New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS 343
Ethan writes: "A developer on the Yahoo Amiga One mailing list has successfully installed MacOS 9.2 using Mac On Linux. And it seems that adding OS X support is on the to-do horizon for the MOL developers.
I think that it will be interesting to see the people at Apple lose some sleep now that a low cost, fast, off the shelf solution exists to run Mac OS, without any Apple hardware.
If it doesn't do anything else, at least it will give the people buying the new Amiga One G3 PPC board an existing software base." Mind you, I've never even seen an Amiga One, but it would be a pretty silly thing to make up ;) Update: 07/05 07:03 GMT by T : Mike Bouma piped up with a link to a page featuring the same hardware, in this case running Debian, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.
I don't really think Apple will lose any sleep. (Score:2, Insightful)
sue happy (Score:1)
Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Heh. (Score:2)
Re:Heh. (Score:2)
What's really sad is I haven't given up on slasdot yet. Really should go just read the headlines and stop reading the articles-- to many bigoted idiots such as yourself.
You assume that "slashdot" means "geeks" and "geeks" mean "higher than average intelligence" but really the Linux community seems to really be AOL type people who are too cheap to pay for software--- rather than geeks who actually *write* software.
But slashdot makes no distinction.
Re:Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2)
So we switch from having Microsoft dominating the software to having Apple dominating the software AND the hardware? Sounds like a step backwards to me. Sorry I have no intrest in placing Steve Jobs in a stronger postion than Bill Gates is in today.
Re:Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2, Insightful)
OS X runs like crap on most Apple Hardware (Score:2)
MOL runs OS 9.2 directly on the hardware, using the PPC's virtualisation features, something the x86 lacks completely, i believe, so PPC apps that do not rely on proprietary Apple hardware (not OS X, obviously) will run at full-speed in the MOL environment, unlike x86-oriented solutions like VMware, where the software has to jump through hoops to give the hosted apps access to the CPU.
And, don't kid yourself. On anything but a top-of-the-line G4 machine, OS X is sluggish. I have a G4 TiBook and also used a 700Mhz G4 Tower, and neither of these machines provided acceptable GUI speed for me. A 600Mhz G3 Ibook is a joke (granted this was the 'from the factory' config, so more RAM would be necessary).
I hear people say they find performance acceptable on these machines.. well, you must enjoy your web browsers not being able to scroll smoothly and waiting minutes for apps to start up, but i sure don't.
Shit, my IIfx running AU/X offers the same level of integration between MacOS and UNIX as OS/X, Apple have been sitting round with their thumb up their ass for the last ten or fifteen years.
Maybe it's just a pointless, overengineered GUI layer, but it still feels damn slow watching that little spinning beachball spin all the time.
Fire up OS 9.2 on the same machine and the speed difference is amazing.
Things happen in 'realtime' instead of at some point in the future after the annoying 'animation effect' has run.
What is really frustrating is that you can't turn the extraneous shit off. Even with TinkerTool, you can't disable all the eye-candy, and even when you do turn everything TinkerTool controls off, the GUI isn't much faster.
My TiBook is pretty much an expensive X-Terminal that continues to run an Apple OS only to support Photoshop.
One day, Adobe will port Photoshop to UNIX, or someone else will step up to the plate with a decent Linux image editor, and my days running OS X will be over.
Obviously, some people like OS X and think it is really neat, but for me it just gets in the way and i'm hanging out for a viable alternative to it.
Re:OS X runs like crap on most Apple Hardware (Score:2)
I don't have this problem, and I'm running on a G4/466 with a gig of RAM. You aren't using UFS are you? My web browser (Mozilla and IE 5.2.1) can scroll faster than I can see, and apps launch in a few bounces. Jaguar (10.2) is supposed to be MUCH faster anyway.
One day, Adobe will port Photoshop to UNIX
Adobe has had a UNIX version of Photoshop for a long time... well for IRIX anyway. I used to use it on a SGI Indy... It sucked. It was way faster on a 9500
Re:Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2)
If you can run your all important (no sarcasm intended) Linux distro on it then who needs Windows (gameplay) especially when more and more games are being ported to OS X within a month or two of Windows and at the same time as Linux (NWN), which is likely to shrink to a month or less over the next year.
The only thing missing is a more mainstream distro of Linux or the merging of say Redhat with YDL for big business.
Add to this economies of scale with more people buying Apple hardware == Apple hardware gets cheaper, and you have a winning combination (unless Apple gets too greedy).
Re:Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't make shit up. (Score:2)
You can't say shit like this without being called on it.
I run Warcraft 3 on an iMac G4 at 1024x768 with all graphics options turned on and it runs great.
10.2 HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED. And when it is, ALL titanium powerbooks, even my first generation one, are going to be supported.
Yes, newer hardware will see fuller use of the graphics chips for greater UI quality-- but thats not "obsoleting" the older hardware-- the OS works fine on older hardware (it also runs fine on my PowerMac 9500 from, what, 1996?)
I don't see 10.2 taking better use of the graphics card as making your older graphics card obsolete. Sheesh, even the older machines will get a significant graphics boost, in the new OS.
And, of course, the ultimate proof that you're a lowdown troll who is making this crap up is the claim that Mac hardware costs three times as much-- actually, Mac hardware is consistently cheaper than comparable PC hardware.
The people who think it costs three times as much are comparing an Xbox to an iMac G3 and claiming they are "comparable".
Geeks prefer... (Score:2)
Actually, Geeks prefer OSX. Those who actually create code, do engineering- hardware and software- and are technically proficient prefer OS X.
The linux community is composed of a small group of geeks (many of whom are transitioning to OS X) and a large group of people who can't differentiate between an XBOX and an iMac in hardware value and wanted "free software d00d" to replace windows.
Oh, and *all* the effing idiots who poll my webserver for outdated IIS exploits seem to be running Linux.
Geeks like cool, high tech, high performance tools, and the penultimate example of that right now is OS X. And its pulling ahead- as the Unix underpinnings are allowing Apple to innovate faster than they were previously able to.
I do agree with you in one sense-- those who like to style themselves geeks, but really aren't, *do* perfer Linux.
Thus endith the "geekier than thou" sermon.
Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's not many Macs still using the G3, but the G3 iMac is very cheap and doesn't require any hacks to get Mac OS and Mac OS X to run!
I think it's cool that this is happening - it's always been clear to me that with Darwin being open it will only be a matter of time before Mac OS X is running on non-Apple hardware - but I don't think Steve Jobs will be shaking in his boots just yet.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
No it isn't. This has been repeatedly demonstrated to be false. Take a reasonable app such as photoshop...
