Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Amiga

New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS 343

Posted by timothy from the the-few-the-insane-amiga-fanatics dept.
Ethan writes: "A developer on the Yahoo Amiga One mailing list has successfully installed MacOS 9.2 using Mac On Linux. And it seems that adding OS X support is on the to-do horizon for the MOL developers. I think that it will be interesting to see the people at Apple lose some sleep now that a low cost, fast, off the shelf solution exists to run Mac OS, without any Apple hardware. If it doesn't do anything else, at least it will give the people buying the new Amiga One G3 PPC board an existing software base." Mind you, I've never even seen an Amiga One, but it would be a pretty silly thing to make up ;) Update: 07/05 07:03 GMT by T : Mike Bouma piped up with a link to a page featuring the same hardware, in this case running Debian, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS More

New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS

Comments Filter:
  • Apple has basically abandoned everything pre-OS X, and Steve Jobs has already declared Classic(OSX) dead.
  • i can't help but wonder how many nasty-grams apple is gonna send out over this one...

  • Pretty neat, but..... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by G3ek ( 589803 )
    OS X is the perfect marriage between a simple, intuitive, aesthetically marvelous end user interface and the power, stability, and hardcore good geekness of UNIX. Furthermore, the OS is designed to run almost absolutely flawlessly on Apple hardware. So what do you get? You get a Mac, the best computer on the planet, period. Someone figured out how to put Mac OS 9.2 on something else....I think that's really cool, and OS X would be cool too....This will let others get a taste of what an awesome OS it is and further propel them to want the real thing. HAHA, the Mac will eventually dominate the planet as planned! It's almost too easy..... ps. my first post!
    • It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that there are really people like this out there.

      • What's really sad is I haven't given up on slasdot yet. Really should go just read the headlines and stop reading the articles-- to many bigoted idiots such as yourself.

        You assume that "slashdot" means "geeks" and "geeks" mean "higher than average intelligence" but really the Linux community seems to really be AOL type people who are too cheap to pay for software--- rather than geeks who actually *write* software.

        But slashdot makes no distinction.
    • "the Mac will eventually dominate the planet as planned!"
      So we switch from having Microsoft dominating the software to having Apple dominating the software AND the hardware? Sounds like a step backwards to me. Sorry I have no intrest in placing Steve Jobs in a stronger postion than Bill Gates is in today.
      • right on - I'll only support Apple over M$ until the day that they are equal, and then they can fuck off and look after themselves. I think if Apple ever get back more than 20% of the market they'll turn back into the uncompetitive, unresponsive, idle, arrogant fuckers that REALLY want to be. It's only the evil empire that keeps the bastards honest. Like a lot of highly talented people, Apple is FUCKING lazy, they only show their best with a gun at their balls.
    • First up, MacOS hasn't needed any Apple hardware i.e. Apple ROMs for a long time, probably since 8.x

      MOL runs OS 9.2 directly on the hardware, using the PPC's virtualisation features, something the x86 lacks completely, i believe, so PPC apps that do not rely on proprietary Apple hardware (not OS X, obviously) will run at full-speed in the MOL environment, unlike x86-oriented solutions like VMware, where the software has to jump through hoops to give the hosted apps access to the CPU.

      And, don't kid yourself. On anything but a top-of-the-line G4 machine, OS X is sluggish. I have a G4 TiBook and also used a 700Mhz G4 Tower, and neither of these machines provided acceptable GUI speed for me. A 600Mhz G3 Ibook is a joke (granted this was the 'from the factory' config, so more RAM would be necessary).

      I hear people say they find performance acceptable on these machines.. well, you must enjoy your web browsers not being able to scroll smoothly and waiting minutes for apps to start up, but i sure don't.

      Shit, my IIfx running AU/X offers the same level of integration between MacOS and UNIX as OS/X, Apple have been sitting round with their thumb up their ass for the last ten or fifteen years.

      Maybe it's just a pointless, overengineered GUI layer, but it still feels damn slow watching that little spinning beachball spin all the time.

      Fire up OS 9.2 on the same machine and the speed difference is amazing.

      Things happen in 'realtime' instead of at some point in the future after the annoying 'animation effect' has run.

      What is really frustrating is that you can't turn the extraneous shit off. Even with TinkerTool, you can't disable all the eye-candy, and even when you do turn everything TinkerTool controls off, the GUI isn't much faster.

