...But damn, that arstechnica review of OS 4, here,

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/amigaos4.ars

just makes the new OS look dead SEXY to an Amiga-like OS user like myself!

I think Hyperion deserves props for what they've done, it looks pretty damn good, I have to say. Because I don't have a way to run it, I can't speak to the technical points of the OS, good or bad. I'd like to though!

It's too bad they've got Amiga, Inc. holding them back.

What Amiga fails to realize is that nobody really NEEDS them. Users need a product they don't make, and hardware they apparently won't let anyone else make. No one NEEDS Amiga, the holder of The Name(tm). And that's sad.

They put all their eggs in that DE basket, and for sure no one NEEDS that dud. So, if 'Amiga Anywhere' is Windows PocketPC, why not just code in PocketPC, or better still, in Java, which really is 'everywhere' including already my cel phone, and skip the CPU intensive emulation alltogether?

They say you have to put in 500K to license their name. Who has that kind of money to spend on their niche OS and on a company not even famous for paying its' employees??

Amiga needs to get real, and allow OS 4 to run on any and every hardware that someone will port it to. Seems then it'd be easier to pimp their OS out if they had hardware on which to show it off. Hardware you could still buy. Like the Efika..

Because, hey, I want to try it too!!

I have great faith in MOS 1.5 being a very worthy contender when it comes out; maybe better if Sputnik is included, and Fireworks drivers are there. Now maybe it's our turn to wait..

Sorry for the ramble

why would you be ashamed ? are you afraid of betraying something or someone ?
If an OS is good then itr's ok to show some interest in it.
The only problem i have with OS4 is the huge amount of posts related to the huge amount of issues the OS4 user are experiencing. Way too unstable for a "final" version.
And the workbench just looks.... old ! i'm glad ambient took some other directions, the wokbench has always been one of the weakest points in AmigaOS IMHO.



[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2007/1/22 22:22 ]

Sure the actual "OS4" is fine.. the problem is there are NO APPS or Ports!!! Also, the legacy compatiblity is nowhere as good as MOS.. MOS 1.4 is still better.

magnetic

@Tronman

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I had a chance to test the latest OS4 a couple of weeks ago and I wasnt so impressed. As you said it LOOKS good, but under the hood there is lot to polish. I dont remember where I spoke about this earlier, but my first impressions about OS4 Final was anything but good.
The first thing I did was open up IBrowse to see the latest one in action, I resized the window and what happened..? Horrible slowish flicker started filling the screen when resizing.. apparently this happens with all MUI-windows. Ibrowse was nice btw, finally searchbar.. yey! :)
Anyway, since I already run pretty much the same stuff on MOS than there are on OS4 I was mainly interested how they implemented Preferences. I didnt change much, just tested here and there and the machine.. locked. After this I gave up.
That said, I wouldnt have anything against running OS4 at home if there was a cheapo way doing it. The elements are surely there but it needs polishing. Hopefully in next update they have fixed the remaining problems, and hopefully by that time there will be actually hardware to run it.

Yeah, that is kind of an eye-opener. I wonder though, how many of OS 4's problems are really the OS and how many are down the 'No it ISN'T BROKEN!!' Articia based machinery it runs on. The reviewer mentioned a pretty good array of apps, so I wouldn't exactly say it doesn't have any. Plus, the SIL based SATA drivers are something MOS could benefit from as well-the world is going the SATA route for hard drives.

BTW I'm running iBrowse 2.4 here, just the demo. It works, but although the search bar and url fonts are modern, it seems to render every page in the topaz font from WB 2.04, and it looks kinda bad. Sort of like my car looked kinda bad after I wrecked it that time.. Does the non-demo version render things in modern fonts? All the font prefs I could find are for new fonts yet it renders in Topaz. Hmm..

I guess I felt a twinge of un-loyalty towards my faithful MOS hardware and its hard working development team, for wanting to check out OS 4. Sadly, my whole 'Amiga experience' as in with the company et al, kinda keeps me from getting hyped on OS 4 like I'd like to be, even more than the lack of hardware. I know Amiga is going to just jump all over it like it was their idea all along and of course their acolytes are going to sing their praises like they planned it that way. I know the truth. I heard all that 'Classic is dead' speech making going on from upper Amiga echilons for years...

It's still gonna make me want to hurl on one of them at a party. Maybe I'll get the chance someday. Amiwest 2007 here I come

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Don't blame (just) OS4 here, the "allowed" hardware has definitely proven to be unstabile

And having lots of users with different problems fixed / unfixed in different ways, different hardware etc. it's quite obvious that there are (some) problems.

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true.



[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2007/1/23 9:08 ]

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well, i dont know for sure (have no os4 machine), but i've head that the lastest os4 has awesome classic sw compatibility. with the new fake ham modes and chipram options a lot of classic sw that use the chipset is working now. also a blitter emulation is under development (3rd party, not offical os4).

but the two main os4 forums are full of topics about os4final issues for sure!

while i'd really like to have an os4 system, i'd prefer to wait for mos 1.5:) hope it will have real screendraging like os4:)

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There are way more people happily using OS4 than there are people posting with problems.

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Heh. Sure. OS4Depot is completely empty.

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Hmm.. MUI windows flicker slightly more than ReAction windows when opaque resizing here, but its certainly not slow, not even sluggish. Which system and gfx card were you using?

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Well, I used OS4 for several hours today without any reboots, lockups and I think only one grimreaper (which I could continue from).

