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paolone 
The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 9:33:50
#1 ]
Super Member
Joined: 24-Sep-2007
Posts: 1143
From: Unknown

I've read many discussion here about modernizing AmigaOS (or its clones) changing the API and adding modern features. This is obviously feasible, providing people doing it have the right ideas in mind, and a clear project about implementing them. But my question is simple and easy: let's imagine that someone has money, time and development team to create this brand new generation AmigaOS, who's gonna use it? and pay for it?

Honestly, when the classic AmigaOS 3.x was already getting obsolete, and AmigaOS 4.0 betas surfaced from the dark, I've seen a lot of resistence from the community, whose large part preferred to stick with 3.x for many reasons. Someone may say the 4.0/4.1 API is not a revolution, even if many new features were added, they are just good additions to something old, but not something able to renew the system completely. It might be right, but for instance Firefox won't be portable to 3.x, due to its former limitations. So this should basically mean that there are actually some differences, that maybe worth upgrading.

On the other hand, every time AROS tried to leverage from the 3.1 era, it got resistences from people fond of the old API and who principally cared about source compatibility (which is, indeed, the AROS goal - so nothing surprising here).

In a few words, I still see many people worried about how a new OS and API would/should look like. And I guess: if a anyone is going to change the current API (3.x with further 4.x and MOS modifications), who is going to adopt it immediately? At what conditions? How would you figure "the next Amiga platform" in both hardware and software side, and how much would you pay for it?

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itix 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 10:38:21
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Dec-2004
Posts: 3398
From: Freedom world

@paolone

Quote:

It might be right, but for instance Firefox won't be portable to 3.x, due to its former limitations.


What makes you think so? There is OWB port for OS3, albeit very poor port, but port nevertheless. There is AmiCygnix for OS3 so you could in theory run Abiword there.

OS4, MorphOS (ABox) and AROS are "only" extensions to the original OS3 API. True type fonts, true colour rendering, better UI toolkits, better development tools, better 64bit DOS, better memory management, Unicode extensions and so on. There are gazillions of improvements, fixes, enhancements and so on but fundamentally everything is built on top of the original Kickstart 1.0.

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radical 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 17:48:28
#3 ]
Member
Joined: 12-Feb-2010
Posts: 40
From: Unknown

@paolone

Who would use it?
Anyone who likes it enough, compared to what else is available to them.
Since the C= bankruptcy, some of us former Amiga users, have limped
along with available alternative desktop OSes, Win,Mac,Linux,etc.
never quite satisfied...

Who would pay for it?
That's a very good question.
Personally, I'm all for an open source Amiga OS, and a complementary
open source Amiga applications and support project, so things don't get
again trapped in ownership issues, or have high price tags associated with them.

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Arko 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 18:21:53
#4 ]
Super Member
Joined: 17-Jan-2007
Posts: 1989
From: Unknown

@paolone

I does not remeber all the details but IMR a lot of the API functions intoduced with KS2.o04 should have been more or less suitable for systems with 'non shared' structures.
Is it somehow possible to continue this way ?

Details:
Under KS1.3 you needed to alloc and fill the structure for a window or screen by yourself, with KS2.04 they introduced functions with variable argument lists ...

_________________
AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

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ChrisH 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 18:38:32
#5 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 30-Jan-2005
Posts: 6679
From: Unknown

@paolone
Who would use it? A lot of the people on this site I think, not to mention potentially many ex-Amigans. Just because there are SOME people who define AmigaOS in terms of the A500 or A1200, does not mean that we all do. Hyperion moves OS4 forward without crippling it due to people who demand 100% backwards compatibility (you know who they are, cough bernd cough).

Of course we have to drop some compatibility to move forward, but I don't see we need to drop compatibility entirely - it's just a question of effort (i.e. perhaps an Ambitious Project?).

Those who keep looking to the past are welcome to keep living in it (they have UAE).

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itix 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 19:14:44
#6 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Dec-2004
Posts: 3398
From: Freedom world

@Arko

Quote:

I does not remeber all the details but IMR a lot of the API functions intoduced with KS2.o04 should have been more or less suitable for systems with 'non shared' structures.
Is it somehow possible to continue this way ?


