Submit your best idea for the most realistic path to open source Amiga OS 3.x

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Indeed, from a component point of view that's true, but I meant integration of code as in merging parts of code with the AROS counterparts. The API may be the same but the code behind them is almost certain to be totally different, making any freely available 3.1 source little more than a reference of how things were achieved 25 years ago.


Yeah, quite possibly. I would be of the same mind, but I suspect that if the hypothetical open source 3.1 were to be developed, it would take developers away from other projects, quite possibly AROS-68k.

I do not think so. Most current Aros devs are more interested in platforms like X86/X64/ARM and not so much 68k. 68k was Toni Wilen (Roms) and Jason McMullen who did the work. Current 68k devs mostly were hard to motivate to contribute. So at the moment it could not do any harm.

@all

I do not understand the hate against Cloanto, at least not regarding my contacts. They were friendly and I do not pay the roms but the whole package. It would be the same as moaning that someone asks money for a linux distribution. You pay for the work, not just the roms. If they were not, where would you get the roms legally? The idea that Hyperion and AmigaInc would have open sourced them then sounds not very propable to me.

Regarding Aros, Aros is very compatible today and includes advanced features unseen on 3.X but of course (how already mentioned) it needs optimizations when running on real hardware and it certainly will never beat amiga os on the old hardware. But it is the only realistic path to go in my view.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Yea, I use FS-UAE. I won't use any windows only software, have been burned too many times in the past with that. Even if WinUAE is a little faster its not worth the hassle of using Windows, I got tired of that a long time ago.

your choice.

I remember FS-UAE defaults to the AROS kickstart so I can easily change back to that and test. I'm not a gamer so most of what I do is under workbench and its games where compatibility issues usually come into play.

no it wont work that way. the aros kickstart in uae is totally outdated, no use for anything, wont even boot. thats probably what part of bad publicity aros receives could be attributed to. wonder why its still there..

depending on what you want i can send you a default config file for fs-uae you can modify for your configuration. but the question is, what do you want to do.

aros is currently undergoing a heavy maintenance, about 20-30 commits a day, in order to implement multicore support, so a build and therefore a nightly can be broken at any time.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

So at the moment it could not do any harm.

it wouldnt do any harm either way. once again: it simply wont happen. whoever want to code an update to amiga system behind a trash bin in an abandoned backyard basing it on leaked code is welcome to do so. wont happen as well. believe me.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by wawa

it wouldnt do any harm either way. once again: it simply wont happen. whoever want to code an update to amiga system behind a trash bin in an abandoned backyard basing it on leaked code is welcome to do so. wont happen as well. believe me.

I only answered the theoretical sentence, certainly it will not happen. And from what legal devs reported it would be not usable on modern compilers either, someone would need to spend lots of time to integrate it in a modern compiler. It would (theoretical) be interesting for f.e. Aros to close some shortcomings in aros or make code more compatible where needed but finally noone really needs it anymore.

[wawa]

sorry olaf, that "believe me" was actually addressed at people dragging out the same utopic ideas out every once a while.

[KronusOfChaos]

Dragging up these topics once in a while is good. There might be new people to the community that have differing ideas that might lead somewhere. This isn't like the old adage "What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result." New people bring new ideas sometimes good sometimes bad.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

To be fair the scene is bigger today than it was just 5 years ago

MAybe you mean number of users? I don't measure it that way. I measure it in teh way of output, and when an independent developer, a fansite maker, tries to get in and is rear-ended by Cloanto's "legal" machine, I see great damage.

If they own that video, they have a right to decide how it is disseminated and published -

Yes, IF, and that is a big IF, which I don't understand why you choose to concede to them. As aspoken in this thread at length, what Cloanto has at best is a license to Kickstart, maybe Amiga OS and to distribute and modify it. Not any other kind of Amiga IP. Taking down that video is just stupid, and what even is "Cloanto Italia"? Is it at all an italian company?

The fact remains: that Amiga video of the launch, which as you said can be protected by fair anyway, is nowhere to be seen by the community.

it would be akin to someone taking one of your most tasty music mixes and using that to promote something (adds on youtube) without any agreement with you. I am pretty sure you would be as pissed off about that as I or anyone would be.

It's not like that at all. We're talking about a specific video of which CLoanto has probably absolutely no claims over, because from what we know, they don't own such shit. Amiga INc. as mentioned before, whatever that is nowadays, probably owns that video, not them. And again: what was the point of taking that down? What harm was it doing to Cloanto?

Youtube doesn't check ownership of takedown notices. If I go now and claim one of your videos as my own, they will go and take it down, even if I am lying.



