AmigaOS 3.1.4 withdrawn from market after Amiga

[kolla]

Yeah well, doing stuff with binary distros is very often tricky, when everything is built for "most users" instead of what you need it for. Building from source is so fast and easily automated these days anyways.

[kolla]

@nobody
Yes it did, stop being so ignorant and try Wikipedia or something.

[nobody]

There was no graphical installer, it was a pain in the @ss to install, nothing was automatic and I clearly remember the most friendly distribution was red hat based especially Suse Linux/mandrake
This is for some folks that say Linux is so easy... Yeah, in 2018.
And I am using it since 2001 or so. The first time I heard about apt and how magic and how good it is, was after UBUNTU took over and created all those fancy tools to make Linux user friendly.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by nobody

Then you should tell us how you managed to install your debian in 1998 lol. Did it even have a graphical installer? I am asking because you seem like experienced Linux guy.

I installed debian 2 from cds downloaded from the net and burned. It was circa 2000. I then updated via the fast uni internet. My first debian PC was my the computer I used for work at the uni. I needed a unix machine and i had a choice of a really slow sun box or a dual core PIII @ 700Mhz. I chose the latter.

Sure it had issues and occasionally there were dependency issues but it usually figured that out ahead of time.

EDIT: The installer was actually the same Curses based one they had until recently.. i was pissed when debian took away that option and gave me a GUI.

[DamienD]

...we are getting way, way off topic here guys

[nobody]

Originally Posted by kolla

@nobody
Yes it did, stop being so ignorant and try Wikipedia or something.

I am not using wikipedia to learn things. I was reading magazines plus my personal experience and if apt was as good as it is today I bet it would have killed all other distributions easily. But everyone back then was using rpm based distributions for some reason.

Sorry for continue off topic but i had to reply.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Urgh.. treating computers like pets rather than cattle.. no interest for me. I'd rather watch paint dry. I want to use them to do stuff.

Lucky for us with linux there's plenty of room for both approaches.
Linux, Windows, and MacOS have the desktop world all sewn up. Maybe Amiga OS could have been where Next is now, had it been owned by someone competent, but that ship has long sailed.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by nobody

I am not using wikipedia to learn things. I was reading magazines plus my personal experience and if apt was as good as it is today I bet it would have killed all other distributions easily. But everyone back then was using rpm based distributions for some reason.



Sorry for continue off topic but i had to reply.

RPMs.... horrible things. Apt was good back in 2000. But nobody was offering support and the Debian (development) guys are ... how do I put this ... they make Amiga users look like a bunch of chilled hippies. It was insanely hard to meet their standard for inclusion in Debian back then. Hence Ubuntu was born. Red hat had books and courses etc... anyways ... back to routing my new Board. I’ll STFU. Sorry @DamienD

[kolla]

My old "blog" speaks for itself, I suppose... heh

http://amiga.nvg.org/news.php#19973105

First Linux kernel I booted, from what I recall, was 0.87 for 68k, back around the same time CBM went belly up. It took a few years for 68k to be included in main, which happened somewhere in 1.2.1xx from what I recall, mostly due to the work of one individual.

[nexus]

yep i ran some linux off of a amiga format cd on my CD32/SX-1 around that time

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by cloverskull

Amiga - I need to use SnoopDOS to figure out what libraries are missing, manually, search Aminet, manually install the thing, it never updates unless I somehow search every library I have periodically on Aminet to see if a thing changed, and the number of conflicts I've run into with installed libraries or commodities is staggering.

AmigaOS got installation scripting with V2.1 in 1992. Click on installer icon, answer a few basic questions, feed in disks when asked, done! Put in wrong disk? No problem, AmigaOS knows which disk it needs from the name! (and no need to hit the 'any' key when you do). Many applications don't even need to be 'installed' - just drag the drawer over to your hard drive, or run direct from floppies (app will ask for any of its named disks when it needs them!). How many Windows or Linux apps can you do that with?

If you need to search Aminet for a library then I'm guessing it's not part of the OS, but some PD or shareware crap that doesn't come with a proper installation script. You can't blame the OS for that! Or perhaps installation is so simple that you don't need a special procedure. The locations of system files are obvious and easy to get to, and there's no need to mess about with registries, raise privileges, or precisely type ridiculously long command sequences.

AmigaOS is much simpler to maintain than those other platforms. Windows is notorious for dll hell and Registry issues, and it's just as well that modern Linux versions have an automatic updating system because doing it by hand would be a nightmare.

Actually, even doing it the 'easy' way can be problematic for a Linux newbie. I installed Linux Lite on a PC so I could watch TVNZ On Demand shows - which had stopped working on my Windows machine because the streaming video vendor changed to an incompatible codec. 2 weeks later it stopped working on the Linux box too! What to do? Update to the latest Firefox they said, so (as you would) I followed the directions on Firefox's website. Downloaded the update, but would it install? Of course not. Seems you have to do a complete system update - which takes hours - and pray that nothing breaks.

Then I wanted to update my KiCad installation (which won't work on my Windows machine due to not having a new enough OpenGL driver). Just do the same thing, right? Wrong! Here's the procedure according to KiCad's website:-

1. Open the Ubuntu Software Manager.

2. Select 'Edit' ? 'Software Sources…?'.

3. Open the 'Other Software' tab.

4. Click 'Add…?', and type some shit in here er.. enter the PPA address: ppa:js-reynaud/kicad-5 and then click the 'Add Source' button.

