Shall we still spend time on AmigaOS or just give up?

i belive in my preferred system, i use usually windows at work and in my parents home , i have many Mac here 10.5.8 to Maverick but the filing of amigaos is like stay at Home.

"AmigaOs you will feel stay at home" wow i make a new slogan :P

If one day AmigaOS will stop excisting, then i will join the mainstream pecee community. I will for sure stop programming.

It's fun to argue about Cadillac's and Toyota's, but there are real-world considerations. My Microsoft Surface w/Windows 8 will support most common USB devices without any action from me (printers, mass-storage). Installing most software is pretty painless. Contrast that with the frustration I have with my A1-500, which I don't try to use for anything productive because things don't work. If I didn't like OS 4 and it's potential I wouldn't have bought two OS 4 computers. I really don't understand the Windows-hate among OS 4 users. Microsoft seems to be making what people want. Besides that, it's hard to understand why it is taking so long for OS 4.2. Ordinary Amiga users like me are totally in the dark about what development work is going on, if any. All we see is OS 4 getting farther and farther behind. Pretty soon it will be as irrelevant and hopeless as a lot of pessimists claim it to be. I often find recent posts on threads that seem to describe current developments and then find out the thread was started years and years ago.

@GarbageOut

>Windows 8

Perhaps it's because I've not had Windows machine at home for about 10 years, but I do not see win8 to work like I would like it to work (I use it at work). But I agree that there has been some positive development, like faster booting, win requires frequent reboots after all.

>Ordinary Amiga users like me are totally in the dark about what development work is going on

Yes, we need more open communication.


/me goes back figuring out why my win8 tablet test code failed...

@Elwood Quote:
I couldn't disagree more:

If an Amiga owner is using an Amiga to play games & browse websites (including making posts on Amiga forums) then I call that a big success. It's a triumph just being able to use an Amiga instead of a PC (despite PC/etc technology advancing so fast).

And if someone is able to actively use their Amiga in their everyday life (and presumably enjoy doing so), then I see no reason why they would stop. That means they will continue to buy stuff (from AmigaKit or wherever) & post about the Amiga on forums/Facebook/blog/etc, which all helps keep the Amiga alive.


As such I think that if Amiga integrates better with PCs, then Amiga would do better, because then it's not a binary decision "Do I use the Amiga *or* the PC?" but rather "Shall I use Amiga now *and* PC later?". i.e. Rather than Amiga stuff being permanently separated from PC stuff, someone can switch between them without having to worry they can't do something on the PC later when they run into something the Amiga can't handle so well. That's why I wrote FolderSync, and why I use a KVM Switch.

@ChrisH

I agree,

My X1000 is my main computer. My PC has been in a box for over two years.
Before Odyssey 1.23, I struggled with TW and regularly had to resort to my work iPad for web access. Now though, Odyssey 1.23 has allowed my Amiga to become the main computer at home. It is the perfect mix of nostalgia, fun, familiarity and usability.

Things aren't all perfect, the absence of true hardware acceleration means some tasks still feel clunky and printing support is frankly woeful.

Media playback gets better and better, the small band of brothers who are working on MPlayer are to be applauded!

@Elwood
"I would like to know what's your feeling today about the future of AmigaOS"

Like Phantom and ddni, I use exclusively my X1000 everyday, no more MacOS, Windows or Linux, but to answer your question...

"No Future" for AmigaOS

but a lot of fun as long as we are enough crazy to waste our time (a lot of time) on this hobbyist system.

@Elwood

I think the question is moot. The only answer to this good computer platform is to support it and keep going. We don't have to reach a particular milestone to achieve success. Staying constant, true, and progressing is our success.

@Elwood

As ChrisH says, the very using of AmigaOS is a kind of support already. You may think that people who merely view websites, play media or in any other way use software don't help, but this is wrong. By using software they find bugs, come up with ideas and feature requests - and we programmers implement them, time permitting. This helps the platform move forward, among other things.

We do spend time on AmigaOS, just using it, being curious about what is coming up via Amiupdate, downloading stuff from OS4Depot, asking questions to developers, pointing them to 68k sources on Aminet that might be usefull, and giving them moral support, thanking them for their efforts.

I do use my Amigas almost entirely for all i want to do. I am retired, but that does not mean you lose interest in society, communicating with non-Amiga hobby-ists, being active on forums or maillists, etc.
BTW i am not a gamer at all, and still having more fun with my Amiga than any other hobby.