As for their contributions, we will just have to agree to disagree. I don't think anyone needing to get into Amiga emulation, old or new, should be paying for it. And I will repeat my point of before: more people using an emulator does not mean to me a betterment or enlargement of the "scene", what I want to see is development being empowered, not number of users being enlarged, and every dime spent on a Cloanto pack is a dime that probably doesn't go to an Amiga software or hardware developer, especially considering that the people who get their knickers on a twist about the legality of an Amiga ROM and go buy some Cloanto garbage have NO ISSUES going to Planetemu and downloading all the ADFs they can get their fingers at without paying a dime.


Well you got me way off topic. best to leave this discussion go, as we will get nowhere! you always go up in favor of Cloanto and I will always go up against it. That's all.

Related to the matter at hand, they don't own all Amiga IP and cannot be policing it around. It needs to be determined who owns Amiga as a brand and trademark and something be done about it. If it expires, what happens? Can it be renewed?

[matthey]

Originally Posted by wawa

matthey, i beg you not to spread fud. aros build system is _very_ user friendly. even i have no problem to maintain my local builds on different linux contribs. its just sourcing out the necessary packages, configure and make.

FUD is disinformation but I have nothing against AROS so it would be misinformation at best. Building AROS is still not easy for me. C was supposed to be portable across compilers and hardware but it looks like AROS requires a particular compiler and OS to build it.

Originally Posted by wawa

i really have a feeling that the problems of newer compilers with 68k are partly a myth. few days ago i was presented by phx with a testcase he said it failed on 5.x.x. i compiled it with aros 6.3.0 and the result was correct.

A bug in a particular version of a compiler is not a myth. Bugs get fixed and new ones introduced. GCC has varied anywhere from good to awful and the 68k has tended to get slow bug fixes and support upgrades. The only thing consistent about GCC for the 68k has been its lack of consistency.

Originally Posted by wawa

aros wont take over just each and every concept of the genuine os and for a reason (monitor files as example). aros extends os3.x functionality, but isnt it what we want? the extensions may or may not be questionable value. you need to contribute something and then you can discuss the options to make it better, simple as it is.

New functionality can be bad if it is for convenience (due to laziness) and/or unnecessary. Was the HIDD interface really necessary for example?

Originally Posted by https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Developer/Docs

HIDD API is heavyweight though. You need to open a HIDD library, open oop.library, instantiate an object (even if there's no object); and object calls are more costly compared to plain library calls.

Originally Posted by wawa

the code behind components may be different but what else does that mean except it is original? it may be better or worse, for sure its more portable, a good base to be future proof, if that is a requirement. nevertheless aros is built after amiga specifications also what concerns separate modules interfaces and their interaction, or at least attempts that, even if it might not be perfect in places. you can replace separate components in aros with their amiga counterparts and they will work. for instance third party mui classes work within zune 68k, peter k icon library, or other genuine libs can be used with aros. amiga device drivers are interchangeable.

Different components are not always interchangeable. The APIs have changed in some cases (for example layers.library). Some components are significantly different like resources with these HIDDs.

Originally Posted by wawa

certainly open sourcing amiga wouldnt make that much difference for aros anymore, its too advanced by now. but there might be some crucial references people would still be thankful about. i know at least staf said something like that. it wont happen though, so no matter.

I believe open sourcing AmigaOS would be very good for AROS, especially AROS on the 68k. A light weight hybrid of AmigaOS and AROS would probably become available for 68k Amigas (hopefully only one cooperative effort with no forks). AROS is currently more appealing for new hardware. Maybe it is time to give up on the 68k (I found little interest in a mass produced 68k hardware) and buy a $35 Raspberry Pi 3 to try AROS on. Ironically, the new ARMv8 (AArch64) support in the RPi 3 is very similar to PPC but at less than 1/10 the price of the Tabor (missing FPU and SIMD of RPi 3 too) and more than twice as fast if AROS can get the SMP working for ARM. I don't expect too much in performance from a 64 bit RISC CPU with 16kB ICache and 16kB DCache even if the code density of ARMv8 is better than PPC. Maybe I could compile my own version of GCC for RPi 3 supported ARMv7 Thumb 2 as compiling is one of the tasks limited by caches. One day soon A-EON/Hyperion will wake up and won't have to worry what CPU architecture to switch to as Amiga users will have realized what AmigaOS to switch to instead.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by wawa

your choice.

Its actually not a choice, it got to be where windows just took too much time so it stole time from other things, I couldn't get anything done I wanted to. Windows is like that co-worker that buys a Kia becayse it has a 10 year warranty so every week he's asking for someone to give him a ride to the dealer, weather the downtime for his car or windows is planned or not its still downtime. The loss of time, the loss of data, etc. But I'm getting too OT.

