There is now a video available showing the AmigaOS4 beta as demonstrated last weekend in London: MPEG / WMV. Q&A session 23 with Amiga’s CTO is also available.
Note that although the version demonstrated here is already quite a bit faster than seen in previous videos, the graphics system and such of the final version will still be multiple times faster.
Also due to the compression it may be a little hard to clearly see what AmigaOS4 actually looks like. So here are some recent screenshots showing AmigaOS4 on the AmigaOne, with the 1st one AmigaOS4 being online:
…I can see the controls being drawn, hope it’ll get faster. Visually looks very true to Amigas original look, I personally think it’s great it didn’t go into the fancy section al’a XP and OSX and instead stayed true to the original, much like I wished Zeta had stayed true to original BeOS.
What does Amiga hope to accomplish with this new OS. Do they plan on trying to take it mainstream, or is the goal more of a hobby OS? It looks very interesting, I would consider trying it out if it didn’t cost to much.
I have to say that it is pretty sad that the interface hasn’t evolved very much. It still looks terribly kludgy and it will not get much in the way of market share (that is what all the PC people are looking for, right?) and as a result will go the way of the previous Amiga.
The first goal will be to get as many past Amiga developers and users back as possible.
Basicly OS main advantage are that has a much smaller memory footprint and should do more with less horsepower.
The current PPC ATX form factor board is mainly targeted at AmigaOS4 developers and Linux/AmigaOS4 power users initially.
The upcoming Mini-ITX boards will mostly be targeted initially at both Leisure computing and embedded markets.
As the native PPC software base grows this should expand into other markets as the solution becomes more competitive compared to Windows and MacOSX. Rome wasn’t build in one day and neither was the Microsoft empire. 😉
> I have to say that it is pretty sad that the interface
> hasn’t evolved very much.
It won’t be hard to custumize the look though, you could for instance change the look into a WindowsXP style if you really want to. The classic look was intentional and IMO not strange considering which groups of people will first be targeted.
Also AmigaOS is extremely modular, you could easily delete the Dock if you want and replace it with a 3rd party alternative, like for instance a Windows style startbar. The same goes actually for almost every component of the OS as can be seen with classic releases.
Anyways, I’d like to take the OS for a test drive. But I don’t feel like buying an Amiga-specific box to do it. Does anybody know if it is or will be possible to run Amiga 4.0 on Macintosh PowerPC hardware?
> Does anybody know if it is or will be possible to run
> Amiga 4.0 on Macintosh PowerPC hardware?
This isn’t planned. AmigaOS4 is a commercial OS however and if one day there will be a good business oppertunity this may happen, but don’t hold your breath for it.
First AmigaOS4 targets will be AmigaOne boards and Blizzard/Cyberstorm PPC powered classic Amigas.
The OS looks promising. However, the video has that extreme tackiness that is so common among things related to the Amiga. I really hope Amiga (I know it’s a hobbyist movie, but still…) puts some effort into presenting things professionally. Not like the horrendous site http://www.amiga-anywhere.com
[quote]However, the video has that extreme tackiness that is so common among things related to the Amiga. I really hope Amiga (I know it’s a hobbyist movie, but still…) [/quote]
Thats really funny … Considering it was created on a x86 PC using videostudio !! ( I personally use MSP v7)
Too bad that the quality of this video was next to none. Instead of watching QuakeI I would like to have bigger resoltuion because I can see what exacly is on the screen. Nice colors have been used in last part. ’60 LSD experience 🙂
Note that although the version demonstrated here is already quite a bit faster than seen in previous videos, the graphics system and such of the final version will still be multiple times faster.
And the next MS os will at launch be multiple times more secure than patched with service packs win2k…
Seriously though, they have been working on OS4 for several years…I don’t see how suddenly Ui responsivness can change drastically at this point :/
And the startup is also somewhat slow (for Amiga/Amiga-like os)
> Seriously though, they have been working on OS4 for
> several years…I don’t see how suddenly Ui
> responsivness can change drastically at this point :/
Yes, they have been working on components and beta testing them extensively for quite some time now, the only thing that was remaining was to glue all these seperate components together and translate them into PPC native code. However the graphics library as shown at the current demonstrations is still running through interpreted emulation. The *PPC native*, final graphic library, which will soon replace it, will be many times faster.
