Is there anything you miss in current gen OS that you had in Workbench?

[Havie]

Originally Posted by meynaf

What has already been mentioned above.
The RAM disk that is always there.
The "enter command and its arguments" popup from double-clicking an iconless data file.
Fast booting.
No shutdown sequence ; just switch it off.
Use/save settings rather than "apply" that will save anyway.
Settings like icon positions that aren't saved behind your back so a blunder doesn't mess things up.
Scroll bars that don't lose the position when your mouse pointer ventures somehow out of the bar.

Without doubt it the fast boot and not having to wait ages for the OS to load!

Also, no need for constant updates that slow down your system and clog up your drive.

RAM disk is great but with fast hard drives it's not really needed today! Although I used to copy the whole of Fiendish Freddy's Big Top 'OFun to a ram disk and run it with no disk swapping back in the day (and I confess on an ST). Great game that I still haven't beaten...

[BippyM]

Proper file identification from headers and not filenames. A modern system would breeze proper identifixation

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Valken

I use this for my RAMDISK:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/...

Good tip, but this appears to be off topic. The OP asked about any 'feature of Workbench' that we miss 'in a modern OS'. A 3rd party addon is not a feature of the OS.

Things I like about the Amiga's ramdisk:-

1. Set up for you 'out of the box', even in WB1.3

2. Only uses as much RAM as it needs.

3. Automatically used by the OS to store temporary files and settings.

4. Can give it a cool custom icon (with view settings) without having to edit a crappy registry or run a 3rd party program.

A RAM disk would be almost useless on my PC because it 'only' has 1GB RAM and the OS (Windows XP) and apps blithely use it all up with no regard for the massive slowdown when swapping to the hard drive. Firefox uses about 200MB just to start up, and a single web page can use more than 1GB for no apparent reason. When this happens the entire OS becomes unresponsive and I just have to wait - perhaps for 20 minutes or longer - for it to do its thing.

The Amiga doesn't have virtual memory so programs have to be mindful of RAM being a limited resource. They can't allocate more memory than is physically available so they can't lock up the machine forcing you to wait for ages to avoid losing your work. The amount of free RAM is shown on the Workbench title bar so it's easy to check that you have enough.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by Matt_H

I agree with everything so far.
Does the Amiga somehow still have the most modern partition/device arrangement? e.g., we can name partitions whatever we want (DH0:, HD2:, MyStuff12: ), position them anywhere in the drive geometry, also access them via a completely different user-set volume name, and know that those names will remain permanently unless we alter them. Windows is still tied to the ancient CPM-derived C:, D:, etc. drive letter naming scheme (volume names are for decoration only). The Unix-like OSes still use the even-more-braindead 1960s/1970s convention of /dev/disknumber/partitionnumber. If you move the disk to another computer or to another controller (or insert a removable drive after bootup instead of before bootup) then the completely arbitrary disknumber changes; if you split or consolidate partitions on a disk, then the arbitrary partitionnumber of all the following partitions changes. Lunacy! MacOS at least has a volume-name scheme overlaid on top (is it just /mnt in disguise?) but it's still very clunky compared to the Amiga. (Not sure how the current Linuxes/BSDs/etc. handle volume names, but I imagine it can't be much better.)

This as well. How could I forget? Volume and drive names on Amiga are so much more convenient than Windows drive letters or the terrible /dev or /media or /whatever depending on the current mood of your linux distro..
Good one

[Matt_H]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

This as well. How could I forget? Volume and drive names on Amiga are so much more convenient than Windows drive letters or the terrible /dev or /media or /whatever depending on the current mood of your linux distro..
Good one

Among my many hopeless dreams is one in which a more popular OS vendor declares "Hey, guess what, we're using the Amiga RDB partitioning standard from now on."

[Retro1234]

The structure of the OS is simple like Commands in C, Libraries in Libs, it's something you just have to live with now days. You know the OS is there but understanding where files go etc is beyond the average user.

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

The structure of the OS is simple like Commands in C, Libraries in Libs, it's something you just have to live with now days. You know the OS is there but understanding where files go etc is beyond the average user.

I love how easy it is to learn how the OS functions, and most things can be set up manually. I had a shock when I found that wasn't the case with other operating systems. It's why I've never got on with Linux. I've only ever got on with GUI's.