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Amiga

Amiga DirectoryOpus 4 Released Under GPL 163

Posted by emmett from the portability dept.
deadl0ck writes "The Amiga DirectoryOpus 4.12 has been released under GPL. Anyone up for porting it?"
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DirectoryOpus 4 Released Under GPL More

DirectoryOpus 4 Released Under GPL

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  • It constantly mystifies me how people seem to think that you can't buy a new Amiga anymore... :-/ I mean I can buy a brand-new-never-out-of-the-box A4000T today without much trouble. When I did my most recent upgrade in Oct/1999 I opted against buying a new motherboard but I purchased everything else new. New CPU module (A4000 motherboards had CPU 'slots' rather than 'sockets' for individual chips) a PowerPC 604e/233, new UltraWide SCSI controller with a nice Quantum Atlas10Krpm Ultra/160 drive... Nice new case and buscard with 7 Z3 slots... brand new NIC, brand new EIDE controller (for cheap drives! :-) brand new I/O cards, brand new GL-accelerated card (ok it's only a Permedia 2 but still)... I don't understand where people get the idea that Amiga hardware isn't made anymore! I mean hell, I just installed AmigaOS 3.5.1 update and that came out only a month ago! I mean, I accept it when people say that the Amiga is dead, because in terms of market share it really is. I'd be surprised if there was more than 100,000 active users around the planet today... But I get annoyed when people seem to think that we've just dropped off the face of the Earth and that we don't have new hardware, modern apps, modern games, etc. etc.... I guess people just think that since Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 that no new Amigas have been made since then.... But that's not true, we've survived 2 bankruptcies and a buyout (C=, Escom, and Gateway->Amino) and we're still getting new gear. Now pardon me while I start planning out my finances for a new PPC7500 card... :-) And the new Amiga BoXeR motherboard with redesigned AA+ chipset-on-one-chip (which is FINALLY actually on the assembly lines now) would be nice to have. :-)
  • I've used filerunner a bit---it's quite good, too. Check it out here [chalmers.se].
  • What about the possibility of a port to AROS? (Yes, I realize it runs on a Linux kernel at the moment...)

    I don't see why everyone's so fired up to see a port to Linux. Quite frankly, even though I've never owned an Amiga, and haven't looked at the source, I'd think that this would be a *difficult* port, resulting in something that's about as half-assed as any other DOpus clone (with the difference being, of course, that this would be The Real Half-Assed Port Of DOpus. :^)

    I agree that the beasts are still worth looking at, BTW, just as NeXT machines are; ironic, isn't it, that Apple has put it's hope behind 12-year-old NeXT technology...in effect, NeXT became the next Macintosh. :^)
  • This is the application that comes the closest (that I know of) to the power of the old Directory Opus on the Amiga. Easier to use with only the keyboard, too.

    http://www.unix11.com

    And it's GPLed too... :)
  • My #1 wish for Linux is Directory Opus "Magellan" (v5.6)! It's the best filemanager ever made! This is a good start though. v4.x and v5.x is VERY different! It's like two completely different programs!

    v4 uses the classic two listviews and a bunch of buttons at the bottom (copy, move, delete, unpack etc).

    v5 uses multiple windows that are marked one SRC, one DEST and/or the rest OFF. Activating a DEST or OFF window makes it SRC and the SRC becomes DEST. Each window has small copy, move, delete etc buttons. You can configure it 100%.. Doubleclicking an archivefile (.lha, .lzx, .zip) let you browse through it like it was a normal directory. Dragging an archieve unpacks it in the window you dragged it to. Marking some files and pressing "move" move them to the DEST window.. etc.. You can choose between text or icon view. And every single function is available through the ARexx language so you can easily create or customize your own functions.

    Directory Opus v5 is the program i miss the very most on other systems!
  • People in the linux community keep talking about new killer file managers and what features they will have, but I have already used a file managers that has all the features that people are talking about putting in file manager X with alot more than they haven't thought about putting in.

    Since the days that I have left my good old amiga I have never felt as productive as I was with Directory Opus 5 (4 was good and I now have gentoo on my desktop that does a VERY nice job at replacing the functionality of DOpus 4). I loved the way that I could easitly make a button bank that could become a nice front end to a command line only program.. Just select all the files that I wanted to run through program X and click my custom button.... No exprert knowledge required and out would come the nice processed files.... or got a bunch of files that are more than one file type... just write a scipt that knows how to process each file type and bind it to a convert funtion... also need to to go to 2 destination at once... no problem, make it to that you have 2 destination windows and it will coppied to both.... arrrrg... this is the same thing that happened to me on that amiga with people actually looking at the software.... there is waaaaay too much that this software does to even start to decribe it. The 3/4 inch manual that it shipped with was just page after page of nothing but features, with little to no howto stuff in it. I keep hopeing that gentoo will turn itself into a clone of DOpus 5, I would even pay money for a nice clone, but I think I wont hold my breath. I doubt if I will ever see the best file manager on the best OS unfortunatly :(
  • I for one love the fact DOpus is open :) It is definatly the second best utility for AmigaOS, second only to DiskMaster2! ;)

    LONG LIVE DiskMaster2!!!!

    My opinion has nothing to do with the fact that i memorized the text configuration format for the DiskMaster preferences file :P

  • Not coming from the Amiga, I have but one question: "What is it ?", screenshots anyone ??
    --
    Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
  • Over ISDN stupid!

    :)
  • Aside from the hardware-independent executables(could someone explain to me how that could work?), the OS that you're describing sounds a whole lot like the BeOS. Totally object-based, low latency, easy to port(Be has a tendency to port to a new platform in under a week, even overnight). Amiga was a great platform in its time, and even beyond its time, but I'm not optimistic that it can ever catch up after all of its difficulties, although I hope it does.

    -lx
  • There are other parts of BeOS that are made to be portable as well, as part of the design - I think that supporting PPC and Intel is the best strategy, since those tend to be the dominant chips in the market. Alpha support would be neat, but hey. (btw, do a diskprobe on the portion of the disk where Be's about box is, you'll see references to the Alpha - there might be a port in the future, but only if Be makes some money soon.)
    Anyhow, I think you'll see be porting a lot more soon, with their new focus on IAs. They may not port to a whole different processor, but at least to fairly different architectures.

    -lx
  • Bravo! Very well stated. Even the most basic of Amiga DirUtils, let alone DirOpus will be a blessing to any userbase, of any OS.
    Especially those with GUIs or mice... ;^)
  • Hemos Rules! The story may have a Boing ball icon but its about a GREAT concept (and program), about GREAT things being GPL'd.
    ...Besides which, lots of Linux users were once Amiga expert. Like the Rasterman.(to "out" only one)...who also rules...as does nanotech!

  • I used to have my Amiga automatically start two CLIs upon startup, because I would always need at least one, no matter what I was going to work on.