If you understand what this means then it’s really no wonder that you see things like slow window refreshes. As the performance difference between the interpreted 68k emulation on a PPC processor and PPC native execution is almost a factor 50!
Graphics-refresh/responsiveness isn’t really that bad. It’s in the same league as mozilla on my p2-450. GFX look to update at about the same speed as as they did on my old A1200 with a 030 @50mhz accel board.
> I was wondering if any of the source was going to be
> Openned and put under a opensource license, or is this
> asking too much?
There are no such plans with regard to the core OS. AmigaOS4 is a commercial operating system and money will have to be made to cover the development costs. If the amount of manyears work which has already been spent on bringing AmigaOS to the current level would be translated into normal western programmer wages, this alone would amount into way above 5 million USD.
If you want to use an open sourced AmigaOS-like operating there still is AROS, but do note however that alot still isn’t completed for the OS to be a complete AmigaOS3.1 (released 1993) replacement clone, like it is intended to become.
“Visually looks very true to Amigas original look, I personally think it’s great it didn’t go into the fancy section al’a XP and OSX and instead stayed true to the original, much like I wished Zeta had stayed true to original BeOS.”
I think it is great that the default look is fairly clean and functional, and not like something made of cheap plastic that you won at a funfair. I could live without the gradient fills, but overall I think the OS is going to be something you can really use to get work done.
This is going to be a real OS, not just a hobby project. Just give it a year or two to mature.
For me the amiga was something on top of the rest. I cant see that anymore… im sorry. It doesnt make any sense. It doesnt feel like an amiga. I remember those fluid graphics on A500, it felt like a video computer, AmigaOS4 feels like any OS out there.
“I remember those fluid graphics on A500, it felt like a video computer, AmigaOS4 feels like any OS out there.”
It _was_ a video computer, but in those days video was analogue and it made sense to sync the whole computer to a video signal. The new machines are (apart from the CPU) just standard modern digital hardware, and this is inferior in several ways to the old custom hardware. Video is all digital now.
OTOH new hardware is much faster, has much more RAM, and much bigger hard drives. The screen displays can have much higher resolution and full 24-bit colour.
Lots of people have ideas for advanced hardware, but nobody has the millions of dollars needed to bring it to market.
The laptop is housing the Amiga OS, the results being sent to the screen you see.
The slowness of some parts could be due to this, but in reality the os is damn fast and i for one like the idea of an Amiga OS. I just hope it will be okay at cable modems etc, or at least LAN capable, so I can use my windows box for access, and my amiga box for serious stuff.
> A 68k emulator (without JIT) allow around 6 times the
> speed of a 68060/50…
At least not here, my Athlon XP 2400+ running WinUAE/AmigaOS3.9-2 is many times slower than my 50 Mhz A4000/060 (or this demo) when disabling WinUAE’s JIT engine.
And considering this is only AmigaOS3.9-2 (which includes various 68k parts optimised in assembler) and is not by a long shot as featureful and advanced as AmigaOS4 (i.e. anti-aliased fonts, transparency, gradients, etc, etc) running a direct parallel between the two is IMO quite strange anyway.
“I just hope it will be okay at cable modems etc, or at least LAN capable, so I can use my windows box for access, and my amiga box for serious stuff.”
Can’t see why not. I use my 68k Amiga with a cable modem and a mixed-computer network. For a while it acted as the firewall for the network.
As there is a TCP stack for the new version of the OS too, it should work just as well as the old (but much faster).
Ouch, this looks very unresponsive.
Note that although the version demonstrated here is already quite a bit faster than seen in previous videos, the graphics system and such of the final version will still be multiple times faster.
Also due to the compression it may be a little hard to clearly see what AmigaOS4 actually looks like. So here are some recent screenshots showing AmigaOS4 on the AmigaOne, with the 1st one AmigaOS4 being online:
http://www3.telus.net/NeRP/OS4_on_A1.png
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=992
…I can see the controls being drawn, hope it’ll get faster. Visually looks very true to Amigas original look, I personally think it’s great it didn’t go into the fancy section al’a XP and OSX and instead stayed true to the original, much like I wished Zeta had stayed true to original BeOS.