If you use Intel benchmarks, of course, your results will be different.... oh, and you got to exclude floating point performance, yeah, that's a requirement. IF you do all this, you can pretend that you aren't paying way too much for too little processor when you buy an x86 machine.
(Actually too much for too much processor as the size of the x86-- HUGE-- is why it draws absurd amounts of power, costs so much (fewer per die) and runs so slow (386 emulation processor) and has such a crappy pipelining system.) Oh, and when you talk about laptops its even worse-- on battery power, Intel processors run at 1/4th or 1/6th the rated clock speed cause otherwise battery performance would be zilch. Which means that a powerbook is actually something like 20-30 times the speed of a PC laptop on battery power, when fully utilizing the processor (say playing back a DVD while flying cross country.)
This isn't quite "running MacOS" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This isn't quite "running MacOS" (Score:2, Informative)
yes, it can be quite difficult to crack well-documented industry standards [sun.com].
Guys (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Guys (Score:3, Funny)
And I have yet to see this actually happenning.
It just needs to be predicted on The Simpsons! Remember the episode in which Bart sold his soul to Milhouse, who then sold it to Comic Book Guy in exchange for Alf pogs? That was a few years back, and of course Milhouse told Bart (about Alf) "He's coming back, you know!" And now he is back! So write to Fox, et al. and have them feature this, we'll have a tangible product in no time!
Misleading Headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it is a neat breakthrough but let's not act like he split the atom.
Screenshots of Debian running on AmigaOne (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screenshots of Debian running on AmigaOne (Score:2)
Sometimes I think that the Amigo is an absurd liberal myth.
Re:Screenshots of Debian running on AmigaOne (Score:3, Informative)
The basic idea behind the GUI screenshots is to demonstrate that almost everything of the GUI can be modified according to the taste of the user. The HD Prep Util is mainly meant to show its new features.
BTW a PPC native version of the Amiga browser IBrowse should come with AmigaOS4. And a new PPC native version of MUI should become available as well.
AmigaOne isn't a particular machine, it's a SPEC!! (Score:3, Informative)
"We completed the AmigaOne specification three months ago, and dubbed it the "Zico". It is a specification and not a product because Amiga is a software company, not a hardware manufacturer. The ability of the Amiga DE to host itself on multiple hardware and operating system platforms frees us from hardware dependency and gives our partners and our customers the freedom to chose the hardware that best suits their needs and tastes."
Isn't the Amiga One more of a mac clone now? (Score:4, Informative)
If I'm right then this story is no more than "Man runs an application of Yellow Dog Linux" - it's really no more exciting than me getting YDL running on my iBook.
MOL developers themselves have been striving for Mac OS X support anyway - it's not as if they've started doing this just becausee the Amiga One hardware can run it.
Also the 600Mhz G3 Amiga One board from a European vendor is 600(euros) with processor, no case, memory, video, sound, monitor, mouse, keyboard.
A 600Mhz G3 iMac - the closest system - is around 1000. So Amiga One hardware is hardly cheap. I can pick a higher spec Intel/AMD motherboard and processor combo up for half thay price.
Re:Inverse pyramid scheme (Score:2)
And I used to use the Atari ST. As far as I am concerned what made the Amiga a great computer was it's custom hardware - this has been superceeded god knows how many times and so there's no point to have an Amiga computer.
The AmigaOS is a different matter - but as far as I can tell from this it's just "Man runs MOL" not "Man runs Mac OS ontop of AmigaOS"
M@t
Re:Inverse pyramid scheme (Score:2)
Re:Isn't the Amiga One more of a mac clone now? (Score:2)
- a case
-a monitor
-RAM
-Speakers
-Mac OS X or Mac OS 9
-CD-ROM
-Hard Drive
-Keyboard and Mouse
It's not clear if it's missing an AGP video card, too, so I won't mention it.
There's zero chance that you can get all of those things for less than the $250 difference in price. So, why would anyone in their right mind buy one of these boards to run Mac OS X?
-jon
Re:Isn't the Amiga One more of a mac clone now? (Score:2)
You have been able to run Classic Mac OS on Linux for years, so if this article is supposed to be celebrating that fact, it's kind of silly. If you want to run Linux on a PPC, just buy an Apple box. As I'm trying to point out, there is zero (and probably negative) price benefit from this Amiga board compared to an Apple. If the news is that someone is making a PPC-based motherboard besides Apple, um, OK, great. It'll be more expensive than a comparable Mac, less compatible with Apple operating systems, run an additional OS with zero application support, and be less supported than a Mac from Apple. Sounds like a dream.
What we've got here is a product that exists for no good reason. The market is going to correct for that pretty quickly.
-jon
Non-Apple "Macs" and other thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)
So without having read the article, I'll comment as best I can...
The first thing that comes to mind is that this is not the first time an Apple unauthorized computer has natively run the Mac OS. I can think of a few other examples.
In the early days of the Macintosh there were machines with Apple boards repackaged in to different form factors, but this was still arguably Apple hardware.
Later, Outbound notebook computers came out that used their own board designs, but were based off scavenged Apple ROMs -- usually from compact Macs. They were nice machines in their day: they had trackbars (which are hard to explain unless you've actually seen one), fast processors, and good B/W screens. Of course, these were still sort of using Apple parts thanks to the ROMs.
Around the time of Outbound's demise (BTW, Outbound's death boiled down to being priced out of the market by Apple's PowerBook line), an impressive effort was completed to reverse engineer the Mac's ROM from published APIs. The machine this ROM landed in was a Mac/PC hybrid that was theoretically untouchable by Apple's legal department. I don't know what ever happened to this thing, but the fact that it wouldn't run Pagemaker could well have doomed it -- even without help from Apple's lawyers!
After that machine faded and vanished in to nothing, Apple licensed cloning. Around the same time we started seeing demos of the PReP and CHRP boards. These could have run the Mac OS, along with several other operating systems, but to my knowledge no Mac compatible boxes were ever released (If someone else knows of some, please post!).
Now Apple's machines use open firmware in place of big ROMs, so any attempt to get the Mac OS running on other hardware might be simpler, but the OF could still be a tricky river for an intrepid cloner to navigate. I don't know much about OF myself, nor Apple's implementation and use of it on their machines, but if you would like to speculate on this subject please do!