      My TiBook is pretty much an expensive X-Terminal that continues to run an Apple OS only to support Photoshop.

      One day, Adobe will port Photoshop to UNIX, or someone else will step up to the plate with a decent Linux image editor, and my days running OS X will be over.

      Obviously, some people like OS X and think it is really neat, but for me it just gets in the way and i'm hanging out for a viable alternative to it.

      • I hear people say they find performance acceptable on these machines.. well, you must enjoy your web browsers not being able to scroll smoothly and waiting minutes for apps to start up, but i sure don't.

        I don't have this problem, and I'm running on a G4/466 with a gig of RAM. You aren't using UFS are you? My web browser (Mozilla and IE 5.2.1) can scroll faster than I can see, and apps launch in a few bounces. Jaguar (10.2) is supposed to be MUCH faster anyway.

        One day, Adobe will port Photoshop to UNIX

        Adobe has had a UNIX version of Photoshop for a long time... well for IRIX anyway. I used to use it on a SGI Indy... It sucked. It was way faster on a 9500

  • Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ducasi ( 106725 )
    How much would one of these machines cost to put together and how does it compare to the current generation of Macs?

    There's not many Macs still using the G3, but the G3 iMac is very cheap and doesn't require any hacks to get Mac OS and Mac OS X to run!

    I think it's cool that this is happening - it's always been clear to me that with Darwin being open it will only be a matter of time before Mac OS X is running on non-Apple hardware - but I don't think Steve Jobs will be shaking in his boots just yet.

  • This isn't quite "running MacOS" (Score:4, Informative)

    by NeoOokami ( 528323 ) <neowolfNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 05, 2002 @02:46AM (#3825841) Homepage
    MacOnLinux basically loads OS 9 in a simulator. And that's what he got working, not OS 9 itself. Yes he's able to use most (non hardware specific) MacOS apps, but he did NOT get MacOS to boot, and without cracking Apple's bios, that's not gonna happen. He provided proper hardware and then made a small emulation field, it doesn't look like he accomplished anything new there at all.

  • Guys (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sleeper ( 7713 )
    I have huge respect for Amiga. But I have to tell that I've been hearing about Amiga comming back many times in the past five or so years (including here). And I have yet to see this actually happenning.

    • Re:Guys (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kamel Jockey ( 409856 )

      And I have yet to see this actually happenning.

      It just needs to be predicted on The Simpsons! Remember the episode in which Bart sold his soul to Milhouse, who then sold it to Comic Book Guy in exchange for Alf pogs? That was a few years back, and of course Milhouse told Bart (about Alf) "He's coming back, you know!" And now he is back! So write to Fox, et al. and have them feature this, we'll have a tangible product in no time!

  • Misleading Headline (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Snoopy77 ( 229731 )
    Talk about a sensational headline. Yes it is Amiga hardware, and yes an _old_ version of Mac OS runs on it but the major part is the fact that he is running Yellow Dog linux on his box and using MOL to create a sort of Mac OS virtual machine.

    Yes it is a neat breakthrough but let's not act like he split the atom.

  • Screenshots of Debian running on AmigaOne (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mike Bouma ( 85252 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @03:07AM (#3825912) Homepage
    Here [samfundet.no] you can see some screenshots of Debian, Mozilla 1.0 and OpenOffice 1.0 running on the AmigaOne. If you would like to support the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 then you should read Bill McEwen latest exec update [amiga.com].
    • That's great and all (notice that timothy posted your link in the story writeup), but what about pictures of the hardware? Or of an actual amiga OS running something that we'd not normally see in our "oh so lacking" mainstream OSes.

      Sometimes I think that the Amigo is an absurd liberal myth.

  • AmigaOne isn't a particular machine, it's a SPEC!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by cgadd ( 65348 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @03:23AM (#3825959)
    From the amiga website(www.amiga.com),

    "We completed the AmigaOne specification three months ago, and dubbed it the "Zico". It is a specification and not a product because Amiga is a software company, not a hardware manufacturer. The ability of the Amiga DE to host itself on multiple hardware and operating system platforms frees us from hardware dependency and gives our partners and our customers the freedom to chose the hardware that best suits their needs and tastes."

  • I thought that the new Amiga hardware had been made CHRP compliant and that the development team had been looking to the Mac for inspiration.