Funky background music too =)
What does Amiga hope to accomplish with this new OS. Do they plan on trying to take it mainstream, or is the goal more of a hobby OS? It looks very interesting, I would consider trying it out if it didn’t cost to much.
I have to say that it is pretty sad that the interface hasn’t evolved very much. It still looks terribly kludgy and it will not get much in the way of market share (that is what all the PC people are looking for, right?) and as a result will go the way of the previous Amiga.
The first goal will be to get as many past Amiga developers and users back as possible.
Basicly OS main advantage are that has a much smaller memory footprint and should do more with less horsepower.
The current PPC ATX form factor board is mainly targeted at AmigaOS4 developers and Linux/AmigaOS4 power users initially.
The upcoming Mini-ITX boards will mostly be targeted initially at both Leisure computing and embedded markets.
As the native PPC software base grows this should expand into other markets as the solution becomes more competitive compared to Windows and MacOSX. Rome wasn’t build in one day and neither was the Microsoft empire. 😉
@ Ian Eisenberg
> I have to say that it is pretty sad that the interface
> hasn’t evolved very much.
It won’t be hard to custumize the look though, you could for instance change the look into a WindowsXP style if you really want to. The classic look was intentional and IMO not strange considering which groups of people will first be targeted.
Also AmigaOS is extremely modular, you could easily delete the Dock if you want and replace it with a 3rd party alternative, like for instance a Windows style startbar. The same goes actually for almost every component of the OS as can be seen with classic releases.
The music in that video is… terrible.
Anyways, I’d like to take the OS for a test drive. But I don’t feel like buying an Amiga-specific box to do it. Does anybody know if it is or will be possible to run Amiga 4.0 on Macintosh PowerPC hardware?
@ Ed
> Does anybody know if it is or will be possible to run
> Amiga 4.0 on Macintosh PowerPC hardware?
This isn’t planned. AmigaOS4 is a commercial OS however and if one day there will be a good business oppertunity this may happen, but don’t hold your breath for it.
First AmigaOS4 targets will be AmigaOne boards and Blizzard/Cyberstorm PPC powered classic Amigas.
The OS looks promising. However, the video has that extreme tackiness that is so common among things related to the Amiga. I really hope Amiga (I know it’s a hobbyist movie, but still…) puts some effort into presenting things professionally. Not like the horrendous site http://www.amiga-anywhere.com
Yup, definitely looks a touch sluggish.
Am I the only one who immediately thought about Turrican 2 on hearing that music?
[quote]However, the video has that extreme tackiness that is so common among things related to the Amiga. I really hope Amiga (I know it’s a hobbyist movie, but still…) [/quote]
Thats really funny … Considering it was created on a x86 PC using videostudio !! ( I personally use MSP v7)
Got anymore funnies ?
I, for one, welcome our new Amiga overlords. =)
Keep up the great work!
IMO it looks really nicer compared to Windows XP. Plus no beige, like monitors and system case.
Too bad that the quality of this video was next to none. Instead of watching QuakeI I would like to have bigger resoltuion because I can see what exacly is on the screen. Nice colors have been used in last part. ’60 LSD experience 🙂
Note that although the version demonstrated here is already quite a bit faster than seen in previous videos, the graphics system and such of the final version will still be multiple times faster.
And the next MS os will at launch be multiple times more secure than patched with service packs win2k…
Seriously though, they have been working on OS4 for several years…I don’t see how suddenly Ui responsivness can change drastically at this point :/
And the startup is also somewhat slow (for Amiga/Amiga-like os)
@ Zima
> Seriously though, they have been working on OS4 for
> several years…I don’t see how suddenly Ui
> responsivness can change drastically at this point :/
Yes, they have been working on components and beta testing them extensively for quite some time now, the only thing that was remaining was to glue all these seperate components together and translate them into PPC native code. However the graphics library as shown at the current demonstrations is still running through interpreted emulation. The *PPC native*, final graphic library, which will soon replace it, will be many times faster.
If you understand what this means then it’s really no wonder that you see things like slow window refreshes. As the performance difference between the interpreted 68k emulation on a PPC processor and PPC native execution is almost a factor 50!
So you are too soon to draw conclusions.
I was wondering if any of the source was going to be Openned and put under a opensource license, or is this asking too much?
