Hyperion Entertainment and the OS 4.0 development team announced that OS4 development has now sufficiently advanced for a comprehensive Developer Pre-release of Amiga OS 4.0 to be distributed to all current AmigaOne owners shortly after the New Year.
AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release CD Announced
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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When MorphOS was released as beta it was frowned upon, now Hyperion seemed to have changed there minds and releasing a beta is fine it seems. IMNSHO they should have released OS4 as a beta a long time ago, maybe the animosity between the two camps wouldn’t be such as it is now. Can’t wait to get my hands on it and have a play, maybe it will blow MorphOS out of the water, maybe it won’t. At least we will be able to compare the two now.
From what I have seem from the OS so far the OS already seems stable and offers good usability. Additional functionalities such as the Grim Reaper are very usefull for testing classic software.
The available development tools are already impressive and therefore the development of various natively written software titles already seem to be far advanced.
Hyperion also added the game Gorky17 to their long list of AmigaOS4 licenses. Sreenshots of the game running on AmigaOS4 are already available here:
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/_amiga/news_031225.html
Other interesting Amiga news:
Former Netscape executive almost doubles the AmiZilla project booty to $8579.22 !
http://www.discreetfx.com/AmiZilla.html
And Fleecy Q&A Session 25 is also available:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=26
Generally the reception of that OS has been positive as well. The development of MOS started a few years before the AmigaOS4 project started but back then advanced very slowly and has seen many delays, luckily these last 2 years the development has picked up significantly.
Although there was and is some criticism with regard to its stability, especially with regard to versions prior to 1.4 why not concentrate on AmigaOS4 itself for once? 😉
If you follow the discussions at AmigaWorld.net or for instance went to some of the over 20 AmigaOS4 demonstration events held globablly this year you will notice there are still people who deeply care about this OS.
Two weeks ago I went to such an event held in the UK myself and had lots of fun! 😎
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=1&rev_…
In fact most Amigans state that they are fed up with especially Windows (and also Linux). Many Amigans have given Linux an extensive testrun because that’s currently the primary OS available for the AmigaOne as they wait for AmigaOS4. Despite this most such people state that Linux simply isn’t what they seek in an OS.
A merry Christmas and Happy new year everyone!
>From what I have seem from the OS so far the OS already
>seems stable and offers good usability.
From Bath show:
http://www.freewebs.com/willworkforcash/amiga/OS4-display-problem.j…
Seems they have to do some more work in GUI refresh.
Otherwise it doesn’t “look” so great.
“Seems they have to do some more work in GUI refresh.
Otherwise it doesn’t “look” so great.”
That is what they have been working on during December.
What version is that picture from?
You DO know that there where OS4 alpha version spanning from the most recent ones to the very early working ones?
And that is not any worse then the GUI refresh on my Mandrake 9.2 system, running on the old 2.4.xx kernel, under heavy load.
Quote:
>Otherwise it doesn’t “look” so great.
You forgot the IMO.
This is something that has been greatly anticipated in the community and I know alot of people that is now happily awaiting the pre-release for their AmigaOne’s
AFAIK that’s not a picture from Bath at all. For one I did not see any AmigaOne at the show running AmigaOS4 with that background picture.
Similar pictures do seem vaguely familiar to me though from quite a few months ago. Despite that the graphics.library as demonstrated in Bath wasn’t PPC native yet, the graphics refreshes weren’t really that noticable anymore. It seem some people even need to troll during Christmas…
Anyway here’s an actual video from the event:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2511&for…
AmigaOS4 looked like this on Mick Sutton’s AmigaOne:
http://webring.amigaworld.net/bath2003/bath08.jpg
It seems to be a picture from an AmigaOS4 event from Melbourne. I don’t know if that’s running on a classic Amiga or an AmigaOne, but looking at the other screenshots from the event it’s most certainly not the way AmigaOS4 will look by default.
According to Mattew Kille who I talked to in Bath, what was shown in Bath wasn’t entirely the default look neither, but close.
Merry christmas and thumbs up for the OS4 guys!!
I can see why Linux might not meet the needs of Amiga fans (different philosophy), but there is no reason to perpetuate the “bloated/slow” myth. Linux is not bloated (it fits just fine on PDA-class hardware), and it is not slow (perhaps unpolished, but not slow).
@ Rayiner Hashem
> but there is no reason to perpetuate the “bloated/slow”
> myth.
Everyone is looking at this from his or her’s own perspective. Linux may not be bloated when compared to Windows or MacOS X, however all three are considered *extremely* bloated by most *AmigaOS* users.
