@TRIPOS

MorphOS on X64 do not compete with Amiga Os 4 on ppc.
MorphOS on X64 as AROS on x86 compete with Windows/Linux/OSX.

@kolla

Future Amiga Os should be hardware agnostic.
Everyone should be free to use on any hardware they want.
It should be just Amiga gui and graphics on top of unix.

@OlafS25

AROS x86/arm, does get professionals because, the OS does have the security, nor the apps, and development tools, and not classic user becouse due to missing JIT. (hosted you can use Linux tools, but then what do you need AROS for then.)

Amiga ONE does get classic user, because hardware is incompatibility to classic and its over priced.

Amiga Classic, does get professional developers because old SDK, lack CPU power and security and old outdated hardware.

They are all horrible solutions to attract new developers and users.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Oct-2021 at 04:53 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Oct-2021 at 04:52 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Oct-2021 at 04:51 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Oct-2021 at 04:50 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

all amiga platforms in todays terms lack important parts

but at least 68k has some obscurity attraction. But of course not for "professional developers" earning money on it

Putting aside the author's rants, since they were written only because he's a blind OS4 & PowerPC fanatic and an AROS (especially) and MorphOS hater, most of the discussions were already developed on the OS4 funeral thread.

I write only some recap and suggestions on what directions to take for the future (if any).

*** O.SES ***

Amiga o.s.
Status: restarted, incredibly, with v3.1.4 and 3.2.
Future: uncertain due to legal battles between Hyperion and Cloanto. Subsequent versions might be stopped / never see the life due to those battles.

OS4
Status: dead, as already stated, as well as the PowerPCs to whom it's deadly tied. Only bug fixes are coming, and all promises made since 11 years (or even more) for v4.2 aren't implemented and will never be done (because it's simply impossible, without breaking the backward-compatibility. Which never happens, of course).
Future: existing applications can be used through emulation, which can be improved if Qemu can be used alone (e.g: without carrying the entire Amiga emulation, like it's doing WinUAE currently) and if the FPU is emulated better (with JIT). Altivec can also be better emulated (with JIT) to further improve the performances.

MorphOS
Status: PowerPC development is ongoing, and never stopped. However it'll be superseeded by the x64 version.
Future: even development of its x64 version is ongoing, as well SMP experiments. However lack of resource tracking, memory protection, virtual memory, and security can cripple its future. Since 64-bit and SMP will break backward-compatibility anyway, it's better to implement the mentioned modern features to put the o.s. on par of other modern o.ses.

AROS
Status: active
Future: same as MorphOS, but lack of developers doesn't allow the o.s. to mature, add new features, or support new architectures, in a faster way. However the 68K flavour is much more active, since it's baked by Apollo/Vampire team, and also the master branch benefits from most contributions.

Windows
Status: active
Future: alive & kicking

MacOS X
Status: active
Future: alive & kicking

Linux
Status: active
Future: alive & kicking


*** PROCESSORS ***

68K
Status: dead
Future: it's revived a bit by the Apollo/Vampire team, with a 64-bit extension (which is not used by the Amiga o.s. neither by AROS/68K) and a SIMD extension. However the market is just a niche, so it's very unlikely that this will bring again alive this processor family.

PowerPC
Status: dead
Future: none. There are no new cores in development since almost 10 years. The existing cores are just reused in some SoCs for the embedded market, like with 68K processors.

x86 & x64
Status: alive
Future: bright, as long as there's a HUGE software library using it. However ARM is eroding its server market, and mobile devices (Chromebook) as well.

ARM
Status: alive
Future: bright, as long as there's a good software library using it. However RISC-V is eroding its embedded market.

RISC-V
Status: alive
Future: bright. Almost all hardware vendors are investing on it, since it has no licences.

*** PLATFORMS ***

Amiga
Status: dead
Future: None. It's a retro-platform, and its games & applications can be enjoyed on different other platforms. However for games WinUAE is the best platform, because it provides the best emulation accuracy & configurations possibilities. WinUAE is also very good with the applications, but it's crippled by the Amiga chipset emulation (a "virtualizer", if realized, might allow to transparently run Amiga os-friendly applications, with much better performances). Apollo/Vampire has a complete and novel hardware platform, but it's quite expensive, and performances cannot match emulated ones. Pi-Storm can take part of the market because it's very cheap, performances are already very good (EMU68 simply ROCKS), and can further improve (as well as the support, with some additional features: RTG, AHI, SCSI/IDE, 3D).