In regards to the motherboard in question, there are a few things to consider:
a) To the extent the cost of equipment is dependent upon volume, this may not be a high enough volume product to make it as a "mass market" board.
b) The advance here might be that you can run PowerPC Mac OS apps on non-Apple hardware, which (as Slashdot story pointed out) could be a convenient extra feature for a few users of this board. It is of course fairly common to emulate a 68K Mac. Aqua and the rest of OS X would be bigger advance, but that doesn't sound like an advance that has happened yet...
c) To get OS X running, you may still have a decidedly different task (remember I didn't read the article; see above).
d) Unless you use ROMs, etc., that were illegally copied, Apple Legal probably doesn't have much to say against this. They may be annoyed, but probably not scared...up until OS X and Aqua will run on it.
e) This isn't a mass market solution for running OS 9: You still need to get one of these machines, get Linux up and running, get a Mac ROM, install the compatibility environment, and only then do you get to use OS 9. That's a pretty geeky sequence, but the geeks don't seem to be the ones who want to run OS 9! Of course, once Aqua hits this hardware...
f) It sounds like this is a G3 board (note: I still haven't read the article). This will limit its appeal; a lot of folks might be looking for a G4 based machine so this might not be the ideal option for them. Of course, the G3 and G4 perform comparably per MHz in non-Altivec operations. OS X, however, on G3 machines seems rather pokey.
In short, this is pretty cool but the advance to date doesn't by itself threaten Apple; loss of control of hardware that could run OS X's UI would threaten Apple. Also don't forget that there are Mac emulators for PCs and Apple hasn't successfully come down on them. And yes, I know that's different, they're only 68K emulators, and they can be slow, etc., but I still think this doesn't yet threaten Apple. For the time being it's simply another neat thing you can do with a neat 3rd party niche board. I'll keep an eye on developments.
Finally, I would like to see commodity G4 based boards that could be coaxed to run OS X. That would be killer. Doubtless Apple would agree...
Re:Non-Apple "Macs" and other thoughts... (Score:2)
Quite a few actually.
OpenFirmware is oddly enough an open standard. IEEE reference materals and all. ou cna even buy OF implmentations for serveral CPUs from several places...and given that it is mosly a big chunk o FORTH code, it isn't that hard to write, and is normally small. This is not a big problem.
That's for sure. This Amiga MB is only about $200 cheaper from buying a CRT iMac with roughly the same specs, and that would come with a (funky) case, power supply, speakers, cables, memory, a hard drive, a CD-RW, a small but high quality monitor, and product support.
Well that depends on the G3, and Apple isn't exactly picking G3 machines with the biggest cache and all now, while they are selecting at least some of their G4's with an eye towards speed.
OS X tends to use AltiVec in way more places. Including any of the software rendering, which OS X currently does more of then OS9 because of alpha composing and the like (10.2 has been promised to use the 3D accel pipeline to speed up what you would think of as 2D ops...at least for some video cards). The end result is more OS X stuff is AltiVec stuff.
It is easy to get everything but the graphics to work (and maybe audio). For the video you basically need to use the exact same graphics card Apple does. That makes life painful. I think it also breaks the EULA (don't know if it is enforcable) where Apple only gives you the right to run (most of) their software on their hardware. Clearly if they were MS that would be unenforcable, but they aren't. With 5% or less of the market, they can do all the forced product bundling they want.
Ahhh... reminds me of Shapeshifter (Score:3, Funny)
One of the more attractive features of this painful experience, apart from the surge of testosterone, was that the bitch could run Shapeshifter, a software Mac emu that was better* than the real thing! I used to spend more time in SS than in AmigaOS, mostly to play with Civ 2, but also because of the joy that the "Eep!" sound effect brought to my traumatised mind. Ahhh.
Happy days...
* - by "better" I mean "slower, unless viewed through the eyes of an advocate, in which case I mean "faster".
The point of the OLD Amiga (Score:3, Insightful)
I had an ST and an Amiga - I got the ST first, so using the Amiga always felt a little unfaithful! But wow, what a machine.
To have the same impact today I think you'd have to have something that made the iMac look ugly and blew away a hefty desktop PC for $300 - in a box - in the supermarket - next to the gamecube.
Re:The point of the OLD Amiga (Score:2, Insightful)
At the time when the Amiga was released there were no good graphics solutions available. So Amiga could finally show the world what multimedia computing was like.
Nowadays mainstream graphic chips are good enough. There are several big graphics companies all spending millions of dollars on Graphic chip development. So today it is best to use of the shelf components and concetrate on the multimedia OS.
Do note however that many Amiga users have upgraded their machines with graphic boards and sound cards based on mainstream hardware chips. (There are even Zorro/PCI bridges available to allow usage of standard mainstream hardware) So actually this isn`t something entirely new.
Re:The point of the OLD Amiga (Score:2)
Um....the Amiga never looked like an indrustrial design masterpiece. From the outside it looked a lot like the other computers of it's era. A more or less rectangler box, muted colors, and some floppy drive slots. Or at least the A1000 and A2000 didn't look special.
What was special last time around was the hardware and the software. This time around the hardware can't be special, so it's the software or bust.
Re:The point of the OLD Amiga (Score:2)
If the hardware cant be special then why bother! You can't polish a turd! And writing a new OS for standard PC hardware can only go so far. The Hardware HAS to shine!
But yes, we have to identify how to differentiate the Amiga from the PC - and I'm pretty sure that to have a mass appeal the Amiga should LOOK better than anything else on the market. Get that right, let it fit into the home, and you're winning from the kick off.
Something I've wondered about (Score:4, Interesting)
I've wondered about this and come to the conclusion that ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot and again I state for those people that didn't notice the first time ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot that you'd find that people would be more willing (and likely) to move to OSX because
(I'm definately not saying the Linux doesn't have some of the above, but the steeper learning curve and not as good interface wouldn't go in Linux's favour)
Of course, we know it wont happen, there are far to many issues that would prevent it from happening. But, if OSX could run on Wintel boxes , would Linux ever see a look in if joe public and general corporations decide to leave Windows?
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that I wonder the same is that I, as a seasoned software developer and looong time Unix user, recently bought a Mac as my home platform. Everyone assumed I'd build a PC and slap Linux on there. I assumed the same until the 11th hour and then bought a Mac. It's pretty, easy to use, required me to learn nothing about the hardware (I'm a software person through and through) and yet I can run all my favourite apps and there's plenty of already ported Unix/Linux apps, and converting the rest is no more challenging than getting them to build on, say, an older HP or similar.
I'd very much like to have been able to get my folks a Mac rather than their troublesome Windows box.