In fact 2.0 made it worse. 2.0 implemented some robustness by implementing watchdog timers (this has saved OS4.1 users from many many deadlocks so far) but 2.0 also made it possible execute even more code in Intuition or filesystem context. Any fault out there is very deadly.

And all structures are still public and shared. 2.0 didnt change this at all. The OS needs complete redesign.

Quote:

Details:
Under KS1.3 you needed to alloc and fill the structure for a window or screen by yourself, with KS2.04 they introduced functions with variable argument lists ...


Only difference was that instead of filling struct NewWindow you are filling struct TagItem.

Last edited by itix on 01-Apr-2010 at 07:14 PM.

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saimon69 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 20:22:39
#7 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 7-Dec-2007
Posts: 307
From: Los Angeles, CA

@paolone

I used to be more intense in my convintions, guess having to deal with real life issues (work, family, paying the bills,etc). made me mellow down, so, while still have hopes in a rewrite of the actual API (quite unlikely to come before my retirement :P), i personally look forward to short-term improvement such as implementing the modifications made by michal Schulz on the 64 bit version and the ABI v1; then, once AROS become a quite stable and feature complete system, we can also talk about a v2 (probably sandboxing old apps seems viable).

But since am not a coder, this is just IMHO.

Saimon69

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Arko 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 1-Apr-2010 20:40:10
#8 ]
Super Member
Joined: 17-Jan-2007
Posts: 1989
From: Unknown

@itix

Quote:

itix wrote:
@Arko



And all structures are still public and shared. 2.0 didnt change this at all. The OS needs complete redesign.


I know you could still access the structs there was nothing that did stop you doing it.


Quote:


Only difference was that instead of filling struct NewWindow you are filling struct TagItem.


I just thought it was a normal C-function argument but maybe I was wrong. I know the accessing of shared structures like it was in in KS1.3 must disappear.

Last edited by Arko on 01-Apr-2010 at 09:37 PM.

_________________
AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

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persia 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 4:13:21
#9 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Jul-2009
Posts: 1059
From: Unknown

@itix

Yeah, it sad it's come to this. We've missed the boat, too much time has passed, Windows, OS X and Linux are mature now. I don't see any chance of AmigaOS catching up in my lifetime. And there's no will to catch up, even if there were resources.



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Jupp3 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 4:31:19
#10 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Feb-2007
Posts: 1225
From: Unknown

There was already one "complete re-design", which didn't (apart from the name) have much in common with Classic AmigaOS.

It was called AmigaDE / Amiga Anywhere.

Sure, it was "not really an OS", but it could have well been extended into one later on. Would there be same amount (percentage-wise) of resistance from users and developers if one of "NG Amiga" systems did the same kind of total redesign?

Not saying that AA was really good or anything, but it just happens to be the closest thing to "total OS redesign" we have had this far.

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HenryCase 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 8:21:47
#11 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 12-Nov-2007
Posts: 728
From: Unknown

@saimon69
As you know from the last AROS thread on AW.net, I agree with you.

@everyone else
If you want to play around with new ideas, restart this project, you won't have to deal with any limitations and you can start seeing your dreams turn into reality:
http://anubis-os.org/home/

@all
EDIT: I've just thought of a good question... In your vision of a next generation Amiga operating system, will it be single-user or multi-user?

Last edited by HenryCase on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:33 AM.
Last edited by HenryCase on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:33 AM.

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Troels 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 8:41:18
#12 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2004
From: Unknown

@Jupp3
Taking a totally different "OS" and labelling it AmigaSomething IMHO have nothing to do with a redesign. I liked the idea back then, but not as an alternative to AmigaOS. Instead it should have been a complement to AmigaOS which would probably also have had interest from more developers.

Personally I would like to see AmigaOS be taken forward at the cost of backwards compatibility, most of the stuff I use now would just be a recompile as source is mostly available. But AmigaOS needs to stay AmigaOS so I hope the structure won't change to much.

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itix 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 9:12:41
#13 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Dec-2004
Posts: 3398
From: Freedom world

@Arko

Quote:

I just thought it was a normal C-function argument but maybe I was wrong. I know the accessing of shared structures like it was in in KS1.3 must disappear.


struct NewWindow passed to OpenWindow() call is private structure.

