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Tom

It saddens me that the "official" Amiga OS branches are in such a terminal mess at the moment.

Like you, I also believe that the only future for an operating system grown from the Amiga heritage is AROS.

It's the only one free of mindless legal entanglements, is Open to development (Open Source) and is able to "find" current hardware on which to run.

I personally "like" to branch away from "intel" and am happy using PPC based hardware and hope that AROS will continue to develop a PPC (+ amigas clasic) compatible product as well as a x86 branch.'

Regards
Darren

When AROS isn't even compatible with AmigaOS?

(Much as I approve of the use of Eric Schwartz's art...)

but to say that it is in coma is almost too positive.

You mean out of coma? :-)

Nice peace of journalism though.

That's a pretty accurate summary (unfortunately).

With regards to the promised hardware from Amiga Inc. and ACK, I don't think anyone really expected it to be released. Take a look at ACK's track record for example:

http://tinyurl.com/2va8rj

Also, I'm not sure that Hyperion have the rights to release Amiga OS 4 at the moment, as the current court battle is centred around the use of trademarks and ownership of the operating system. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I don't think we'll see a release of OS4 in the foreseeable future. At least until after the court battle is over.

I completely agree that, as it stands, the future is with AROS. All the legal and community infighting since the fall of Escom has done nothing but hurt the platform. AROS provides a legal and reasonably neutral way forward, and in the light of the current situation, I'm hoping more people will get behind it.

So, dear Thom Holwerda. Since there is a possible way out from the deadlock-seemed situation for OS4 (just as you wrote: there is new hardware, which is real-smelly-can-even-be-bought, and a possible classic Amiga version, even if it would not happen within "just two more weeks"), you urge people to install AROS. Kinda twisted logic, don't you think?

Anyway, I DO urge people to install AROS and find out how useful it is... Or do they have to wait for the UAE integration, which will be happening in "more two weeks"?

I Agree 100% that it could'nt be more caotic at the Amiga community right now.

The worst IMO isn't the Lawsuit, but this "Civil War" there still is between AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.

And one thing I don't understand at all is why Amiga Inc. dosn't give AROS any support.

But personally I'm hoping that DiscreetFX will succeed in buying Amiga Inc. and getting an end to the worst part of chaos there is in our community right now.

About ACK:
Well, I believe we ALL have to face that even in a small community - like the Amiga World - there also is the kind of people there only is here because of the money.

The sad thing is that the Amiga brand has a very strong marketing value.

Quote:
Focus on the option that is open source, unencumbered by legal issues, available now, runs on standard hardware, and can really use your time and devotion: AROS. At this point in time, that is where the future of the Amiga platform lies.
--end--

Yes, AROS not better that Windows 95, cool stuff indeed. :-)

About the unstable CruxPPC port:
The port was not released at the show so you cannot complain about the unstable nature as you would do with a released product (like you are doing here).
The port was finished a few hours before the show so instead of whining you should applause the work done by the CruxPPC team.

Edited 2007-09-30 16:18

Nice writeup Thom. About 5 years ago I came to the same conclusion as you did, and I still believe that if anything of the AmigaOS I once loved will live on, it will do so in the shape of AROS.

If all of Amigaland backed AROS instead of clinging to vain hopes of this or that company coming to the rescue, we would already have AmigaOS 4+1/AmigaOS 5/whatever you want to call it.

In its day, Amiga was very entertaining, due to it's advanced hardware, advanced operating system and GUI, enthusiastic user base, and the soup's on of panache that the whole package exuded.

Today, the name Amiga still delivers first rate entertainment. Unfortunately, though, in a sort of "As the World Turns" meets "The Keystone Cops" sort of way. (With a touch of "Dallas" thrown in for good measure.)

I hope the Amiga continues its "renaissance". Because sometimes I get bored on Sundays. ;-)

I think what the platform now needs is one or two oligarchs to buy out all brand names, solve legal issues with either money or armies of lawyers, then give it away to the fervent community to do as they wish. (Why not? Oligarchs seem to buy anything from oil companies to giant airplanes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch) That way they could possibly get out of the vicious cycle.