> Linux is not bloated (it fits just fine on PDA-class
> hardware)
Modern PDAs often use faster processors and technologies than even top model classic Amiga systems offered. AmigaOS is alot more usable on 68k Amigas than Linux, in fact you could do some fancy stuff running AmigaOS even on a 1MB 7Mhz Amiga. For instance I used such an Amiga during the 80s for editing home videos (mixing graphics/movie, adding titlings, etc).
Or on such a lowly specced Amiga I could run an audio program running a stereo soundtrack while drawing in DPaint and formatting a disk simultaneously without having to deal with my OS freezing up. IMO it’s all a matter of perspective.
My first computer was an Amiga an I liked to hack it (both directly to the metal and the OS).
I remember the simple kernel interface (if one could talk about a kernel in those days): read address 0x4 and you got a pointer to the exec library. Even though it wasn’t that portable it was way cleaner than dos/Windows 3.xx. This combined with preemtive multitasking and the low overhead of task switching in a environment without a MMU made it realy responsive.
Now MMUs are mainstream and they sure are nice to avoid “Gurus” as have been aknowledged in AmigaOS 4.0.
Today all that was cool about AmigaOS has become available in other OS’ses, except for the responsiveness. Now what I don’t understand is why AmigaOS4.0 would be interesting. At:
http://os.amiga.com/os4/OS4FeatureSet.php
they talk about context switching in 1 microsecond and IPC round-trip in 4 microseconds. I tested the same things three years ago on my old 500 MHz x86 box using Linux (part of a computer science OS course). The numbers were 0.4us for the context switch and about the same for the IPC – and this were on crappy x86 hardware.
Could someone please tell me why AmigaOS4.0 is such a great idea? I have searched the web extensively to try and make my old love for the Amiga thrive again.
Best wishes to the OS4 effort!
There is no reason to troll this thread. Any development is a good development if it is not Windows.
Happy Holidays!
R&B
computos Expurt sounds like a character from dilbert
All joking aside, I think that it is nice that the amigaOS 4.0 is finally coming out but I cant help but wonder, is it too little too late? Commodore and the amiga were struck with a lot of blows that left them from being on top (or close to it) to struggling to catch up. Macs and macusers have kept up with OS releases coming out (even it the company was suffering) and official computers made by the company, not just any third party accelerators.
I am afraid that by having made this OS for specific hardware they are shooting themselves in the foot. The hardware might be “cheap” enough but if they do not have killer apps to begind with who is going to spend 500euro on a toy?
Great to see the progress going forward on Amiga OS 4. I can’t wait to see the results of the final release candidate. Way to go you Amigans!
BTW, anyone trolling this thread must be suffering from a bad case of envy 😛
Now I can finally justify the purchase of an AmigaOne.
I cant wait now ill buy a new case for my amigaone to go with getting an os i can use.
Although i use Linux and windows, less on windows nowadays, i can see how the AmigaOS4 would be a good idea.
Although I fond it a strange idea to put the os out for ppc hardware rather than the cheaper and more widely available intel machines, I will seriousely consider getting an A1 when the OS4 comes out and proves itself.
[IMNSHO they should have released OS4 as a beta a long time ago, maybe the animosity between the two camps wouldn’t be such as it is now.]
That dont make sense to me.
Like the reason why MorphOS users attack Aos4 so much is because a Aos4 beta that is made for another platform was not released alot earlyer than now.
Yes i see windows users getting really upset because Apple G5 users dont have the latest & greatest 64bit MacOs-X yet.
argh.. someone uses my nickname ;[ good that from completly different domain.
I would be interested in AmigaOS if hardware for it wouldn’t be soooo expensive
It’s GUI brings QNX to my mind, but is also enough different to not be a copy. It’s nice GUI.
I’m not an Amiga user. But I visit OSNews many times a week and I feel like Amiga OS 4.0 is taking lots of times to come out the doors…. We have had many Linux release, MAC OSX had a new release and still, we are only earing about alpha or beta of AOS 4.0….
Are the programmer sleeping on this one?
Why is it still important to talk about Amiga? Here in Canada (Quebec), it’s almost impossible to find Amiga computers, even on Ebay! It’s dead here. RIP. Go MAC!, Go WinXP! or Go Linux!
Hi
Please mod me down if this my comment causes affence.