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DAX 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 10:32:31
#14 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 30-Sep-2009
Posts: 2790
From: Italy

@paolone
I believe that what Amigans ultimately want (and search) is "Fun".
Surprisingly enough, leaving in our niche market also has its benefits, as we are basically left out of the big ongoing dilemma (that being "how this computer copes in the world of ¤199 NetBooks, and who among the billions of mainstream users will be convinced to adopt it, and at what conditions" etc.).

In the end that's the spirit here, Amiga is for those that find a peculiar sense of FUN in doing their computing stuff on a custom computer which runs an OS that for many different reasons (that differ from user to user) ends up being their favourite.
No need for world-conquering goals, and by extension, no need for Big questions either (Average Joes won't be convinced to buy it? Perfect! Go buy that NetBook Joe! We surely won't mind! ).

In the future I see Hyperion catering for this niche by continuing to upgrade AmigaOS (one step at a time) until it will be fairly modernized.

On the software side, Amigans have the historical tendency to do their computing stuff on software available on their beloved platform disregarding main-stream offerings (they always did) so don't be surprised to see AX1000 owners happily doing their text editing in Page Stream (neglecting Word and the likes) 3D with Blender (yes neglecting Maya and so on), music on future versions of Audio Evolution (disregarding Cubase and similar), presentations in Hollywood (bad luck PowerPoint! you've been ditched! ), video editing and compositing again on Blender, etc. etc. (spread sheets with Gnumeric, vector graphics with SodiPodi, music with TuneNet, video with DVPlayer or Mplayer, surfing the web with TimberWolf, you name it, as long as there is a single good software to handle a a computing task, amigans will love every hour spent with it on their beloved computer).

And what about curious and playful things developed using Xmos technology? Naahhh there is too much fun to be had here to leave...

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damocles 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 12:49:38
#15 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Dec-2007
Posts: 1719
From: Unknown

@DAX

Quote:
In the end that's the spirit here, Amiga is for those that find a peculiar sense of FUN in doing their computing stuff on a custom computer which runs an OS that for many different reasons (that differ from user to user) ends up being their favourite. No need for world-conquering goals, and by extension, no need for Big questions either (Average Joes won't be convinced to buy it? Perfect! Go buy that NetBook Joe! We surely won't mind! ).


Why we can't have fun on a $300 netbook running AROS? Well, at least you did not tell poor old Joe to go catch fire, guess that is an improvement for the unwashed.


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Arko 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 13:13:30
#16 ]
Super Member
Joined: 17-Jan-2007
Posts: 1989
From: Unknown

@DAX

Quote:

In the future I see Hyperion ...


There seems not to be much future for Hyperion: IMR there was a message from Rogue about how important an industrial customers wanting AOS4 as embedded OS would be.
Now look to the Hyperion homepage, there are no informations about AOS4 as embedded OS, possible customers will not find any usable informations about Hyperion's main product.

Hyperion's relation to AROS is not positive,, AROS is threatening AOS4 survival as hobby OS. I don't see Hyperion in the right position to develop a future API for AROS. A new API for AROS was the main point of the OP.
Look to one of the polls how much people want to have a working complete AOS3 emulation, there is a bigger chance for a seamless UAE integration in AROS then under any other amigaoid OS.

_________________
AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

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DAX 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 14:12:17
#17 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 30-Sep-2009
Posts: 2790
From: Italy

@Arko
Wow! your post about no news nor future just in time for Faq number 3 (on main page) that hints at GPGPU streaming apps to be supported along with powerfull new Graphic Driver system (that will make new GC avaialable way earlier) and of course SMP also coming...

??@Damocles
Indeed that could be fun (it actually is ), but it is even more fun for those that like to try OSs on different machines that commercially shipped as something else (being able to do so is quite great IMHO).
That said, others (including me and many here on AW) love to have a Personal Computer that while not being a Mac or a PC (I would like to remind everyone that those systems were already avaialble and had more software and more market even when the Amiga first came out) it was born as that computer from the get go.
I see no evil in this either.