AmigaOne
Status: almost dead
Future: a new machine, Tabor, is on development since 6 years, but not yet sold (except for a bunch of beta testers). It's unlikely to see future machines, due to the OS4 situation, and even if they will be produced no big performances boost is expected, since there are no PowerPC cores developed.

PC (Windows, Linux, and the myriad of alternative o.ses which are running on this on this hardware platform)
Status: active
Future: alive & kicking

Mac
Status: active
Future: alive & kicking


My personal opinion: 68K has the largest software library for Amigans, and it's better to focus on it.
The proposed virtualizer could allow to enjoy the applications, transparently running them on the host o.s., like the native ones. Something like VAMOS, but much better and more deeply integrated to the host system. Maybe EMU68 can be adapted in future to bake a JIT (not only for ARM, but for x64 as well).
Games have already the best available platform: WinUAE. Toni Wilen is making a GREAT work at improving the chipset emulation & compatibility, and the upcoming version will set a milestone here. However here I'd like to see "enhanced" versions of the games which I've played; with this I mean that the same logic/gameplay is preserved (existing code is executed), but graphics and/or sound can be replaced with better ones (32-bit graphics, higher resolutions, 16-bit samples, activating both music & sfx for games that can only allow to use one of them, additional CD track played in the background, etc.) and this can only be accomplished by an emulator which is supporting this AND special WHDLoad slaves that allow to replace a game asset "in real time".

Regarding the Amiga o.s., it's better to create a new one which is inspired by Amiga, but with modern features and removing the too tight hardware integration.
This might find a first utilization on the embedded market, and then on some lightweight desktop systems. Unix/POSIX is old & boring, Amiga o.s. has nothing in common with it (except for line endings and the path separator), and we, Amigans, were used to a different environment at all levels (from the GUI to the shell, to the APIs, ABIs, etc.).
AROS could be a good base, since it's open source, and has already implemented a lot of stuff. MorphOS can also come in play, because it's very actively developed.


My 2 cents.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: Amiga Status: dead

And here is why.

well 1 out 1000 reasons but all pretty much the same

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@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Future Amiga Os should be hardware agnostic. Everyone should be free to use on any hardware they want. It should be just Amiga gui and graphics on top of unix.

Yes, that’s what was said by many of us in 1995 as well. And since that didn’t happen, the vast majority of capable users and developers simply left and instead became prominent developers of Linux and the BSDs.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

Amiga o.s. Status: restarted, incredibly, with v3.1.4 and 3.2. Future: uncertain due to legal battles between Hyperion and Cloanto. Subsequent versions might be stopped / never see the life due to those battles.

Also very uncertain simply because key developers have left and there clearly is a lack in transfer of knowledge and skill - I can understand that, there’s hardly been any time and it requires signing NDA with the devil. Of course if the prime task of the OS is to launch games vis whdload, you may not notice, but you don’t have to play around much before new bugs start appearing - for example, I suggest that the coders and testing team start putting the h flag on all binaries they consider pure and start testing them properly. Also test all parameters on all commands, don’t assume they all work. Assign remove. Use of env and local shell variables have changed, no idea of it is on purpose, or by coincidence. For example one can no longer have env variables as value for .def in shell scripts or put variables in WINDOW= tooltype for shell.

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@OlafS25

Apart from already saying most of what you wrote, this took my interest.

Quote:

But still you lack the developer resources the big platforms have, not only for OS development but also to have at least a basic set of applications most users need. You need f.e. developers who contantly improve the web browser to stay on same level as other platforms. You must develop lots of drivers for different hardware including USB support. I see two problems (even if I got bashed for it by some aros supporters), from my experience one source for all platforms is advantage and curse at the same time.

Here's the thing. On Pi, USB support (standard) GPU (Standard) CPU (Standard) PCIe (Standard)
You aren't re-inventing the wheel each revision. You are supporting a single hardware platform that remains the majority wise, compatible with each revision. GPIO works from each board up. It's not re-inventing the wheel and create a new motherboard with it, each time. You can just plug-in a compute module into whatever you or some 3rd party creates (Already available) and off you go.

When it comes to your "time" requirement, how long has it already been? Do you think that any of the developers currently bringing the OS forward are being pushed for time or is it a "When it's done" type attitude. Clearly they need to be paid. Having a cost-effective platform to purchase, work on and use daily is only going to help.

Not Ohh, Ive got a great idea! i'll go buy a $500 US dollar main board and start to pitch in because I'm such a nice guy and a programming genius. Ka ching!