If i can suggest just one thing to enhance the chances that we don't lose our girlfriend too early: let's remain creative and help others to be creative.
For example; make it easy for would-be developers to start as a "one-project" maintainer of an existing open-source software.

@GarbageOut
Quote:
Because OS4 is so different than Linux so Gallium (as an example) can't be ported in a few months and because there are not hundreds developers working on it.

@ChrisH + Trixie
Valid points. Users are part of the equation for sure.

@JosDuchIt
Quote:
This is my option #2 "Action".

Let's all move our "bottom" and move as fast as we can to build the future of our OS.

This gives me the opportunity to bring again the following list of what all Amigans can and should do:

1. Donate money if you like a program. Even a few $ is appreciated.
2. Give feedback to developers by email.
3. Comment the program when you download it. A lot of people just download it and doesn't even say thank you or talk about errors/problems. You must not stay silent. It's important!
4. Help improving the content of OS4depot, adding screenshots of new/old programs. It helps new people that come across a software.
5. Email developers and ask if you can betatest their programs.
6. Ask developers in a nice way if they could create a new program you suggest.
7. Keep on talking/write about AmigaOS at your job, blog, facebook, G+ etc.
8. Write documentations, tutorials. It helps many users.
9. Help developers localize their software.
10. Help Amigans on websites. The more we are organised and helpful towards other users, the more we are stronger.
11. Organise Amiga meetings in your area. People need to share ideas. Doing so they will propagate the Amiga spirit in the future. The stronger we feel the stronger we are.

@Elwood

Good list!

Let me add one I have personally had lots of great times with:

12. Make an effort to visit Amiga events wherever and whenever you can. See if you can't e.g. combine a quick weekend getaway to another city with visiting such an event. Bring the missus and let her loose downtown while you spend time with Amigas/Amigans - that always increases the WAF .

Even though we're all getting used to communicating online, occasional real life encounters can help a lot to understand each other and also make ideas surface that you would never have thought about discussing until you met IRL.

(My wife and I are going to Gothenburg, Sweden for AmiGBG 2014 in ten days; hope to see many Amigans there!)

Best regards,

Niels

@Elwood

Quote:
Please do! Feedback and communication can be a highly motivating factor for the developer.

Quote:
Absolutely. There's nothing worse than silence after a release; this only makes the developer ask, "Why do I bother at all?", and quit the ring.

Quote:
Speaking of Amiga meetings: I'd personally never go to a local Amiga party to meet the four ageing geeks there; bigger meetings of the AmiWest kind (with Hyperion/OS dev team attendance and seminars/presentations) would be much more meaningful and worthwhile. I think we should strive for an annual European Amiga get-together held at a convenient location everyone can easily fly to (such as London, Paris or Rome). Not Bologna, sorry

@trixie

London, Paris or Roma are really expensive places

Nonetheless, it's indeed true that gatering on a regular basis motivates us to keep the party going

The last one we attended was the Amigateries, organized by Huno (and the ClubEvolution 4) near Dijon in France.

There were Corto, Huno, Abalaban, Ölrick, Crisot and Corto for the French developpers. There was also the PaulaPowered, a French music group still using their amiga 1200 with Octamed.

And there was another music group for the night and many amigans danced during the event.

Relec did also attend the event and brought with us a really good "Raclette" recipe He even brought an all new AmigaONE X1000 bought by one of the attendees.

Guibrush also brought the only one AmigaOne 1200.

For the pictures : http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/Amigateries2014/

So, yes, meet other Amigans, you'll see how motivation comes back !

@K-L

Quote:
They are expensive to live in - not stay in for two or three days! Their airports charge lower fees due to high tourist demand so flights are cheaper, and connections are excellent. And even in London you can get a bed for 15 pounds or less. Travelling to a provincial city can actually be much more expensive.

@K-L

thanks for sharing the pictures. Looks like the event was a lot of fun! It would be great to put some names to some of the faces in the photos!

I was particularly interested in the photos of the AmigaOne 1200 - I guess it would have been a lot of work to do that build!



Catcha,
Epsilon

Seeing as this conversation is still going,

Hi GarbageOut,

Quote:

You're funny.

Quote:

Errrr, yeeeaaahhhh.

And where EXACTLY can I contact microsoft and tell them that I DO NOT WANT....

