelf components and a generic PowerPC board. Not saying that it would be as easy in today’s case, but let me dream of the possibilities.
It wasn’t a full port to the IBM hardware. Some things didn’t work. It was a proof of concept.
Perhaps it is not small task, but IMO they simply have to do it. x86 will stay dominant (perhaps new word should be invented for this context) desktop processor for years to come, market is huge and there are lots of people like me, who would be willing to spend ~100$ for AmigaOS, maybe even out of nostalgia, but will not pay few thousands for new thingamajigger just to fool around a bit.
I would even claim that if they do not do it, AmigaOS has no chance finding its niche in desktop. Community is at die hards for some time now, and having to pay more for some peculiar hardware will not help there.
I understand why people want x86-support. x86-hardware is cheap, available everywhere, and knowledge of x86 in our society is high.
However, think about it from a computer architecture: x86 has grown into a monster. Think about what you need to do to make a modern OS work on x86: There is the horrible mess called ACPI, there are 4 ways that hardware can trigger interrupts (XT PIC, APIC, MSI, MSI-X), the ancient PC-BIOS that you need to support in absense of native drivers, and then the extensive task to write drivers for native hardware.
As none of this can be implemented in reasonable time, one would have to work with certain “certified” hardware combinations. Even then it would be a hell of a job to build something impressive.
Staying with non-PC hardware not only avoids all of this work, it also avoids importing the uglyness of the PC into the Amiga. You get a cleaner computer architecture. The Amiga was known for the combination of hardware and software. While the perfect match between hard & software of the original Amiga can realistically no longer be matched in todays hardware market, it is a big plus that hardware designers like Acube can cooperate with software designers like Hyperion to serve each others need.
Stay with PowerPC for now, if it is doable, maybe add ARM later. These are good architectures to build computers on, and innovate them further.
Then do what Apple did, make it work on a small number of fixed configuration systems and see if third parties come along and make unofficial ports to more generic x86 hardware.
As for drivers, many drivers for hardware are available under permissive licenses like BSD, reuse them, don’t try reinventing the wheel.
Too simple thinking. “Certified” hardware only solves some of the problem, you still need to have for example an ACPI implementation, which took Linux many years for example.
I can think of better ways to keep a team of <20 programmers busy. Simply consider the Amiga an expensive computer. Compared to x86, terribly overpriced, but at about 500 euro’s, it is affordable by mere mortals, in fact, this is about the money you paid for an Amiga 500 20 years ago.
Edited 2009-10-27 11:31 UTC
What AmigaOS needs now, is to break from the past in a way that cleanly delineates between the old and the new, while allowing users to use both in a user-friendly fashion. Maybe have two partitions on a hard drive (dual boot), or use a “classic”-type environment of MacOS X, or something.
Then, what they need to do is to keep the “unique” qualities of the AmigaOS UI (the way the AmigaOS operates), while upgrading it to modern system specifications, like memory protection, VM, multi-threaded, multi-core, etc.
Just as you cannot have an Atari 1040ST function in today’s web-tied, high-end audio/graphics, 3D gaming world… so, too, you cannot expect to keep the “old ways” of the AmigaOS and it’s hardware and expect to be relevant today.
You simply CANNOT have your cake and eat it too. Not only is it impossible, it’s pointless! You cannot live in the 80’s AND live in 2010 at the same time, computing-wise.
The companies that made the Amiga what it was (Psygnosis, anyone?) are either long since gone or have moved onto other things. Very few companies still support the Amiga, even in tribute.
What must be done is to revive AmigaOS as a alternative OS on an alternative platform. Make it an actual platform, not just a “revised relic OS” on a piece of PPC hardware.
The “Amiga” must be revived as a “new” hardware platform, not just the OS. AmigaOS cannot remain viable, so long as it tries to reach for the present/future, while maintaining hold of the past.
Then and ONLY then, will AmigaOS be more than it used to be and be supported by a larger base than just the few die-hard devs and users, yearning to live in the past, while trying to grasp the future.
Well said. I’ve been kicking around similar ideas myself. It seems to me that if AOS or MOS (or BeOS for that matter) are to be anything more than a retro hobbiest OS, they must do so without the traditional desktop. Perhaps they can figure out the tablet or build a home automation OS or do a REAL web-based OS (and can change my mind about cloud computing). An extensive investigation of what the top computer science universities are working on might bear fruit.
My real fear is that Hyperion will be bought by Google in the near future and this 40th glimmer of hope from the Amiga camp will be once again dashed.
If Google buys them, “Amiga” will be (finally) truly and forever dead… up til now, it’s just been on life support, over and over and over and over and over and over… again.
This I do not wish, but it would happen, if it did.
But what does AmigaOS offer Google or anyone else? A 80’s retro UI? Come on… Google tain’t that stupid.
Right now, not much other than a lightweight OS that is good for embedded applications. Going forward, if Hyperion can get any traction (and that is a pie-in-the-sky sized IF) they could make an attractive takeover target for anyone with money to burn.
Embedded hardware has evolved too…
If you want an embedded system that won’t interact with users (eg routers etc), then AmigaOS is rather pointless since it’s a user oriented OS, not a server oriented system…
If you do want user interaction, embedded systems are coming with relatively fast ARM processors these days which are more than capable of running linux, linux already runs on them and has a wide software base already ported to the architecture. It’s also available royalty free, with source code so you can customise it to the task.
AmigaOS really has no chance as an embedded os.
It’s hard to take OSAlert seriously when they cover stuff like “Amiga OS4”.
So OSAlert should limit itself to news about Windows?
I suppose in your eyes “world news” should be limited to news about the U.S.