Originally Posted by wawa

no it wont work that way. the aros kickstart in uae is totally outdated, no use for anything, wont even boot. thats probably what part of bad publicity aros receives could be attributed to. wonder why its still there..

depending on what you want i can send you a default config file for fs-uae you can modify for your configuration. but the question is, what do you want to do.

aros is currently undergoing a heavy maintenance, about 20-30 commits a day, in order to implement multicore support, so a build and therefore a nightly can be broken at any time.

I have a 1.3 config where I setup like what I had back in the 90's and another 3.1 I made. I had a 500 with 1.3 back then but no hdd so I just set this up as if I had a hdd then, juts found a pre-made hdd image someone else made and downloaded it and started adding stuff that I used back then.

Anyway, to get back to a more OT discussion. For purposes of defining what Amiga is or is not, is Amiga just the workbench or kickstart or both?
AROS68k is it aimed at replacing both WB and kickstart. I know the x86 runs on top of standard pc hardware so no kickstart there. So I still use the Amiga kickstart if I want to try AROS 68k (even under emulation).

If so then technically I can only try 1.3 kickstart since thats all I own (sitting in my closet at the moment).

My HP48 for example I did a romdump to use in x48 since since I legally purchased that ROM. I'd need to go buy a 3.1 kickstart to use it.

[OlafSch]

@Akira

the action around this youtube video certainly was not very wise, if they own the rights or not. The news spreads of course in a small community and damages your reputation and thus the goodwill of potential buyers so it is to me more like a self goal in a economic sense.

Assuming Cloanto would not exist do you really think roms would be legal? Me not, neither Hyperion nor AmigaInc ever gave away something for free. My guess is that there would be only Hyperion as legal source asking for a relative high price because they would be only ones offering it legally. But again, all theoretic because it will never happen, Cloanto or no Cloanto. If someone has enough time and money (lots of money) and is willing to spend everything for it, go I have no problem with it. You certainly would need specialised attorneys reviewing all the papers since Commodore assets were sold first time because noone knows for sure right now that the people claiming to own the rights really own it and not believe to own it. It would certainly need a lot of time to examine everything and thus a lot of money. If you finally know who really owns it you can get in contacts and as soon this entity realizes how interested you are they/it will ask for money too. Will be interesting, you can inform me if it is at that point. I personal will (if I do something at all) invest time in the only free option available but everybody is free to do what he/she likes to do.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by KronusOfChaos

Dragging up these topics once in a while is good. There might be new people to the community that have differing ideas that might lead somewhere. This isn't like the old adage "What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result." New people bring new ideas sometimes good sometimes bad.

no. it turns the people away from realistic solutions. who in this thread has proposed any realistic path to follow? i did. anybody else?

its really at least puzzliing to see the same subjects, the same participants, the same idas being shared since years without any action. no new members. it seems only that pople forget that they have thrown the very same simple idea around half a year earilier, just a thought, not any research done and will now again discuss it to death waiting for somone else to come and solve them.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Anyway, to get back to a more OT discussion. For purposes of defining what Amiga is or is not, is Amiga just the workbench or kickstart or both?

aros replaces both kickstart and workbench. depending on how you ant to handlie it you can load/define the kickstart and kickstart extension image (aros rom has one mb in size) into your uae or softkick it form your amiga system.

navigate to:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/de/download2.php
find latest built archives.

amiga-m68k-boot - is a lha archive containing kickstart images. aros-amiga-68k-rom.bin is the base image. aros-amiga-68k-ext.bin is the extended one. reference them in your use settings. if you just want a kickstart.

amiga-m68k-bootiso - contains the whole system along with a kickstart files within boot/amiga/ subdir. its a tar.bz of an iso image.

you can make it your primary bootable partition and attach the image of your original drive containing your amiga software you want to test alongside.

So I still use the Amiga kickstart if I want to try AROS 68k (even under emulation).

why? the whole purpose of aros68k is to make it unnecessary.

If so then technically I can only try 1.3 kickstart since thats all I own (sitting in my closet at the moment).

once again. you dont need the genuine kickstart to run aros.

[Samurai_Crow]

To make a hybrid of AROS and AmigaOS 3 one only has to resume the work on AfaOS (AROS For Amiga). Bernd started backporting features and libraries from AROS to run on the OS3 kernel.