    Dopus 5.11 (now 5.6 Magellan II) changed all that. I never really liked Amiga Workbench, but thanks to Dopus, I finally "saw the light" about GUIs and found that I no longer needed a CLI. I don't automatically start any CLIs on startup anymore.

    I'm so dependant on it now, that I once visited a friend who also has an Amiga (but not Dopus) and it took me a while to remember how to use a stock Amiga. Workbench is so lame!

    Instead of getting excited over Dopus 4, Linux folks around here ought to lean on Mr. Potter to port Dopus 5. This program changed how Amigans do things, and we're a damn stubborn bunch!


    ---
  • This was announced last week and, not wishing to be smug, but I submitted almost exactly this story the day it was released. Rejected VERY quickly.

    Sounds familiar; I'm waiting for the somebody else's version of the story that NEdit [nedit.org] has been released under the GPL to appear as news here. I mean, a quick straw poll: how many people care about the source code to an Amiga program being GPL'd compared to that of a slick, emacs-thrashing programmer's editor? It's not that I think that any source code liberation isn't worthy of note, but a sense of priority would be nice on an essentially Linux-biased site such as this.
  • ... give AmigaOS a 'POSIX-layer' and a X-capable API, and you got a good startingpoint for something more innovative than all those *nix-clones.

    There is a start of that with ixemul.library. Most of the GNU toolset has been ported and makes a nice developement system (If a little slow and memory hungry on a 25MHz machine with 8MB RAM)

    There is even a start of an X server, but I could never get it running (It needs way more then 8MB RAM).

    Check ftp://ftp.ninemoons.com/pub/geekgadgets/ [ninemoons.com] if you have an Amiga and want to check it out.

    My favorite trick on the Amiga is still VMM. User space virtual memory!

    And YAM is still one of the best mail clients I have ever used. http://www.yam.ch [www.yam.ch]

  • It's basically a two paned filemanager - very similar in concept to midnight commander (not the Explorer-ised GNOME version, the console version), but with a proper GUI.

    www.gpsoft.com.au have screenshots (albeit crap ones) of DOpus5 which is much better than DOpus4 anyway.

  • CLI (Score:1)

    by Jumpy ( 24568 )
    I actually still use my Amiga quite a bit.
    But I prefer the shell. =)
    Still, its cool that they GPLed the code.
    Something like DOpus could make X far
    more useable for the would be linux crowd who
    want to try it out, but cant figure out stuff
    like ls, cd, rm, cp, more... ;)

    Cheers
  • v5 - Especially Magellan - is a VERY different product. Pretty much a complete new desktop with an integrated filemanager. It's a lot more powerful but I know not everyone prefers it. I use both, personally, as the effort required to make 5 perform as 4 did is substantial and 4 is sometimes faster.

    Whatever, 4 is still a VERY cool product and worth looking at. I agree it may well be more than a little difficult to port due to being very Amiga specific, but it's a start. And anything that helps produce a better file manager is good.

    Greg
  • I wondered whether this might happen, but decided to experiment a little.

    I'm a Windows user :) Nothing against Linux (though I'm not a huge Unix fan), just no reason to run it for what I need. Too much effort to set it up, not enough return. I'll probably set up a *nix box of some description when I've got the space for more than one, but right now I'm a Windows user.

    Anyway. I can't really test Worker out over here :) but it does look nice. So much of DOpus was in the little things it could do which I can't really comment on from screenshots but, based on what I've seen, it would appear worth looking at.

    Don't let this discourage anyone from working on DOpus though. It's probably going to be very difficult to port (if at all possible - it may well prove to be too OS dependent) but it's a good program and the computing world could benefit from using is as an example. Linux and Windows :)

    While I'm here, how on earth did my original post generate a 4? I mean, it's not a troll and it's fairly early, but...

    I've got moderator points right now, too. Pity I can't post and moderate in the same thread - I'd moderate myself back down.

    Greg

  • Nnnngggghhhh! (Score:5)

    by GregWebb ( 26123 ) on Monday January 31, 2000 @02:33AM (#1319364)
    This was announced last week and, not wishing to be smug, but I submitted almost exactly this story the day it was released. Rejected VERY quickly.

    Oh well...

    For anyone who hasn't used this, do. It's fantastic and would be a real asset to the GNU community. Even if it means downloading UAE and using that just to try it out. This program could convince almost anyone to move away from CLIs for file management and was Amiga Format's highest rated product until Lightwave 3.5 came along - 97%.

    Please, can someone port it?

    Greg

  • As far as I know, porting DirectoryOpus 4 would be quite a task - perhaps difficult enough to just give up and put the effort into improving gentoo, a DOpus 4 workalike in GTK. (sorry, no link.) Amiga software (especially in cases like this) tends to rely heavily on the system; some programs even use the doubly linked lists provided by the exec.library instead of having their own implementation...

    Anyway, DirectoryOpus 4 used to be a commercial product, so I wouldn't expect much of the source :-)

  • there is a thing called preferences, you can switch all amiga stuff off, or are you ignorant on purpose?
  • I don't currently have any screenshots, but I can tell you what is is. DirectoryOpus is a file-browser much like X-Tree for all you x-DOS people, that allows you to copy, move, rename, delete, archive, and launch files among other things. It is highly configurable and scriptable via ARexx. I could fire up my A3000 at the house tonight and grab you a screenshot of my DOpus, but for now you will have to imagine :)
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • I wonder how difficult it would be to port DOpus to Linux/*BSD/etc., since the AmigaOS, while different, is quite Un*xish from what I have gathered over the years. I'm not a C programmer, so I couldn't port it myself, but I'm just wondering how hard it would possibly be.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • I believe that's DOpus 5, but still DOpus 4 has a similar concept to that. DOpus 5 became a WB replacement as well as a filemanager. I'll get a DOpus 4 screenshot off my A3k tonight or tomorrow and post it. The interface is simpler than DOpus 5.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • Well, of course you'd say that the C64's not dead -- according to your sig, you'd be partial to the platform.

    And I don't deny that. However, I do know from first-hand experience that there are still thousands of C64 hackers - not bad for a system that 'died' in the early 90's.

    And what bragging rights does Amiga still have?

    1. The Amiga is still the only platform that allows you to have multiple screens open at different resolutions and to have them displayed at the same time independently of the other screens.
    2. The core OS would fit on a single 880KB diskette. I know, I know, Linux itself (meaning the kernel) will fit on a floppy disk (tomsrtbt is a fine example) but the OS itself that is stored on disk takes up very little room (I would say around 100-200KB).
    3. Can we say FULL SCREEN ANIMATION? The Amiga did full screen animation LONG before the PC even did 15fps postage-stamp animation.
    4. Instant TV-OUT. I know that PC's can be bought with a video card that supports it, but the A1000 (the first Amiga) supported this out of the box in 1985.

