What does the Amiga community need?

[gururise]

The Amiga community needs to rally behind an Open Source OS like AROS to leave behind all the in-fighting and drama from Hyperion, Cloanto, Haage & Partner and other companies that hold Amiga hostage.

The Atari community standardized on an Open Source OS years ago and they now have a modern and constantly updated OS that provides free updates to the entire community. Open standards and an open OS has revitalized the Atari community and was probably the best thing they did for their platform.

The Amiga community could learn a lot from this lesson... It worked for Linux, it worked for Atari and it can work for Amiga.

[Chucky]

well I guess reason ataripeople was more interetsed in a opensource OS is that their os was pretty damn crap.

while AmigaOS is a good working example so there is "no need" as we have one.. AROS. but interest is to say . "weak" I myself haven't bothered to test it. as. why?

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Chucky

while AmigaOS is a good working example so there is "no need" as we have one.. AROS. but interest is to say . "weak" I myself haven't bothered to test it. as. why?

Same here, the only time I've tried AROS is when I don't have WinUAE set up and it boots into AROS because I haven't set the ROMS.

One of the early AROS screenshots looked interesting where it looked like Kick3.1, booting from a bootdisk on pc. That was an early version before it became with Reaction by default.

[Minuous]

Eh? AROS still doesn't have ReAction yet. Which is one of the reasons it is basically useless as an AmigaOS replacement.

[Bren McGuire]

Less idiots.

Originally Posted by wiser3

let me know what you think the community needs.

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by Hercules

New keycaps for my A1200. They always sell out too quickly.

This. Still waiting for a new batch to match my new white A1200 case.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by gururise

The Amiga community needs to rally behind an Open Source OS like AROS to leave behind all the in-fighting and drama from Hyperion, Cloanto, Haage & Partner and other companies that hold Amiga hostage.

I don't get it. If you want to help developing AmigaOs, you can do that, right now. Contact the folks behind 3.2. Nobody is taking anyone hostage here. By the way: Haage & Partner are out, since a long long time.

Originally Posted by gururise

The Atari community standardized on an Open Source OS years ago and they now have a modern and constantly updated OS that provides free updates to the entire community. Open standards and an open OS has revitalized the Atari community and was probably the best thing they did for their platform.

The same is happening here? So where's your point?

Originally Posted by gururise

The Amiga community could learn a lot from this lesson... It worked for Linux, it worked for Atari and it can work for Amiga.

Thanks, but the complexity of Linux I wouldn't want to see at the Amiga - or we'd have systemd in a couple of years. Believe me, that's the very very last thing I'd like to be taken hostage of.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Thanks, but the complexity of Linux I wouldn't want to see at the Amiga - or we'd have systemd in a couple of years. Believe me, that's the very very last thing I'd like to be taken hostage of.

Its offtopic but what is or do you think is the "problem" with systemd? To complex, doesn't work good, broken by design, ...? However, I don't think something like systemd for Amiga will come because I don't seen a need for it and it would probably need to much resources and doesn't fit well in the Amiga environment.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by daxb

Its offtopic but what is or do you think is the "problem" with systemd? To complex, doesn't work good, broken by design, ...? However, I don't think something like systemd for Amiga will come because I don't seen a need for it and it would probably need to much resources and doesn't fit well in the Amiga environment.

It doesn't solve a problem I have, and for that, it does too many things "under the hood", i.e. it is implicit, not explicit. The "init" system was pretty clear: One directory per start level, scripts in bash, executed by priority. So everything was transparent. With systemd, many things are opaque, without giving you much of a gain - init.d boots the system, systemd boots the system by no means "faster" or "better". Complexity for nothing.

There are many things like that in Linux, problems that are solved more complex than necessary, in an "expert-only" friendly way.

"Cups" is just another example, "printing made complicated". Yes, it does printing over network, nice, with many protocols, but everytime I'll try to print, something else fails, without the system being able to tell where exactly the problem is, or how to solve it. If the Amiga printer.device fails, it tells me "printer out of paper" or "printer offline", and it's clear how to solve that. If cups fails... Well, go hunting in many places, with error messages that are not helpful.

It's great to have a complex system that works for so many situations, but frankly, a system that solves only 80% of the cases, but then works transparently in an obvious way would make more users happy as it would help them to work with the system and administrate it.

Unfortunately, AmigaOs is also moving in this "piling up complexity" direction, and I'm not happy about it. DefIcons is an example of an opaque, not-maintainable system - a system that is too complex for what it delivers.

An Os should select 20% of the features to make 80% of the users happy. For the remaining 20% of users, there is plenty of room for custom extensions in Aminet, but please don't move such monsters into the Os.

[modrobert]

Love, peace and understanding.

Originally Posted by gururise

The Amiga community needs to rally behind an Open Source OS like AROS to leave behind all the in-fighting and drama from Hyperion, Cloanto, Haage & Partner and other companies that hold Amiga hostage.

