The AmigaOS lives on! It's up to 4.1 now. But is there any point today?
I am told it's lovely to use. Sadly, it only runs on obscure PowerPC-based kit that costs a couple of thousand pounds and can be out-performed by
a £300 PC.
AmigaOS's owners -- Hyperion, I believe -- chose the wrong platform.
On a Raspberry Pi or something, it would be great. On obscure expensive PowerPC kit, no.
Also, saying that, I got my first Amiga in the early 2000s. If I'd had one 15y earlier, I'd probably have loved it, but I bought a 2nd hand
Archimedes instead (and still think it was the right choice for a non-gamer and dabbler in programming).
A few years ago, with a LOT of work using 3 OSes and 3rd-party disk-management tools, I managed to coax MorphOS onto my Mac mini G4.
Dear hypothetical gods, that was a hard install.
It's... well, I mean, it's fairly fast, but... no Wifi? No Bluetooth?
And the desktop. It got hit hard with the ugly stick. I mean, OK, it's not as bad as KDE, but... ick.
Learning AmigaOS when you already know more modern OSes -- OS X, Linux, gods help us, even Windows -- well, the Amiga seems pretty
weird, and often for no good reason. E.g. a graphical file manager, but not all files have icons. They're not hidden, they just don't have
icons, so if you want to see them, you have to do a second show-all operation. And the dependence on RAMdisks, which are a historical curiosity now. And the needing to right-click to show the menu-bar when it's on a screen edge.
A lot of pointless arcana, just so Apple didn't sue, AFAICT.
I understand the love if one loved it back then. But now? Yeeeeeeaaaaaah, not so much.
Not that I'm proclaiming RISC OS to be the business now. I like it, but it's weird too. But AmigaOS does seem a bit primitive now. OTOH, if they sorted out multiprocessor support and memory protection and it ran on cheap ARM kit, then yeah, I'd be interested.
a £300 PC.
AmigaOS's owners -- Hyperion, I believe -- chose the wrong platform.
On a Raspberry Pi or something, it would be great. On obscure expensive PowerPC kit, no.
Also, saying that, I got my first Amiga in the early 2000s. If I'd had one 15y earlier, I'd probably have loved it, but I bought a 2nd hand
Archimedes instead (and still think it was the right choice for a non-gamer and dabbler in programming).
A few years ago, with a LOT of work using 3 OSes and 3rd-party disk-management tools, I managed to coax MorphOS onto my Mac mini G4.
Dear hypothetical gods, that was a hard install.
It's... well, I mean, it's fairly fast, but... no Wifi? No Bluetooth?
And the desktop. It got hit hard with the ugly stick. I mean, OK, it's not as bad as KDE, but... ick.
Learning AmigaOS when you already know more modern OSes -- OS X, Linux, gods help us, even Windows -- well, the Amiga seems pretty
weird, and often for no good reason. E.g. a graphical file manager, but not all files have icons. They're not hidden, they just don't have
icons, so if you want to see them, you have to do a second show-all operation. And the dependence on RAMdisks, which are a historical curiosity now. And the needing to right-click to show the menu-bar when it's on a screen edge.
A lot of pointless arcana, just so Apple didn't sue, AFAICT.
I understand the love if one loved it back then. But now? Yeeeeeeaaaaaah, not so much.
Not that I'm proclaiming RISC OS to be the business now. I like it, but it's weird too. But AmigaOS does seem a bit primitive now. OTOH, if they sorted out multiprocessor support and memory protection and it ran on cheap ARM kit, then yeah, I'd be interested.