Should Linux kernel power future AOS solution ?

I know this is not the proper time for this discussion, because of the news from Amiwest, etc. but I have to get this off my chest.

This weekend I had a visit from an old former amigan friend. In 1998 he skipped the amiga scene in frustration, and was very sad and angry over the situation, and the lack of development..like many of us. He just never looked back, and is still very upset over the fall of the Amiga, and don't even follow anything amiga anymore.

But we stayed friends for the years to come, and so this weekend we had some good food and wine, and I gently told him Amiwest was also this weekend. I told him about the situation with new NG hardware in many years - and showed him the new amiwest videos of Trevor talking about three new motherboards. I also told him about Libre Office, Firefox, HD audio, Radeon support, etc. Java on its way, QT, AmiCygnix, etc.

He was rather condescending about the progress, and reacted mostly like he was very hurt once, when i kept talkin positively about what was going on. (and the news from amiwest) - he just couldn't see anything positive about where the amiga scene was today. It seemed like he was almost unsalvable, and I asked what should be done to keep his interest and restore a bit of faith in him. (he is a long time amiga user, and a capable java programmer, so he knows his it stuff)

He answered that long ago the AmigaOS should have been given a linux kernel, and thereby get all the bells and whistles of memory handling, filesystems, SMP, etc.

He said that in his eyes that was the only way to go. To run AOS in a sandbox, or run somekind of Amithlon solution. He thought it was a bad idea that a small company reinvented all the stuff that very skilled people already had put in the linux kernel for free use. He was angry that Amitlon never was used as NG solution, and that amiga used up precious time to code stuff that was already made by experts, and was free for the taking.

And my thoughts are - yes perhaps we should have a Linux kernel booting a workbench environment - like Amithlon. That would dramatically increase the speed of AOS getting all the cool important stuff, and support x86, memory protection, multicore cpus, etc.

So Instead of making 14 different distros running on the X1000 - maybe take the quickest of them boot AOS directly into WB, and use this as a future platform for AOS

I wonder what the devs oppinion are on this matter ? Is this an easy way to get all the important stuff and all the nice apps, games, etc. ?? it seems like A-eon already have some cool linux guys working for them, so maybe the idea is not that impossible to implement.

I could easily live with AOS running on a linux kernel...as long as it looks and acts mostly like AOS

So as far as my personal oppinion goes, I'm optimistic about the idea, because I think the development time is much too long for AOS - and probably costs too much for such a small userbase.

But again I don't know the whole picture legally wise, business wise, investment wise, etc.

So please don't think I say this HAS to be done...I'm merely asking if my friend is right ?

(note he is also unaware of the current/future plans and timeframes of Hyperion)

And yes I made sure he saw Trevors suitcase full of boing stuff...


Hondo

@Hondo

Short:

NO!

@fingus

WHY?

@Hondo

Because will become another MacOs and a Linux clone.
AmigaOs is AmigaOs and inside it there is the spirit of Amiga Workbench at 100%..
Linux kernel means loose all from the past like apple made ...
If not for iphone and ipad after ... apple totay will be dead

@tlosm
Quote:
Can you elaborate? Why do think MacOSx is *not* like MacOs9 ?i.e it lost the Apple spirit

For me it's still the same MacOS.

It's what Hondo means. The kernel is hidden under the rest of the system so from a user point of view, what you see and use (Workbench, icons, menus...) is still the same.

Linux kernel is a great kernel for ... Linux. Amiga kernel is at the core of the Amiga operating system. I'd rather have it no other way. Let's go our own way. I am patient.

@mbrantley

+ 1, our dilemma used to be hardware but that's more than solved now so the final frontier will be investing in driver/software development with our own kernel.

@Elwood

I have here only 3 Mac
One is an Imac 27'' 2x4 I7 OsX Snow Leopard

The other a MacMini and Powerbook G4 with Osx Leopard

and ... I can say for sure nothing is like MacOs 1 to 9... it is totally different only the top bar make you remeber the old MacOs..
MacOs 1 to 9 was simple you will simple add or left an Extension of the system the system work with totally different philosophy...

Let me know how will be amiga os without Devs , Libs, Prefs? without the Startup sequence, the User Startup ad all the peculiarity that AmigaOs have ? Parallels screen draggrables ?..

Tomorrow make a X desktop for linux with look of AmigaOS .. Like was "Commodore Os" ... but remeber you are using linux and not totally different thing... if i wanna linux i can install it on my PC or on My Macs ... but i Wanna AmigaOS.

I do not think Mac OS X is very much like the original classic Mac operating system at all, to be honest. But that is OK with me because I did not like the original Mac OS very much. But I happen to like AmigaOS very much. I do not want it lost in the process of improving it.

@Hondo

Noooooooooooo!!!

If that ever happened I would be resigning as a beta tester and freezing my system at that point. it's bad enough with sobjs, cygnix & QT but at least the last 2 are optional, having a linux kernel and all the cr*p that involves underneath would drive me away.

@Hondo

As most have commented it's important to preserve an Amiga identity, whit out it it's just another Linux clone.

But on another hand there might be a need to sandbox the software in the future, if you want hibernation and things like that, imaging restoring system state whit out initializing the hardware first.

An important note is that the OS most have parity transparent access to the hardware, it can't be too slow.

It might be nice to power down the computer, power it up again and continue working from where you where the day before, on tablets or laptops it will be unthinkable to not have it.

So No to Linux kernel, Yes to sandbox.

But first thing first SMP and 3D.

Quote:

NO

@Hondo

As much as I see we live with our EXEC which is faster and more responsive. Yes, its not a single file with drivers, but I don`t mind optimizing DOS Drivers to what I really like. In fact I love we don`t copy that kind of solution.

SOBJS:, Libre, AbiWord ... there are already way too much we use from Linux.

Only and only if Hyperion has to close and not open source OS.

I don't think Intuition and Linux mix well. So it's a no go.