But what platform is the AmigaOS used on. And how
big is the community. I have only seen one Amiga
back in 1994 and its OS was great. But it just seems
like a dead OS. When I nip to PCWORLD I cannot see any
trace on the OS there is Linux, Beos and MacOS X. Same with
other stores. If they want it to survive they would try and
make them selfs known.
Please prove me wrong…
“Why is it still important to talk about Amiga? Here in Canada (Quebec), it’s almost impossible to find Amiga computers, even on Ebay! It’s dead here. RIP. Go MAC!, Go WinXP! or Go Linux!”
Computing just aint enjoyable on those platforms.
>But what platform is the AmigaOS used on.
Amigas 🙂 Either the new G3/G4 based AmigaONE or an A4000/?A1200 with a PowerPC accelerator.
>I cannot see any trace on the OS
Sadly, the Amiga community has shrunk a _lot_ since Commodore’s demise – to be blunt, the current A1 is aimed only at die-hard Amigans. Future models (eg the MicroA1 that you may have heard of) may be destined for more of a mass market though.
(This is also the reason why development is currently taking so long – Hyperion, who develop the OS, have had to do other projects to get money, since the Amiga market is currently too small to support them)
> Best wishes to the OS4 effort!
> There is no reason to troll this thread. Any development
> is a good development if it is not Windows.
> Happy Holidays!
> R&B
Wow, how long have you had these feelings, BBRV? Frankly I have a similar antipathy to Windows and other Microsoft software because I consider it a case of a bad oppressive monopolist destroying competition and innovation by producing a bad OS and bad apps, all of which are bad for people, who are genuinely worse off, never knowing it, than they would otherwise be if there were real competition in the desktop computing industry, because competition tends to force improvement in products. But it is really something of a surprise to hear this rebel point of view coming through in your remarks, at least in this strong way.
How do you separate this anti-Windows sentiment from the natural admiration you as a business-person must feel for the obvious business prowess of Microsoft and Gates and Ballmer etc. ?
Hoohoo, consider the fact that AmigaOS was not developed for at least TEN years: after that, you understand why OS4 will be an HUGE milestone… 😉
“It’s GUI brings QNX to my mind, but is also enough different to not be a copy. It’s nice GUI.”
ROTFL. QNX came *after* AmigaOS. I think you’ll find the inspiration worked the other way round.
i don’t know how it was really, but IMHO old amiga GUI was nowehere near QNX GUI (at least from what i saw on screenshots, and many implementations of “amiga GUI” on other systems. i had only amiga500 with workbench
. old AmigaOS had completly different size of window top border and proportions of borders, different coloring (not color, but the way it’s painted), and differently set icons (but that’s continuation of coloring, old Amiga GUI was “flat”, new is more “3d-like”). That’s why new GUI is more like QNX GUI in my eyes, than old Amiga.
I’m sure many things in today’s OSes are inspired by Amiga (fore example my fav. BeOS
, but i’m also sure that designer(s) of new Amiga look were inspired by new GUIs form other OSes.
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nice guy
 By Mikey_C (IP: 168.143.113.—) – Posted on 2003-12-26 17:50:35
Mike Bouma you’re a nice moderator and amiga supporter. We love you
(Removed links to pathetic website)
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I apologise, about posting with regards to a moded down comment, However, I would like to state that the above post was not by me. If someone could please delete it, I`d be grateful.
Some people are just too pathetic for words.
Mikey C
OS4 looks a good OS for the 1990’s.. LOL
Opps its almost 2004 now!!
I used to own all the Amiga’s, and it was awesome in its day.
But now??? I gotta go out and get ripped off, for a out of date motherboard and cpu for MEGA bucks, and then hope this OS4 is released sometime before I get old and grey?
Save your money and get a nice P4 or Amd system.
In a year or 2 at the very most, we will all be saying Amiga who??? and yet another go and bringing this to life goes bust.
This will upset the Amiga lovers, but there is not enough of you to keep this old ship afloat.
*BZT* Thank you for playing.
QNX is older than AmigaOS, beginning in 1980 and releasing their first version long before 1985.
[quote]*BZT* Thank you for playing.
QNX is older than AmigaOS, beginning in 1980 and releasing their first version long before 1985.[quote]
QNX 1.0 (the first official release) was released in 1984! I wouldn’t call that long before 1985
And about the GUI … IIRC QNX came with it’s first GUI in 1990 with QNX4
By Mikey_C (IP: 217.205.242.—) – Posted on 2003-12-28 12:49:03
(Removed links to pathetic website)
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everyone is entitled to his opinion, but could you please elaborate on what’s pathetic about wrongpla.net?