    If I'm right then this story is no more than "Man runs an application of Yellow Dog Linux" - it's really no more exciting than me getting YDL running on my iBook.

    MOL developers themselves have been striving for Mac OS X support anyway - it's not as if they've started doing this just becausee the Amiga One hardware can run it.

    Also the 600Mhz G3 Amiga One board from a European vendor is 600(euros) with processor, no case, memory, video, sound, monitor, mouse, keyboard.

    A 600Mhz G3 iMac - the closest system - is around 1000. So Amiga One hardware is hardly cheap. I can pick a higher spec Intel/AMD motherboard and processor combo up for half thay price.

  • Non-Apple "Macs" and other thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)

    by i1984 ( 530580 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:01AM (#3826071)
    I couldn't view the site since my browser rejects Yahoo's cookies.

    So without having read the article, I'll comment as best I can...

    The first thing that comes to mind is that this is not the first time an Apple unauthorized computer has natively run the Mac OS. I can think of a few other examples.

    In the early days of the Macintosh there were machines with Apple boards repackaged in to different form factors, but this was still arguably Apple hardware.

    Later, Outbound notebook computers came out that used their own board designs, but were based off scavenged Apple ROMs -- usually from compact Macs. They were nice machines in their day: they had trackbars (which are hard to explain unless you've actually seen one), fast processors, and good B/W screens. Of course, these were still sort of using Apple parts thanks to the ROMs.

    Around the time of Outbound's demise (BTW, Outbound's death boiled down to being priced out of the market by Apple's PowerBook line), an impressive effort was completed to reverse engineer the Mac's ROM from published APIs. The machine this ROM landed in was a Mac/PC hybrid that was theoretically untouchable by Apple's legal department. I don't know what ever happened to this thing, but the fact that it wouldn't run Pagemaker could well have doomed it -- even without help from Apple's lawyers!

    After that machine faded and vanished in to nothing, Apple licensed cloning. Around the same time we started seeing demos of the PReP and CHRP boards. These could have run the Mac OS, along with several other operating systems, but to my knowledge no Mac compatible boxes were ever released (If someone else knows of some, please post!).

    Now Apple's machines use open firmware in place of big ROMs, so any attempt to get the Mac OS running on other hardware might be simpler, but the OF could still be a tricky river for an intrepid cloner to navigate. I don't know much about OF myself, nor Apple's implementation and use of it on their machines, but if you would like to speculate on this subject please do!

    In regards to the motherboard in question, there are a few things to consider:

    a) To the extent the cost of equipment is dependent upon volume, this may not be a high enough volume product to make it as a "mass market" board.

    b) The advance here might be that you can run PowerPC Mac OS apps on non-Apple hardware, which (as Slashdot story pointed out) could be a convenient extra feature for a few users of this board. It is of course fairly common to emulate a 68K Mac. Aqua and the rest of OS X would be bigger advance, but that doesn't sound like an advance that has happened yet...

    c) To get OS X running, you may still have a decidedly different task (remember I didn't read the article; see above).

    d) Unless you use ROMs, etc., that were illegally copied, Apple Legal probably doesn't have much to say against this. They may be annoyed, but probably not scared...up until OS X and Aqua will run on it.

    e) This isn't a mass market solution for running OS 9: You still need to get one of these machines, get Linux up and running, get a Mac ROM, install the compatibility environment, and only then do you get to use OS 9. That's a pretty geeky sequence, but the geeks don't seem to be the ones who want to run OS 9! Of course, once Aqua hits this hardware...

    f) It sounds like this is a G3 board (note: I still haven't read the article). This will limit its appeal; a lot of folks might be looking for a G4 based machine so this might not be the ideal option for them. Of course, the G3 and G4 perform comparably per MHz in non-Altivec operations. OS X, however, on G3 machines seems rather pokey.

    In short, this is pretty cool but the advance to date doesn't by itself threaten Apple; loss of control of hardware that could run OS X's UI would threaten Apple. Also don't forget that there are Mac emulators for PCs and Apple hasn't successfully come down on them. And yes, I know that's different, they're only 68K emulators, and they can be slow, etc., but I still think this doesn't yet threaten Apple. For the time being it's simply another neat thing you can do with a neat 3rd party niche board. I'll keep an eye on developments.

    Finally, I would like to see commodity G4 based boards that could be coaxed to run OS X. That would be killer. Doubtless Apple would agree...

