What do you call the Amiga's Operating System?

[Unch]

This isn't a trick question, nor is it some really bad Christmas cracker joke. I was wondering what people refer to the Amiga's Operating System as. Back in the day, there didn't seem to be one name for the overall system. You had all these named components, such as Kickstart, AmigaDOS, Workbench* etc.

People I knew tended to refer to the whole lot as "Workbench", I guess mostly due to the fact that the only time they ever saw something resembling an operating system was when they popped in the disk labelled "Workbench". IIRC there was even an Amiga Format cover with a headline about "Workbench 3.5" as late as 1998. Occasionally, AmigaDOS was used to describe the complete package. I think that some C= documentation did this.

The whole AmigaOS thing seems to be a late arrival, harking back to the Escom days. Personally I've always hated it. It's very much a "me too" sort of name, like MacOS, BeOS, etc., etc. It's completely devoid of any personality.

I always liked "Workbench" as a name, and I've always liked the workbench metaphor. Drawers, tools and projects always seemed to make so much more sense. So I guess, my vote goes to that. Yeah, I know Workbench is "just" the file manager application, and that loads of people have replaced it years ago with something better (I use Scalos myself), but I still think it is a great name for the whole system.

What does everyone else think?



*Interestingly, Cloanto own the Workbench trademark.

[Zetr0]

Cloanto own a "Workbench" trade mark... that is interesting... very much so..

there are times today that i still say fire-up workbench when i should of said windows.... normally i get a resounding "whu?"

but yeah... as WIMP systems go, its a great bit of kit, way ahead if its time. although superseded now in way perhaps far to more complex to iterate, i still love the comfortability i get with workbench.

I sitill do chuckle at new vista users today bleeting on about animated backdrop on their desktops, lol the miggy had that 10 years ago!! and back in the day i remember mocking 386/486 users with the words "multi-tasking"

I am collector of sorts when it comes to OS's and i do like to play with them when i get time, its generally from this I quite often take a renewed appreciation of Workbench (OS3.5 is my favvy thus far)

[NLS]

AFAIR, the operating system as a whole, originally did NOT have a single name but as you said consisted of basically three names:

Kickstart (what we would call BIOS today)
AmigaDOS (the CLI -later shell- part)
Workbench (the GUI)

...you could find use of other names (which are in fact OS parts though, but their version generally does describe the whole system version) like kernel, exec or intuition.

After 3.0 I'd say (but could be 2.04 - definitely before ESCOM though), there were the first mentions of AmigaOS, describing the whole thing as an entity.

I prefer not having a single name. So there is a triad that rules everything... kickstart/amigados/workbench

[cosmicfrog]

Intuition

[Dizzy]

I remember making an ElvisBench for my amiga 500. It was made on Wb1.3 basis

[NLS]

now this deserves a photo

[Vairn]

Steve, always liked that name, seemed to suit it nicely.




ok, in all serious I normally referred to it as Workbench, since I started with 1.2 and it had that word on it.

[viddi]

Originally Posted by Unch

The whole AmigaOS thing seems to be a late arrival, harking back to the Escom days.

Yes, might be...

I used to call it Workbench and I still do.
But there is nothing wrong with Amiga OS.

Workbench sounds a bit more personal.

[killergorilla]

I call it Workbench.

WORK
BENCH

[Zetr0]

@KG

Fred calls his Bowelmovement.

[killergorilla]

Fred calls his Bowelmovement.... what?

[Zetr0]

Os

[killergorilla]

So he calls his bowelmovement OS?

What's he call his OS then?

[BippyM]

oi stop going off-topic!

[Galahad/FLT]

I just call all of it AmigaDOS, I know its wrong, but I'm so entrenched in calling it that, I'm not going to change.

Just be thankful I didn't called it Kipper!

[paranoid]

Back-in-the-day it was Workbench, depending on the context. I mean, if one were talking about OSs, it would be MacOS, Windows, Workbench. If I were talking with an Amiga user, I would tell them to "go into the cli" (pronounced, clie, not c l i) and type something. But if someone asked about a pipe device (or something similar), it would be part of AmigaDOS. Kickstart was just the rom you needed. If someone were running WB2.0, KS2.0 is assumed, that sort of thing.

[rkauer]

Simply Workbench, even for 3.5/3.9/4.0!

[Unch]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

Cloanto own a "Workbench" trade mark... that is interesting... very much so..

Indeed, it looks like the original C= Trademark expired in 2004. The last registered owner was Amiga Development LLC LTD - in other words Gateway, so I guess that Amino never bothered to pick it up for their super-duper non-amiga AmigaDE crap.

Cloanto picked it up a couple of years later. For anyone interested enough the trademark serial numbers for USPTO are :-

C= Workbench: 1761068

Cloanto Workbench: 78907083

[NLS]

woooow talking about new trademarks in the meantime eh?

[Hewitson]

I always called it Workbench until 3.5 came out under the new AmigaOS name, I now refer to all versions 2+ as AmigaOS and 1.x as Workbench.