Mac OS X on commodity priced hardware would be VERY attractive in the marketplace.
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:2)
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:3, Insightful)
All of the cusomizability of Linux tends to diminish the ease of use for non-geek users.
We'll get there at some point, but we're still a long way off.
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:2, Interesting)
As opposed to the "future's so bright I gotta wear shades" prospect that desktop Linux is sporting now???
I was an Amiga user, and finally went PC when I realized I could use NeXSTEP [pair.com] on PC boxes, and I bought a high end 486 (at the time) to run it. Spent $4,500 on the machine. After 9 months I had to wipe NeXTSTEP and install Windows 3.1 as I needed the desktop apps. It was a sad day. I tried 4-5x over the next few years to run Linux exclusively (desktop use), but was forced to go back to Windows 95 becuase I simply needed the desktop apps Windows offered. I finally saw Jobs return to Apple and saw the plan for NeXTSTEP to merge with some MacOS pieces and become OS X. I bought a Mac, a Blue-and-White G3 400 [blakespot.com], in Jan '99. I jumped the gun a bit becuase OS X did not really get to rolling until March/April '01. But I had fun with the hardware while I waited (and noted OS 9's decent speed but terrible stability, etc.) Summer '01 I went out and purchased a dual processor G4 800 [blakespot.com] upon which to run OS X like a beast. I have never been happier with an OS.
Do you know how much $$ (hardware, purchase of NeXTSTEP) and time (installing Linux 5x over the years, only to uninstall and reinstall Windows) I spent trying to get a UNIX solution on the desktop that worked? It became a hobby in and of itself, the quest for desktop UNIX. But the apps always kept me away.
As I type this, I sit downstairs, away from my "machine room," using my new iBook 700. I am typing this on IE 5 (which now uses Apple's Quartz text smoothing for so-nice aa fonts) connected to the net via my AirPort base station (WiFi), I have Silverado on DVD playing in a small window, and have Photoshop 7 running in the background because I've been doing some color correction on some digicam images I've imported, via USB, into iPhoto, Apple's free photo management package. I could not be doing these things on the Linux platform. Nor any other UNIX platform. OS X has brought together the best desktop interface I have encountered, the most stable UNIX variant that I have encountered, mainstream application support that leaves the user wanting of nothing, and a company behind it all that has a clear and compelling vision and direction.
So...would Linux be doomed on the desktop if OS X became available for the PC? Well, you'll have to make that call. It won't happen becuase Apple's main source of revenue is hardware sales and also they currently are able to hold up OS X to the crowds with the stability and ease that only comes from a company controlling both the hardware and the software. Having run NeXTSTEP both on that old PC back in the day (where motherboards / chipsets / CPU's come from one of many vendors) and on my NeXT machine [blakespot.com], I can tell you that such dead solid stability comes only from having just that kind of control over both ends of the stick. But OS X is available for Macs--and looking at what one walks away with when they take the plunge into the current world that Apple has built, it seems that the appeal of "free" Linux and the ability to run on super-economy hardware becomes somewhat less mighty....
Oh....and did I need a new laptop when I already have a DP G4 800 in-house? No. I simply am so enamored of OS X that I wanted to be able to take it with me whenever I like. I've had a few engrossing and satisfying relationships with OS's in the past (AmigaDOS in the 80's, etc.) but nothing like this. This is just...right.
blakespot
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:2)
As I type this reply on my Toshiba 200MMX laptop in Galeon 1.2.something or another (don't remember what fonts I am using -- but they are not to bad). I am sitting on the couch using some wireless lan card from CISCO that cost about 1/10 what an airport would (the hub is in the basement somewhere). I have "The Road Warrior" playing on the TV next to the couch. I am importing pictures from my cameras Compact Flash card connected to my PCMCIA slot and rotating the ones taken sideways using Gimp 1.something or another -- as soon as I am done transfering the pictures off the CF card -- I am going to delete them and copy over 256 Megs of MP3 files to play on my Nex II portable. (Software cost for this whole setup was $0)
I read this article and I don't buy the "Linux is useless on the Desktop" crap. There is always alternatives -- the only caveot is to be careful when you buy your hardware.
$10 WiFi Cards? (Score:2)
You really bought a Cisco WiFi card for $10? From a dot-com auction? Or are you saying you really can get a $10 WiFi card off the market? I haven't seen anything like this at Compusa.
1/10th of $99, is $9.90. I'm wondering if this wasn't yet another of the exagerations PC people make about Mac hardware being expensive eg "My Xbox has better graphics and was only $200!"
Re:$10 WiFi Cards? (Score:2)
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:2)
In other words, the kind of people who care about desktop operating systems.
As a Geek who has worked on advanced operating systems and spent a lot of time with Unix machines, it truly is the case that Linux isn't worth the time getting it all working. I get paid to get my software working on a server and I've certainly been using Unix long enough to be competent-- but still, the time differential is significant enough that OS X -- also being essentially free-- is a far better deal. And thats not accounting for the quality differential-- the desktop experience under OS X is just a LOT better.
Plus you get more bang for your buck with Apple hardware.
I applaud all the work to improve the usability of Linux on the Desktop, but poo-poohing the difficulty of the issue doesn't help it.
Another beautiful troll from Mr Silver! (Score:2)
Woops, you are a troll. Visit Mr. Silver saying:
Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]
you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]
spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]
Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]
Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org] Do we have a theme here? Every fifth post, Mr. Silver says something silly about Linux being hard to use, dead blah blah, some Windows thing is what you should use. Stick it, Mr Silver.
There's NO innovation in Open Source. (Score:2)
Unfortunately, other than the idea of Open Source and the Open Source methodology, the market is exclusively about making commodity software.
Linux is a commodity operating system (Unix) running a commodity UI (windows ripoff). It is not the source of innovation.
Making software that does what commercial software does and making it free is great-- but the software is all commodity- ideas that have been around for decades. I haven't seen any new applications "killer Apps" or not- that were really innovative starting on Linux.
Linux *does* encourage innovation, though, because it drives the value of commodity software to zero. If Linux didn't exist, there would still be people charging $1,000 for an x86 Unix install, because they could get away with it. Now if they want to charge $1,000 to their customers, they'd better innovate some value for that money.
Linux helps a lot on that front. And it also works to let companies like Apple opensource the commodity parts of their OS-- and spend their money working on the areas where they can be innovative.
By the way-- while I disagree with what this Mr. Silver said, the only troll here is you. You attack him and do so personally, and probably unfairly-- You don't get to decide the position someone is taking and tell them that they don't believe what they are saying. That's the height of offensiveness.