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I'm surprised. I find OS4 way more polished than MorphOS 1.4.5. Sure MOS has a lot of nice feature; but polish? From the install CD to the ad-hoc way you have to cobble together updates from over the internet to get a usable desktop, MorphOS seemed to need way more polish than OS4 to me.

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I can't speak for everyone, but my XE is rock solid stable, has DMA turned on for the HD and ethernet. It hasn't had any of the fixes, i've had no corruption, and use it daily. I'm not saying the Articia works 100% as advertised, i'm just saying OS4 *for me* is perfectly stable on my A1.

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Sure, OS4 emulates planar modes from 1 to 8bits, as well as all HAM modes. I have written a Blitter emulator, which while not perfect (yet) allows me to draw pictures in DPaint 3 and some other programmes work a bit better. I'm in the process of adding CIA timer emulation to it.

I just wanted to put a counterpoint to some of the things written here. I have OS4 on my AmigaOne, and MorphOS on my Pegasos. They're both very nice systems, and I hope they both have a good future.

[ Edited by xeron on 2007/1/23 22:00 ]

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you're the responsible for the blitteremu stuff? great! congrats!
as i see you have peg/mos too, is it possibble to write something familiar to blitteremu also for mos? is it possibble in tech. way?

well if you dont mind i'd like to read a short comparison btw mos and aos4 by you (by cons and pros for example). thx!

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Maybe flickering was a bad word .. redrawing window contents once or twice a second would be more closer

The machine in use is Denhos A1, MicroA1 I believe?


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It might be due to an old library or something else, Workbench+pointer just froze but AmigaAmp kept playing.

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But I wasnt comparing OS4 to MorphOS at all. I am quite aware of what MorphOS lacks of. Naturally I am not familiar with the install procedure nor updates.. really I just wanted to testdrive OS4

Eventhough I admit I wasnt overly impressed I wouldnt mind having one next to my Pegasos. I was just expecting so much more from the FINAL release. Lets look at it this way, last time I tried it, the Shell crashed.. now it worked... so its come a long way since

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There are two problems for a MOS version of blitzen, as I see it. The first is that as far as I'm aware, MOS programs cannot trap writes to the custom chipset area. Secondly, MOS doesn't emulate planar and HAM modes, so even if programs could use an emulated blitter, you wouldn't see the correct output on the screen anyway.

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Well, there is a short review of my initial findings on my website, but its a bit harsh on MorphOS because at that point I hadn't managed to get MUI 4 and Ambient Open Source installed (it just locked up whenever I tried), but i've since installed it. I have to admit, though, that I've hardly turned my Peg on at all for months because I didn't get on too well with morphos and disconnected the peg so I could use the monitor etc. for my A4000 again. I guess I could set it up again and try and write a fairer comparison once I have some free time.

[ Edited by xeron on 2007/1/24 6:33 ]

[ Edited by xeron on 2007/1/24 6:42 ]

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Well, it definately does a better job than that on mine. Thats on an 800Mhz G4 XE with Radeon 7500, though.


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Hmm.. some bad apps can cause that, but mostly OS4 is very stable here. The software I use heavily on a day to day basis are SimpleMail, IBrowse, AWeb, TuneNet, HivelyTracker, MilkyTracker, AmIRC, JabberWocky, JanoEditor, Photogenics, Personal Paint, DPaint, TVPaint, KingCON, and GCC. I also use a bunch of others less regularly, and i've changed the prefs loads of times, and i very rarely have lockups, or crashes.

I don't know exactly how Densho has his A1 set up, but there could be a number of factors affecting stability, including what software he has installed, what power supply he is using etc. but I find it hard to see that OS4 has an inherant problem with stability when it is pretty much rock steady for me.

This is pretty common. Amigists are known to finetune the environment to suits their needs, so there are always a chance that even if the hardware-setup is the same, they perform slightly differently.

Take my MUICON-problem as an example.. I seem to be the only one suffering from it

No need to be ashamed. I run OS4.0 final (both A1-XE and Micro A1-C) and Pegasos II (MorphOS 1.4.5).

I have absolutely no problems running the final version of OS4.0 and find it very stable. IBrowse 2.4 runs very well (as it does on my Pegasos) and JIT 68K emulation work extremely well now. I am very happy with the OS4.O final release. Just need some new hardware available! Also looking forward to purchasing an Efika assuming it will run MorphOS (1.5?).

TrevorDick

I don't see a reason to be ashamed either.
Since MOS, AmigaOS and AROS share the same roots and the same background and still are (to the very most) source compatible it's just logical to also like these systems.
From those three amigaish OSes everyone has a favorite manifestation. Most ppl on mz prefer MOS for their good reasons. But if suddenly MOS would disappear magically from planet earth I am quite sure most ppl here would choose OS4 or AROS to fullfill their amigaish needs.

Well, in the end I still believe that from those three amigaish systems MOS is quite the best. Of course MOS has its downsides, too. Biggest downside is I guess the long installtion route when setting up a system from scratch and to keep your system up to date:
MUI4, Ambient, MUICON, 3d update, Reggae, MOSNet, Trance update,...
But I am perfectly happy with my MOS setup.

When MorphOS is ready for release on the EFIKA it will have the same sort of coverage and maybe more. This article will prove useful to the entire community. It just gets things more ready for the next positive event...

R&B

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Of course it will. But I expect not more, but less coverage: "Amiga" is still recognized as a brand (both in a positive and negative way), whereas "MorphOS" isn't. No problem for us people hangin' around here...

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Which article?

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Glad to hear this!

[ Edited by jcmarcos on 2007/1/24 15:02 ]

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probably the one mentioned in the very post post