Current top operating systems are Windows, Unix/Linux, Android, IOS, OS X, see Usage share of operating systems ... but where is Amiga?

Hyperion Entertainment bankrupt?
Hyperionmp #60
Hyperionmp #62

Amiga OS could be at least under the top 10, i.e. under the best and most used operating systems!

No kidding, just look at MS Windows - it's not that good but it's most used.

The question is: How can Amiga OS become a leading operating system?

Well, I'd like to hear your recommendations but how about this:

1. Amiga OS4 must become Open Source. That is very important because
- to get governmental money
- nonprofit and public benefit to save taxes
- to get low-priced help from programmers around the world
- to qualify Amiga OS for high security applications in military and industry

2. How can Hyperion Entertainment get enough money?
- sell nice Amiga DVDs with some extras, many prefer a DVD for installation
- it should be possible to get quite large sums from the EU (at least in the future)
- it should be possible to get some donations for the great vision of a successful Amiga OS surpassing Microsoft
- crowdfunding, crowdinvestment (i.e. Hyperion Entertainment starts a project, allocates money, hopefully makes profit and pays the investors their money with some bonus back)

3. Stop kidding with Amiga OS as a hobby OS - that's bullshit! Amiga OS could become a leading operating system - that must be the goal and nothing less!
- Amiga OS must be user-friendly
- Amiga OS must be real-time capable
- Amiga OS must have no backdoors whatsoever
- Amiga OS must be as secure and reliable as possible
- Amiga OS must be small and modular, for example from a 100-250 MB base to a read-to-use 1 GB home/office installation
- Amiga OS must be able to efficiently run Linux and Windows programs, see Wine and ReactOS
- Amiga OS must come with some programs most useres simply expect, like a browser, email, editor, file-manager/explorer (like Windows XP and Total Commander) and something like WinZip.

Yeah, something like that ... and don't laugh - that's possible!

@KingKong

Nothing is impossible !

PowerPC could even be mainstream again if Amiga companies just play their cards
really really well.

*EDIT*

AmigaOS already comes with a archive extractor, and I believe that it is more capable than Winzip.

Last edited by Trewq on 15-Feb-2015 at 08:26 AM.

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@KingKong

Um which government have pledged to give money (and to who???) for an open-source OS-4?

And why are the EU going to give Hyperion money for producing a DVD???

@Trewq

True, but apple also became a lot more popular after leaving PowerPC

I think most of the people just want intel or amd processors for their computer because off the frequency they operate

@KingKong

Whatever your smoking, can I have some ?

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@KingKong

Quote:

Amiga OS must come with some programs most useres simply expect, like a browser, email, editor, file-manager/explorer (like Windows XP and Total Commander) and something like WinZip.

Aren´t these delivered with OS install CD as contributions? At least last time I checked...


Quote:

Yeah, something like that ... and don't laugh - that's possible!

Yeah!

Make an AmigaWatch with 1 programme...

The Clock.

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Switch to affortable hardware for everyone.
Re written from scratch, new kernel, memory protection, focus on stability.
Fit in todays standards.
Focus on performance for each and every task.
Focus on the daily needs of an end user.

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@King Kong

That's some powerful drugs you've got. Please share them round.

AmigaOS added minicomputer functions to a micrcomputer, and was for this reason exceptional in 1985 to 1992 ish. After this time it slowly was overtaken to the point that today it is a toy OS.

It doesn't make use of an MMU to offer memory protection, the multitasking schedular is trivial prioritised round robin, it is stuck forever in 32 bits... to name just three critical failings.

NB. I loved my Amigas and was a diehard fan from 1990 to 1997.

EDIT: and its impossible to add those things without throwing out what's there. So you might as well start again retaining only the AmigaOS name.

Last edited by Aslak3 on 15-Feb-2015 at 09:28 AM.

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Amiga OS must provide full user-control over the data received from and transmitted over the internet. Therefore Amiga OS must have
- a native firewall that restricts internet-access for programs; the user must explicitly allow internet-access for an application
- detailed and comprehensible logging of internet-transmission; total and vor each program with interent access; the user must recognize unusual behavior.

Amiga OS must be bottom up secure and to achieve this, ideally the whole computer (from chip micro code over the BIOS/firmeware to the OS and most used programs) must have bottom up checksums and a secure checksum-scanner. Possibly the Xena co-processor (see AmigaOne X1000) can be used for some extra security. The checksums must be public.

In these days (just think of CIA/NSA), security is a great feature not only for military and industry but also for Joe Sixpack. Obviously, one day Amiga OS should run on smartphones also.

PS: LibreOffice would be nice too but that's already in work, isn't it?

@pavlor

Sorry, I'm not running Amiga OS4 but is there really something like WindowsXP-style Explorer (right click file compressor/extractor) and Total Commander on the DVD? That would be great!

@Aslak3

32 bit is still good enough for most applications. 64 bit hast to come too but 32 bit enables effient CPUs and safes memory.

Yeah, state of the art virtual memory management, memory protection and multiprocessing would be nice and that has to come - no worries.

@KingKong

VM and memory protection is not a state of the art feature. Your television probably had them in its OS. Probably even your top of the line washing machine. Yet alone your mobile phone.

That's how far behind current Amiga OS is.

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@KingKong

Quote:

Sorry, I'm not running Amiga OS4 but is there really something like WindowsXP-style Explorer (right click file compressor/extractor) and Total Commander on the DVD? That would be great!

