They should make a Windows like Amiga OS so it runs on a PC

[Karlos]

All good reasons

[DisasterIncarna]

these days there is very little Wine/Proton cannot handle, games wise its mostly the ones using kernel level access to do whatever the hell they like and anything tied heavily to microsoft .NET framework and the likes that fail, pretty much everything else works, Wine/Proton even handle very old stuff modern windows often doesnt run properly itself.

Erased my last Windoze PC a good 3-4 years ago, had no issues, what i cant run which isnt much i just look for alternatives or in the case of games i just play other stuff, we are spoiled for choice these days, i still use my main Kubuntu PC for web related stuff and watching media on Jellyfin but i find i'm using my Steam Deck more and more, both in handheld mode and docked to my TV, there is almost nothing i cant run on it, i was even happily playing Fury3, Ascendancy and various other old/very old titles.

I cant think of anything "essential" i cant run on Linux/Kubuntu/SteamOS, my amiga emulation is also perfectly fine on those linux devices as well as emulating a crapton more devices.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Web, notepad++, visual studio, mpc-hc, emulation (a lot !), gaming.

Most if not all is also available under Linux:
Web and emulators of course. Gaming via Proton/Wine
There are even Linux distributions tailored towards gaming like:
https://nobaraproject.org

Visual Studio via Wine or the native version of Visual Studio Code

For notepad++ there is NotepadNext

For mpc-hc there is mpc-qt
(which is still an active project and gets updates in contrast to mpc-hc)

Oh, and also pure laziness (it came pre-installed), lack of knowledge about what alternatives can currently do, and to have something easy to blame in case anything goes wrong.

It does not come preinstalled, but you can blame Linux just as easily for any inconveniences and problems!

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Having a 'modern' screen resolution makes it less Amiga-like. When you do that problems arise with the way the Amiga does things. The mouse pointer gets small and hard to find. The menus at the top of the screen become a pain. You need a sharp high resolution monitor, and if you're old like me powerful glasses to read text in standard font sizes. Or you increase font sizes and create havoc with apps that can't handle it. IOW, all the problems you have with RTG on the Amiga.

Every monitor sold for much less than a 1084 is both larger and sharper than a 1084, so I really do not see your point. The text size measured in mm is more or less the same because you’re comparing a 14" monitor to a 28" widescreen one. And if you have poor eyesight, you can increase font size and all applications will adapt. My mother uses enormous text sizes on her Iphone.

For effective use of modern video systems we actually need a less 'Amiga-like' OS. Menus should be attached to windows, not screens. Instead of Workbench functions being on a menu at the top of the screen, they should be accessed via a context menu activated with the RMB. In this way a minimum amount of mouse movement is required to do stuff, which becomes more important as the screen real estate increases.

Incorrect. It is much easier to push the mouse to the top of the screen than targetting the 12 pixels that make up the menu bar inside a window. Menus inside windows are not based on research, but on technical and legal limitations.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

To be 'Amiga-like'. BTW most of my PCs have floppy drives too. Pretty much essential with retro PCs that don't have any other convenient way to get software into them. Also I like floppy disks.

A Windows PC with a floppy drive is not more Amiga-like than an AmigaOS 4 system without one.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Every monitor sold for much less than a 1084 is both larger and sharper than a 1084, so I really do not see your point. The text size measured in mm is more or less the same because you’re comparing a 14" monitor to a 28" widescreen one.

Monitor? I have always used my A1200 on a TV in composite. In the 90's and 2000's I had a 29 inch CRT TV, combined with a powerful hi-fi amp and large speakers. Later on I upgraded to a 32 inch LED TV, which I still have today.

On my 'modern' PCs I use 17 inch 5:4 LCD screens at 1280x1024. I prefer this 'narrow' format because it keeps everything in front of me and the screen doesn't take up so much space. Only the laptop has a widescreen monitor. Its resolution isn't great but I only use it watch TV programs so...

I currently have my A600 with Vampire hooked up to another 32 inch LED TV via HDMI running 1320x800, and it's way more screen real estate than I need. To get the mouse from bottom to top or one side to the other takes 4 movements. Fitts's law says the further you have to move the mouse the harder it is to hit the target, but having to constantly pick the mouse up and move it back in the air to keep it on the pad is even worse.

PCs get around this problem with accelerated movement, but that makes it even less accurate. OK for operating menus, but hopeless when you need good accuracy and linear movement (bitmap drawing programs, CAD etc.). You end up magnifying the image to make up for the inaccuracy, which defeats the purpose of having a higher resolution!

The Amiga's mouse has beautifully linear accurate movement, but this becomes a pain at higher resolutions when you have to push the pointer longer (pixel) distances. Having to push it all the way to top of the screen and hold down the right mouse button to bring up the menu doesn't help. With higher resolution there's no need to hide the menu like this, and having a menu attached to the window it's associated with makes more sense than attaching it to the screen.

And if you have poor eyesight, you can increase font size and all applications will adapt. My mother uses enormous text sizes on her Iphone.

This doesn't always work. My boss was using his laptop to control our drone. He thought it would be a good idea to get a tablet instead, but the HP unit he bought was fixed at a stupidly high resolution that made it impossible to operate the drone app with the touch screen. In Windows 10 you can increase the font size, but the app didn't increase container sizes to fit the larger text. So the tablet was useless. Very frustrating!

You can make any argument you like, but it doesn't change the fact that the Amiga was designed for low resolution displays. That makes it a good fit to a 1084 monitor or TV in composite mode, but not good for the higher resolutions people use on computers today. Conversely, modern LCD monitors often struggle to produce a good image at low resolutions. I recently bought an Acer LCD monitor that supposedly could do 15KHz, and it did - but the pixel interpolation was horrible (I ended up giving it to my brother to use as a second monitor on his laptop).

So if you want an OS that works well on modern systems, it needs to be less 'Amiga-like'.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

So if you want an OS that works well on modern systems, it needs to be less 'Amiga-like'.

Again this comes down to your very personal definition of "Amiga-like".
In the context of an OS for modern hardware all these pure retro-computing aspects like low screen resolutions make absolutely no sense.
Maybe call it "in the spirit of Amiga-OS" or "based on the (useful) ideas and principles of Amiga-OS", if that helps.
Keep the good things, toss the bad things and the restrictions it had, that were purely due to the harsh hardware limitation of that era. Build on the good ideas and expand these with modern hardware in mind.