1) The registry (I want to move a program (WHEN/WHERE)EVER I CHOOSE!)
2) An "os" composed of 84,000+ files
3) An "os" that takes 2 minutes to boot up on a quad core 3.4 GHz desktop CPU with 32 Gigs of RAM off of one SSD drive connected to a 3 Gbits per second channel with all power saver options OFF. (It would need to be 13.6 GHz to boot in under 30 seconds! I Wonder how many Amiga 3.1's can be booted with that much computing power in 10 seconds?)
3) A "search" option that THEY MADE that DOES NOT WORK!!!! It is HARD TO USE and LOCKS UP, and that is on BOTH xp and win-dos 7!
4) Don't WANT multi-user
5) I have very often been subjected to "can't put file here".
6) I WANT A RAM DRIVE!!!!!!
7) I WANT INSTANT OFF!!!!!
8) Is it TOO MUCH TO ASK when a program is removed by you, you know, you don't need third party software, to, you know, REMOVE IT!!!!!
9) I WANT A RAD:!!!!!!! (Does bill gates EVEN HAVE AN INKLING OF A CLUE TO what that is???)
10) EVERY thing that (and I stress->)"sort of works" is laid to waste by a dozen things that DO NOT WORK.
11) Where exactly do I complain about a "so called 'os' " that takes 12+, yes, OVER TWELVE hours to reinstall itself on a BRAND NEW FROM THE STORE computer that was manufactured in August 2013!!!! I personally observed this. I needed to re-install his "os" (win8, maybe 8.1, don't know, don't care) after he got conduit tool bar on there and I couldn't just erase the files, and I saw that there was like 3 pages of instructions to get rid of it so I didn't do them. AND THEN, I had to download and install the updates AGAIN on my 100 megabit internet connection.... still took over an hour and a half, and 3 or 4 reboots. Oh the FUN WE HAD! Would make for a GREAT 15 hour infomercial that extols the GREATNESS of their GREAT "os". 15 hours of a guy watching a screen displaying the progress bar of system re-installation.
13) Should being able to compile a BASIC program REALLY NEED 500+ Megabytes of a coding language to do so?
14) I could go on, and on, and on,....

Quote:

I can clearly see what you're saying with that remark, as you choose to compare a $3,500 computer that has a development budget of $700,000 with a $350 computer at retail (BARRING CLOSE-OUT CLEARANCE sales!!!!) with 5,000,000+ coders, and over a BILLION MAN YEARS of programming, and there are TWO competing BEHEMOTHS, one of which ON IT'S OWN is worth OVER half a TRILLION dollar$$$$!!!


Your powers of observation, truly a sight to behold. (You'd make a great doctor.)


Oh and, don't think of yourself as presenting a "devil's advocate" case here as windows has NO LEG TO STAND ON at just how ATROCIOUS AND LOATHSOME A JOKE that it is, as it TRIES to represent itself as a quote *operating system* unquote. It's pathetic and wretchedness level buries the needle on ANY METER you can measure with.

I DESPISE WINDOWS**!


** All versions

@Atheist

The last system build I did from "clean slate" was a minimum 24 hours (only 45minutes spent actually building the machine into a workable state from parts) with 23 of those hours spent "rushing" the installation of drivers and updates along with mandatory downloads of patches.

The graphics driver disk which came with the graphics card actively toasted the first Installation and required that I re-run the Installation from scratch (completely reformatting to be able to get anything re-installed).

I was lucky as hell the graphics drivers were the first and only thing I had installed after the base DVD of materials had been decompressed and installed.

I have point blank refused to do more than a "base install" for any rush builds since that one (and I still had to wipe and replace the machine one time after that due to the idiot who purchased that system trying to actively install drivers for anything and everything graphics related.

(He was installing Intel GMA and Nvidia CUDA drivers alongside ATI Radeon HD Catalyst drivers... for an S3 chipset old machine seperate from the machine I built.)

so I can understand how that OS can be horrid and despised.

I personally think datacenters should switch to non-Microsoft kit and dump everything Microsoft related.

"1. Donate money if you like a program. Even a few $ is appreciated.
2. Give feedback to developers by email.
3. Comment the program when you download it. A lot of people just download it and doesn't even say thank you or talk about errors/problems. You must not stay silent. It's important!"

Right, why waste time for nothing ? Fun is not always enough.

Au revoir à tous.

@trixie

Quote:Have you tried it?

I've been to a number of "local" events in several parts of Europe (see http://nbache.dk/), and they have all had more than "four ageing geeks" present. (BTW, think about this: If you go and meet the four ageing geeks, you will increase the attendance by 25%! )

Anyway, I've always had a great time at those more local events, often with an incredibly friendly reception by the locals, but of course they are different than the big shows with lots of vendors present etc. Both types have their place, and I'd encourage visiting both.

Best regards,

Niels