    I could name others, but this list should be sufficient.

    Maybe it still plays those old demos real well, but can it run the latest games? No.

    And what is the importance of this? Just because it can't play the newest games, it sucks? I find fault in that argument for two reasons.

    1. Maybe Amiga owners don't have a desire to play Half-Life or Unreal. Ever played Scorched Earth on the PC? Well, Scorched Tanks on Amiga makes 'Earth look like an Atari 2600 game. The Amiga has thousands of classic games that beat the living crap out of most PC games today.
    2. While games are a decent measure of how fast the computer is, speed isn't all that matters. My A3000 is more stable and reliable at 25MHz than my Win98 PC is at 333MHz. Of course, Linux makes up for that difference, but in general it takes a PC lots more horsepower to do what an Amiga could do in '85.

    What about web browsers that support up-to-date standards, like CSS? No.

    Umm...maybe you've never heard of VoyagerNG or iBrowse. iBrowse 2.1 (the most recent version) supports JavaScript 1.2, HTML 4.0, as well as a feature you don't see on PC browsers - the ability to define how each page you visit appears. I will concede that no mention has been made of CSS yet, but I would rather have no implementation of CSS than two different incompatible versions (MS vs. NS)

    Or even recent versions of Lightwave (it's on what, 6 now)? No.

    I will have to concede this point to you, because it's the truth. But that doesn't mean that older versions of LW that are available on the Amiga are useless, just because a new version came out.

    Just because you're stuck on old platforms and still get a nostalgia fit every time someone says the name "Commodore" doesn't mean the Amiga story should be right on the front page. Slashdot can only put so many stories there, and I'd much rather it had been something besides Amiga.

    I'm not 'stuck on old platforms' - I simply use platforms that I enjoy using, such as the C64, Amiga, and PC (believe it or not, I do have a PC, contrary to what you might be thinking). Besides, if you have a username, then you can log in and disable the Amiga news in the preferences. And if you're worried about people knowing who you are, there is a small checkbox above the submit button labeled 'Post Anonymously'. Besides, what if six years from now, Linux/*BSD/Windows/Mac/BeOS is regarded the same way by somebody and you take offense? My point is, just because you don't want to see Amiga news on the front page, doesn't mean there aren't many people who would like to see Amiga news on the front page, and that is the whole purpose of the preferences section, to tailor Slashdot to your tastes.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • And Deluxe Paint 3.

    Bah, DP4 AGA destroys DP3. HAM support, limited morphing, more screenmode support.

    I've yet to find a paint package for Unix thats as nice to use.

    Agreed. The GIMP is nice, but I want something more like my good old DP.

    Of course, I really just miss the way Amiga Paint programs allowed you to use anything as a brush

    I highly miss that feature. What about the animation features of DP3/4? Animbrushes came in very handy at times when creating animations.

    Oh, by the way, there actually is DP3 for DOS. However, don't try to find it, as it sucks compared to the Amiga version. And it might not be DP3, but rather DP2. I will have to check my home box to see. It bites though...very bad.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • You're probably talking about the same thing here. Opera allows you to have a user defined CSS override the document CSS so you can define how each page you visit appears.

    Well, not quite. The feature I'm referring to allows you to disable images, GIF animations, and much more on a page-by-page basis. You can see a screenshot here [softhut.com] (link to Software Hut's website).

    And a PC browser too.

    Opera is a damn good browser, I haven't had much experience with it because I don't have the money to purchase it :) I have checked out the time-limited version, and it is quite good. Kinda has that Amiga feel, even tho it is for other OS's. One thing - anything come of Amiga Opera? That would be sweet.

    Oh, and on the subject of user-defined CSS - IE3 supported it, but they removed the feature in IE4. Don't know if Netscape ever supported it or if Mozilla does/will.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder

  • Re:Amiga again? (Score:4)

    by LocalH ( 28506 ) on Monday January 31, 2000 @03:09AM (#1319373) Homepage
    How is this news? I don't get why Slashdot keeps on posting stories about Amiga. Sure, Amigas may have been cool at the time, but they haven't been made for years, and with all the advances in computing technology since then, I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them, much less why they're still relevant to any of us.

    Just because they're not made anymore doesn't mean they are dead. The life of a system is based on it's userbase, not how many corporations throw money behind it. To use another classic computer as an example - the C64. You may say it is dead, and it is commercially in my eyes. However, if you tell me that the 64 is dead based on the sheer number of users it still has, then I will laugh in your face, sir.

    I can sort of understand why the story about the PET was posted -- that was a true original revolution in personal computing

    And the Amiga wasn't? It was 15 years ahead of it's time (the Amiga still has bragging rights on certain capabilities that haven't happened anywhere else), the only problem it had was Commodore.

    But the Amiga is a dead platform, yet Slashdot has a whole category for Amiga posts.

    That's because many geeks were brought up on the Amiga, such as myself. The Amiga platform is still fairly popular if you consider how long ago Commodore filed for bankruptcy, and also the fact that when a PC is obsoleted, many people just trash them and upgrade. I can give you a list of things that the Amiga is capable of out of the box that PC manufacturers just haven't figure out how to do yet.

    Doesn't anyone else here get tired of constantly hearing about Amiga?

    No, I used an Amiga ever since AmigaDOS 1.2, and I was amazed at the speed and stability of the system, so amazed that even after I had sold all my Amigas (yes, I did :) and bought a PC, I still yearned for more. So now I have an A3000 sitting in my home, that does things running at 25MHz and with only 4MB of RAM that my 333MHz K6-2 can't with 128MB of RAM. So yes, I do still own an Amiga, and yes, I enjoy hearing news about it, at least it still gets some press coverage.

    Rob & Co., I appreciate all the effort you put into Slashdot, but I think all of us would like stories that cover what we're interested in today.

    If you're not interested in the Amiga, then pass by the article instead of trying to raise a stink. Some people actually still like the Amiga, you know.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder

  • It seems to be a file manager / desktop environment. I found at least one screenshot [gpsoft.com.au] from the site.

    /Bergie


    --

  • I mean, a quick straw poll: how many people care about the source code to an Amiga program being GPL'd compared to that of a slick, emacs-thrashing programmer's editor?

    Are you still talking about nedit here? :) But seriously, I am far more interested in DOpus being GPL'd - firstly because I am an ex-Amiga fanatic, but also because it was a truly seminal piece of software that redefined the way many people used their computers. Also, Linux GPL software is announced every day, GPL software for the Amiga is much rarer.

    --

  • As an Amiga old-timer I would love to see DOpus ported to Linux.

    I am however not much of a programmer, but I'd be happy to help out in other ways. That is, $ and/or debugging.
  • REXX was a standard scriptiong language, dude.

    The thing that made Arexx great, was that almost all Amiga programs exposed their functions to the script language (called an Arexx port).