As for AROS, it would be very interesting if the project decoupled most of the operating system from any one hardware platform and went the way of JNode (http://www.jnode.org/) -- that is, implement a platform-dependent nanokernel and a virtual machine, then do the rest of the system programming with a programming language targeted at the virtual machine.

Why? This way porting it to classic Amigas, PowerPC systems, or any other device would be much easier. They might also be able to use, through the abstracted hardware presented by the supposed virtual machine, GPUs as extra CPUs and other fancy things -- "custom" processing units in the Amiga sense, in a way. This is what AROS is lacking from the Amiga experience in my opinion: the feel of running on a completely unorthodox or at least uncommon hardware platform, geared towards performance.

It saddens me to see the state of affairs. Back in 1987 or so, I had a Mac Plus, and I went to a friend's house. He had an Amiga, with full color graphics. He even played me a sound file. I even remember it was "Land Of Confusion" by Genesis. It would be another 10 years before I even saw a stereo sound file played on a home computer again.

I felt like my Mac Plus was an abacus in comparison to my friend's Amiga.

Sadly, 20 years later, incompetence and greed have completely destroyed the platform, while its inferior siblings, Mac OS and Windows, live on.

To be a fan of Amiga nowadays is to be a masochist. To have your platform of choice in the hands of incompetent pseudo companies and greedy lawyers must be just painful. At what point do you decide that it's time to move on?

As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.

The beginning, there was no real difference, from an Amiga's perspective, from the software and the hardware. Things began falling apart when they divorced the two. Suddenly the OS had to stand on it's own, but it was missing key bits needed on other machines. And look at it now, a time-warp, time and energy and money wasted all because some little corporate dictator decided that hardware wasn't important. Now, AROS is the best bet, simply because it has an advantage that no corporately controlled AmigaOS can have, it has "No Schedule and Rockin!"

Enough about AROS already!

Not only is there almost no software to run on it, it's based on ancient OS3.1 and there is masses of functionality that is missing.

OS3.9, OS4.0 and MorphOS are all better solutions from both a developer and user viewpoint.

So AROS is open source, that seems to be about the only advantage of it. But AmigaOS is not difficult to hack and patch anyway, look at what's available at Aminet for example.

>There's no point in reporting Amiga news unless the community re-examines itself and starts caring about practical solutions for the real world.

And we don't? Stop trolling.

>But could you staff people please stop reporting Amiga news as if the unreasonable hopes had some basis in reality?

You can predict the future can you?

it's sad to see a bunch of necrophilia idiots screwing a dead company.

...I fully agree with Thom: hobby operating systems can have a future only if you opensource them. Or did you already forget what happened to Zeta?

Thanks for a least trying to put things somewhat straight. OSNews should continue to carry Amiga news, because it is relevant. Anyone in the know will take Amiga news lightly, even comically.

Amiga was great and revolutionary for its time, just like the Macintosh. But we aren't using classic MacOS for the same reason we wouldn't still be using a classic-AmigaOS-based Amiga if it had survived to compete with modern Windows or Unix/Linux variants. Times have changed, security has changed, etc etc.

Right on for the hobbyist, but I see no place or relevance for Amiga in the real world. Aside from the Amiga namesake being slapped on something new in the future, I see no future for what once was to be again.

BTW, I see absolutely no market value in reviving Amiga. The brand would have to be built back up from scratch, it would never ride on nostalgia or former glory.

People really need to let go of the Amiga. This hacked together nonsense and ridiculous circus is nothing like the Amiga of old. I learned how to program (680x0 assembler) on the Amiga, and learned the joys of Angus and building copper lists (REAL programmable video hardware in 1985!). The hardware is a large part of what made the Amiga such an amazing machine in her day. From the original hardware, through ECS and AGA, the Amiga was, even in the crummy A4000 implementation, an elegant and beautiful hardware architecture (with the ECS based A3000 being the pinnacle of Amiga hardware).