5. When prompted insert the administrator user password.

6. Return to the Software Manager and view the Progress tab to see when the cache has finished updating.

7. Return to the Software Manager main screen, search for 'kicad', and install it. (finally!)

Just one tiny little problem...

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

AmigaOS got installation scripting with V2.1 in 1992. Click on installer icon, answer a few basic questions, feed in disks when asked, done! Put in wrong disk? No problem, AmigaOS knows which disk it needs from the name! (and no need to hit the 'any' key when you do). Many applications don't even need to be 'installed' - just drag the drawer over to your hard drive, or run direct from floppies (app will ask for any of its named disks when it needs them!). How many Windows or Linux apps can you do that with?

Except that half the time this doesnt work.. i get a guru.

If you need to search Aminet for a library then I'm guessing it's not part of the OS, but some PD or shareware crap that doesn't come with a proper installation script.

Like md5sum2, the updated scsi device libraries, loadmodule, extractmodule, mmu.lib... oh wait.. any useful software whatsoever.

AmigaOS is much simpler to maintain than those other platforms. Windows is notorious for dll hell and Registry issues, and it's just as well that modern Linux versions have an automatic updating system because doing it by hand would be a nightmare.

Updating it by hand is a nightmare. Its a nightmare on Amiga. I wanted to install MuMapROM the other day and it needed a bunch of dependencies. Then my hard disk got corrupted so i had to install ClassicWB from scratch.. which is fine.. but it want a simple script to get everything back where i had it.

...

Updated kicad here.. took under a minute.. why do you make it complex.

sudo apt-get install kicad
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  kicad-common libboost-context1.62.0 libboost-program-options1.62.0
  python-wxgtk3.0 python-wxversion
Suggested packages:
  kicad-doc-ca | kicad-doc-de | kicad-doc-en | kicad-doc-es | kicad-doc-fr
  | kicad-doc-it | kicad-doc-ja | kicad-doc-nl | kicad-doc-pl | kicad-doc-ru
  wx3.0-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  kicad kicad-common libboost-context1.62.0 libboost-program-options1.62.0
  python-wxgtk3.0 python-wxversion
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 194 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 666 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Fetched 66.3 MB in 36s (1,827 kB/s)                                            
Selecting previously unselected package kicad-common.
<SNIP>
Setting up libboost-context1.62.0:amd64 (1.62.0+dfsg-4) ...
Setting up kicad (4.0.5+dfsg1-4) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.24-11+deb9u3) ...
stephen@developer:~$

I just want to type at an AmigaDOS shell.

pkg-install mui

and it does it. No prompt etc. just gets the files and installs. Amiga OS can handle it. Just nobody has written a package manager. The installer is part one. I want something to get the dependencies for me too. When i see an installer pop up a dialog box saying "This software needs version XXX of XXX.library" i get very stabby that that library wasnt bundled.

[DamienD]

Ok... I've already mentioned this once; as has lilalurl before me.

Next off topic / unrelated post to the subject at hand and the thread is closed

...you guys decide the outcome by your follow-ups.

[Hewitson]

Could this off topic discussion possibly be moved to another thread? I'd love the opportunity to argue with some of the rubbish posted in here.

[gregthecanuck]

Well, here is my take on things...

Cloanto has done a great job with Amiga Forever. Superb product. Why couldn't they just sign some sort of agreement with Hyperion to distribute 3.1.4 ROMs going forward? Or even sell the full 3.1.4? Win-win.

I don't believe Cloanto has any developers that could possibly work with the source code. For better or worse the developers that know how the system ticks, know the history, and know what they are doing bringing OS3.1 forward are working with Hyperion. They have the OS4 sources handy and could start back-porting what makes sense.

I can see OS3.1 forking into a "For classics" flavour and a "big boy" flavour that assumes your machine has at least 64MB of memory or something like that. There is still a lot of legacy support in 3.1.4. Perhaps some of that could be stripped/simplified in the "big boy" flavour.

In addition I think that open-sourcing at least some parts of OS3.1 could really help. A cool experiment. Pick something. scsi.device?

No comment on all the legal tit-for-tat. Hopefully at some point all parties involved come to their senses and work together for mutual benefit. The market can be grown for both OS3 and OS4 if better cooperation ensued.

Hopefully I don't get this thread frozen...

[nobody]

Well it would be better to clean this thread, it's full of trolling/flame/insults and more.
I guess it's not so easy with 16 pages about fascism/Linux/maybe even some Hilary Clinton topic i don't know, didn't check lol

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by nobody

Well it would be better to clean this thread, it's full of trolling/flame/insults and more.
I guess it's not so easy with 16 pages about fascism/Linux/maybe even some Hilary Clinton topic i don't know, didn't check lol

Not seen any insults actually. It’s been pretty well behaved.

[kolla]

Originally Posted by gregthecanuck

In addition I think that open-sourcing at least some parts of OS3.1 could really help. A cool experiment. Pick something. scsi.device?

I agree with this, everything in tools, utilities and prefs for example, lots of libs, devices and cli tools.

[hth313]

I think open sourcing parts of that code base is a problem with the settlement agreement. Hyperion cannot do it (they do not own AmigaOS 3.1) and the owner (Amiga Inc) is (most likely) prevented from doing it as stated in their settlement agreement, at least as I can remember reading and interpreting it.

I fear that open sourcing any part of AmigaOS now would just be injecting more fuel into this legal fire.

[kolla]

Well, we're actually at a point where we can do it the other way around, use AROS and just add AmigaOS components when needed.