    • Apple licensed cloning. Around the same time we started seeing demos of the PReP and CHRP boards. These could have run the Mac OS, along with several other operating systems, but to my knowledge no Mac compatible boxes were ever released

      Quite a few actually.

      the OF could still be a tricky river for an intrepid cloner to navigate

      OpenFirmware is oddly enough an open standard. IEEE reference materals and all. ou cna even buy OF implmentations for serveral CPUs from several places...and given that it is mosly a big chunk o FORTH code, it isn't that hard to write, and is normally small. This is not a big problem.

      To the extent the cost of equipment is dependent upon volume, this may not be a high enough volume product to make it as a "mass market" board

      That's for sure. This Amiga MB is only about $200 cheaper from buying a CRT iMac with roughly the same specs, and that would come with a (funky) case, power supply, speakers, cables, memory, a hard drive, a CD-RW, a small but high quality monitor, and product support.

      them. Of course, the G3 and G4 perform comparably per MHz in non-Altivec operations

      Well that depends on the G3, and Apple isn't exactly picking G3 machines with the biggest cache and all now, while they are selecting at least some of their G4's with an eye towards speed.

      OS X, however, on G3 machines seems rather pokey.

      OS X tends to use AltiVec in way more places. Including any of the software rendering, which OS X currently does more of then OS9 because of alpha composing and the like (10.2 has been promised to use the 3D accel pipeline to speed up what you would think of as 2D ops...at least for some video cards). The end result is more OS X stuff is AltiVec stuff.

      Finally, I would like to see commodity G4 based boards that could be coaxed to run OS X.

      It is easy to get everything but the graphics to work (and maybe audio). For the video you basically need to use the exact same graphics card Apple does. That makes life painful. I think it also breaks the EULA (don't know if it is enforcable) where Apple only gives you the right to run (most of) their software on their hardware. Clearly if they were MS that would be unenforcable, but they aren't. With 5% or less of the market, they can do all the forced product bundling they want.

  • Ahhh... reminds me of Shapeshifter (Score:3, Funny)

    by Little Dave ( 196090 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:13AM (#3826107) Homepage
    This takes me back to when I was young and full of piss and vinegar. Had myself a distressingly modified A1200 in a tower case with more processing power and RAM than an Amiga was meant to hold - not to mention a big fat fan tied to the gfx card that somehow caused the case to vibrate like a washing machine. That was when computing was done by real men - I sustained numerous minor fleshwounds and a deep fear of hacksaws when I shoehorned that pesky motherboard into my tower case! I still maintain to this day that a computer isn't truely yours till you've bled on the motherboard and smelled the sweet sweet aroma of silicon and burning blood...

    One of the more attractive features of this painful experience, apart from the surge of testosterone, was that the bitch could run Shapeshifter, a software Mac emu that was better* than the real thing! I used to spend more time in SS than in AmigaOS, mostly to play with Civ 2, but also because of the joy that the "Eep!" sound effect brought to my traumatised mind. Ahhh.

    Happy days...

    * - by "better" I mean "slower, unless viewed through the eyes of an advocate, in which case I mean "faster".

  • The point of the OLD Amiga (Score:3, Insightful)

    by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:17AM (#3826118) Homepage Journal
    Surely the point of the old amiga was that it was graphically amazing for its time and it was available at supermarkets before you could get PCs in the high street?

    I had an ST and an Amiga - I got the ST first, so using the Amiga always felt a little unfaithful! But wow, what a machine.

    To have the same impact today I think you'd have to have something that made the iMac look ugly and blew away a hefty desktop PC for $300 - in a box - in the supermarket - next to the gamecube.
    • The new Amiga will use mainstream graphics chips like the Matrox Parhelia or ATi Radeon chips.

      At the time when the Amiga was released there were no good graphics solutions available. So Amiga could finally show the world what multimedia computing was like.

      Nowadays mainstream graphic chips are good enough. There are several big graphics companies all spending millions of dollars on Graphic chip development. So today it is best to use of the shelf components and concetrate on the multimedia OS.