    Thus, you could script almost anything.

    Both KDE and GNOME are working on doing more or less the same thing through CORBA. A CORBAized LinOpus with general script language bindings would rock.

    This is the top item on my (now rather short) "nifty things I miss when using Linux" list.
  • > I want a RamDisk

    A resizable ramdisk doesn't really make sense on OS with good disk-cache management.

    > and an ENV:

    Persistent environmnent variables were a poor kludge compared to what you get with any Unix-like system.

    > I want straight-forward no-fuss super-efficient pixel-editors for low-color-(web!)graphics

    Admiteddly, the Gimp is a big step forward WRT Dpaint 4. And you still are able to do editing of low-color web graphics...

    > want free program downloads of a few hundred K with 25 languages included.

    Never considered using GNU gettext for that? Or the X/Open catalogs (built-in the the GNU libc?)

    > I want to script my applications from any other application!

    Well, scheme is becoming the de facto standard for every application for which scripting makes sense.

    >I want plug and play that work

    Amiga was a well defined architecture. You could count on the fact that certain hardware was there. A today's intel box is more like the Frankenstein's monster, so doing PnP is somewhat more difficult.

    > I want assigns

    Just use symlinks. Perhaps use devfs. What's the problem?

    > I want SEPARATE chips to handle all computer IO

    You really believe that your video card and your sound card and your chipset are absolutely dumb? Uh?

    > I want sensible file dialogs

    Yes. The GTK guys should just copy that. Definitively. But the current GTK file window is not really far from that (for mere functionalities).

    > I want hardcore hand-optimized assembler demos with breathtaking effects on an 7MHz 68K.

    Yes. I'm missing them too. :-)

    Perhaps you forget to mention that in addition to that you want protected memory and virtual memory, because that are something that only embedded systems could do without today. And yes, I remember GigaMem.

    Don't be too nostalgic. Have a nice day.
  • FYI, there is already a nice clone of Directory Opus, called Worker [freshmeat.net].

    WRT porting Directory Opus to *nix, Amiga environment is so different from the typical *nix environment that probably it's easier to rewrite software like this from scratch.

    But then, the release of the sources of Directory Opus will surely make Amiga users (and UAE ones) really happy, anyway.

    My 0.02 Euro, as usual.

  • Amidst the same old 'OSS duplicates and never innovates' whining, there is this:

    Face it, apart from the kernels, much *nix stuff is based around a 1/4 century old 'paradigm'. A really oldfashioned way of thinking.

    As opposed to the Amiga OS, which is based around a 15-year-old 'paradigm'? Last I checked, the Amiga *did* include a command-line interface as well as the windows and icons, so perhaps its designers didn't think keyboards are as old-fashioned as all that, hmmm?

    Perhaps I'm just cranky, but I thought an Amiga fan would be more open-minded about alternative OS's than the average Windozer or Macintoid. I'm sure some of you are -- please, for the sake of your reputations, speak up!

  • This is news because Directrory Opus is one of the two reasons I kept using my Amiga even when it went way outdated, and why I could use it to feed my /. addiction even this week when my usual Linux box went down.

    For those who don't know what DirOpus does, it's a file managment tool in the vein of Norton / Midnight commander, except it's everything those tools ever wanted to become. A port of it would be a Good Thing (TM).

    Besides, I feel more manufacturers should set their software free when the commercial value of it has run dry. After all, that's not the only kind of value a program has. A good example is Ian Bell's release of Elite [clara.net].

  • Because they're onto Directory Opus 5 now, which is totally different to DOpus 4.

    Screw cloning DOpus 4, give us DOpus 5 :)
  • ... from the looks of things. They're advertising Directory Opus 5 on the web page. I don't know how different the versions are.
    Literally porting it might be difficult, because it's probably very Amiga-specific. However it should be quite easy to copy the interface.

  • DOpus can't be judged by screen shots... GET UAE! (Score:4)

    by Macfox ( 50100 ) on Monday January 31, 2000 @05:23AM (#1319384)
    While I agree this might not a as news worthy as a lot of other stories, there is a large
    portion of /. readers who are x-amiga fans and like to see this kind of news now an then...

    Three major things that Dopus was to the amiga...

    1) The only file manager with a decent GUI. Back when I first met John Potter and he
    was coding the first version there was no API short cuts to coding a nice consistent
    interface. Only the horrible 1.3 WB interface existed. Hardly worth using and only if you
    had access to the ridiculously priced amiga developers books. Johns own GUI set the
    standard and I had my suspecisions that many of the WB 2 widgets appeared very
    similar. :)

    2) Many have commented that they had a 50k file manager that did the same... Hardly...
    DOpus's GUI was not only most easiest and clear to use GUI, it was also very intuitive
    and could be customized very easily... A very rare thing to find in an program back then.
    These are the best points and they can't be demonstrated by screen shots!

    3) Behind the GUI layed a very smart file recognition system that didn't rely on dumb file
    extentions, a text and hex editor, media players, and a host of WB tools that allowed the
    creation and modification of icons for files and folders.

    Overall DOpus filled a big gap. Only after it was so successful was there a host of clones
    that never matched DOpus for what it was.

    Anywayz my 0.02c AUS

    Rob

  • Re:Nnnngggghhhh! (Score:4)

    by MartinG ( 52587 ) on Monday January 31, 2000 @03:08AM (#1319385) Homepage Journal
    > Please, can someone port it?

    Before anybody starts to port it, why not have a look at Worker [freshmeat.net] at freshmeat. It's described there as follows:

    Worker is a file-manager exclusive for X based on the famous filemanager "DirectoryOpus" on the AmigaOS. It is configurable on the fly without restarting Worker. Any extern program can be easily integrated in the GUI, including a button and a hotkey. Worker uses real file-recognition on file-content AND/OR file-ending, where each file-type can get an own action.

    --
    MartinG.

  • Yes, I'm an amiga fan, though not a fanatic. I still have mine at home and doubt I'll ever get rid of it.

    The amiga CLI was great, much closer to $SHELL than DOS ever was. If you haven't ever used it I think you'd be suprised at how unix-like and powerful it was.

    It was an integral part of the Workbench (the Amiga GUI) but novice users didn't have to use it to get things done.

    FreeBSD, Linux and others sometimes seem a bit behind the Amiga in some areas - but way ahead in others. Why start from scratch trying to recreate something that should remain a fond memory, when we have such fantastic 'current' OS's to work with and build on?

    John

    #include sig.h
  • i wonder if anyone here ever used gentoo for linux, it 's a file manager modelled after DOpus, i think it's really nice :) can't remember teh site tho, but u can find it on freshmeat.
    ps i made a cool WM icon for it ;)
    mvg,
    Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys
  • >>Only after it was so successful was there a host of clones that never matched DOpus for what it was.