Re:Another beautiful troll from Mr Silver! (Score:2)
Coo, someone who has spent the time looking through my postings. Wow, you're really putting some effort in it. So just to make you look stupid:
Yes, I use Windows on the desktop. Big deal. I actually rather like Win2k (shock! horror! are people allowed to like Windows and read Slashdot?) apart from when it starts playing silly buggers, of course. All my mail and webspace is solely Linux, I develop using Perl, PHP and C (again under Linux). I do admit to fiddling about with a bit of VB, but thats mainly because I don't want to spend the time learning Visual C++.
At home I have Windows 2k (general stuff), Mandrake 8.1 (development) and Win 95 (games). Again, no big deal. I pick the OS that serves my purpose best.
Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting
Not quite, try reading the posting again. It talks about how there is a certain cost to software (even free) if you have to spend a large amount of time getting it working.
you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]
Score 2
It's hard drive based. I would be concerned about running with one. Actually on Friday night I was in the pub with a work mate and he let me have a good shake of his iPod and it worked just great. Doesn't stop me being a little worried about an hour and a halves work of bouncing about (I run Marathons) and how it will affect a hard drive. In the end, I think i'm going to wait for the gigabeat and have a think again.
spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Insightful
It partly is. Let me give you a clue. People send spam because they want your business. If they get your business, then they will consider spam to be effective. As soon as they don't get your business, they won't consider it worthwhile. Why do you think that you get the "enlarge your penis" emails? (apart from that fact that it might be a hint from your girlfriend?). They don't just send those things out if they're not going to get some stupid people actually cough up money.
Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting
Read the comment. From the article, it points out that Gater fires up adverts when people visit that page. Gator isn't PHYSICALLY interferring with the HTML, it's just doing something that make people assume its interferring.
Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org]
Score 2
In no place does it say, Linux on the desktop is dead. I just said that it was hyped up rather too much and in the end was bound to fall short. Linux on the desktop will never be dead unless every program for it vanishes off the face of the planet.
So, in short, you're an idiot and you can't read. And I have moderations of my points and insightful comments to my own comments to back me up. Looking at your last comments they tend to show either stupidity, trolling or blind faith without any facts to back it up. At least I have 50 karma.
I know what the good, bad, pro's and con's are of free software and commercial software and I pick whatever software is right for my purposes. I don't follow blind faith, I sit down, evaluate and make conclusions.
I can't believe i've spent 10 minutes pointing out the flaws in a trolling accusing me of trolling. I see the IQ of some posters is definately going down the pan.
ps. Oh yes and thank you. By showing me Debian playing movies on an Amiga, you have taught me that an Amiga can play movies. I seriously doubt that in a board room meeting that sort of thing would convince CEO's and CTO's to use Linux.
pps. Stick to the blind faith. You can't produce a reasoned argument for shit.
Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OS X? no way. Linux! (Score:2)
Good point, but history has shown that if something is worth paying, then people will.
Then ,there is a little of choice:
Your three choices would be viable if you're talking about someone who reads slashdot and wants to do those sorts of things. However outside in the Joe Bloggs world they care very little about those points. Most people want one single consistent desktop and user interface. Why do you think Microsoft interface guidelines exist? Why do you think that most Windows based software makes it easy to find things like print, preferences, saving and loading? The whole idea of learn-once-use-anywhere applies here.
You're assuming that everyone else in the world is as tech savvy as yourself and wants to do the things you consider important. That is not the case.
In our office, a large number of people consider a new screen saver and desktop picture "customisation". Being able to customise their window managers, desktops and kernels wouldn't rank highly on their list of things to do.
Each of your points is false. (Score:2)
The difference in Linux is that you *can't* buy Office for it, but you CAN run OpenOffice on the Mac.
The developer tools are given away free to everyone-- grandma and grandpa too. Out of the box.
Your entire post is a list of factually false statements presented as facts.
Origami salami (Score:5, Informative)
MOL as a virtual machine is impressive in its own right. I use it a bit on my Powerbook when I'm booted into Linux because there isn't always an analog for a Mac program I want to use. It isn't always terribly fast but I can get stuff done with it if I'm a little patient. However an Amiga PPC board running MOL under YDL isn't exactly making me cream in my pants. It is a PPC board that runs Linux well enough and then runs MOL which abstracts MacOS from the hardware. If someone had managed to get MacOS running on the PPC board natively by hacking up their own ROM replacement I'd ooh and ahh. Suggesting the ability to run MacOS in a virtual machine is somehow a competitor to Apple's hold on the desktop PPC market is a bit of an immature statement.
If OSX ever works directly on the hardware my ears will perk up. However it will only take a small tweak in the Cocoa framework to check for a Mac ROM. Lack of a ROM will keep the whole Cocoa environment from even working leaving you with the Darwin kernel working but none of the rest of what makes OSX unique not work.
comments from a former Amiga user (Score:2, Informative)
I have both Amiga 1200 with 68020 cpu and a Powerbook Duo which has 68030 CPU running Mac OS 7.6.
What I see is, MacOS 7.6 is really badly coded, can't multitask, essentially WASTES that CPU power.
On the other hand, in Amiga 500 days, I *sure* remember we had a Mac emulator which has run Mac programs/OS 1.5 times FASTER than Mac itself (same days mac)
So, thats why story is a pointless thing...
If you never owned a Amiga or a Mac
In your dreams. (Score:2)
Why do people continue to pretend that Apple isn't providing machines with better performance at lower cost than Intel machines?
The price myth, like the megahertz myth (which are related) hasn't been true since 1990, if it ever was.
Yes, you can buy an XBOX for $200 (but ony because its sold for less than it costs to make it) and a G3 iMac costs $800, but that iMac beats most intel PCs on the market up to $2,000.
Dude! You're getting a dud.
What your not being told about.... (Score:2, Informative)
you'll need to have installed a modified bios. This
is to insure systems are certified
bla.... by Amiga....
Only those system Amiga approves of will be able to
run AmigaOS4, for the Bois will only be available to
Amiga approved OEMs.
What it is in essence is a bios resident dongle.
The reason for it is to reduce piracy of AmigaOS4.
In a way you can view it as a form of DRM.
I'm sure someone will come up with a way around it
but it then becomes illegal and Amiga inc has been
agressive on such matters even when it's not there
Intellectual Property they are agressive about, but
Amiga based software in general.
This article is about how an Amiga Spec'd system can
run what? A Mac Emulator? on top of Linux?
