AmigaOS 4.1 demoed in JDLL of Lyon

Last friday and saturday, the JDLL (Journ?es Du Logiciel Libre or Free Software Days) were held on the La Doua Univesrity Campus in Lyon (France).

Each year, the French Association Triple A comes to show that a proprietary OS can live with many free softwares (MPlayer, DosBox, OWB, soon TimberWolf, GNash, etc...).

This year, more than the former ones, we attended the show with a great team (Elwood, M Belette, Voxel from AmigaShop, Corto who ported DosBox and developped PointRider, etc...)

We brought there one Sam440 with AmigaOS 4.1 latest version (thanks Elwood) and one AmigaOne G3/800.

What was the most amazing is that people were really impressed by the AmigaOS 4.1 on the Sam440. The Sam440 has caught the attention of many visitors (Voxel should have sold 3 cards to 3 people not being Amigans for the moment). The reactivity, the simplicity and the speedy boot of the system have really impressed.

The friday, these were mostly sudents that came to visit ou booth. The saturday, we met developpers.

Many contacts with developpers interested by the PowerPC architecture and the possibility to developp on AmigaOS 4.1 were made. We hope all this will lead to something real.

Here is the report unfortunately translated by Google since I lack time to translate it by myself :

Click Here

Do not hesitate to ask questions aout this event. I'll be glad to answer

@K-L

What did they think of the actual os in action? Were they told about the amiga situation?

@K-L

Did read that right? Somebody from the university is going to try porting OpenOffice because of this show?

@Chris

Looks the same for me as reading that. Finally read it,nice reading. Nice presentation too. And Open Office would be nice to have. Hope that turns out

@Antique

AmigaOS 4.1 was really welcomed by the vistors. Some asked me what Linux kernel was running. I explained that AmigaOS 4.1 was different from Unix.

Showing MPlayer, OWB, DosBox and so on was greatly appreciated. To amaze even further the crowd, we sometimes rebooted the OS without closing anything. The system booted fast and without error warning.

Ex Amigans were really surprised to see the system developpment going on. A I said, Voxel could sell 3 Sam boards (and possibly one more).

Regarding the Amiga situation, we did not have yet the information about Amiga Inc and Hyperion so we only explained who was developping the system and the hardware. We focused on the European making (Italian hardware bye ACube, Swiss case by Relec, Operating System by German developpers (amongs others) for a Belgium company.

@Chris : Indeed, a teacher (Eric Bachard, you can see an interview translated by Google here) came right to us and explained us what was his goal and that he was really interested by porting his light OpenOffice on PowerPC. It would be based on Oo4kids.

Matthias 'Corto' Parnaudeau (PointRider, DosBox, etc...) talked with him for a moment (you can see them on one of the pictures). He knows better than me if this is possible or not and what would be required to even start this work ). I really don't know if this will lead to anything but the most important is to have some contacts with these kind of developpers.

Amiga-NG (french AmigaOS 4.1 site) is ready to provide an OS 4.1 ready machine to Eric if he really wants to start porting Oo4kids on AmigaOS 4.1 with his students. He was nonetheless really enthusiastic by AmigaOS 4.1 on PowerPC.

Its nice to hear that there is interests in porting openoffice if i understand right. Im not an office user but it would for sure be good for alot of users. For example sometimes people sends me .doc files etc and i always tell them to send me .txt files. But with openoffice this would be an easy just load the file.

@K-L

It's always very nice to read these kind of things. Very good job everybody involved ! Nice to know there's interest outside of our community.

@Thread

Yes, AmigaOS is interesting to some people outside.
We need to show the OS outside the Amiga community so I ask every Amigan to show it everywhere: in the office and to some computer conventions/shows.

We need to do advertising and you are well capable of doing this. Our primary target are the ex-Amigans. Many of them will be happy to feel again AmigaOS under their fingers.

Show AmigaOS everywhere. Let's make it grow together!

Thanks.

@Elwood
I already booked 4 friends of mine (3 ex Amigans and my cousin which is an ex Atarian) for when i receive my OS4.1 system, although I would like to wait for the "latest update" release first.

I will implant the "Amiga Bug" into every geek i know!!!

@DAX

Oo4kids is open office for light computer with 40% less code and simplified (without javascript or java if remember well).

The teacher allready port Oo4kids with his students on PPC platform and will be verry interested to found a PPC platform during the JDLL (AmigaOS).

Just would like to add in english some part of the french reports about Oo4kids.

@Mrodfr
Indeed, and most important is that someone outside the community shows interest in our system.

And when this very person is a well known professor, core member of the OO.org project, open enough to make his students work on a possible Amiga port of OO4kids, we must not miss this opportunity.

Anyone willing to lend him a SAM to work on??
IHMO, it would be better if Acube/Hyperion make contact with him.

@Balis

As I said, Amiga-NG is ready to provide an OS4.1 ready system if this should go further.

But I prefer to be sure that this will be possible to port Oo4Kids and I'll contact Corto to be sure we are not going nowhere

@Thread

I know Amiga centric shows are great (Pianeta Amiga, AmiWest, NASS, etc...) but we really MUST go to conventions less Amiga centric to show that Amiga is still alive and usable.

Of course, it's some work (having contacts, scheduling tables, preparing demonstrationsetc...) but we can do it (we demoed Amiga OS 4.1 on Sam440 during Primevere (a French event which focus on alternatives and ecology and we'll dot it in 2010 too), JDLL (as you may know by know) and last year in the city of Colmar.

And the biggest event in France will be the Alchimie 2k9 (already 112 visitors) during which many people outside the community will come and discover that real alternatives exist.

So as said Elwood, it's up to us to start getting out of our little Amiga World and show that other alternatives exist.

What I'm dreaming is a giant European Amiga show (maybe in Germany since it's the middle of Europe, more or less) and lots of advertising to have people coming and (re)discover the Amiga.

@K-L
Following Haiku's example would be a good idea...

JDLL was a nice meeting with few great contacts. About OO4kids, I don't think this professor will port it itself on OS4 but I had a quick and interesting talk with him.
I can't tell much more, I will contact him soon.

But I doesn't want to make false hopes.

And I have also to work on my own projects (enhancing PointRider at the moment).

It is really nice to go in non-Amiga exclusive events. We have things to show and no complex, even in this free software meeting, with our OS is not open source.

Let's have fun !

@Thread

http://ooc-lang.org/blogbackend/?p=145

@Thread

Ok, I quote the most intersting part of my link (since i guess noone actually read it ), it's about a joung guy whose aim is to have a program that generates C code :

Quote:

@K-L

thanks for the report...with Firefox and Open Office coming hopefully soon to AmigaOS I know personally at least 10 old amigans that will buy OS4.x right away after I showed them my Sam running OS4.1..

word of mouth is powerful

@328gts

Exactly.
When we were at this event, we saw the eyes of an ex-Amigan shining like the Sun when he understood the machine was running at only 667Mhz while it was so fast.

Such reactions are priceless