@AdvancedFollower

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Yeah, AROS is a pretty good indication of what would happen if AmigaOS got ported to x86. Not many people using it, even though it's free and works on cheap x86 hardware.

I am not an AmigaOS4 user, but I have used AROS, and I get the impression that AmigaOS4 is in a higher state of development, so I don't really think this is an apples-to-apples comparison.

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@bison

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a higher state of development,

could you define the category of "higher state of development", like, wider contemporary infrastructure, wider choice of supported hardware, advanced features, lower footprint, legacy systems compatibility, eye candy, or whatever you deem appropriate.. ?

@pavlor

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Drivers?

You mean uber?

Kidding aside, drivers are just as much a problem on any other arch, but by going "mainstream" there is the option of learning and even using drivers from other operating systems, the way Haiku can use hardware drivers from FreeBSD, and Linux and BSDs can use NDIS from windows etc.

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@wawa

Quote:

could you define the category of "higher state of development"

Not really; I've only used AROS nightly builds, so I have no real basis on which to make a comparison. It's just an impression. You'd have to ask someone who has used both whether they think AROS is an acceptable substitute for AmigaOS4.

If that's you, then perhaps you can answer the question.

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@wawa

Personaly I found the default look of Aros "ugly". The second point is that it is hard to install IMHO. 3rd thing is that there's no 68k JIT emulator within the OS like on OS4 & Morphos. (I don't wanna 68k based apps launched within UAE even if it is done nicely)

If all this existed I would use AROS.

@edponpon

I said this years ago, even if nothing has changed yet, but OS4 actually brings AmigaOS closer to x86[64] and other architectures than ever before. For one thing, they ported as much to C as possible. Another is hardware like the AmigaOne models. Where they had to remove legacy dependence on Amiga hardware. So they are half way there really. After all, the AmigaOne machines have been described as a [expensive] PC with a PowerPC CPU.

There's some low level stuff like interrupts and a few other things that would be tied to PowerPC at present. So they would need to be hidden away and made transparent. And right now it would still need to run on a CPU that supports big endian. Which most still do.

To fully support the hardware, 64-bit, SMP and that sort of thing, will need a full rewrite. Well for 64-bit at least. Porting to 64-bit PowerPC is easiest. But in the process portng to an agnostic 64-bit ISA would be a good idea. After all, they need to replace the whole system at the 64-bit level anyway, so might away have it as a clean room implementation as much as possible.

Now, they will need 68K support. After all, this was a big feature. As pointed out, sure you can run UAE, but nothing is the same as running 68K emulated under the native OS. And there are still components like Arexx and maybe Xad clients that ­don't have native or it isn't possible dur to some reason. The "sharedbox" approach now would need to change to a sandbox that called on a legacy API which acted as a wrapper to the native API. I don't see 68K integration as a problem.

As it is with the AmigaOne machines now, they really do reduce AmigaOS4 to being an OS. They don't rely on Amiga hardware anymore. The point of the AmigaOne now days is a focus on the OS. Yes I see what your point is. Well, baby steps. Maybe baby steps still. But slowly getting there.

@kamelit0

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If you wanna go for IA64 you've to give the users the same features as mainstream OS

Which of course bases the notion of relevance on competitiveness.

The foremost concern that virtually everyone seems to ignore is the fact that the AmigaOS must actually generate revenue and become solvent.

Solvent, not dominant.

And the usual counterargument that has been bandied up for the last 15 years is that people will never buy something when there are better/faster/cheaper options available.

Except they do.

In fact, there has recently been another 80's brand that has been successfully leveraged and it too uses technology that isn't better/faster/cheaper.

So why can one effort succeed while another one continues to flounder?

It's not about the technology. It's never really been about the technology.

@ne_one

Yeah Atari is doing for now "$3,004,987" with 11402 backers (maybe not unique).
ZX Spectrum Next, $947,900.02 with 3 113 backers.

I'm not sure it is enough users to sustain a business. For the ZX they did have everything, brand, rights, original case designer and a team that deliver.
I don't know much about Atari, but if you've seen Ready Player One, it is still a very strong brand.
On Amiga land we don't even know who own what so it is a big handicap.

@edponpon

I've been thinking about this, and maybe Amiga would be better off as just hardware. It would be nice for developers to have a single platform to target, with no more than one revision per year. A sort of reference system for AROS, Linux, *BSD, etc.

Raspberry Pi is already doing something like this, which is why it is being used as a desktop system, despite being somewhat under powered and unintended for this purpose.

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@bison

Using AROS nightly is kind of like building your own Linux distribution. Unpolished and difficult to install. Distributions like Icaros are much more polished and easy to install, provided you have the magic combination of x86 hardware that's actually supported.