    I think CLImate predates Dopus. It had a similar interface and concept but wasn't as powerful. I used a directory utility called SID by a guy named Timm Martin. It too predates Dopus I believe, and I used it for a very long time. In my eyes, it wasn't as complicated as Dopus to set up. I always liked using these types of programs to batch process files. Gotta convert 300 targa images to iff? no Problem! :)
  • It sure is, and thanks! I'm not exactly up to comparing the two on a feature-by-feature basis, though. DOpus is more integrated, and therefore (feels) larger. gentoo relies more on external programs, since that is more the "Unix way" of doing business. Still, I couldn't refrain from having a built-in text reader... ;^) Hm, I think DOpus 4.x was the last version I ever used way back when the Amiga was still my platform of choice. Perhaps I should download it, for sentimental reasons.
  • <PLUG TYPE="SHAMELESS">
    Um, you might want to try my app (mentioned above), gentoo [obsession.se]. It's not DOpus or even a clone, but it might be similar enough for you to use while waiting for someone to port the real thing. ;^)
    </PLUG>
  • Yay, the second time someone mentions gentoo! ;^) As the author of that program, I feel compelled to not only reply, but also provide a handy link to the gentoo web page [obsession.se]. Enjoy!
  • ObAuthorRant: whoo-hoo, the third person who mentions my app! ;^) A handy link is right here [obsession.se]. Thanks!
  • Hm, the idea about not holding your breath waiting for gentoo to turn into an Opus 5.x-clone is probably a good one, as far as survival strategies go. ;^) At this point in time, I have no plans to take development in that direction... Sorry.

  • Re:CLI (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Monday January 31, 2000 @04:15AM (#1319394)
    Something like DOpus could make X far more useable for the would be linux crowd who want to try it out, but cant figure out stuff like ls, cd, rm, cp, more... ;)

    I agree with the point that a complete GUI desktop environment is going to make Linux more accessible to the new or casual user. The reason is extremely simple. It is easier to recognize even infrequently used controls when they are visible in front of you than it is to remember how to access them when they are not visible. That is the entire secret to the real need for GUIs.

    Let's be honest with ourselves. My average computer use has probably been around 10 hours/day for several years (down somewhat from the days when I didn't have kids and home-repair projects). I am probably around the 50th percentile among Slashdot readers. (Future poll topic?) And I am probably at least 1.5 to 2 sigmas out on the bell curve for the general population. Remembering an infrequently used command is not a problem for me. I know where and how to find the information.

    The importance of a CLI however is often underrated. CLI tools lend themselves very well to scripting. That means that I can make frequently executed tasks even easier than a GUI makes them for my mother. I can reduce something that she clicks through menus to do into a shell script. I type a few characters and dozens of separate steps involving a variety of tools happen automatically, with the infinite patience and unparalleled repeatability that a computer brings to the task. I won't give up that power for all the windows, icons, menus and pointers in the world. GUIs don't speed up my interaction or make it easier a significant part of the time.
  • How TF do I download the United Arab Emirates?

    More seriously, what is so good about this thing? Any screenshots &/| short descriptions out there?
  • DOpus 4 is a great product, or so I remember from my Amiga days, but
    there _is_ a reason why the whole thing was rewritten from scratch for
    version 5. The whole thing is too spagetti-codish to easily make
    sense off or port to some other system. I would probably be easier to
    code a DOpus lookalike from scratch.

    Not that it is bad to have more GPLed source available, of
    course.



    Curiously, a quick web search doesn't turn up any hits. Does
    anyone know of a clone?

  • 5.0? (Score:1)

    by Seehund ( 86897 )
    Why not buy 5.82 which has been available [gpsoft.com.au] for quite a while? Or were you talking about a GPL:d release?

  • It's not that I think that any source code liberation isn't worthy of note, but a sense of priority would be nice on an essentially Linux-biased site such as this.

    Yes, a sense of priority would be nice to prevent this site from becoming more Linux-biased than it already is. "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

  • "And the new Amiga BoXeR motherboard with redesigned AA+ chipset-on-one-chip (which is FINALLY actually on the assembly lines now) would be nice to have." Cheesus H. Rice! WHERE DID YOU HEAR/READ THIS?!? I've been waiting since last freaking MAY for my shiny-new BoXeR-based Amiga clone and it's been like finding and then pulling hen's teeth to get ANY frockin' info on the mobo's status! E-mail me e-mediately (if not sooner!) about this!!! PLEASE!!!
  • Just like every other program for the Amiga, it is ugly as hell.

    Why are all Amiga apps so gosh-darned, butt ugly? I've used Amigas off and on for many years, but have always been repulsed by the way they look. Even when they try and make themselves attractive, they are breathtakingly tacky.

    Not a troll, just a personal observation.

    --
    Max V.
  • That's the problem. There are UI designers who are very very good. I trust them and like them. I love my NEXTSTEP machines because they have a rigid, beautiful interface. I don't mind the default GTK look. It's pedestrian, but functional. When themes are applied, it becomes largely dreadful. And E is a catastrophe.

    I think it's fine that the average user can customize his UI experience, but, IMHO, that results in some garish computer screens.

    --
    Max V.
  • Diskmaster II was awesome. Started up real fast. Configuration was done in a text file. Once it was set up, it was great to use.
  • Your links, ``First rumours'' and ``Speculation'' are out of date. They talk about Gateway's plans for the Amiga, but Gateway doesn't own Amiga any more.
  • Tao has the raw OS. Amiga will be adding the rest of the Operating Environment.

    As far as hardware goes, I think the idea is that you can use whatever hardware you like. X86 hardware is commodity stuff, i.e. cheap, no doubt most people will use that. Or if something better comes along, or if you have specialist needs, you could use that. The point is, you will have freedom of choice.

    If you are thinking about the famous Classic Amiga ``Custom Chips'', they are irrelevant. Companies like Nvidia are the ones with the most expertise and dollars, they are the ones producing the best and cheapest Custom Chips.

  • Yes, of course, you made some very good points. I too get tired of whinings about Amiga not being news for nerds.

  • Elate uses a "Virtual Processor" (VP) which is an imaginary processor that is targeted by compilers. VP code ends up being translated into native code. Interestingly, according to the marketing blurb on the web site, drivers are portable also.

    I don't know a lot about BeOS, but I believe you when you say it could be ported in a week. Well, maybe the kernel, but what about all of the other software that makes up BeOS? All of that would have to be recompiled, tested (for endian problems at least) and maintained. What happens to software for which there is no source code available? Historically, Be has ported to new hardware, or rather migrated (hobbit --> PPC --> X86), for survival reasons, not because they want to support new hardware.

  • I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them [Amigas], much less why they're still relevant to any of us

    The Amiga is relevant because it has always had a powerful-but-easy-to-use design philosphy. Linux/Unix is powerful, but can it ever be easy to use (for Joe L. User)? I know, people are working on it, but Linux's hardcore-nerd roots make it very challenging. And Windows of course is easy to use, if you want to do easy things, but difficult if you want to do powerful things. So, there is a big opportunity here, don't you think?

