Amiga OS vs. Linux
 

Hi,

Amiga was a great machine. However surprising you it can too be used in parallel with linux.

Why such interests in Amiga OS, here it is :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx3q2...eature=related

The main difference seem to be lack of source code and unsupported platforms (powerpc&motorola68k only)

via:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...migaOS_4.1.png
it is a pretty beautiful desktop, fonts, and so on. It looks quite comfortable to use...


and and ... you can even play:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photos/312.jpg

sliding sideways from here:-

I immediately wondered if, either CP/M 2.2 or even ZCPR3 would work . . . .

Amiga vs Linux
 

Once a discussion starts about Amiga it is usually 'Amiga was...' I guess this is one of the main differences between Amiga and Linux.

There are ideological differences where GNU/Linux is based on Free software philosophy and open source, and where it can vary from enterprise versions to DIY versions or Linux From Scratch. Amiga is a closed source commercial product, that one has to buy.

Amiga was easily 10 years ahead of its time in the mid 1980's, however, it was sidelined by other operating systems due to marketing issues, lack of development, and finally, Commodore was 'no more'. Amiga fans created AROS/Icaros, and companies tried to revive Amiga the latest reincarnation is AmigaOne using Amiga OS4.1, and MorphOS. All are nice to use, only limited by the hefty price of hardware for AmigaOne, and lack of sufficient software. AROS is open source, but it is still in its alpha-version.

Linux is in a different ballgame, to put it simple.

I find the use and layout of both to be similar.
Then there are overlap tools like infotopam
I've downloaded and ran amiWM but can't get the 1.3 patch to work .

Differences between Amiga and Linux
 

Linux and Amiga are very different from each other

1. Linux is licensed under GPLv2. Amiga is proprietary, only AROS is open source and current development is taking place in Github
2. Amiga is older by almost a decade before Linux
3. Linux is designed to work on servers, multiple users, Amiga, MorphOS, AROS: are single user OS, and is not suitable for servers or networks.
4. Linux can run perfectly in CLI via TTY or terminal. Amiga relies heavily on GUI, AmigaDOS is helpful at times, but it is complimentary
5. Amiga (and all other flavours) run a microkernel. Linux uses a monolithic kernel
6. Linux has memory protection, Amiga does not generally have
7. Amiga boots and loads programmes in almost no-time, and it requires a lot less resources to run a full GUI. It is said that this is one of the reasons NASA used Amiga at one point https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...-ebay-listing/
8. Amiga (classic) runs of 68K processor, OS4.1 runs on PPC, Apollo runs on 68K, AROS aims at x86, PPC, ARM, 68K etc., Linux works on a vast array of architectures
9. Linux has great support for modern software, while AmigaOS 4.1, AROS, MorphOS are working on having modern applications, Linux is far ahead in that area.
10. AROS can run hosted in a folder on Linux, and it can run some Linux software via AmiCygnix, but AROS cannot host other OSes or have emulators

I actually wrote several video games and other applications for the Amiga, and I always found its programming model to be, as others have said, "years ahead of its time." It was an extremely clean architecture. And the "Lattice C" compiler has always been a favorite of mine.

But a very serious problem lay in the fact that it used the 68000, which did not have any sort of virtual memory nor memory protection. So, you got a lot of "GURU Meditations." (Which I always thought was a much more civilized way to present a "[blue] screen of death.") When a program misbehaved, it unfortunately could scribble over anything, including the operating system itself. The necessary hardware simply did not exist yet – and Amiga/Commodore did not live long enough to adapt it or the computer to more-advanced successor chips.

(Original Macintoshes had many of the same [lack of CPU ...] architectural problems ... but, at that time, no true multitasking. That didn't really appear until OS/X = Unix replaced "System 9," which was the last of what was originally called "MacOS.")

I'm sorry that other designers of GUIs and operating system APIs didn't pay more attention to the Amiga.

I don't recall the Motorola chips having a problem with multitasking. I remember my delight in finding I could do it with QDOS on my QL, as opposed to my IBM at work with MS/DOS. I used the QL, upgraded to the M68020 and with more memory, for years and I don't recall that sort of problem.

The 68000 had no problem with multitasking, but it did not have virtual memory and the associated protection of address spaces. Whereas today a misbehaving process cannot bring the entire system down, in those days it definitely could.

4. You can use AmigaOS without 'loadwb' if you want, its just as capable.
10. AROS can host and run emulators, here is just one repository of emulators for it http://archives.aros-exec.org/index....&cat=emulation

Motorola did make an MMU and the 68020 and up did support virtual memory and protection but there tended to be a lot of backward compatibility issues with a lot of software at the time due to the way people wrote for the plain 000 and didn't look for and use or work with those features.