@BigD

Wann a bet that the very same people that use now OS4 wouldn't give a damn if they had to buy an x86 machine, they only care about the name, that's why they don't use AROS, or do you think more people would be using AROS if they get it on PPC?

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@pixie
I wonder if people would accept the loss of being able to mix 68k and native code, because this is currently one of the selling points of OS4.

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@AdvancedFollower

Quote:

Using AROS nightly is kind of like building your own Linux distribution. Unpolished and difficult to install.

Building Linux from scratch is a hobby of mine, and I can tell you that using AROS nightly builds is nowhere near as involved! AROS nightly builds are unpolished compared to Icaros, but not difficult to install. In fact, one doesn't really install them at all; there's just a bit of configuration.

Quote:

Distributions like Icaros are much more polished and easy to install, provided you have the magic combination of x86 hardware that's actually supported.

Unfortunately I've not had much luck with Icaros on the systems I own, which are all fairly new. It looks interesting, sort of like the Magic Island that I can't get to.

Last edited by bison on 30-Jul-2018 at 05:06 PM.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@AdvancedFollower


Quote:

Using AROS nightly is kind of like building your own Linux distribution.

i wonder whats functionalities you expect out of the box. how have you even survived using amiga ever. and how does it compare to other amiga offshots, do they have all advanced tools, webbrowsers and the like supplied directly with the os, set up and ready to use?

Quote:

Unpolished and difficult to install.

i give you the default skin and icon set isnt pretty, but as above, you dont even need to isntall aros. it boots from iso. i do it a lot for testing on a number of environments inclusive emulated sam440-ppc, where other amiga-like oses apparently do not run out of the box.

and i have only once tried to install it at all. usually i simply copy the content of iso to a hard disk and this works as well.

Quote:

Distributions like Icaros are much more polished and easy to install, provided you have the magic combination of x86 hardware that's actually supported.

this is really funny. aros supports much wider choice of hardware than os4 or morphos, i386, m68k, ppc, arm, x86_64 and yet it is not enough. you have vendors who deliver you a dedicated system for what i know. for os4 you need to source out few options of expensive and not even fully supported hardware, for morphos you need a second hand obsoleted apple. but aros should suppoert each and every computer hardware combination you happen to have spare, otherwise it isnt good enough?

Last edited by wawa on 31-Jul-2018 at 08:24 AM.

@wawa

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for morphos you need a second hand obsoleted apple.

Not totally true you can buy new hardware in the form of an X5000 and if you are willing to swap the graphics card that comes with it to one that supports 3D in MorphOS then you have a more than capable machine in the X5000 to run MorphOS.

Been using this for a month now and been quite impressed with it on the X5000

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@outrun1978

this detail doesnt defeat what i was about.

@edponpon

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I was just curious to get all of your thoughts on this. - What IF Amiga OS 4.X was designed for modern AMD, Intel, MAC and Raspberry PI machines? - That they would no longer focus on proprietary machines and just be like Windows - an OS for the masses.

It would have been an awesome idea, if only we were still living in 1998. Twenty years later it's just too late to even think to concretize it. Moreover, it is already available here: www.icarosdesktop.org - just go and download the light edition to test it quickly.

1. you won't get the Amiga name, 'cos there are already too much people and companies hitting themselves with totally pointless legal actions, to even consider asking for a license

2. it is based on AROS, which is a very romantic project most Amigans just pissed off, instead of helping.

Last edited by paolone on 01-Aug-2018 at 10:40 AM.

@paolone

If I've got a PeeCee with multiple cores and a fast GPU that comes with Windows preinstalled then why bother with AROS? Only the A.L.I.C.E. project would get me to try out AmiKit but then why bother with AROS when you can emulate AmigaOS4.x on that machine and AmiKit runs classic programs fine?

Last edited by BigD on 01-Aug-2018 at 11:41 AM.

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@paolone

Quote:

Moreover, it is already available here: www.icarosdesktop.org - just go and download the light edition to test it quickly.

To be honest, I found the default configuration so cumbersome to use that, after I managed to test what I wanted to test, I ended up not even trying look where I could switch the behaviour of right-click menus.

If you would like to gain users who might already be using similar options, it is probably a good idea to consider how they (all...) work by default to make users feel comfortable right away. I am afraid I did not.

Quote:

it is based on AROS, which is a very romantic project most Amigans just pissed off, instead of helping.

That is one way of looking at it.

Last edited by ASiegel on 01-Aug-2018 at 02:38 PM.

@thread

Objectively speaking installing AROS (Icaros) involves the same level of difficulty as installing Windows or Linux.