    Certainly Amiga has had many abortive attempts at rebirth since Commodore went under many years ago, but the latest attempt looks to me like a winner. Here is a press release from jan 8:

    Amiga Incorporated has entered into a strategic relationship with Tao Group for the New Amiga [amiga.de]

    These guys who bought Amiga have some very interesting ideas to do with an Object Oriented Operating Environment; and the underlying OS, Elate from Tao, looks very interesting too. Some highlights of Elate:

    • real time (important for multimedia)
    • object based from the ground up
    • easy porting to new platforms (just one part of it needs ``just a few weeks to be written'' for a new platform).
    • hardware independant executables
    • can run hosted in another OS, so it can get on peoples computers by stealth (Be seems to be doing this too). If they like it, they can install it natively.

    More info on Elate can be found at www.tao-group.com [tao-group.com].

    But it's still very early days, so don't get too excited just yet.

  • I've no problem with it and even though i don't have an Amiga I have fond memories of a mates one and might fire up UAE for the first time in ages to have a look at it but.....

    How the hell do gpsoft expect to make money now. Even if their only releasing an older version won't the Amiga lovers just put in the newer features themselves.

    I wasn't asking this in the case of Netscape going Open-Source because the point of that was to try to sell Netscape Servers (by keeping the HTML people use "open" or standardised so to speak)

    What's gpsofts bottom line on this. Is it just a desparate attempt to get publicity - no offense!
  • If you took the time to configure it, it could look just about any way you wanted.
    ---------
    Thus Spake Dave
    Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
  • Disk Manager was a bit too Limited in the number of buttons you could use. The version I had was limited to 4 banks of 4 buttons I think (or something close to that). I had the same time-frame release of DOpus and you were limited to like 8 banks of like 30 buttons each. Plus in DOpus you could configure the pull-down menus. I never saw that in DiskManager. DOpus WAS, of course 4 880K Disks in distribution, hardly bloated, except that ImageFX was also 4 disks, so it may have been large. But for the very basic version it would fit in 880K. It was a memory hog (by Amiga Standards) but the point was that you run it instead of Workbench, and don't have to run quite as many other apps.
    ---------
    Thus Spake Dave
    Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
  • If someone wrote something like PowerPacker with the same compression I would kiss their @$$.
    ---------
    Thus Spake Dave
    Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
  • How is this news? I don't get why Slashdot keeps on posting stories about Linux. Sure, Linux may have been cool at the time, but it haven't been improved for years, and with all the advances in computing technology since then, I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over it, much less why it's still relevant to any of us.

    Hehe... Just a thought... Possible? i don't know... =)
  • Look. The technology may be past it, but it wasn't the technology that made the machine really special. It was what sold the machine originally, but those who could be bothered to look below that saw that the heart that beat under the flashy pre-'multimedia' multimedia capabilities was a testament to good, frugal design, which ran unbelievably quickly for it's meagre 7Mhz clock speed, had a fully-featured integrated CLI/GUI operating system (note: *integrated* means they work as one. The CLI doesn't sit like a terminal program over the GUI (a la Win/XWin))

    Yes I agree the technology is outdated, but in this current climate of bloatware, proprietary 'standards', and in-built obsolescence (I used my A500 for 6 years. My home PC clone is pretty much obsolete after 2) What I want to see emerge out of the ashes of Amiga is a system that is modern, but is not overexpensive (after the initial outlay), hardware and software designed and integrated WELL by people who care about technological and design excellence (As opposed to the 'If it ain't broke, add more features' mindset prevalent today). You have to admit that a G4 box with well-designed OpenGL hardware, studio-quality sound hardware and a PROPER INTEGRATED OS, written for the system, but open enough to allow easy porting (say, from Linux) could sound quite exciting. The addition of a home-user version (All hardware output, limited input(upgradeable)) for a couple hundred dollars completes the idea. Add to that the fact that you could build the box yourself and buy the software, if you were a real techie, and you'd have a pretty comprehensive range. Consoles are too limited, big box computers are too complex and expensive for Joe Public. It's time to take back the middle ground, ladies and gents!

  • First rumours [theregister.co.uk]

    Press release [amiga.de]

    Speculation [att.net]

    Hate to spread ill will, and all, but you have to understand that to some people (A lot of whom are Linux/Slashdot regulars) these things matter. Keeping alive memories of a time when MS were only king of the hill in the US, and different thinking was embraced.(not Apple's 'Different Thinking(tm, patent applied for)). That the ethos that made this possible (allowed international users the ability to hold off MS domination for 10 years) is still present, and those that share it are now doing something tangible about it, IS geek news. Geek news is about using technology for the good of more than a select few, NOT just restricted to x86/Linux issues.

    Being in the majority does not automatically make you right. (Otherwise umpteen-million Windows users couldn't be wrong ;-) )

    I'd never agreed with the 'Open-Source, Closed-Minds' sig until today, but you have swung my ideas firmly in that direction. If you persist in this attitude, in a few hours, time and story posting will remove this story from the front page. Given that Amiga stories are a relatively few and far between occurrence, you will not have to worry about this until next month. But you're shutting off a world of experience if you discount everything beyond your own sphere of interest.

    Man couldn't fly without studying birds. Evolving wings is an obsolete notion, but if you can build on that to make something new and good, surely that merits some attention?!

  • REXX was a standard scriptiong language, dude. I'm sure an implementation for *nix should be around somewheres.....
  • Mummy told me never to talk to trolls, but since you make that point, what do *you* consider relevant to be worthy of a hallowed /. page (Bearing in mind, as has been said, you *can* turn Amiga pages off in Preferences)

    All right, let's do everything *YOU* want to do - Jim Carrey, The Truman Show

  • IIRC, Gateway did get a mention, but only in rounded terms. I'm talking about how Amiga was extracted from Gateway. First rumours simply means that it was from before Amiga was bought. I was just trying to make the point that some ppl consider Amiga news relevant, and I hope that Amino get their act together soon. Judging by those involved in the Amino project, we may see something soon. Sorry if it offends, I guess I let a flamewar get out of hand......
  • I just get upset when people start flaming'n'complaining without actually doing some reading. It's this refusal to learn that worries me most about /. thx

  • Large, bloated, slow, unstable.... i think you`re thinking of the kind of program that made the PC famous?

    Configurable, useful, extendable and easier than WB are the words I was thinking of. Yes, we (programmers) didn't have much call to use it, but Joe Public Amigans (and believe me, there were more than a few that I knew) found it useful, because it performed tasks that the 1.x Workbench made difficult, if not impossible. I had a souped-up 1200 on which it seemed everything was possible, but not everyone did. True, DOpus didn't hit nirvana until 5.x, but it was still a useful tool that quite a number of people use......