Quote:

To attract new users outside the whole concept (especially the user interface) must be process orientated and intuitive to use, very different from now.

Nope. It's cost.
It's ability to purchase (having actual hardware) and how much (price to get it, OS included)
I wouldn't charge for the OS at all. Maybe have a nag requester on boot like Windows does but, make it attractive to anyone to try.
PiStorm is already better in function than Vampire however, and it's a big one, It still requires ageing and hard to source hardware that is prohibitive.

Buy-in cost. It's everything.

You can have the most beautiful experience on earth but if it's a $500 buy-in and hard to find, you just won't.

Last edited by SHADES on 10-Oct-2021 at 10:54 PM.

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@kolla Quote:

kolla wrote: @ppcamiga1 Quote: ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Future Amiga Os should be hardware agnostic. Everyone should be free to use on any hardware they want. It should be just Amiga gui and graphics on top of unix. Yes, that’s what was said by many of us in 1995 as well. And since that didn’t happen, the vast majority of capable users and developers simply left and instead became prominent developers of Linux and the BSDs.

Do you still care to reply to a troll which talks about "hardware agnostic" whereas he's continuously promoting PowerPCs because they are "big endian" and... "binary compatible" (with 68K)?

It's a contradiction by definition. Which isn't a surprise, considering the guy.


@kolla Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Amiga o.s. Status: restarted, incredibly, with v3.1.4 and 3.2. Future: uncertain due to legal battles between Hyperion and Cloanto. Subsequent versions might be stopped / never see the life due to those battles. Also very uncertain simply because key developers have left and there clearly is a lack in transfer of knowledge and skill - I can understand that, there’s hardly been any time and it requires signing NDA with the devil.

Actually they did: how can they escape from the NDA which the devil imposes all the time?.

And anyway, they are co-responsible of the current situation, because they are giving the devil the gasoline to continue to set the fire...
Quote:

Of course if the prime task of the OS is to launch games vis whdload, you may not notice, but you don’t have to play around much before new bugs start appearing - for example, I suggest that the coders and testing team start putting the h flag on all binaries they consider pure and start testing them properly. Also test all parameters on all commands, don’t assume they all work. Assign remove. Use of env and local shell variables have changed, no idea of it is on purpose, or by coincidence. For example one can no longer have env variables as value for .def in shell scripts or put variables in WINDOW= tooltype for shell.

This arises me a question: has the Amiga o.s. any form of automatic tests? Unit tests? functional tests? non-functional tests? components tests? integration tests?

Continuing to manually test everything reminds me the stone age of computer science...


@SHADES: AROS has an USB stack & proper tool, which might work on 68K machines as well.

@kolla

Most users are wooed by the increased version number and pretty(?) icons. It's "actively developed" and "updated" they say, and it "no longer needs patches". Yet I see Facebook groups and forums filled with people having various compatibility issues with 3.1.4 and 3.2.

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@cdimauro

FYI, RISC-V is already fragmented with different implementations.

Unified boot and HAL environment is important not just the CPU's instruction set.

Wintel's X64 PC platform defines the unified boot/HAL/instruction set stack that enables the proper commodity platform market.

Last edited by Hammer on 11-Oct-2021 at 07:58 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 11-Oct-2021 at 07:53 AM.

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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @ppcamiga1 Quote: ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Future Amiga Os should be hardware agnostic. Everyone should be free to use on any hardware they want. It should be just Amiga gui and graphics on top of unix. Yes, that’s what was said by many of us in 1995 as well. And since that didn’t happen, the vast majority of capable users and developers simply left and instead became prominent developers of Linux and the BSDs.

...and Haiku.

@BSzili Quote:

BSzili wrote: @kolla Most users are wooed by the increased version number and pretty(?) icons. It's "actively developed" and "updated" they say, and it "no longer needs patches". Yet I see Facebook groups and forums filled with people having various compatibility issues with 3.1.4 and 3.2.

And kolla knows this very well, since he was the one which reported the FailAt issue, AFAIR.

This, again, shows luck of professional development: the existing code is just patched over the time, and then manually validated.

Computer science Stone Age...

@Hammer Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro FYI, RISC-V is already fragmented with different implementations.

Not only the implementations.

The RISC-V architects started, years, ago, with what they called extensions to the ISA, using single letters to identity them. And, of course, they started to sound with their trumpet announcing to the world how beautiful was their architecture design, because it was fragmented like other ISAs (x86, ARM).