      Do note however that many Amiga users have upgraded their machines with graphic boards and sound cards based on mainstream hardware chips. (There are even Zorro/PCI bridges available to allow usage of standard mainstream hardware) So actually this isn`t something entirely new.
    • To have the same impact today I think you'd have to have something that made the iMac look ugly and blew away a hefty desktop PC for $300

      Um....the Amiga never looked like an indrustrial design masterpiece. From the outside it looked a lot like the other computers of it's era. A more or less rectangler box, muted colors, and some floppy drive slots. Or at least the A1000 and A2000 didn't look special.

      What was special last time around was the hardware and the software. This time around the hardware can't be special, so it's the software or bust.

      • This time around the hardware can't be special

        If the hardware cant be special then why bother! You can't polish a turd! And writing a new OS for standard PC hardware can only go so far. The Hardware HAS to shine!

        But yes, we have to identify how to differentiate the Amiga from the PC - and I'm pretty sure that to have a mass appeal the Amiga should LOOK better than anything else on the market. Get that right, let it fit into the home, and you're winning from the kick off.

  • Something I've wondered about (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:44AM (#3826190)
    If running OSX on a wintel box suddenly became very easy (and ignoring licence issues), would Linux on the desktop suddenly look rather doomed?

    I've wondered about this and come to the conclusion that ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot and again I state for those people that didn't notice the first time ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot that you'd find that people would be more willing (and likely) to move to OSX because

    • Nice interface brought to you by the people that know how to do interface design properly
    • An excellent selection of software (iTunes, iPhoto etc. etc.)
    • Easy to use for the point-and-click users, no need to go hitting the command line, but power users can if they want
    • Office X. Enough said.
    • Stability

    (I'm definately not saying the Linux doesn't have some of the above, but the steeper learning curve and not as good interface wouldn't go in Linux's favour)

    Of course, we know it wont happen, there are far to many issues that would prevent it from happening. But, if OSX could run on Wintel boxes , would Linux ever see a look in if joe public and general corporations decide to leave Windows?

    • Re:Something I've wondered about (Score:5, Interesting)

      by David Kennedy ( 128669 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:53AM (#3826217) Homepage
      I wish I was moderating this - I wonder the same.

      The reason that I wonder the same is that I, as a seasoned software developer and looong time Unix user, recently bought a Mac as my home platform. Everyone assumed I'd build a PC and slap Linux on there. I assumed the same until the 11th hour and then bought a Mac. It's pretty, easy to use, required me to learn nothing about the hardware (I'm a software person through and through) and yet I can run all my favourite apps and there's plenty of already ported Unix/Linux apps, and converting the rest is no more challenging than getting them to build on, say, an older HP or similar.

      I'd very much like to have been able to get my folks a Mac rather than their troublesome Windows box.

      Mac OS X on commodity priced hardware would be VERY attractive in the marketplace.
      • Out of idle curiosity what Windows-oriented software can't your parents do without? Is it Intuit's QuickBooks? (There's a version sold for the Mac but it's a couple of generations behind the Windows versions?)
    • You have an excellent point. Mac OSX represnets what Linux needs to become in order to become a true competetor to Windows on the desktop, and for precisely the reasons that you mention. Mandrake comes a long way, but lacks some of the apps that add sizzle.

      All of the cusomizability of Linux tends to diminish the ease of use for non-geek users.

      We'll get there at some point, but we're still a long way off.

    • If running OSX on a wintel box suddenly became very easy (and ignoring licence issues), would Linux on the desktop suddenly look rather doomed?

      As opposed to the "future's so bright I gotta wear shades" prospect that desktop Linux is sporting now???

      I was an Amiga user, and finally went PC when I realized I could use NeXSTEP [pair.com] on PC boxes, and I bought a high end 486 (at the time) to run it. Spent $4,500 on the machine. After 9 months I had to wipe NeXTSTEP and install Windows 3.1 as I needed the desktop apps. It was a sad day. I tried 4-5x over the next few years to run Linux exclusively (desktop use), but was forced to go back to Windows 95 becuase I simply needed the desktop apps Windows offered. I finally saw Jobs return to Apple and saw the plan for NeXTSTEP to merge with some MacOS pieces and become OS X. I bought a Mac, a Blue-and-White G3 400 [blakespot.com], in Jan '99. I jumped the gun a bit becuase OS X did not really get to rolling until March/April '01. But I had fun with the hardware while I waited (and noted OS 9's decent speed but terrible stability, etc.) Summer '01 I went out and purchased a dual processor G4 800 [blakespot.com] upon which to run OS X like a beast. I have never been happier with an OS.