  • Of course, later on DP5 added extra functionality to DP4AGA. Then EA decided to go mostly console..... :( Cloanto to the rescue with PersonalPaint (PPaint) which took DPaint's functionality a step further, with an awful lot of effects that wouldn't look out of place in Photoshop

    It's just a shame that PC-based paint packages (With the exception of the DOS DPaint and DAnimator ports) seem to be fixated on ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, or the abysmal MS paintbrush (later Paint) program. Why this is, we'll never know. In fact, the PC graphics market owes a considerable favour to Apple in this regard. Without products like PhotoShop being ported to Windows, the ZSoft-kludge derivatives would still be in alarming number today........

  • DOpus made using a vanilla A1200 bearable (WB3.1 was far too kludgy and slow - thus negating the reasons WB was remembered so fondly!)

    To finally see the kind of program that made the Amiga legend on different formats would be a real testament to the work of those that have fought to keep the machine alive over recent years, while greedy corporations fought over the rights to Amiga, purely for the GUI technology, simply to give them more leverage with MS, so the machine could be killed even more stone dead!

    What makes the Amiga special is that the fundamental design and ideas behind the machine were good. The design was based around having a good machine, not one that would render itself obsolete within a few years so the company could fleece more money from the public. No adding lots of features at the last minute, no bloatware, and no need to charge big $ for major updates, simply because the system tended to work out of the box, and in the rare cases it didn't, SetPatch was free.

    Anyway, got a bit OT there. Please someone port it to whatever you can (I would, but a)I don't really have the brains yet, and b)I'm a student on my year out, with every day filled with something i usually don't want to do ;>) )

    I say this, because a port is the only way to keep the faith until these new owners come up with something tangible. I can't deny that the technology needs a serious rethink, but still, I'd love to see the machine's name and ethos resurrected, so here's hoping!

  • If you are looking for screenshots of Doups 4.12 (and not 5 like some of the others are) try this page [sucs]
  • hmm.. isn't gentoo inspired by directoryopus ? very nice app!

  • Well, perhaps because Linux 'sucks' when it comes to usability for non-geeks.

    AmigaOS really have a lot of stuff that would make Linux a pleasing experience...

    Face it, apart from the kernels, much *nix stuff is based around a 1/4 century old 'paradigm'. A really oldfashioned way of thinking.

    I as an 'ex-amigan' really miss the Amiga. A lot of stuff I took for granted is missing in *nix and making everyday use more of a hassle than it should have been, if the *nix-community would go beyond the 70s way of thinking.

    I miss a ordered disk-strockture, I miss the assigns, I miss that an app is placed in ONE location instead of all over the disk, I miss the simple double-click to start a program, I miss the Installer, I miss the intuitive way, I miss it's speed....

    So why am I here using Linux and not still with the Amiga? Simply, AmigaOS only runs on m68k, has no protected memory, 'no' software, 'no' RTG/RTA, bound to a single platform, 'no' development....

    Why is it that the OSS-community (apart from KDE, Gnome and a few others) are more commited to duplicate than innovate?

    Why is it that 'all' free OS's is trying duplicate Unix? How many flavor do we really need? (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, HURD, Minix ....)?

    Why this continual struggle to catch up with windows and let M$ set the agenda?

    Is it so terrible to go beyond Unix and Windows and create something new and innovative?

    Don't dublicate... innovate!

    ... give AmigaOS a 'POSIX-layer' and a X-capable API, and you got a good startingpoint for something more innovative than all those *nix-clones.

    Sadly the AROS-project doesn't have the attention of the OSS-community.

    Bjarne

  • Well, Linux, xBSD et al. are only great in the kernel aspect, that it's OSS and there is developed software for it.

    For the rest, it's just a pain in the butt. Eg. configuring your ppp-connection, configuring you X-driver etc. etc....

    *nix have a lot to learn from other OS's (not just Amiga mind you), but the thoughtpattern among geeks is: if i aint broke don't fix it...

    I've discussed this issue with other linux-geeks and have come across a mentality that doesn't differ much from that of M$.

    The M$-way: Don't like our product? Then don't use it then (well, knowing Mr. and Mrs. Everyday don't have any other choice, because...)

    The M$-way: Don't find it userfriendly? Who cares, just learn it or scram, stupid!

    .... just my 2 øre! ;)

    Bjarne

  • 15 years is still 15 years younger than *nix. But yes, I'm not saying AmigaOS is perfect, I'm just saying that AmigaOS (and other OS's) have a lot of ideas that would make *nix better (read usable).

    Yes, I'm using Linux as of now and have been for some time, and it's plain to me what *nix is missing since I havn't taken a trip around Windows (like most ex-amigans) and getting frustrated by that OS.

    Age is ok, when it comes to wine, antics and the like. But for technology it just doesn't cut it... else we would end up just like the car-industry... using decade-old engine technology with high fuel-consuming and thus increasing global warming more than necesary.

    Why are so many *nix-geeks so conservative and immobile?

    Bjarne

  • I know of GeekGadgets, yes.... and ixemul.library... if there was something that would crash my amiga it was ixemul..

    But GeekGadgets is just doing what Linux, xBSD, HURD etc. are doing... reimplementing Unix....

    And I too REALLY REALLY miss YAM.

    UAE/Linux will hopefully come out soon with a bsd-socket just like WinUAE. Then it's time to fire up under YAM, NewsRog and V3 again, and this linux-box might just be usable.... ;-)

    Bjarne

  • Actually, DirOPUS 4.12 is not entirely unknown on other platforms. Check out here [uni-kl.de].

    It's for Win9x. I don't know how it compares, but the author claims he was openly inspired to "recreate" DirOPUS. Visually, it looks close.

    Personally, let me know when GPSoftware releases DirOPUS 5.0; that will get my attention!! If my Amiga was still alive (sniff) I'd have it running just to use that. Maybe once I get UAE working ...

  • How is this news? I don't get why Slashdot keeps on posting stories about Amiga. Sure, Amigas may have been cool at the time, but they haven't been made for years, and with all the advances in computing technology since then, I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them, much less why they're still relevant to any of us. I can sort of understand why the story about the PET was posted -- that was a true original revolution in personal computing, and it was a one-time nostalgiafest post. But the Amiga is a dead platform, yet Slashdot has a whole category for Amiga posts.

    Doesn't anyone else here get tired of constantly hearing about Amiga? Rob & Co., I appreciate all the effort you put into Slashdot, but I think all of us would like stories that cover what we're interested in today

    Oh my. If you would have read even a bit about the point of the article, you would have noticed that it's not about Amiga, but a piece of software which has so far been available only for Amiga. Now it's possible to get this program ported to other operating systems. Where exactly in this thing is the Amiga-specific content, I ask you?

