@agami

"While MorphOS, AmigaOS 4, and AROS all do some nice things to make an Amiga-like experience run on newer and faster hardware, to enable developers to deploy somewhat contemporary apps for their respective user communities, I don't see the Generational leap.
Beyond the porting to PowerPC and x86, laudable efforts in themselves especially given the circumstances, I don't see much of the "departure from the old and the embracing of the new" philosophy."

Very well said. To me it is all about the contemporary apps and features around them. Amiga stuff has always been more about the hardware than the software, and frankly it should have focused more on the software and OS. A cpu shift seems very painful with what I have observed, even getting multiple cpu's in existing ecosystem is very painful. So there seems to be reluctance or lack of resources to get the job done. Even if a large sum of money was brought forth to port any of the OS's, I think either because of complexities or legal or both make it a very hard sell.

So until the solution presents itself where a new cpu is a reality, we may as well focus on the software and OS, because that is where the rubber meets the road for actually doing and enjoying something. So I'm very content with my Late 2005 PowerMac 11,2 (Chris Edwards on YT just did a video on this system - showing multimonitor) for about everything. Is it perfect, no nothing is, but what it is and what I use it for, it's the best game in town for my needs and is a joy to use. Little drama, very stable, and a software team that is helpful and productive...

Last edited by Matt3k on 17-Apr-2024 at 12:29 PM.

@cdimauro

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Yes. OS X had different APIs, but it supported also the old ones and "classic" applications ran on a single cooperative process.

It had a quirky way of doing it, as it booted a classic system to do it, then it could run programs that looked old.

On actual OS9 hardware I couldn't tell the difference. If both Windows 3 and Mac OS9 were co-operative multitasking models then Apple gave Microsoft a run for their money. On Windows I could tell from the user experience it wasn't the full deal. But on OS9, it was just like Amiga, and I would have never known it didn't have full multitasking.

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Some years ago I saw a video of a PC with Windows 1.0 running a Win16 application (I don't recall now which one) which was able to run up to Windows Vista, by subsequently upgrading the OS up to that version. It was unbelievable, but... that's the result of a designing an OS with proper abstractions & APIs.

I've seen some older apps running on Windows 95 or similar. And it was strange as they looked old and gave me the impression the app had to build its own window widgets. I don't know what went under the hood but just looked that way. Similar to WINE on Linux perhaps, where the latest version you can install always makes XP software look like 98.

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The question was all about the OS (which, of course, should be baked by proper hardware: you don't get 64-bit without a CPU which supports it, as well as SMP without multiple cores or, at least, hardware threads).

In this case, even though dated, the hardware is now superior to the OS. The hardware is being held back. Even Linux is held back unless you have an older video card.

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See my article: it's all about the FEATURES / PROPERTIES which are at the foundation of the OS.

It seems there's a dispute over calling NG because it's expected to be MG. Modern generation. It's not there yet. Perhaps adding another letter will help. Call it TNG. We know TNG refers to Startrek after first series. And no one complains that TNG isn't a show with modern features. Makes sense to me.

@ppcamiga1

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It is good. Let's rename NG to SG. And everyone will be happy.

@agami

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The statement is not quantitative. In terms of what Amiga OS things from the '90s would still be present in some hypothetical true Amiga OS NG in the 2020's, qualitatively we can look to operating systems that have survived that specific time-span, and what of their '90s incarnations is still there today, however much there might be.

Amiga OS4 would still have a lot of common things with Amiga OS3. Technically it could be said OS4 is a next decade leap as it's a step up from the decade before it but hasn't really leaped beyond that. Though compositing effects in the UI and alpha blended windows really do make it shine at a level above OS3 and just checking now, not even my Mint desktop does those fancy effects with more powerful hardware under the hood.

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I think the key is not to focus on the N part. The G is the defining factor. MacOS 8 was the next thing after System 7.6.1. A major update, new branding, elimination of clone licenses, but it was not a Generational leap on the previous. MacOS 8.5 dropped 68k support, and was also not a Generational leap.