Over time, and once several companies started implementing the ISA and the extensions that they needed, they discovered that some extensions weren't well defined, because they added too many things, which would have been better to split/move on separate extensions. Then they walked a step-down, and started to create "sub-extensions" (identified by the single upper case letter plus other lower-case letters).

And this happened even for extensions (C, M, A) which, according to the claims their trumpets, which were already "set in the stone".

You can see this if you read the different versions of the ISA manuals, as well as their talk at the conferences.

"Coherent" peoples...
Quote:

Unified boot and HAL environment is important not just the CPU's instruction set. Wintel's X64 PC platform defines the unified boot/HAL/instruction set stack that enables the proper commodity platform market.

Correct, but currently RISC-V is mostly focused on the embedded market.

Maybe for the desktop & server markets they will define something like x86's HAL.


@Samurai_Crow Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: @kolla Quote: kolla wrote: @ppcamiga1 [quote] ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Future Amiga Os should be hardware agnostic. Everyone should be free to use on any hardware they want. It should be just Amiga gui and graphics on top of unix. Yes, that’s what was said by many of us in 1995 as well. And since that didn’t happen, the vast majority of capable users and developers simply left and instead became prominent developers of Linux and the BSDs.

...and Haiku. [/quote]
Honestly I fail to understand what an Amigan could find attractive from a Unix/POSIX o.s., which is carrying very old APIs and concepts.

Even Windows has more interesting and a better defined set of APIs.

@cdimauro

I agree with almost everything you've written here. Just a few comments:

For Amiga OS (Classic)
Quote:

Future: uncertain due to legal battles between Hyperion and Cloanto.

I would change that to
Future: Uncertain, due to Hyperion.
I know it takes two to tango, but we all know who the culprit is in this case.

Quote:

Regarding the Amiga o.s., it's better to create a new one which is inspired by Amiga, but with modern features and removing the too tight hardware integration.

I too have said this very thing, for many years now. Here on this forum, Amiga.org, and even a lengthy article on the old Amiga Round-table podcast web site.

Then I see @OlafS25 make the same comment, only to turn around and state how that would not be an Amiga.

NEWS FLASH!
Nothing will be an Amiga. It was one of those moments in computer history that can't, nor should it survive unchanged in a 21C computing landscape.

How many people look at an M1 Mac running macOS 11, with all its objects, support for modern coding languages, and even a Terminal app, and proclaim:
"But it's really not a Macintosh LC II running System 7.x. Where's the single tasking? Where's the floppy drive? Where's the single-button mouse? Can it run Mac Paint?"

It's like those parents who force their children to live out their long lost dreams of glory.

For the record, again, I firmly believe that Amiga paradigms of the late '80s and early '90s can find a solid user base in contemporary 21C computing. I'm certain it would be a lot larger than the user base of all A-Cube/A-Eon AmigaOS 4.x systems combined. (not as easy a challenge as it may sound).

The average new user would buy it because it is cost effective, supports a unique and empowering UX, has the critical contemporary standards-based internet apps (browser/email/synchronous chat/video-conferencing), and is easy to develop for because it supports modern coding languages and frameworks, and IDE.

The old Amiga user would buy it because they would see the inspiration of Amiga in the OS and UX, and they can play their old games and run their old apps with the built-in 68k Amiga emulator.

It's just like any religion: If you don't get new adherents, the religion dies.

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@agami

Quote:

I know it takes two to tango, but we all know who the culprit is in this case.

The party that started legal proceedings?

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Quote: Yes, that’s what was said by many of us in 1995 as well. And since that didn’t happen, the vast majority of capable users and developers simply left and instead became prominent developers of Linux and the BSDs. ...and Haiku.

In 1995 there was no Haiku, so I presume you mean BeOS.

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@Rob

and the other party extending its business without any contract like giving licenses of roms and such things or doing a new version of 3.X getting it for free and selling it expensive.

We do not know what happened in background, I assume lawsuit was last step. But that is only personal guess from my side

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: @agami Quote: I know it takes two to tango, but we all know who the culprit is in this case. The party that started legal proceedings?

Which is Cloanto/Amiga Corp./Amiga Inc. in the current case...

Last edited by AP on 12-Oct-2021 at 03:53 PM.

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@OlafS25

Wether or not Hyperion abused the terms of the 2009 settlement was not Cloanto's fight until they made it theirs. Regardless of Hyperion's actions I think Cloanto's purchase of Amiga Inc would have put them on a collision course with Hyperion because the 2009 settlement meant that Cloanto would inherit the same restrictions making the purchase next to pointless for Cloanto.