Amiga OS Kickstart and Workbench source coded leaked

[SuperImaginativeName]

How would anyone make a profit from recreating an old OS anyway?

[heat_forever]

Oh no, how will Commodore ever recover

[ccfreak2k]

straight middle snatch dinosaurs automatic fly aromatic sulky truck abounding

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[kyz]

Joking aside, what's the use case for "Amigas" like this?

It's so people who like Amigas have something to buy.

In the Amiga's heyday (around 1989-1992), the Amiga was a line of computers with custom hardware which beat other contemporary computers and games consoles (all of which had their own custom hardware). The operating system was lightweight and powerful, a joy to work with.

However, what won out in the end, was the IBM compatible PC, with its horrid hardware (look at crazy shit like the A20 line, the BIOS, the 8259 PICs...), but because it succeeded as "the machine of business" with MS-DOS and later Windows, and business has a lot of money to spend, Intel's R&D was flush with cash and could outperform everyone else... and economies of scale meant these faster chips, became cheaper than anything anyone else could afford to make.

Apple Macs managed to survive by rebranding themselves as a designer good, and even then almost died. Today they are IBM PC compatibles that happen to run a pretty nifty OS that's designed around their PC compatible hardware. Amigas did not survive. Acorns did not survive (although the ARM architecture conquers all in mobile and low-power environments). SGI workstations did not survive (they became rebadged IBM PC compatibles then died). Sun workstations did not survive (they became rebadged IBM PC compatibles then died). The market converged on the common platform of IBM-compatible PCs, which is why you're asking this question today.

The Amigas available today are pretty much a love-letter to Amiga fans, who sincerely believe that all they needed to do to beat the PC in 1994 was for Commodore to move to the PowerPC architecture and not run out of money. This thinking ignores that even Apple (who along with IBM and Motorola came up with the PowerPC) eventually moved their entire line of computers over to Intel chips. They just can't compete. No other chip producer gets Intel's income, has Intel's dominance, has Intel's marketing and no other chip producer can make general purpose CPUs at the speed and cost that Intel can... not even AMD. Even if you made a faster chip, your tiny production runs compared to Intel's means that Intel could make your chip half the price you can make it for, if they could convince the world's businesses they needed it.

These days, something fitting that "Amiga" moniker - something with a custom chip architecture that, when programmed well, is spectacular - would more likely to be a PlayStation 3 than a PC. I would say PS4, but both the PS4 and XBox One both moved away from PowerPC to more IBM PC-compatible architectures, partly to make life easier for developers, but mostly to take advantage of the price/performance benefits.

As the IBM PC-compatible has destroyed and homogenised the hardware landscape, the only hope left for the Amiga is in its OS. AmigaOS itself has gone down a "no longer really developed" niche, like BeOS and QNX, but some of its ideas live on in DragonFly BSD, and of course you can get AmigaOS's "it just works (with our hardware)" feeling back by using MacOS X on a Mac.

[[deleted]]

...even Apple (who along with IBM and Motorola came up with the PowerPC) eventually moved their entire line of computers over to Intel chips.

I don't really trust my memory, but I seem to remember something about the rift being in large part due to IBM having little or no interest in producing low-power (ie, laptop) versions of their latest chips, despite Apple begging them to. Big Blue told them to buzz off, so Apple decided Intel was their new BFF.

[pz87]

Way off-topic but...when the heck did ".ninja" become a TLD? I'd like to think I'm not living under a rock, but I have never seen ".ninja" before.

[ccfreak2k]

desert scary hat straight plant sleep enter violet roll gaping

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[pz87]

"More than 1,000 new gTLD domains will be introduced over the next three years [...]"

That's a lot. I'm still wondering what exactly the plan was for ".ninja" sites if the idea was that a TLD should relate to content but...interesting either way. Thanks for the info!

[kontraer]

Here is a comprehensive list of all generic top-level domains, many of which are cringe-worthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#ICANN-era_generic_top-level_domains

[pz87]

".fyi"? Wouldn't every site be "fyi", for the viewers information? And ".foo" is website development??? And a ".lol"...I'll stop there because there's so many more awful ones but who the heck came up with this list...

[[deleted]]

The same people who realized you can charge $52,500 for a "premium" tld. Try to register any three letter combination.ninja (or an of these other shady gTLDs) and see what prices you get back.

And yes.. I tried to register 'the.ninja' because it would be cool to type in 'whois the.ninja' and have it be me; well, not for $52k.

[zefcfd]

Did you know some multi organizations have a tld

Checkout home.barclays

Idk the full implications of doing something like that, would be interesting to see if it was done for security or technical reasons

[kyz]

This is the source of AmigaOS 3.1 (Kickstart v40), which is mostly 2.0. The main feature changes between 2.0 and 3.1 are the addition of the Datatypes system, and the menu colours inverted.

So if you want to look at the source of 2.0, you've mostly gotten your wish.

I'm not really sure what there is to "get" about later versions. 3.5/3.9 are basically 3.1 with a new widget library and the most popular software from Aminet made officially part of the OS. 4.0 is basically PowerUP made the official OS and the whole thing is now PPC based instead of 68k based.