Can we take back the Amiga?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

I suppose if somebody has aspirations of AmigaOS becoming a modern OS, then I can see why taking control might seem to be the solution, but I can also see it fragmenting the Amiga scene in a destructive unhelpful way.

Isn't that what already happened?

[StevenJGore]

Originally Posted by TCD

Isn't that what already happened?

Which bit? The bit about becoming fragmented, because we've already got AmigaOS 3.2, 3.5, 3.9, 4.X, AROS, and MorphOS? Yes, I guess that has already happened!

[TCD]

Yep, that's the bit I meant

[Minuous]

>The new Reaction classes are not redistributable independent of Hyperion Entertainment. That's my point.

It's an OS component; what would be the benefit of distributing individual OS components?! It would just encourage frankenstein systems.

>The hardware is extremely limited/expensive and 4.1 does less than 3.2.2 and the endless lawsuit has devastated this platform.

Actually, there are quite a lot of features of 4.1 that are not yet in 3.x.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by matt3k

3.2 is a fun hobby on classic hardware, we will have 3.3 I would guess next year as the team seems to plug away at it. The Development team are a great group doing the work about as best as could be expected at this point. So I'm not crazy about the money I pay for it going to a void and not into the pockets of the developers, but given our classic options I will keep it that way to keep the ball moving at this point.

4.x is pretty much dead to me at this point. The hardware is extremely limited/expensive and 4.1 does less than 3.2.2 and the endless lawsuit has devastated this platform.

AROS is a fork that will solve the hardware, but is also handicapped by the lack of native applications for it and gets around it by rabbit hole.

MorphOS has evolved and been developed by a serious margin. 3.18 was just released and they are already plugging away at 3.19. They offer the best application set (They wisely put their effort into a toolset that gives the OS an advantage and having MUI native in the OS helps.). The application set and performance make this a robust offering. If I had to thank anyone I would thank those developers who brought us cheap and powerful options and the ability to browse the web, get email, and use SMB productively to name a few... They just put their heads down for over 20 years and made things happen. It's also nice to know that the limited money I spent for licenses went to the team and operating system, where I saw the fruits of that.

Lack of apps on Aros? Really?

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Minuous

>The new Reaction classes are not redistributable independent of Hyperion Entertainment. That's my point.

It's an OS component; what would be the benefit of distributing individual OS components?! It would just encourage frankenstein systems.

>The hardware is extremely limited/expensive and 4.1 does less than 3.2.2 and the endless lawsuit has devastated this platform.

Actually, there are quite a lot of features of 4.1 that are not yet in 3.2.2.

Minuous, you seem not to understand what Reaction or MUI are. Both are GUI toolkits (like many others that existed). If they are exclusive tied to one platform it makes it more difficult to developers to port a application from one platform to another.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

Minuous, you seem not to understand what Reaction or MUI are. Both are GUI toolkits (like many others that existed). If they are exclusive tied to one platform it makes it more difficult to developers to port a application from one platform to another.

Now, tell me again why you want to ship something that comes with the Os and thus can be assumed to be present at the target system anyhow?

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Now, tell me again why you want to ship something that comes with the Os and thus can be assumed to be present at the target system anyhow?

there is a world outside AmigaOS you know

there are other amiga platforms. I do not care anyway. Who wants portable apps uses MUI and there are only few apps with reaction GUI

[a_crow]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Look, this sounds very "romantic", but there is no "community" as a closed group with all common interests. There are, as always, multiple parties with mulitple interests and mulitple directions where to drive a project. Actually, with that "community" we see here we would not see one AmigaOs, but ten versions, all incomplete and all non-working because everyone wants to drive it into another direction.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm new to the Amiga scene and there's obviously a lot of background here that I'm not up to speed with.


That said, what you describe as a negative I think is actually just a necessary phase of any large scale open-source project. The project eventually finds an equalibrium and is better off for it. It's a kind of natural selection.


The best ideas and features from all of the disparate OS verions eventually coalesce into a solid product.


Whether that's a suitable direction for Amiga or not is not something I'm qualified to say, but in principal I think the kind of competing ideas and directions you describe often end up as a net positive for a project if it can survive the turmoil of the early days.

[Tigerskunk]

Amiga is a hobby platform.
Deal with it.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by a_crow

That said, what you describe as a negative I think is actually just a necessary phase of any large scale open-source project. The project eventually finds an equalibrium and is better off for it. It's a kind of natural selection.

The "natural selection" currently means that I do not dare to update thunderbird because every time they create a major release they break the plugins I need for daily work. "Natural selection" means that ported once the UAE player for XMMS, and once again for audacity, and after they kept breaking the interface for the third time, I just gave up cleaning behind them and adapting to another iteration of the interface.


You can do that if you market is large enough and there are sufficient people on continously tracking development and adopting interfaces as they keep changes. But we have a tiny system here, with little manpower behind. This is not a suitable direction.

[OlafSch]

@a_crow

from experience on aros with the fork apolloos it is theoretically possible but not very propable. As long the API remains the same and the commits are open all benefit. For example some bugfixes from apolloos were integrated in main branch but also improvements from main branch are going into apolloos. Finally most of the commits are useful for all platforms and requirements f.e. on 68k are different to f.e. X86. In theory of course a open source os could be forked and all forks go in different directions but in my view that is theoretical (be alone that you need the skilled devs for all the forks).

[OlafSch]

@Thomas Richter

You have forked also . 3.2 or 3.3 are forks too adding to 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9. I do not see a big difference here

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

there is a world outside AmigaOS you know

For programs running on AmigaOs, no.

Originally Posted by OlafSch

There are other amiga platforms.

No, there are *other platforms*. What would a reaction class help on another platform than AmigaOs? The Boopsis need their natural habitat.

Originally Posted by OlafSch

I do not care anyway. Who wants portable apps uses MUI and there are only few apps with reaction GUI

Look, I'm not sure what "portable" means in your ears. But I surely cannot take an AmigaOs app and run it on AROS with its x86 kernel. You probably mean "I want source code to recompile it on other platforms", but that's something different.



But then again, why would I care about MUI in such a tiny niche. For that, I already have gtk or Qt. That means portable to a lot of relevant platforms. Amiga is utterly irrelevant for GUI toolkit platforms.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

@Thomas Richter

You have forked also . 3.2 or 3.3 are forks too adding to 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9. I do not see a big difference here

No, unless you call "a straight line" a "fork". That looks quite unlike a fork to me.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by a_crow

The best ideas and features from all of the disparate OS verions eventually coalesce into a solid product.

That's not how it works in Amigaland at all

[OlafSch]

@Thomas Richter

here we talk about the amiga universe (or bubble) not about real world. Of course no amiga gui toolkit has any meaning outside of it. I only talk about amiga or amiga inspired platforms (or however you call it) like Aros, MorphOS and AmigaOS.

And of course you have created something new and different and thus not fully compatible. People used patched systems based on 3.1 kickstarts or 3.9 and stuff no longer works for them. There are lots of discussions about that. It is not important whom to blame in this context. It is a new branch adding to patched 3.1 or 3.5/3.9. Fork is perhaps not the right wording here because only one team has access to the sources.

[a_crow]

Originally Posted by TCD

That's not how it works in Amigaland at all

I'm starting to get that impression!

[drHirudo]

For me ApolloOS is a joke. I used it for some time on the Apollo Core V4+ and as calm as I am with using AmigaOS for long time, I didn't like to reboot so often, because of random crashes. Then installed Coffin (AmigaOS) and now it is much much stable and I enjoy it.

[Minuous]

That seems an overly broad definition of "fork": every version of every program is a fork according to such a definition.