4 ms·

I think you're missing the point. In fact, while I don't want to be mean, you're missing two or possibly three different points... among which are the reasons

I think you're missing the point. In fact, while I don't want to be mean, you're missing two or possibly three different points... among which are the reasons I posted this link. [1] It's not that TOS is less advanced than AmigaOS. Yes it is, and anyone who knows them realises that, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that this FOSS project has brought these two platforms together after about 35 years, and that's both really technologically impressive and also just plain fun. [2] It means in principle that Amiga owners can run Atari apps, and the ST had some impressive apps. [3] AROS is great but it's an x86 OS. It doesn't readily run on classic Amigas, or even especially well on the handful of later PowerPC Amigas, AFAIK. It also doesn't run natively on modern RISC hardware, like say the Raspberry Pi. [4] But because it doesn't, that's prompted the creation of another really cool FOSS project, Emu68 -- a native 68K emulation environment for Arm, something comparable to Apple's nanokernel for running Classic MacOS on PowerMacs. https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 [5] Creating an OS that's as good or even better than the original while running on original hardware is impressive. Improved localisation opens it up to more people. That's good. It enables reviving vintage kit more easily, and expanding it. That's great. You were so busy mocking something that you didn't stop to consider all the good sides. [6] We know TOS was limited. We all know that. OTOH its simplicity enabled this. Its simplicity also was part of why the ST survived as a musicians' tool of choice for decades after it went out of production: super low latencies for music, and so on. But others knew that TOS was limited, which drove a 3rd party OS market, with products such as MagiC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagiC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagiC And MagiC is now FOSS: https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources Which is good, but OTOH, it's not attracted much interest or development, AFAICS... Whereas EmuTOS is now on v 1.21 and is seeing new releases several times a year. This is great, and is one reason I posted it. [7] The limitations of TOS are also what prompted the development of MINT, and that's FOSS too, and it's quite mature: https://github.com/totalspectrum/atari-mint https://github.com/totalspectrum/atari-mint And it has distros, such as AFROS: https://aranym.github.io/afros.html https://aranym.github.io/afros.html Which you can run on x86 kit: https://aranym.github.io/ https://aranym.github.io/ All of which is amazing work. So, yes, while you just wanted to do some advocacy, you missed a huge amount of great work by a committed community. Not cool, dude. Leave the Amiga-v-ST hate in the 1980s where it belonged. It wasn't very welcome then. They're both great computers. But hey, then the fans were children, so they can be excused. In 2022, they can't.

justapassenger 4y ago
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It's good to hear that Amiga users are finally getting their act together and doing the open source thing after years of fighting over who was going to make a few pennies off the dated corpse of AmigaOS. In the meantime, your tone is inappropriate for a post about an open source volunteer run project. And, no, the original title was not inaccurate or misleading. EmuTOS runs on Amigas and works fine on them. That you have some chip on your shoulder that someone might accidentally run it instead of AmigaOS (?! as if) is your own concern. Finally, as for TOS being some woefully inferior garbage product that AmigaOS dwarfs in its inelegancy is ridiculous. It's fairer to say that both are products of an early 80s mindset just in different ways. Yes, AmigaOS has proper multitasking. But it also had no memory protection for a long time (ever?), and from I remember doesn't use the 68k's TRAP syscall mechanism to perfom syscalls. It had no real standard GUI toolkit to start. It had some real sexy stuff, but also some missing stuff. TOS/GEM was not multitasking, and was built to run things single process apart from the cooperative multitasking in desk accessories; but GEM explicitly has APIs designed for a multitasking environment and was built to do so later. Interprocess mailboxes and events. Concepts of process/workstation handles, etc. Hooks that later revisions to the OS built on. Why didn't they do it right away? Because at that point, on an 8mhz 68000 with 512kB of RAM this was, frankly, mostly silly. It's nice the Amiga did multitasking, and the hardware was clearly awesome. But the lack of timeslicing (and the cheap beautiful monochrome monitor, DOS compatible floppies, etc.) actually made the ST more appropriate as a productivity machine in the context of e.g. music studios. Other poster is right: leave the weird sectarian platform battles in the 80s. It was silly then but it looks even more ridiculous now.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    > It's good to hear that Amiga users are finally getting their act together and doing the open source thing AROS has been around since the 90's. I remember when Aaron Digulla first posted about it on comp.sys.amiga.misc around ~'93 or so. It's not instead of the fighting over AmigaOS, but in addition to it. Different people. > Because at that point, on an 8mhz 68000 with 512kB of RAM this was, frankly, mostly silly. The Amiga showed it wasn't silly at all. We used the multitasking heavily. I usually had multiple productivity apps up at once, alongside music players and other stuff.

justapassenger 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It's good to hear that Amiga users are finally getting their act together and doing the open source thing after years of fighting over who was going to make a few pennies off the dated corpse of AmigaOS. In the meantime, your tone is inappropriate for a post about an open source volunteer run project. And, no, the original title was not inaccurate or misleading. EmuTOS runs on Amigas and works fine on them. That you have some chip on your shoulder that someone might accidentally run it instead of AmigaOS (?! as if) is your own concern. Finally, as for TOS being some woefully inferior garbage product that AmigaOS dwarfs in its inelegancy is ridiculous. It's fairer to say that both are products of an early 80s mindset just in different ways. Yes, AmigaOS has proper multitasking. But it also had no memory protection for a long time (ever?), and from I remember doesn't use the 68k's TRAP syscall mechanism to perfom syscalls. It had no real standard GUI toolkit to start. It had some real sexy stuff, but also some missing stuff. TOS/GEM was not multitasking, and was built to run things single process apart from the cooperative multitasking in desk accessories; but GEM explicitly has APIs designed for a multitasking environment and was built to do so later. Interprocess mailboxes and events. Concepts of process/workstation handles, etc. Hooks that later revisions to the OS built on. Why didn't they do it right away? Because at that point, on an 8mhz 68000 with 512kB of RAM this was, frankly, mostly silly. It's nice the Amiga did multitasking, and the hardware was clearly awesome. But the lack of timeslicing (and the cheap beautiful monochrome monitor, DOS compatible floppies, etc.) actually made the ST more appropriate as a productivity machine in the context of e.g. music studios. Other poster is right: leave the weird sectarian platform battles in the 80s. It was silly then but it looks even more ridiculous now.
- vidarh 4y ago
  > It's good to hear that Amiga users are finally getting their act together and doing the open source thing AROS has been around since the 90's. I remember when Aaron Digulla first posted about it on comp.sys.amiga.misc around ~'93 or so. It's not instead of the fighting over AmigaOS, but in addition to it. Different people. > Because at that point, on an 8mhz 68000 with 512kB of RAM this was, frankly, mostly silly. The Amiga showed it wasn't silly at all. We used the multitasking heavily. I usually had multiple productivity apps up at once, alongside music players and other stuff.