So more power to us all, Amigans of all flavors

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Raffaele 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 14:54:48
#18 ]
Super Member
Joined: 7-Dec-2005
Posts: 1906
From: Naples, Italy

@paolone

Quote:

paolone wrote:
I've read many discussion here about modernizing AmigaOS (or its clones) changing the API and adding modern features. This is obviously feasible, providing people doing it have the right ideas in mind, and a clear project about implementing them. But my question is simple and easy: let's imagine that someone has money, time and development team to create this brand new generation AmigaOS, who's gonna use it? and pay for it?


Paolo you are a maintainer of Icaros Desktop Distro for AROS. Aros has already its plans for improving Amiga Api with new features in its projects pages.

So don't mind it, and wait for new improvements while it is time to you for making Icaros Desktop more flexible and usable.

I tried 1.2 of Icaros Desktop and found it just a major collection of futile windows-gadgets demos and irrregular-shapes windows demos.

Who care of it?

Just make an icaros Desktop version that when installed, recognizes on the fly that Host Operating System is using Internet connection, and link it itself automatically on internet showing OWB browser running, FLV and MPEG5 players, audio streaming for MP3 and Internet Radios, etcetera...

This is your main task...

Quote:

In a few words, I still see many people worried about how a new OS and API would/should look like. And I guess: if a anyone is going to change the current API (3.x with further 4.x and MOS modifications), who is going to adopt it immediately? At what conditions? How would you figure "the next Amiga platform" in both hardware and software side, and how much would you pay for it?


The progress make every time people worrying and fearing about it, but slowly AmigaOS is emerging from is ghetto, and new versions of it acquired new features and next versions will acquire more.

So don't worry about it.

People will love new features as long as these features continuing the mainstream of keeping AmigaOS a quite friendly OS with ease of use, and lightweight consuming of hardware resources.

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 15:36:45
#19 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12791
From: Norway

@paolone

Quote:
Who's gonna use it?


Someone loves the OS for what it is, like me.

Quote:
And pay for it?


I’m happy to pay for developer’s time on improving AmigaOS4.x,
I own AmigaOS4.0 and AmigaOS4.1 played cash and registered.
I even did buy some of Hyperion games 3/4 to support Hyperion.

Quote:
AmigaOS 3.x was already getting obsolete


I agree, I think most things when it comes to improving the API is going to be gradually.

In the past one allocated any memory for any OS structures, today one allocates sys objects and let OS deal whit what kind of memory used, before you need do everything, today the OS knows more about how to dispose of system objects, and clean up.

Moving away from hooks and nasty call callback routines, I don’t think MP has that high priority compared to SMP, mainly because full MP or not does not affect your user experience to the same degree as being able to use two CPU cores and able to play p720 films, and many more things raw cpu power can be used for, and I also think it’s easier to get SMP to work, implement something that going abstract applications from underling internal structures, not that it’s not impossible, the tool box of tricks are where big so any thing is possible.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Apr-2010 at 04:22 PM.

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Leo 
Re: The old age API, the NG dream and the real life
Posted on 2-Apr-2010 16:04:15
#20 ]
Super Member
Joined: 21-Aug-2003
Posts: 1597
From: Unknown

Whoever writes this new API need to make people want to use it... It needs to be enough attractive and enough apps to interest people.

Now that being said, there will always be people against it, and promoting the old one. But that's not the problem in a "normal" market, where this is a minority. Problem here is that the only people left are attached to it and aren't part of a minority, but of a majority...

Adopting new APIs (RTG with CGX/P96), hardware (sound cards, graphics cards, even AGA machine at their early release) has always been a problem on the Amiga. It took years for people to adopt CGX, it also took a long time for PPC to be accepted as well. Same thing for AGA over ECS (we even saw demos "we don't need AGA", etc..).

Either you make people recycle their machines, or you make new users buy your machine. On the Amiga problem is people don't want to recycle, and there's few if no reason at all for non-amiga users to buy an Amiga.

And I think that if CBM hadn't declared bankrupt this early, this would have killed them anyway.

AEon thinks they can change that: we'll see ;)

Last edited by Leo on 02-Apr-2010 at 04:08 PM.

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