Yet again, to be able to run AmigaOS4 it will need
the modified Bios Dongle. The sort of thing I've
come to call a "pissmark" like a dog marking it
territory (Dog Released Marking).
We all know how MS wants to place their DRM system
on people and for those who don't know, Amiga was a
participant at some recent show, in the MS booth.
Amiga was listed as an MS partner.....
I'd be real skeptical of Buying and AmigaOne system
with this bios dongle.
But for those who like the AmigaOS and would like to
be able to use
Clone Project that's under a license very similiar to
the Mazollia License (OSI compatable) It's called
AROS and can be found on Sourceforge and it's well
past the halfway mark. Somehow I suspect it might also
end up making a good smart userspace interface for the
Hurd somewhere down the road, As Amiga made user
accessible IPC standard (AREXX "ports") and the Hurd
uses IPC alot.
low cost, fast, off the shelf... in what world? (Score:2)
Somehow I dount Amiga hardware will end up being any of those seeing as the Amiga market is an even smaller niche than the mac one.
Re:Executor (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Executor (Score:3, Informative)
not a "decent" one? (Score:5, Informative)
These all emulate the Mac hardware at a lower level than ARDI's Executor, (I'm not sure if you're making that distiction or not) and so they need a copy of the MacOS and a Mac rom image to operate. BasiliskII is notable because it's GPLed, Linux-compatible, and fairly full-featured.
There are no PowerMac emulators for PC, however. Given this latest news about MOL running on fairly foreign (although still PPC) hardware, it must have a pretty complete architecture emulation. All that would be needed for a portable PowerMac emulation would be for a PPC emulator core to be tacked on and optimized a whole bunch. Although this would take some time, it doesn't seem terribly impossible.
Re:Executor (Score:2)
A couple different companies have promised new emulators that can emulate PowerPC, updating their emulators that still only emulate up to a 68040. I know one company that is working on a PPC emulator is:
http://www.microcode-solutions.com/
But they certainly don't seem to be in a hurry. Why? I don't think there's much market at all for a good Mac emulator. There isn't much that runs on Mac OS that you can't get an equivalent elsewhere. For those apps that are like that, the performance isn't good enough to use an emulator- so they jujst get a real Mac.
Re:Executor (Score:2)
More likely than you'd think (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not likely... (Score:2)
mol-0.9.63.tgz doesn't look like its alpha, let alone vapor...Anybody running this?
That isn't true. (Score:3, Interesting)
All you have to do is write a work-alike rom that does the same things as the apple one. And since this is mostly being done for the hell of it, and you arn't limited by hardware you can make it as big and slow as you'd like.
You can also patch diffrent versions of the OS to run without the ROM if you want to. Or you can use a combination of the two methods (for example, taking out any verification code in the OS to make sure it's running with a genuine apple ROM)
Did you even click the link? (Score:2, Funny)
"What Is Mac On Linux? Mac-on-Linux lets you run MacOS under Linux/ppc. MOL runs natively on the processor, i.e. it is very fast. Unlike most mac emulators, MOL can run MacOS 8.6 and later WITHOUT A ROM IMAGE
I didn't add the emphasis, by the way. So you read that and decided it is all a big fat lie. I wish I was smart like you and knew everything about everything.
Re:Not likely... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is getting less and less true, so called new world machines [apple.com] only rely on the ROM for booting (all machines since the iMac are new worlds machines). The ROM that contains the toolbox code is basically a memory mapped file (you can see this file in the system folder).
Darwin does not need any special ROMs (how would it run on x86 machines?). And Mac OS X basically runs on top of darwin (this is how unsupported machines [macsales.com] can run OS X). The only part of the Mac ROM that needs to be somehow emulated is the open firmware booting code that sets up the device tree and hands it to the kernel. Open firmware is IEEE standard [openfirmware.org].
So roughtly to run OSX on a unsupported machine, you need to implement a booting system that can hand a device tree to the kernel and write darwin drivers for your hardware / emulation plateform. As far as I know, you can do both legally.
Of course there might be some hidden checks in OSX, but the open source nature of Darwin make this improbable. I don't think that Apple will care about this simply because it does not seem to be a serious threat to their marketshare...
Re:Not likely... (Score:2)
Re:Not likely... (Score:2)
So, if there is no ROM, what happened with those functions? The reason they were in ROM has gone away with much faster RAM, CPUs and disks. So the ROM functions are stored in a loadable library, rather like most function libraries.
Doing research is overrated! Besides, since when has anyone needed to know what they're talking about before they write a post anyway! Oh well, you would've been right if this were 1995. Better than nothing!
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2, Insightful)
---"I've predicted this for a long time. The first generation of Amiga platforms were revolutionary, and blew away offerings from other personal computer manufacturers. In fact, it was only recently, with AGP systems, that modern PCs could even match the first Amiga (the A1000) in terms of graphics sync/performance."
Sounds like you're an Amiga fanboy. Care to back up your "Assertions" with real numbers?
---"The new generation of Amigas will be running on PPC-compatible hardware. (Even older Amgias can get extension boards with PPC chips on them, though), and will truly rock. It's been a while since we've seen a truly good mixture of hardware and software, working together well to build the ultimate platform. That was... hmm - the late 80s and early 90s. The Amiga. The x86 hardware has (and still does) prohibit the PC from reaching this level,"
Care to mention examples? Perfreablly comparing to the Amiga (the old ones)
"and MacOS (up until MacOS X) has been a complete toy operating system."
Agreed.
"Just when PCs and Macs are starting to catch up with the original Amiga, the new Amiga is getting ready to be unleashed."
I'll believe it when I can use it somewhere. I've heard about the "Amiga 1" ever since '98 from usenet. Unless you're talking to the developers, I see this as much fud as the Troll "BSD is dying".
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
Agreed.
Uh... by that definition, ditto win9x.
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
Correct also. What is the best OS for games? Windows. Games are just really interactive toys, nothing more.
Re:Better design (Score:5, Informative)
My 14MHz A-1200 still seems more responsive than even some high end wintel boxen. Now, I know the OS is partly to thank forthis, but the problem with modern wintel hardware is that everything is being designed to run off of the CPU...Softmodems, integrated video, sound, and even integrated IDE interfaces use the CPU and System Memory.
The Classic Amiga wasted as little CPU time on non-mathematical functions as possible. Which seems to be the exact opposite directon the wintel platform is going.
Re:Better design (Score:2)
Yes, I have to agree. My amiga was as fast as any system made yet in terms of the windowing. It never slowed up, never ground down. Given that it did what it did as fast as it did it, I can't see how any OS can be faster in terms of user interaction than it was.