      Do you know how much $$ (hardware, purchase of NeXTSTEP) and time (installing Linux 5x over the years, only to uninstall and reinstall Windows) I spent trying to get a UNIX solution on the desktop that worked? It became a hobby in and of itself, the quest for desktop UNIX. But the apps always kept me away.

      As I type this, I sit downstairs, away from my "machine room," using my new iBook 700. I am typing this on IE 5 (which now uses Apple's Quartz text smoothing for so-nice aa fonts) connected to the net via my AirPort base station (WiFi), I have Silverado on DVD playing in a small window, and have Photoshop 7 running in the background because I've been doing some color correction on some digicam images I've imported, via USB, into iPhoto, Apple's free photo management package. I could not be doing these things on the Linux platform. Nor any other UNIX platform. OS X has brought together the best desktop interface I have encountered, the most stable UNIX variant that I have encountered, mainstream application support that leaves the user wanting of nothing, and a company behind it all that has a clear and compelling vision and direction.

      So...would Linux be doomed on the desktop if OS X became available for the PC? Well, you'll have to make that call. It won't happen becuase Apple's main source of revenue is hardware sales and also they currently are able to hold up OS X to the crowds with the stability and ease that only comes from a company controlling both the hardware and the software. Having run NeXTSTEP both on that old PC back in the day (where motherboards / chipsets / CPU's come from one of many vendors) and on my NeXT machine [blakespot.com], I can tell you that such dead solid stability comes only from having just that kind of control over both ends of the stick. But OS X is available for Macs--and looking at what one walks away with when they take the plunge into the current world that Apple has built, it seems that the appeal of "free" Linux and the ability to run on super-economy hardware becomes somewhat less mighty....

      Oh....and did I need a new laptop when I already have a DP G4 800 in-house? No. I simply am so enamored of OS X that I wanted to be able to take it with me whenever I like. I've had a few engrossing and satisfying relationships with OS's in the past (AmigaDOS in the 80's, etc.) but nothing like this. This is just...right.

      blakespot
      • . I am typing this on IE 5 (which now uses Apple's Quartz text smoothing for so-nice aa fonts) connected to the net via my AirPort base station (WiFi), I have Silverado on DVD playing in a small window, and have Photoshop 7 running in the background because I've been doing some color correction on some digicam images I've imported, via USB, into iPhoto, Apple's free photo management package. I could not be doing these things on the Linux platform. Nor any other UNIX platform. OS X has brought together the best desktop interface I have encountered, the most stable UNIX variant that I have encountered, mainstream application support that leaves the user wanting of nothing, and a company behind it all that has a clear and compelling vision and direction.

        As I type this reply on my Toshiba 200MMX laptop in Galeon 1.2.something or another (don't remember what fonts I am using -- but they are not to bad). I am sitting on the couch using some wireless lan card from CISCO that cost about 1/10 what an airport would (the hub is in the basement somewhere). I have "The Road Warrior" playing on the TV next to the couch. I am importing pictures from my cameras Compact Flash card connected to my PCMCIA slot and rotating the ones taken sideways using Gimp 1.something or another -- as soon as I am done transfering the pictures off the CF card -- I am going to delete them and copy over 256 Megs of MP3 files to play on my Nex II portable. (Software cost for this whole setup was $0)

        I read this article and I don't buy the "Linux is useless on the Desktop" crap. There is always alternatives -- the only caveot is to be careful when you buy your hardware.

        • You really bought a Cisco WiFi card for $10? From a dot-com auction? Or are you saying you really can get a $10 WiFi card off the market? I haven't seen anything like this at Compusa.

          1/10th of $99, is $9.90. I'm wondering if this wasn't yet another of the exagerations PC people make about Mac hardware being expensive eg "My Xbox has better graphics and was only $200!"
          • Believe it or not they had a WAP with 4 CISCO cards "taped" to the package...On the closeout rack at the local home center for $99.00. I figured about 60 for the WAP and $10 each for the cards.
    • What a silly thing to say, but it's the kind of thing that a weenie that uses Windows by choice [slashdot.org] might think. "Linux on the desktop" whatever that is, won't be destroyed by any kind of comercial software. Indeed, I expect some comercial concern to step up and make a fine business out of free software. It may be a Linux distro, BSD, or even the HURD, but it will be free and have a heavy contribution from GNU. Closed comercial software, regardless of short lived hardware advantages, simply can not keep up with the inovation and flexibility of free software, and the company that owns it will always do something stupid in the end to furfill their "duty to the shareholders." If Debian playing movies on an Amiga [samfundet.no] is not enough to convince you of free software's invincibility, you must be a troll.

