@matthey

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Unix was *not* designed "more future proof" than any other OS. It was *not* designed for portability or multitasking.

This just makes the situation look worse!

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After multitasking was added, it was many years before it was SMP capable. The monolithic kernel made it difficult to port and update drivers. It was low performance and was going nowhere on the desktop until a highly optimized and hacked Linux version was created for the large x86-64 platform. Binary compatibility was not as important as the source code was often open source. Old versions of Unix based software requires a recompile and may require code changes as well. The open source philosophy saved Unix but the flavor/distribution and ISA/binary divisions keep it from becoming more popular.

Not that I noticed but I was wasn't aware Unix had any desktop presence. I did wonder how it survived against a free copy. Linux code tends to need updating and recompiling with each kernel release as the include files go out of date.

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The AmigaOS is somewhat like a cheaper more efficient Unix but the Amiga has binary compatibility and standard hardware while lacking the open source code philosophy. The AmigaOS either needs to break compatibility and evolve like Unix or return to standard customized hardware and focus on maintaining compatibility. In 1985, the AmigaOS may have had a chance at becoming like Unix but doing it today is likely to result in another fragmented Unix like flavor that is three and a half decades behind Unix derived OSs. Returning to standard customized hardware could unite all Amiga fans and makes more sense to explore and possibly ride the retro computing wave back to prominence while taking advantage of hardware integration.

Historically each major Amiga OS update broke some compatibility. Usually games though if they didn't use the OS as intended and went bangers they were coded wrong. And then the usual software problems. Some with newer CPUs but that's progress. But software had a lot of flaws like expecting Topaz 8 window fonts so seemingly trivial changes to borders and fonts messed them all up.

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The 68k MacOS was probably serviceable but likely difficult to update while maintaining compatibility. It was not multitasking from the beginning like Unix and adding cooperative multitasking had issues and is inferior to preemptive multitasking. Apple had decided to change architectures from 68k to PPC breaking compatibility anyway so they decided to fix it with something that was working and proven. Apple nearly went bankrupt during the Mac PPC years and changed again to x86-64 and ARM but they eventually successfully made the transition to a more advanced OS. There were definitely politics involved in both OS and architecture decisions. Jobs likely didn't care what was under the hood as long as it worked well enough and supported his GUI design.

My first experience of Mac I recall was OS7 emulated in ShapeShifter on my Amiga. 2 colour mode being the fastest. After that I used an OS9 PPC black book. By the time Mac OS9 came out I couldn't tell that it didn't have full multitasking. It did a good job. Having auto loading disks and a Ram disk made it very Amiga Like. And the layout was neater, by comparison Amiga was sloppy and they never fixed it up.

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Windows at least started out with cooperative multitasking even though it was primitive in the beginning (windows couldn't even overlap). It was also a mess under the hood trying to support segmented memory and the quirky x86 architecture. The Windows XP kernel was replaced with the Windows NT kernel to provide preemptive multitasking and there were many compatibility problems but also an improved "compatibility mode" introduced. The x86(-64) platform has payed attention to compatibility and has a unified OS and ISA unlike the others which has helped to attract developers and retain customers. It has also allowed the OS to be profitable and has supported the organic evolution which has occurred. The days of quickly evolving commodity hardware are over as the efficiency advantages of better integrated hardware is becoming more important. As only the most popular OSs can make a profit off sales of the OS in order to pay for commodity hardware drivers, expect any OS which gains personal computer market share to be on standard custom hardware. The Raspberry Pi is standard hardware and even ARM creating a more standardized AArch64 ISA is a move toward better standardization integration which should improve Android and Apple offerings.

It was obvious with classic Windows as it had that "fake" feeling to it. Not helped by the "da da". But it was more configurable than later Windows or it looked like. I recall a young lady who got a new computer that had Windows 3.1. Soon she had a different colour for each window border. It even put OS3.1 to shame on my A1200 since Workbench really only used 4 colours. But, I thought Windows '95 already had the Amiga style multitasking, so what kernel was used in '95 up to XP? I thought the Windows style compatibility mode was strange as it looked like each program had to manage its own gadgetry that looked exactly the same. Where as on Amiga OS only classic apps with custom gadgets had the old look while new look apps got the latest look. On Mac old apps looked old but it had this bizarre looking routine where it booted OS9 on OSX just to load up an app and then it looked old.

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The AmigaOS is closed, divided and has barely evolved compared to the other OSs mentioned above while there is not enough money in any of the niche markets to properly develop it. Replacing the AmigaOS kernel with a SMP capable kernel will not allow existing Amiga programs to use SMP without placing them in a sandbox using slow emulation. The AmigaOS is adequate for lower performance affordable hardware which could be popular enough to mass produce. It would be interesting to see what could be done with customized hardware as far as performance improvements while retaining enough compatibility for the retro computing markets and allowing some modern computing.

Well, AmigaOS as it stands, is the original 68K which really closed at OS3.1. OS3.2 is from another time though still 68K. And then there is OS4 which is almost like a cousin twice removed. Built from original sources and then C replacements with ideas from others. Running on Amiga foreign PPC hardware. But the design is too open. They encouraged programmers to directly peek and poke in system structures. Gradually improved the API with ease of use. But didn't provide a safe and private way access the system. The door was already left open. They made changes like dropping BCPL so Amiga standards changed but they needed to go deeper. Later they forbid the Forbid but it was too late by then and there was no other way. The move to OS4 changed a lot but they kept too much legacy in. Reasons cited were 68k compatibility but 68k code was emulated regardless so a fire walled 68k OS interface could have been put in place, but it would have been more work than task based emulation. Other quirky decisions were killing off Tools, which made tool types look meaningless, and confused Commodities which was moved into Utilities where it doesn't belong, allegedly because having both Tools and Utilities was thought to be confusing. Some 68K API changes were perhaps more confusing, like rendering GetCC useless, even though it was designed as a system friendly call to get conditions. In a time where system friendly calls were needed, it didn't make sense to do this, and introduce possible bugs into once fine working 68K code.

@matthey

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It was low performance and was going nowhere on the desktop until a highly optimized and hacked Linux version was created for the large x86-64 platform.

Eh, what? What "hacked" Linux are you yapping about?

NeXTStep? IRIX? I recall even Ultrix with X11R4 and CDE using a puck mouse being a heck lot better desktop than contemporary windows and mac. And Linux isn't Unix.

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Binary compatibility was not as important as the source code was often open source. Old versions of Unix based software requires a recompile and may require code changes as well. The open source philosophy saved Unix but the flavor/distribution and ISA/binary divisions keep it from becoming more popular.

Hm, in old time Unixen was not much open source - the word "open" at the time had a different meaning - "code open to our licenced partners" and to some degree "open standards". Open Source as we know it today came with GNU and GPL, really. BSD was (and is) open for commercial exploitation.

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There were definitely politics involved in both OS and architecture decisions. Jobs likely didn't care what was under the hood as long as it worked well enough and supported his GUI design.

He cared enough to keep PPC alive for a decade, he could have dropped it right away when he took over Apple, but instead they spent years porting NeXTStep (with a mac aqua skin and cocoa) to PPC.

Last edited by kolla on 31-Jan-2022 at 11:54 PM.
Last edited by kolla on 31-Jan-2022 at 11:53 PM.

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