Of course, I don't think it would decompress MP3's on the fly.
Say what you like (I'd love to see them back, but if BeOS didn't fly, cant see how AmigaOS will) about it being a piece of history - it was a good piece of history.
but the problem with modern wintel hardware is that everything is being designed to run off of the CPU...Softmodems, integrated video, sound, and even integrated IDE interfaces use the CPU and System Memory
Yes, its a fault and a feature. A CPU is so flexible its cheaper to make one fast one and spread it around than 50+ hardware widgets. Having said that, more things should be on the motherboard these days - like soundcards, modems, and some general logic unit to decompress MP3's and DVD's.
Michael
Re:Better design (Score:2)
Oooh, how wrong you are on this one
There's a good CLI-based MP3 player for the Amiga called MPEGA [wanadoo.fr]. I think I had to combine to MONO to play back at 44/48Khz, but there is even a neat little "hack" for the Amiga called 14-bit dynamic sound. There are a couple of methods, but it gives the Amiga essentially 16-bit quality stereo sound by combining the 4 stereo channels into 2
more things should be on the motherboard these days
Agreed, but none of them should be "stealing" memory or clock cycles from the system
Re:Better design (Score:2)
It is true that it does cut you down to just 2 channels, though. Left and Right. For playing back sound samples, that's all you need. For playing back anything else, such as MODs or OctaMEDs, it doesn't help you in the least bit -- but
I've actually used the hi-fi sound hack, whatever it was called and I was very impressed. I don't think it was exactly practical, but it did allow me to listen to 16 bit WAV files which was all I really needed to do at the time anyway.
Oh, and it ran fine on all three of my Amigas without any modification. An A2000, an A1200, and an A4000.
Re:Better design (Score:2)
Yes, I have to agree. My amiga was as fast as any system made yet in terms of the windowing. It never slowed up, never ground down. Given that it did what it did as fast as it did it, I can't see how any OS can be faster in terms of user interaction than it was.
Well, I didn't have any problems causing a truly bad slowdowns with for example running DeliTracker and using pseudo-14 - bit playback for 16/32 - channel modules with some back-then-neat visualising genie running. That was on A4000 with 68040/25 MHz...(which I still have and even occasionally use) And of course a workbench with eg. 64 colors using AGA was a very easy way to cause major GUI slowdown. It's not a bad machine for its age, but even a lightweight OS can't 100% prevent slowdowns if the running tasks are heavyweight for the hardware.
Re:Better design (Score:2)
An RTOS is not faster; average kernel latency is actually higher, but it's entirely predictable.. so user interfaces can be designed to be have precisely how you want them to.
I agree.. an old amiga still feels really responsive. It's amazing.
Re:Better design (Score:2)
Re:Better design (Score:2)
I think it's fairly simple. Most Amiga users don't see M$ as a good choice of OS (for whatever reasons
Which meant buying a Mac and remaining tied to another proprietary hardware platform
Also, alot of Amiga users already owned Macs for whatever reasons. And, quite a few also owned a PeeCee box as well. I think Linux was a choice because it was in the right place at the right time. X86 boxen were cheap (Macs are anything but), most Amiga users were already well versed in the basics of software development, Linux was not only good, but it was also cheap. Which was Jay Miner's origonal vision for the Amiga anyhow...
Re:Better design (Score:2)
Where do you get this stuff?
I wasn't aware that OS X was being distributed with a Shell...I was told that it must be installed seprately...anyhow, OS X as you said is BSD. And the fact that the Amiga was "unix like" rather than UNIX didn't hurt it for all of those Amiga users.
I dunno, you can get a g4 mac with 17 inch monitor for under $1100. That's the same price as an A500 + 14inch monitor in 1989 dollars. It always amazes me that people keep spouting this stuff. Yeah, yeah...you can build your own PC for a few hundred less, but you could never do that with the Amiga.
Lets not compare it with the A500, compare it with an A1200. The A1200-HD could be had for well under the origonal price of the A500, and came with a harddrive. I think I bought my A1200-HD for $599 in '92, and you can't compare the price of a monitor (monitors get cheaper as time goes by). Compare it to what was available at the time...
And the monitor issue is interesting, as I belive that most Amiga monitors could be converted to a PC monitor using nothing but a $20 cable.
I think the truth of the matter is alot of the "last" Amiga users wanted to escape the propreitary hardware thing because they were looking at a proprietary platform with no real support. And lets not forget that M$ has backed Apple as well (which for some would be just as bad as going to Windoze)...
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, it was only recently, with AGP systems, that modern PCs could even match the first Amiga (the A1000) in terms of graphics sync/performance.
Recently? Already at the time Commodore went belly up Amiga was starting to show its age. Doom was the game to show that Amigas "superior" chipsets wasn't so superior.
Just when PCs and Macs are starting to catch up with the original Amiga, the new Amiga is getting ready to be unleashed.
Christ, I dumped Amiga 4 years ago and since then I've been catching up to the rest of the world. The PC's and certainly Mac's surparsed Amiga years ago.
Very timely, actually. Things could get interesting in the next few years.
How so? There is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga. The most advanced feature of the new OS is... *gasp*
And what about software? There have hardly been released anything for the Amiga the last 8-10 years. And even less for all those PPC-addons.
And then there is the HW... It'l be closed and crippled and "donglelised" as always (just as a Mac)... I'm sure the slashdot-crowd will be more interested in bplan's [bplan-gmbh.de] more open PPC-board.
No, there is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga.
Businessweek on Gassee and BeOS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Businessweek on Gassee and BeOS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple's current high-quality/low-price hardware strategy will undercut the demand for this thing before it gets off of the ground. Add to that Apple's new NeXT-based OS, and the chances look even dimmer. As for native apps, I think Be's demise should show where this leads.
The Amiga was killed by several factors. It was a giant leap forward, but after that it languished. Its image was tarnished by the fact that is was available from K-Mart and other discount stores. There were so many games available that the public didn't consider it a "real" business machine.
I am also a little surprised that you consider the Macintosh OS so lowly. Compared to the other GUI's of the time, it was polished and well thought-out. True, multi-tasking didn't come until much later in the game, but it started the DTP revolution.