Amiga(D)OS, Intuition and the workbench UI were pretty interesting in their own right, but it was the complete package that made the Amiga so damn neat. It was the unique and powerful hardware, multitasking OS and highly approachable API that made programming on the Amiga fun and interesting, regardless if you were doing low-level stuff or building interesting workbench apps. The Amiga could simply do stuff other computers of that era couldn't. The PC wouldn't soundly surpass the Amiga until almost two years after C='s death, which is pretty remarkable given that Amiga R&D was already badly in decline, post A3000. Oh, and the games were simply wonderful (Stunt Car Racer and Shadow of the Beast anyone?).

Today all this drama around the Amiga is just stupid. The current available AmigaOS (3.9) is based on an OS architected for an era that didn't feature or require MMU's, demand-page virtual memory, SMP, advanced layered driver stacks and hosts of other things that modern OS's support. The original 680x0 processor and hardware is now long obsolete, and all these PPC accelerators, RTG gfx hardware and hacks are just brutally kludgy and inelegant extensions to a once beautiful platform. It's like exhuming the body of a beloved family member and plastering makeup and lipstick on the mummified remains.

Everything that was great, exciting, new and unique about the Amiga is dead and has been for 13 years. What is left is this freak show of people who just won't leave well enough alone and move on. Ultimately, this is tarnishing the history of what was one of the greatest and most influential platforms of all time. The Amiga is dead, let her rest in peace.

I somehow (of course as a former Amigan :-) tend to agree with post, who criticises OSNews for "double standards". I worked 4 years for Amiga Review here in CZ as main columnist, and I know that in order to be able to judge the situation, one has to have some insight. That is also why I later refused to write for one electronic mag - I did not feel I can do that anymore, lost contacts and interest. That article has a little value and imo brings wrong conclusions.

AROS might be fine, but is open-source a holy grail? It is open source, yet it is developed very slowly. What is wrong with PPC? What is wrong with embedded hw? Noone tries to suggest here that Amiga is first league OS player. It is a niche. And if there is enough interest in it, then it is OK. Of course x86 would be more practical, but that still does not answer the main question - why AROS?

And some ppl here should just read their post and think before they post. Many are suggesting to let Amiga RIP. Yes, last 6 years are total fiasco, and as a manager I would fire Bill & Co long time ago. But - AmigaOS 4, or even MorphOS, are just light years ahead of some OSes which are reported here. They have some apps to run, they are more or less a complete system, and there is a userbase. Yet Amiga is being highly disregarded here.

My take is - as far as user base is alive and active AND interested, then there is still place for the Amiga. I bet most users suggesting it to RIP or spouting nonsense about missing critical features never ever saw, not to mention used, the real Amiga ...

Cheers,
Petr

Edited 2007-10-01 05:56

During the past weeks, "news items" appeared for about anything: from some guy saying in some public forum he wanted to buy out the Amiga (I mean: come on !), and asked the users to tell Amiga to lower their price (wow !! ), to the special thoughts of BBRV ("yes, we will release AmigaOS4 and MorphOS, and yes, we will resurrect the Amiga, and yes, we will save Willy",...), not forgetting the secret MacMini OS4 port "very advanced"...

And now you're asking: does it help ?

Does it help to tell lies ? Does it help anything announced in some public forum ?

I really don't think so...

What would help would be to only tell the real *facts*.

So, to sum up, we have:

- Amiga sues Hyperion (you talked about this one). OS4 update has been released, but no one can buy it right now, and no release date for classic version.

- AROS is progressing, but you shouldn't forget than it isn't more advanced that AOS 3.1 released 14 (!) years ago, that is to say: no memory protection, no resource tracking, and, no way to "add" this features.

- MorphOS ? well, Efkika has been released, but it only runs Linux. MorphOS 1.5 (or call it 2.0, or 3.0,...) has been demoed, but no release date, no feature listing.

Here is what helps to understand the situation. No date, no commitment, only talks, thoughts,...

Well people can finaly stop grouping RISC OS in the same boat, we clearly have quite a peaceful community, there are no court cases, there is active OS development, new hardware, new comercial software releases, constant improvement to exsisting comercial software.