As for OOP.library and the HIDD format, when it was converted to the 68k, Jason McMullan made single inheritance a special case so it would be library calls thus speeding it up.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by wawa

aros replaces both kickstart and workbench. depending on how you ant to handlie it you can load/define the kickstart and kickstart extension image (aros rom has one mb in size) into your uae or softkick it form your amiga system.

navigate to:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/de/download2.php
find latest built archives.

amiga-m68k-boot - is a lha archive containing kickstart images. aros-amiga-68k-rom.bin is the base image. aros-amiga-68k-ext.bin is the extended one. reference them in your use settings. if you just want a kickstart.

amiga-m68k-bootiso - contains the whole system along with a kickstart files within boot/amiga/ subdir. its a tar.bz of an iso image.

you can make it your primary bootable partition and attach the image of your original drive containing your amiga software you want to test alongside.



why? the whole purpose of aros68k is to make it unnecessary.



once again. you dont need the genuine kickstart to run aros.

Ok, so its just FS-UAE shipping with an older AROS kickstart, if I download a current AROS rom I get a good working one then? When you said the aros kickstart in uae is totally outdated, no use for anything, wont even boot I thought the AROS 68k kickstart in general, so I read that wrong.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by matthey

FUD is disinformation but I have nothing against AROS so it would be misinformation at best.

matt, no pun intended. but you spread wrong information without properly informed yourself. i dont care so much, but it may be damaging interest in a project that could be advantageous for you and others..

Building AROS is still not easy for me. C was supposed to be portable across compilers and hardware but it looks like AROS requires a particular compiler and OS to build it.

i have never had an impression you are really interested in it. if you are i can walk you step by step in setting up the compiler enviroment for aros. it isnt more complicated than compiling netsurf, a much smaller project (in fact it is easier, since once the packages are in place the whole build process is scriped). if you can build and use cahir's cross-toolchain or the new 6.2 one it would be a walk for you.

as for a proper environment for the task, people are building under very different ones, even osx. i did ubuntu and debian but prefer lubuntu, even though the default editor has no syntax highlighting and managing the terminal history is rather limited. i would put up a virtual machine with whatever popular 32bit linux you like for the task.

the 68k has tended to get slow bug fixes and support upgrades. The only thing consistent about GCC for the 68k has been its lack of consistency.

nevertheless this paricular bug phx pointe me to as example was non issue. have not tested it with 4.6.4 sorry to say. probably should have.

Was the HIDD interface really necessary for example?

this is to my knowledge an abstraction layer the original os never had. os4 soent have this as well. therefore all the prolems with the different platforms and transitions. if you have a better concept you might be able to force it through, given you have proven yourself as a valid contributor, not just a lazy better knowing, and im assuming you would have to contribute your changes yourself.

Different components are not always interchangeable. The APIs have changed in some cases (for example layers.library). Some components are significantly different like resources with these HIDDs.

yes. different versions of libs dont always work with different versions of amiga system as well. is aros supposed to fix this in some kind of magical way? matt, by all means, dont do nitpicking. the only aros hidd i had consciously to do so far on amiga was amiga chicpset hidd and both gallium and softpipe. i think amiga hidd is an provisorium anyway, but it works.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Ok, so its just FS-UAE shipping with an older AROS kickstart, if I download a current AROS rom I get a good working one then? When you said the aros kickstart in uae is totally outdated, no use for anything, wont even boot I thought the AROS 68k kickstart in general, so I read that wrong.

i have built aros68k with yesterdays sources after they have fixed an issue i have reported and gave it a shot.

so yes. id assume if a nightly on a location i have gave you above is available, it is working too.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

To make a hybrid of AROS and AmigaOS 3 one only has to resume the work on AfaOS (AROS For Amiga). Bernd started backporting features and libraries from AROS to run on the OS3 kernel.

the reason behind afa os was, thate there wasnt aros68k at that time. bernd had to backport only few libraries he has been able to. the result was rather hacky. today its a waste of time in my opinion. instead work should be put into improving aros until its a proper replacement.

[Samurai_Crow]

The necessity of the hidd format is free graphics card support since CyberGraphX is owned by MorphOS developers and Picasso96 was licensed to OS4 and neither is open source.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by matthey

C was supposed to be portable across compilers and hardware but it looks like AROS requires a particular compiler and OS to build it.

The basic C language itself is portable but pretty much anything else in a C program is not. I can't take my code from a PIC24 and expect it to compile in GCC either.

[wawa]

@eugene

here is screenshot of mine lubuntu with yesterdays aros68k compile running in fs-use:
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuvzEgbTrkxP-C3KUU_aPnhTepYR

note that you best immediately go to prefs, and disable themeing if you want to use amiga chipset for display, otherwise you will be able to look at how the menus renders with all defaults bells and whisthels like alpha transparency on aplanar screen. themeing can be disabled in appaearance prefs or deleting theme.var from envarc. run screenmode prefs program to choose rtg for more speedup if you are emulating it. disable bakcground images in wanderer prefs program. they eat enormous amount of time.

aha. edit the startup sequence, adding "SetPatch QUIET" as known from amiga at the very beginning.

i think this are the basics.