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
Ah, this post must come from the alternate history where Apple's decisive leadership in PReP allows them to innovate and fill new niches, leaving MSI and ABit to worry about the low-quality/low-price volume market for MacOS hardware. Sony's Macs, following the high-quality/high-price strategy, still attract many users on brand name appeal, of course. AppleSoft's tiered OS licensing allows the Mac industry to ship low cost machines while making high margins on licenses to run on high-end hardware. (Taligent's OS has been delayed until 2H03, surprise.)
And about this time, Dell is figuring out that its low-quality/high-price hardware strategy isn't quite working out, and Microsoft is thinking of buying them to get them an efficient supply chain.
Seriously, I think what you mean is "high-quality/high-value". If you mean anything.
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
Yeah but if you compare a new $1600 G4 to a $3500 PowerMac 9500 (running at 132 Mhz) I think you can see that Apple's new hardware is low cost.
The quality/price ratio (Score:2)
Apple does pack a lot of stuff in that you could live without at home (such as fast Ethernet cards *and* 56k modems), and is notoriously unfriendly to the "roll your own" crowd. Then again, the hardware is one of the most important aspects of the Mac, as it was with the Amiga. Without this tight integration of hardware and the OS, the Apple woudn't have survived.
And that is another reason why I think this bird won't fly: the Amiga was actually a miracle in *hardware*; the OS was what let it shine.
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2, Informative)
This is not "New Amiga hardware", it's a "generic" POP board cloned from the Mai TeronCX [mai.com], only its new distributor Eyetech [eyetech.co.uk] has licensed the "AmigaOne" trademark from Amiga Inc.
Forthcoming versions of AmigaOS running on hardware from third parties like this would be fantastic news if only Amiga Inc. hadn't decided to f*ck things up as usual with some seriously demented distribution policies [amiga.com] for new versions of AmigaOS: Any hardware, in order to be allowed to run AmigaOS, must be licensed by Amiga Inc. The hardware vendor must also get a license for himself and his support/financial organisation, he must equip his hardware with a hardware license verification mechanism (although Amiga Inc. affectionally calls it "anti-piracy measures") and he must sell AmigaOS bundled with his hardware. AmigaOS will not be available for sale separated from hardware to us users who wish to choose our hardware and hardware vendors ourselves.
Of course this is unacceptable for independent hardware vendors, especially those who design Open Hardware like POP which is what AmigaOS will run on, and thus Amiga Inc. are killing AmigaOS in a very effective way. If it's intentional it's probably to redirect resources to their "AmigaDE" project. Unfortunately they're at the same time splitting the "potentially AmigaOS compatible" hardware market into "hardware for AmigaOS" and "the exact same hardware but for everyone else".
Please consider signing this petition [petitiononline.com] to Amiga Inc. if you wouldn't like this to happen. There's more info about all this available here [8bit.co.uk].
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
The Amiga community (as well as the Mac community) realized along time ago that the Wintel platform will be on the top of the heap for along time to come.
But, that's not to say those "enlightened few" can't use the better hardware.
You know there is still a place the Amiga has stayed on top...brodacast video...
Re:The Amiga is coming back. (Score:2)
> can't use the better hardware.
Indeed. It's surprising when you get that "but it's not as popular as such-and-such" even from the Slashdot community, especially those who spend way too much time and energy promoting Linux, which is still not as popular as that other big x86 OS. Oh well, better just abandon ship then, XP is better now... right?
Re:Urban Myth: VHS was inferior for consumers (Score:3, Funny)
The point being that Betamax's 1 hour tape length (designed to record network broadcasts) wasn't long enough to contain the material that consumers wanted to rent - porn.
Much of the article you link to [indiana.edu] makes sterling sense, but how many porn movies really need to be over an hour long? I would argue that Betamax might have proven quite the boon to the porn industry, by helping to focus their screenwriting and editing efforts toward producing films with tighter dialog and more efficient plot development. No, I think in this case the consumer lost :)
Re:Not for long... (Score:2, Informative)
By having MacOS9 and several other OSes including Linux running on the AmigaOne now it offers people a much more wider choice of applications. It will take time to port applications like Mozilla or OpenOffice to AmigaOS4. By having Linux running on the AmigaOne now, makes the wait alot easier.
Re:Not for long... (Score:2)
Did you even read the story summary?
The AmigaOne runs Linux. There is this prorgam called "Mac-On-Linux" that lets you run Mac OS from *within* Linux. Like VMware on WinDOS or Linux, it emulates/proxies some hardware devices, but does not need to emulate the CPU, so it runs at almost the same speed as if it were running as the real OS.
That is, you're not just buying an AmigaOne to *just* run Mac OS. You're buying an AmigaOne to run Linux, Mac OS, and Amiga apps.
Go back and read the summary and maybe even the article. Mac OS doesn't *replace* Linux or AmigaOS on the AmigaOne. Amiga Inc would have no more motive for making this not work than it would making it so you couldn't run AbiWord. Mac-On-Linux and AbiWord are both just applications that run on Linux.
I believe it is against the EULA on Mac OS 9 to run it on non-Mac hardware. I'm not positive though, but I won't be surprised if/when Apple does try to stop this though. They may not care much as long as MOL can only run up to Mac OS 9 within it's cage, they are fading it out. As soon as Mac OS X is runnable via MOL on *non-Mac* hardware, you can trust that Apple will definately take an interest. Mac OS X is one of the most important reason for buying a Mac, and the best thing Apple has to brag about.
Similarily, if one got Apple's Darwin running on the AmigaOne, which is open source, one could totally run Mac OS X on an AmigaOne. Drivers for the AmigaOne video and input devices would have to be written of course.
That is, who the hell would want to run yet another crappy Linux distro that has built-in AmigaOS emulation when you have Mac OS X!
Re:Not for long... (Score:2)
Linux is being used as the development OS for coding and hardware design (like the replacement firmware)...
So, in the end, only developers should be running Linux on the AmigaOne, and I'm sure that
Yes, there will definately be a Linux distro on whatever the new hardware ends up being
I was just pointing out that neither company wanted this to be happening.
Re:Who's paying for all this? (Score:2)
A hole? (Score:2)
Re:Who's paying for all this? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mac OS at great value (Score:2, Interesting)
Then why did Amiga fail?
And can someone please tell me why this ghost still haunts?
Really! I'm not being facetious. What is on the minds of the Amiga people besides fond memories? Please educate me (sincerely).
Re:Mac OS at great value (Score:2)
I do recall many Desktop-Publishing guys buying Atari-ST machines and using mac emulators, instead of purchasing macs, because it was actually faster than the mac, for less money (and more fun).
I seem to recall the ST was like a half an amiga
Re:Successful marketing (Score:2)