      Woops, you are a troll. Visit Mr. Silver saying:
      Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]
      you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]
      spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]
      Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]
      Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org] Do we have a theme here? Every fifth post, Mr. Silver says something silly about Linux being hard to use, dead blah blah, some Windows thing is what you should use. Stick it, Mr Silver.


      • Unfortunately, other than the idea of Open Source and the Open Source methodology, the market is exclusively about making commodity software.

        Linux is a commodity operating system (Unix) running a commodity UI (windows ripoff). It is not the source of innovation.

        Making software that does what commercial software does and making it free is great-- but the software is all commodity- ideas that have been around for decades. I haven't seen any new applications "killer Apps" or not- that were really innovative starting on Linux.

        Linux *does* encourage innovation, though, because it drives the value of commodity software to zero. If Linux didn't exist, there would still be people charging $1,000 for an x86 Unix install, because they could get away with it. Now if they want to charge $1,000 to their customers, they'd better innovate some value for that money.

        Linux helps a lot on that front. And it also works to let companies like Apple opensource the commodity parts of their OS-- and spend their money working on the areas where they can be innovative.

        By the way-- while I disagree with what this Mr. Silver said, the only troll here is you. You attack him and do so personally, and probably unfairly-- You don't get to decide the position someone is taking and tell them that they don't believe what they are saying. That's the height of offensiveness.
      • What a silly thing to say, but it's the kind of thing that a weenie that uses Windows by choice [slashdot.org] might think

        Coo, someone who has spent the time looking through my postings. Wow, you're really putting some effort in it. So just to make you look stupid:

        Yes, I use Windows on the desktop. Big deal. I actually rather like Win2k (shock! horror! are people allowed to like Windows and read Slashdot?) apart from when it starts playing silly buggers, of course. All my mail and webspace is solely Linux, I develop using Perl, PHP and C (again under Linux). I do admit to fiddling about with a bit of VB, but thats mainly because I don't want to spend the time learning Visual C++.

        At home I have Windows 2k (general stuff), Mandrake 8.1 (development) and Win 95 (games). Again, no big deal. I pick the OS that serves my purpose best.

        Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]

        Score 4, Interesting
        Not quite, try reading the posting again. It talks about how there is a certain cost to software (even free) if you have to spend a large amount of time getting it working.

        you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]

        Score 2
        It's hard drive based. I would be concerned about running with one. Actually on Friday night I was in the pub with a work mate and he let me have a good shake of his iPod and it worked just great. Doesn't stop me being a little worried about an hour and a halves work of bouncing about (I run Marathons) and how it will affect a hard drive. In the end, I think i'm going to wait for the gigabeat and have a think again.

        spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]

        Score 4, Insightful
        It partly is. Let me give you a clue. People send spam because they want your business. If they get your business, then they will consider spam to be effective. As soon as they don't get your business, they won't consider it worthwhile. Why do you think that you get the "enlarge your penis" emails? (apart from that fact that it might be a hint from your girlfriend?). They don't just send those things out if they're not going to get some stupid people actually cough up money.

        Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]

        Score 4, Interesting
        Read the comment. From the article, it points out that Gater fires up adverts when people visit that page. Gator isn't PHYSICALLY interferring with the HTML, it's just doing something that make people assume its interferring.

        Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org]

        Score 2
        In no place does it say, Linux on the desktop is dead. I just said that it was hyped up rather too much and in the end was bound to fall short. Linux on the desktop will never be dead unless every program for it vanishes off the face of the planet.

        So, in short, you're an idiot and you can't read. And I have moderations of my points and insightful comments to my own comments to back me up. Looking at your last comments they tend to show either stupidity, trolling or blind faith without any facts to back it up. At least I have 50 karma.

        I know what the good, bad, pro's and con's are of free software and commercial software and I pick whatever software is right for my purposes. I don't follow blind faith, I sit down, evaluate and make conclusions.