The major change there was dropping 68K hardware and bringing in PPC. And, going by the user interface, it looks almost exactly the same. Can barely see a difference. By comparison, OS4.0 was certainly different looking to OS3.0. But it was designed by a different team, that designed it with more than four colour windows in mind.

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For Apple, that happened when they made a clear departure from one way of thinking about their OS, to a new way of thinking with Mac OS X.

Said to be with the help of the Exec king himself, Carl Sassenrath. Who looked into it and thought it was too far gone to implement real multitasking as well as breaking the 24 bit barrier. The only practical solution was replacement. The irony being, that in the long run, Carl's design would also suffer from built in limitations preventing it from a logical transition to threading, SMP and 64 bit. And so OS4 suffers the same problem since it inherited the same vestiges OS3 had with no roadmap or preventive plan I know of to break from it. Taking 68K compatibility too far and building it into the OS while the rest of the Amiga world thought OS4 was just an expensive emulator or some Linux distro.

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After XP, it's a bit harder to see a generational leap in Windows, just like it's harder to see generational leaps in macOS since the maturation of OS X. Apple has worked hard to make the transitions from PowerPC to Intel to Apple silicon, trouble free.

In my experience of Windows 10 and 11 it looks like a step backwards. With a plain GUI that makes a ten year old Ubuntu look good. Not quite as bad as Windows 98 installer that looked like DOS. Compared with the Windows 95 installer before it that looks way superior and more modern with a real GUI.

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While MorphOS, AmigaOS 4, and AROS all do some nice things to make an Amiga-like experience run on newer and faster hardware, to enable developers to deploy somewhat contemporary apps for their respective user communities, I don't see the Generational leap.

They are very similar though the core AROS idea is to be an OS3.1 like base system. OS4 has a lot under the hood and perhaps more changes there than is visible. I've been using it since OS4.0 and would be so used to it over the years I could barely list all the changes and features it brings.

The involvement of Hyperion with OS3 was something that the user base welcomed. There's a lot of Hyperion hating over the years but a lot of Amiga users did buy Hyperion AmigaOS. It brought backports from OS4 while some other components are being written independently. But in my experience it's not enough. That is second hand experience. In typical OS style the release is confusing as it comes decades after OS3.5 and 3.9, which in some ways just added PD software to the OS, and so lives under their shadow. It also cannot compete as it lacks the features and more so, it's still behind Windows 95, when setting up RTG monitors. It needs a lot more backported form OS4. By comparison, OS3.1 to OS3.2 doesn't look like a NG leap to me. The leaping divide between OS3.2 now and even OS4.0 decades ago looks wider to me.

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With this I can be on board. I think the follow-ons from Amiga OS 3.x could be collectively referred to as SG takes on the original.

@Matt3k

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A cpu shift seems very painful with what I have observed, even getting multiple cpu's in existing ecosystem is very painful. So there seems to be reluctance or lack of resources to get the job done. Even if a large sum of money was brought forth to port any of the OS's, I think either because of complexities or legal or both make it a very hard sell.

Even though more resources and money would certainly help, the main issue is technical. OS4 is simply too close to the OS3 design. Inheriting all the OS structures and exposing the same API and structures to programs. There is some hiding like 68K vectors like and Exec system lists but not much else. In doing so it also inherited the same design flaws. The XE from 2004 was meant to to have a dual CPU board released. Which would have been good for... Linux. Since the X1000 in 2011 work has been put into a SMP supporting kernel, which now is in it's own "SG" second generation and being tested on X5000. But, with the open shared memory model, it just becomes too faulty.

This stems from the old "Forbid()" problem. Where the entire OS is locked out from multitasking while one app accesses a local object. It's a killer on multi core as it means all processes on all cores must be dead stopped while one app on one core stuffs around. OTOH, AmigaOS also runs on interrupts and I've been told by an OS4 dev years ago, the OS itself actually runs in an interrupt.

Perhaps adding to the irony is that Heinz Wroble warned developers "STAY AWAY" from Forbidding. The problem is, some tasks require it, and it's a standard way of performing some operations. And, internally, because some OS objects are exposed they are designed to do the naughty in private OS code.