Amiga *nix n00b
 

What would it take for me to run some *nix on my Amiga? Is Minix the only one available? Or is Amiga Unix available too? (Is that the one Sun wanted to purchase?)

I have a 1200 with a 030@50Mhz, FPU@50Mhz and 64MB of RAM, would that be enough spec to run it?

Is there a guide to set it up?

Is there anywhere but this link to get the distros? http://aminet.net/misc/os

Thanks guys

Have a look at NetBSD.

http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/amiga/

Cheers :)

NetBSD is still supported and maintained, thats what i'd do for a 030 machine.

Linux on Amiga is a bit of bitrot fest, there's a unofficial Debian/m68k port but i wouldn't recommend it easily.

If you want something more historically accurate then Minix is your thing :-)

Amiga Unix only runs on the A2500 & A3000. It has very limited driver support so no other model can run it.

Runs in WinUAE though, but dont expect anything too fancy. its just a typical SystemV port of that era. If you have seen one of them you have seen all of them.

You'd have to be insane to use anything other than NetBSD.

Thats why i have a EmuTOS+MiNT setup on Amiga for the real perverted UNIXy fun! >;-)

The recent NetBSD 7.0.2 (October 21, 2016) lists Amiga which is nice.

I ran Linux/68k on my A4000 for quite a while. It was very stable.

Back then there were no distributions so I used a dump of an Atari users HD to get started, then compiled updates from source. Great way to learn Linux BTW.

I did look into Debian again this year. IIRC Debian 4.0 (Etch) was the last 68k version.

AFAIK, "true" Amix Amigas had a different ROM - 1.4.

Fixable on an A3000 I guess (loads ROM from disk) but somewhat tricky on an A2000...

... Any amount of people trying, but OP wasn't, just wanted any version.

Minix was invented because AT&T stopped releasing the source in the 1980s, leaving teachers with a big problem of how to teach operating system design - without having an example to show. A bit like running photography lessons in a blacked out cave.

I have the CD of an unofficial RedHat release (very old, made in the early 2000s or so) but unfortunately I've never had the time to try it....

Now that is a good question. IIRC, Novell acquired the rights to Unix from AT&T when AT&T got broken up as an unlawful monopoly.

Novell basically axed any further Amiga releases was the rumour, but I think it was more a case of CBM would not pay for any. Certainly they were never in a hurry to hand over cash. Sun were involved in Unix from the 1970s, so I doubt they would have been that interested in the Amiga version, except perhaps to make sure that it stayed dead.

I'm sure it's way more complex than that, but that's what I heard.

Linux isn't Unix. Linux is Linux, of whatever flavour.

Thank you. I was never sure which ones were actually worth trying; Debian supports a lot of Amiga hardware too, but as a Ubuntu user, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with Debian.

As a Debian user for 15 years Ubuntu makes me puke, i'm happy the feeling is mutual

I wouldn't go that far - Ubuntu does have it's uses, and it's SUCH a breath of fresh air after the Windows experience.

I guess I wouldn't have bothered, if I had not got bitten by the Reprap movement. Ubuntu does offer some kind of solution, to a Nix noob like me.

Well... not straightforward to boot Amiga UNIX even on an A3000UX... you have to hold down both mouse buttons while turning it on, then select your Operating System.

http://gona.mactar.hu/Commodore/Amiga/

I would guess the 2500 has the same "feature".

Still it's only couple of mouse clicks to do, it's seriously cool that you can dualboot a machine from early 90's that easily.

If both Amix and Workbench are installed, it's just a question of setting partitions boot priorities which boots automatically.

I thought Kickstart 1.4 was just an early A3000-thing to enable Amix running, the box says anything newer than 2.04 should work fine.

Yeah, maybe. 1.4 is so rare that it's kind of conjectural as to what it actually did. Would not try with a 16Mhz A3000. Not a nice machine.

I didn't trust sales pitches from CBM at the time, let along a quarter century or so after they went bankrupt.

Dualboot? Bridgeboards let you run PC and Amiga software simultaneouosly. On the same display. :)

Oh dear, looks like there might have been something in that ROM after all... Or, maybe they are referring to the Nix kernel?

Anyway, good luck! :)

There is no 1.4.

1.4 was the beta of 2.04. Very few machines had it. Here's a Sysinfo dump from that machine with the dual boot. Note the Version numbers top left.

What version numbers top left?