  • Well, I only had an A500P, so I got DP3 with it. I quite liked the look of the onion skins (i.e. transparent frames that let you see the previous fram) that DP4 could do

    As for the animation features, Animbrushes were great, but the way it worked took up a lot of my Meagre 2 megs of RAM.

    This would be so much better now that I have 32 times that much, and about a gig of VM under Linux
  • Well, PSPro is very nice, but it still seems aimed rather heavily at image processing rather than painting. I think the Amiga's use of Full screen apps helped as well. So much easier to be creative when there's none of those distracting bits of GUI, and no possibility of the mouse leaving the window.

  • Here's a screenshot [t-online.de]

    Not being a DOpus user myself, I'm not sure if this really shows DOpus well. Seems a shame that all GUI aspects that are ever copied seem to be the Win95 and Mac ones. The Amiga had some wonderfully designed GUI's.
  • Worker is superior though. I was using Filerunner until recently. On E it took a good 5-10 seconds to load, and can't be easily resized to an 800x600 monitor. You lose a couple of the button. Worker however fits nicely, will probably fit on a 640x480 desktop, and loads in under 2 seconds. Worker will be my file manager of choice until Opus gets ported. As an ex Amiga user, Opus was my favourite program on the Amiga. Awesome.
  • a feature you don't see on PC browsers - the ability to define how each page you visit appears. I will concede that no mention has been made of CSS yet

    You're probably talking about the same thing here. Opera allows you to have a user defined CSS override the document CSS so you can define how each page you visit appears.
    And a PC browser too.
  • I downloaded the code and will have a look at it (which might result in me porting it to GCC, but that's not really probable). If it's not too hard to port I might cope with it. But it'll probably be a CygWin port (which then should be easy to port to Linux or so). But don't count on me at all for now! We'll see.
  • I miss Dir Opus as well. But it is run with AREXX an Amiga REXX port. You would have to replace the REXX hooks with symbolic links and forget about MUI.
  • 4.12 may be an old version, but the 4.x was the best. I have the
    version 5 on my Amiga, and don't use it for my filemanager. I still
    use Dopus 4.x for that, as nothing in the world is a better
    filemanager than this IMHO. They totally changed the concept of Dopus
    for version 5, it now totally replaces the Workbench (desktop) and the
    interface is a lot different than in 4.x. If I had my choice of any
    filemanager to use in Linux, it would definitaly be aport of
    Dopus 4.12. I wouldn't use a port of version 5.
  • It's news because Dopus 4.12 is hte best Filemanager I've ever used, on any platform.
    I've longed for something similar under Linux, and now that is possible. I am extremely
    happy to see interest in porting it to Linux. This Dopus story isn't an Amiga
    story, it's an application story, and a damn good piece of software at that. This
    application just happened to have originated on the Amiga, but I feel Linux will
    benefit greatly from having a port of it.

    And while Amiga has stumbled over the last few years, we are getting
    G3 and G4 PowerPC cards in the next few months, totally new products,
    currently being developed by 3 separate companies. We are getting a new
    motherboard with much more up to date features, PCI slots, much much
    faster CPU bus, etc. And we are working toward adopting the PowerPC POP
    motherboard and porting AmigaOS to that. I don't want to argue about
    advocacy stuff a lot, but while Amiga has been down for a while, it's not
    gone yet, and good things are indeed happening. I myself am a hardware
    developer working on some Amiga products for the commercial market.

  • I m studing Informatics Engeeniring I m using Amiga since 1988.I dont think it's outdated, it has feutures that windows users haven't seen yet and amiga has them for 15 years.Anyway if you aren't interested on Amiga news just don't read them... I also develop for linux but I still prefer Amiga some things ONLY AMIGA MAKES THEM POSSIBLE Cheers!
  • I would have to disagree, advances in pc technology do not make the amiga an less relevant of a platform. Despite is absence in the main stream "dead" is not a work I would use to describe the amiga. There is still a signifigant user and development base, and amigas HAVE been made and are available new in the box as we speak. NOT TO MENTION AMIGA OS 3.5 WAS RELEASED ONLY 2 MONTHS AGO. There are companies that clone the amiga, there are power pc boards for the amiga, I could go on and on. The amiga is the last great hobby computer, its a fantastic machine and thats why so many people still do use them. Its obvious from your post you have never seen a power pc or 060 amiga in action with programs like visual prefs, newicons, executive, etc
  • Yes Amiga will come back! I use my Amiga 400T and prod of it. Beats the hell out of my window's pc. Even though the suport software is lagging some what. But there will be new Amiga's on the way. PPC based Amiga's will kick some ass on the next Amiga os :) I would like to see more loyal support from other Amigen's.
  • I first got an Amiga in 1992.

    In June 1993 it started work as a bulletin board system, and it hasn`t been switched off for more than 2 weeks in total since - during which time (not all at once), I have had to reinstall the OS *twice* due to dead HD`s.

    If this is the kind of rock-steady reliable performance you get out of your present PC, whichever OS you use, you can collect your medal (don`t go upgrading your OS now, we haven`t needed to (much)! ).

    If however, you are still awestruck at how efficient, powerful, and downright pleasant to use the Amiga is, you may smile

    It manages all this on a processor no faster than a 386-25 (i`m on an 020-14Mhz) and boots in 10-15 seconds flat to a proper gui.

    Dopus is one of the definitive file handling utilities available in the world, it REALLY IS THAT GOOD, and the sooner someone ports it the better.

    We are so damned stubborn in supporting it because it`s just so damned good, even today, despite being slower than your average calculator - it is still faster than Win-dohz for any non-processor intensive tasks due to it`s inherent intuitiveness and responsiveness.

    They kick ass, and if you don`t believe it, go see one in action.
  • * I am one of the writers for www.classicamiga.com and would like to comment his words about BOXER. We at Amiga4Ever never heard of it? Why? If so, please send us the news and dont spread such things here, people will either believe in it and get crazy and will spread untrue news....,other people will only look at it as a another BoXeR rumour. * I am a Amiga user, I've been since its early days. My first one was an Amiga 500, my second one was a A1200 and the third one was and is A4000. I am happy with it. I can run (almost) everything wich YOU can run on your PC's. I am surfing, chatting trough AmIRC, writing e-mails, looking at news groups. I do exactly all the same stuff as you PC guys... even MP3 :) Next time you throw bad words about the Amiga, please think before you do, because without it, Windows 2000 wouldnt be here at all! ... and.. I dont have any Microsoft related software on my computer, not either a Intel CPU. See. I am alive... I can do those things, wich you PC people wouldn't believe, because of your 300Mhz CPU's. Keep the momentum going! (This text is made by me. Its a text wich want to inform you, its not here because I hate other computing platforms, but its here because I've felt that I had to give people my points. I am a Amiga user and loves to give everyone the truth about the Amiga and the Amiga history.)

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