@Wumpus
What is an Amiga?

A hobby.
A respite from the real world.
A playground for the mind.
Escape to a more human friendly environment, if only for awhile.
A community for like minded people with varied interests and a common bond.

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Tinkering with computers.

@Signal

Agreed.

I'd like to add...

... a reminder that computers can be designed FOR people in order to enrich their lives. A real life lesson in design and aesthetics.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BSzili

Looks like I've opened up a can of worms here. I can't see any other explanations for Linux impressions. Yet. I think by FAT I must have meant the customised PC-MBR and GRUB. I'm too used to creating USB boot drives which don't work unless they have FAT so FAT sticks in my head. I've doen the operation below when installing AROS for dual boot.

http://aros.sourceforge.net/documentation/users/installation.php#installing-to-hard-drive

@bison

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Are you thinking of Linux on Raspberry Pi, maybe?

No but installing AROS alongside Linux on an x86 netbook in one case.

@paolone

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So are you telling me Amiga users are so illiterate about computing, that they can't even understand the difference between a bootloader and a kernel? Did I really loose so much time of my life arguing with totally clueless people?

No, what I'm telling you is that I read all this talk about AROS looking or acting like Linux, and when I looked the only Linux like thing I could see was use of the GRUB bootloader as used in popular Linux distros. Which is executed before AROS loaded up obviously.

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Well. AROS is Linux because both use the same bootloader. So Amiga, PCs and AmigaOnes are the exact same thing because they all have a space bar.

Well the spacebar an external attachment...

I've criticised the AmigaOne boot process years ago as on here:
https://blitterwolf.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/the-os4-pre-release-preview-part-1.html

@resle @thread

My opinion is that the only viable way ahead is AROS on a 68K Amiga.

@michalsc

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Uh, let us look at it from another perspective. Popular linux distros support PCI devices plugged in. All AmigaOne series have PCI slots. That makes AmigaOS running on X1000, X5000 or whatever else very linux-ish?

That's hardware. That would be more PC'ish. But like I said, from my observation, it only looks Linux like from association with GRUB. Now GRUB can also run on a Mac/PPC but I've never seen a PPC Linux distro with it.

I'm not saying AROS is Linux or casting judgement against it here. I'm just expressing how it looks from observation of the boot process. If someone wasn't familiar with GRUB then they wouldn't make a Linux association with the boot loader.

If I have a problem with it, that wouldn't be because of any Linux looking loader, it would be because presenting a menu with different resolutions isn't an Amiga type of thing. And I would say the same thing about SLB or OF style booting. Now, unlike it may seem. I do understand these things need to be in place and an open source team like AROS needs to use any resources they can get their hands on to assist the project. Especially if AROS needs to be live alongside another OS.

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Or, if I would like to be sarcastic, I would tell AmigaOS4 actually *is* just like linux because it has shared objects (.so files). Happy? ;)

I was fine with it. Just saying how the cover looks. Not trying to judge a book by the cover.

But, with shared objects in OS4, actually no I'm not happy with that as they don't get installed from a package manager. It was bad enough tracking down libraries and now we have to track down these objects as well. So it's not enough like Linux. And if I didn't know Linux used shared objects I wouldn't think they were Linux like at all.

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AmigaOS4 boots from either CFE or UBoot. None of these comes from Amiga world, UBoot is used a lot on embedded systems of different architectures. Very often UBoot is used to boot linux. That makes AmigaOS4 more linux-ish than AROS. There are only very few customisations in UBoot for AmigaOS, compared to entire UBoot code base.

We could also argue AmigaOS4 is like Windows here because it is booted from a BIOS firmware. And no, like you say, CFE or UBoot aren't Amiga in origin. In fact, I've never liked both. Any type of firmware, lest Kickstart itself is unnatural for an Amiga platform. On Amiga the core OS was in the firmware that set up the machine. I would have liked to see this trend continue. Sure, an OS4 PPC Kickstart takes up more space, but in the A1000 they had boot code that loaded in the main Kickstart but still was able to display an image on screen. Of course the hardware was all integrated.

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How ironic, parts of UBoot come from Linux either directly or in indirect way. Would you like to have AmigaOS done properly (without this awful 3rd party software parts), then you would have it embedded on the mainboard directly, just as it was the case with pre 4.0 Kickstarts.

Yes I would. In the least an Amiga like bootstrap. Colours on bootup or else an error on screen. A simple Gadtools like interface with red pointer would be nice. Well, would have been nice.

I've already posted a link before about my impressions with UBoot years ago and how I was critical of it. I mean, they didn't even code the UBoot font in Topaz 8. Topaz 8, the base of text on the Amiga. That could have helped ease us Amiga people into it, at least the minimum to try and make us feel at home in a foreign land.

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PS. Where do you have GRUB like boot loader on AmigaOne? Have I missed something? I hope you don't mean Parthenope, do you?

I know Parthenope has code for GRUB style booting. But what I mean is in that SLB thing. SLB has code based on GRUB for booting Linux, though a bit more simplified. The a1boot.conf file format is based on GRUB. Not as sophisticated as Parthenope has but it's in there. If you see the output of SLB it makes a note about GRUB.

Last edited by Hypex on 14-Apr-2018 at 06:44 AM.

You got to appreciate the irony when the Aros group who says Amiga-1 is built like a pc has to defend itself against peeps claiming it has more in common with Nix than Amiga.

As far as my daughter and wife use Linux - yes, when Linux is all finished and the distro is set-up one is lucky if it just works as then yeah, even childrern can use it. What about grownups and setting it up and even repairing it? that is exactly what I did with both my Linux distro and AOS4.1 and I will even admit the time it took me to setup AOS4.1 to my liking was pretty close to the time it took my to setup distros like LXQt to my liking, with one major difference - with AOS4.1 it was a blast and till this day I have fun reshaping it (and then sometimes I post videos about it). With Linux you can't pay me to go back and dive into it. You see? it's not about proficiency and putting down A1 users, it's about motivation which I find more in setting up W10 as a games/videos machine than Linux as a an all-around one. As far as Aros as a unique develpment I have yet to form my opinion seeing as I only used it as a 68k emulation a few times which wasn't sufficiant to reach any kind of conclusion.

When trying to say what is Amiga the camp boys come and try to paint this strowman argument about AOS4.1 users wanting to be different and failing to do so (damn if you do damn if you don't) when I for example think being different for the sake of being different is childish and if the rest of the world puts its resources into, let's say, video cards, then we might throw in the towel if we can't find a way to join in on the action. The same approach applies to the open source and free world which was formed pretty much on Linux (and it desreves the credit for it) and provided some key technologies like some I'm deploying right now on the pc with MPV and SVP. Funny how some here blame Amiga for taking library forms from Linux while a platform can be an utter failure of innovation yet enjoy the developments single developers do there because their crowd is also there (and nothing beside that).

While Amiga started as some sort of a perfect mix between market and uniqueness, today due to known conditions, it can't be defined by both its market or an apparent need to differ from everything else. The q is about the result of certain actions and what lies beyond it, is the road which is defined by this community (when its factions don't try to take a bigger slice of cake from an ever shrinking pie). Unfortutanely this community is also busy waiting for a company to come and save them just like in the old days (which never were).

Last edited by Srtest on 14-Apr-2018 at 07:20 PM.