Extractor yes (right click on archive -- Extract to -- choose patch in requester), compressor no in context menus (not in default installation). As OS uses XAD for extracting archives, most file types are correctly recognised and extracted (LHA, RAR, ZIP etc.)

Total Commander - DirectoryOpus and DiskMaster2 are included as contributions, I was not TC user, I can´t say if features are comparable

If you are interested in runing OS4, you may buy "Classic" version for 30 EUR and try it in WinUAE. However, there are limitations (mainly only 128 MB RAM - enough for basic OS usage, but not for much more).

@Aslak3

Quote:

That's how far behind current Amiga OS is.

AmigaOS has VM since 4.1 (2008).

@KingKong
Wrong strategy. You Must not try to bring Features to become on par with mainstream Systems. Check what what kind of UI (men machine interfaces) will be used in 10years... Try to bring this earlier (you could because mainstream jobs live from small changes).

If you come up with something usefull you can become #1

I believe offering cloud saas and cloud computing, managing bigdata(Hadoop), offering a assistant which can also identify priority emails for is something usefull in business.
Offering exclusive computer power for heavy tasks or providing users a way to easily connect to a disturbed computing infrastructure will speed up work tasks... And this is money.

Btw countries at least in Europe support startups (closed source) more than opensource.

This is what I plan to reach within the next 5 years step by step. My new hobby project amigaNX

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@pavlor

No it doesn't. It has memory paging to disk which is not the same as virtual memory.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory

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@Aslak3

That kind of virtual memory is in OS4 at least since Final Update in 2006...

(probably even since first pre-release in 2004)

Last edited by pavlor on 15-Feb-2015 at 10:22 AM.

@pavlor

Did you read the Wikipedia article?

"The primary benefits of virtual memory include freeing applications from having to manage a shared memory space, increased security due to memory isolation, and being able to conceptually use more memory than might be physically available, using the technique of paging."

AmigaOS has this? Obviously I used some other AmigaOS all that time. Clearly OS4 has some kind of paging system (which is not very reliable by your own admission) but it is not virtual memory as that article, and a computer scientist, defines it.

(if anyone knows how paging was hacked into OS4 I would be vaguely interested to hear it)

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@Aslak3

For current memory management see (in most parts since 4.0FinalUpdate):
http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/Exec_Memory_Allocation


Can´t find old 2003/2004 OS4 presentations on the net (PM me your e-mail aderess if you are interested) - I will mention relevant parts:

AmigaOS4 Presentation Amiwest, July 26-27 2003:
The management of the PPC MMU is completely integrated into Exec with an API interface. (page 15)

Virtual address space with virtual memory support. Pager to
swap memory pages in and out.
General Exception handler :

Crash handler
Stack manager (Auto stack alloc / expansion / limitation)
Pager (for swapper ; not yet available) (page 16)


Feature List Revision 1.0 January 7, 2003:
New memory system:
• ExecSG uses a fully virtualised address space. As a result addressable memory can be larger than
the available physical memory.
• Memory allocation can specifically request physically mapped memory or virtualised memory.
Clarification: virtualised memory is NOT virtual memory in the sense of disk-based
memory.
• Memory allocation can be deferred, i.e. virtual addresses are allocated but no physical memory is
assigned until it is needed (which is then handled automatically and fully transparently to the
application). If an address range is not referenced, it will never be backed up with physical
memory so no memory is wasted.
• Memory can be paged-out to disk (virtual memory). This feature can be disabled if required
(under certain circumstances, this can be switched on or off on-the-fly, no reboot required).
• Memory can be reallocated: This essentially resizes a block of memory without moving it.
• Memory reallocation in conjunction with deferred mapping can be used to load disk-based data
structures in an extremely memory-efficient manner: Allocate a large block of memory deferred,
fill it up with data, and reallocate it to the appropriate size. This method will never use more than
the memory that is actually being accessed and can be used to load e.g. compressed data when
the uncompressed size is not known but a rough estimate is nonetheless possible.
• The memory system is now "object-oriented": The virtual address space is divided into areas
(similar to the old MemHeader system) but each memory area can be attached to an allocator and
a fault handler.
• An allocator organizes the address space it has been assigned to;
• it handles allocation/deallocation, DMA preparation etc.
6
• it handles allocation of physical memory and binding physical memory
to virtual addresses
• A fault handler is responsible for handling memory faults in its assigned area:
• it handles deferred memory requests by providing physical memory as
soon as virtual areas are accessed.
• it handles interaction with the pager to swap memory out to/in from
disk.
• it handles illegal access (privilege violation, illegal addresses etc).
• Possibilities for allocator/fault handlers:
• "Normal" virtual addressed memory: The default case.
• Stack areas: A stack might underflow (out of stack space), in which case the fault
handler can use the allocator to provide a new chunk of physical memory, thus
automatically enlarging the stack. Stack underflows are one of the major problems
on the Amiga today and account for a significant percentage of crashes.
• Memory mapped files: The fault handler swaps in portions of a file when they are
accessed in virtual address space. This works exactly like virtual memory but allows
for normal disk-based files to be accessed as if they were in memory.
• Address space emulation: The system can emulate alien address spaces, for example
emulate an AGA chipset on a machine that doesn`t have AGA. (page 6-7)

@pavlor

So it has one big "virtual" address range for all processes, with paging on top of that. Virtually useless (haha?) but I guess within the technical definition of Virtual Memory. It still lacks memory protection, which is the principal reason for virtual memory. In other words it does nothing to make the OS any more reliable then it was thirty years ago.

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