The Atari community standardized on an Open Source OS years ago and they now have a modern and constantly updated OS that provides free updates to the entire community. Open standards and an open OS has revitalized the Atari community and was probably the best thing they did for their platform.

The Amiga community could learn a lot from this lesson... It worked for Linux, it worked for Atari and it can work for Amiga.

I agree with this, if you mean as a replacement for AmigaOS on real hardware, but not everyone likes that idea. Fortunately regarding classic Amiga hardware it's easy enough to disassemble 68k binaries, quite readable, and modify as needed, so not that big of a deal. If you really want to look at the original Amiga OS 3.1 source code for some reason, it's been leaked several times, still floating around out there.

[Minuous]

DefIcons was already in the OS for a long time.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Minuous

DefIcons was already in the OS for a long time.

Yes, and? That doesn't make it better. Look at the datatypes system - that is not perfect, but simpler. One descriptor per datatype, easy to install new data types. The descriptor is unfortunately opaque - that should be fixed at the datatypes end. Ideally, this should be an editable file in ASCII. Nevertheless, it's simpler to understand, and simpler to configure.


For deficons: One big config file, totally opaque. It should work like datatypes: One descriptor for each icon type, easy to manipulate. It should be as simple to install default icons as it is for datatypes: Drag icons into the right place - be done. Applications should simply place their icon identifiers into the system, without having to manipulate an undocumented binary blob.

[Seiya]

The really needs is stopping hardware development and concentrate on freeware software, but it is my opinion.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Seiya

The really needs is stopping hardware development and concentrate on freeware software, but it is my opinion.

LOL
There is some truth in it.

Maybe we will need some replacement parts in the future, but otherwise it doesn't really matter if your Amiga runs with 50MHz or 400MHz. It will never become usable again for all your daily needs. So let's have fun and develop software for the systems we have and love.

[indigolemon]

Judging by some of the replies in this thread, the best answer to the OPs question is looking like "a hug"

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Seiya

The really needs is stopping hardware development and concentrate on freeware software, but it is my opinion.

And what advantage does that offer for you? I mean, except that you don't want to pay for software I mean? Creating free software isn't a problem, after all. If you want to do that, please do.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by Seiya

The really needs is stopping hardware development and concentrate on freeware software, but it is my opinion.

What is stopping you?

[clebin]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

I don't get it. If you want to help developing AmigaOs, you can do that, right now. Contact the folks behind 3.2. Nobody is taking anyone hostage here.

You know as well as I do that what you describe is a million miles away from open-source. You're fine with that arrangement, but you can't expect everyone to be fine with it.

And let's say Cloanto win the court-case and block sales and further development of OS 3.2. Do not expect Ben Hermans to allow any of that work to be used by Cloanto or anyone else. Do expect him to enforce the NDA to prevent those programmers working for Cloanto though. In that scenario, you'll find it very difficult to defend your current viewpoint. There are other potential outcomes, but I think you're rather glossing over how precarious the legal situation is. Which is exactly why open-source is required. Deep down, I think you must know this.

[clebin]

Originally Posted by gururise

The Amiga community needs to rally behind an Open Source OS like AROS to leave behind all the in-fighting and drama from Hyperion, Cloanto, Haage & Partner and other companies that hold Amiga hostage.

So, yes, this. Personally, I'd like to see AROS focus less on x86 from now on. I know the Apollo team and others are doing this. Trying to support every combination of PC hardware has been a Sisyphean task. It's taken huge resources away from more essential work and has only resulted in an OS that might as well not run natively on anything. Users (and even devs) aren't able to decipher what PC will or will not boot AROS.

So I'd personally like to see AROS focus on ABI v1 and on optimising 68k. There's a huge amount of development on 68k - Apollo, PiStorm, Buffee - that makes it feasible for the mostly simple computing tasks that AROS/Amiga applications are capable of. But x86 is a pointless endeavour. Purely IMHO by the way - I'm not going to dictate what any dev does in their spare time.

There was a great AROS project some years ago called "Paper Cuts" that was entirely user-focused - fixing the little gripes that users reported when using AROS. Little UI bugs and inconsistencies, small feature requests, etc. Deadwood in particular did amazing work in making AROS more useful and enjoyable for regular users. Another project like this would make a huge difference.

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by clebin

You know as well as I do that what you describe is a million miles away from open-source. You're fine with that arrangement, but you can't expect everyone to be fine with it.

And let's say Cloanto win the court-case and block sales and further development of OS 3.2. Do not expect Ben Hermans to allow any of that work to be used by Cloanto or anyone else. Do expect him to enforce the NDA to prevent those programmers working for Cloanto though. In that scenario, you'll find it very difficult to defend your current viewpoint. There are other potential outcomes, but I think you're rather glossing over how precarious the legal situation is. Which is exactly why open-source is required. Deep down, I think you must know this.

I would say "Precarious" is probably quite optimistic for Hyperion at this time:

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2021-07-00053-EN.html

But the other point you missed, was the Hyperion (Developers) indemnity agreement. Now, just exactly how much indemnity can you realistically expect from an insolvent company?