That video is rather tacky.
Graphics-refresh/responsiveness isn’t really that bad. It’s in the same league as mozilla on my p2-450. GFX look to update at about the same speed as as they did on my old A1200 with a 030 @50mhz accel board.
“I was wondering if any of the source was going to be Openned and put under a opensource license, or is this asking too much?”
There is an Open Source clone called AROS under development.
http://www.aros.org/
They would be glad of additional coders for the team, if you are volunteering.
@ James
> I was wondering if any of the source was going to be
> Openned and put under a opensource license, or is this
> asking too much?
There are no such plans with regard to the core OS. AmigaOS4 is a commercial operating system and money will have to be made to cover the development costs. If the amount of manyears work which has already been spent on bringing AmigaOS to the current level would be translated into normal western programmer wages, this alone would amount into way above 5 million USD.
If you want to use an open sourced AmigaOS-like operating there still is AROS, but do note however that alot still isn’t completed for the OS to be a complete AmigaOS3.1 (released 1993) replacement clone, like it is intended to become.
Yesterday there was another AmigaOS4 demonstration in Basildon, UK. Here are some pictures from this event:
http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk/news/141103_seal/index.html
A bigger event will take place on the 13th of December in Bath, UK:
http://www.petergordon.org.uk/os4/
“Visually looks very true to Amigas original look, I personally think it’s great it didn’t go into the fancy section al’a XP and OSX and instead stayed true to the original, much like I wished Zeta had stayed true to original BeOS.”
I think it is great that the default look is fairly clean and functional, and not like something made of cheap plastic that you won at a funfair. I could live without the gradient fills, but overall I think the OS is going to be something you can really use to get work done.
This is going to be a real OS, not just a hobby project. Just give it a year or two to mature.
While the tower appears to house an AmigaOne, why is that laptop in the video?
For me the amiga was something on top of the rest. I cant see that anymore… im sorry. It doesnt make any sense. It doesnt feel like an amiga. I remember those fluid graphics on A500, it felt like a video computer, AmigaOS4 feels like any OS out there.
@ M Bouma
A 68k emulator (without JIT) allow around 6 times the speed of a
68060/50… when running on a G3 so even with a 68k gfx library, I
find that VERY slow… considering the fact that the demo was,
moreover, running on a G4/800(+)….
“I remember those fluid graphics on A500, it felt like a video computer, AmigaOS4 feels like any OS out there.”
It _was_ a video computer, but in those days video was analogue and it made sense to sync the whole computer to a video signal. The new machines are (apart from the CPU) just standard modern digital hardware, and this is inferior in several ways to the old custom hardware. Video is all digital now.
OTOH new hardware is much faster, has much more RAM, and much bigger hard drives. The screen displays can have much higher resolution and full 24-bit colour.
Lots of people have ideas for advanced hardware, but nobody has the millions of dollars needed to bring it to market.
The laptop is housing the Amiga OS, the results being sent to the screen you see.
The slowness of some parts could be due to this, but in reality the os is damn fast and i for one like the idea of an Amiga OS. I just hope it will be okay at cable modems etc, or at least LAN capable, so I can use my windows box for access, and my amiga box for serious stuff.
For details see http://www.amiagaworld.net
make that url http://amigaworld.net
@ Joël EHRET
> A 68k emulator (without JIT) allow around 6 times the
> speed of a 68060/50…
At least not here, my Athlon XP 2400+ running WinUAE/AmigaOS3.9-2 is many times slower than my 50 Mhz A4000/060 (or this demo) when disabling WinUAE’s JIT engine.
And considering this is only AmigaOS3.9-2 (which includes various 68k parts optimised in assembler) and is not by a long shot as featureful and advanced as AmigaOS4 (i.e. anti-aliased fonts, transparency, gradients, etc, etc) running a direct parallel between the two is IMO quite strange anyway.
The music in that video is… terrible.
Well you know how the saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time…….
“I just hope it will be okay at cable modems etc, or at least LAN capable, so I can use my windows box for access, and my amiga box for serious stuff.”
Can’t see why not. I use my 68k Amiga with a cable modem and a mixed-computer network. For a while it acted as the firewall for the network.
As there is a TCP stack for the new version of the OS too, it should work just as well as the old (but much faster).