        I can't believe i've spent 10 minutes pointing out the flaws in a trolling accusing me of trolling. I see the IQ of some posters is definately going down the pan.

        ps. Oh yes and thank you. By showing me Debian playing movies on an Amiga, you have taught me that an Amiga can play movies. I seriously doubt that in a board room meeting that sort of thing would convince CEO's and CTO's to use Linux.

        pps. Stick to the blind faith. You can't produce a reasoned argument for shit.

  • Origami salami (Score:5, Informative)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Friday July 05, 2002 @04:55AM (#3826219)
    Unfortunately I have to be in the "big whoop" crowd. This is not a terribly impressive feat. I can run MOL on my Powerbook. Terra Soft briQ systems could do the same thing. MOL doesn't require a ROM image in order to run MacOS 8.6 or later because the New World systems don't use the ROM to store the ToolBox anymore, it is a file in the system folder. All the ROM does anymore is tell the system where to find certain devices and stuff. MOL takes care of that as a virtual machine.

    MOL as a virtual machine is impressive in its own right. I use it a bit on my Powerbook when I'm booted into Linux because there isn't always an analog for a Mac program I want to use. It isn't always terribly fast but I can get stuff done with it if I'm a little patient. However an Amiga PPC board running MOL under YDL isn't exactly making me cream in my pants. It is a PPC board that runs Linux well enough and then runs MOL which abstracts MacOS from the hardware. If someone had managed to get MacOS running on the PPC board natively by hacking up their own ROM replacement I'd ooh and ahh. Suggesting the ability to run MacOS in a virtual machine is somehow a competitor to Apple's hold on the desktop PPC market is a bit of an immature statement.

    If OSX ever works directly on the hardware my ears will perk up. However it will only take a small tweak in the Cocoa framework to check for a Mac ROM. Lack of a ROM will keep the whole Cocoa environment from even working leaving you with the Darwin kernel working but none of the rest of what makes OSX unique not work.
  • Will keep it simple...

    I have both Amiga 1200 with 68020 cpu and a Powerbook Duo which has 68030 CPU running Mac OS 7.6.

    What I see is, MacOS 7.6 is really badly coded, can't multitask, essentially WASTES that CPU power.

    On the other hand, in Amiga 500 days, I *sure* remember we had a Mac emulator which has run Mac programs/OS 1.5 times FASTER than Mac itself (same days mac)

    So, thats why story is a pointless thing...

    If you never owned a Amiga or a Mac ,don't even reply, I know those kinds of stuff sounds unbeliavable...
  • To be able to run AmigaOS4, if and when it comes out,
    you'll need to have installed a modified bios. This
    is to insure systems are certified ....bla bla
    bla.... by Amiga....

    Only those system Amiga approves of will be able to
    run AmigaOS4, for the Bois will only be available to
    Amiga approved OEMs.

    What it is in essence is a bios resident dongle.
    The reason for it is to reduce piracy of AmigaOS4.
    In a way you can view it as a form of DRM.

    I'm sure someone will come up with a way around it
    but it then becomes illegal and Amiga inc has been
    agressive on such matters even when it's not there
    Intellectual Property they are agressive about, but
    Amiga based software in general.

    This article is about how an Amiga Spec'd system can
    run what? A Mac Emulator? on top of Linux?

    Yet again, to be able to run AmigaOS4 it will need
    the modified Bios Dongle. The sort of thing I've
    come to call a "pissmark" like a dog marking it
    territory (Dog Released Marking).

    We all know how MS wants to place their DRM system
    on people and for those who don't know, Amiga was a
    participant at some recent show, in the MS booth.
    Amiga was listed as an MS partner.....

    I'd be real skeptical of Buying and AmigaOne system
    with this bios dongle.

    But for those who like the AmigaOS and would like to
    be able to use ...., there is an open source Amiga
    Clone Project that's under a license very similiar to
    the Mazollia License (OSI compatable) It's called
    AROS and can be found on Sourceforge and it's well
    past the halfway mark. Somehow I suspect it might also
    end up making a good smart userspace interface for the
    Hurd somewhere down the road, As Amiga made user
    accessible IPC standard (AREXX "ports") and the Hurd
    uses IPC alot.

  • I think that it will be interesting to see the people at Apple lose some sleep now that a low cost, fast, off the shelf solution exists to run Mac OS

    Somehow I dount Amiga hardware will end up being any of those seeing as the Amiga market is an even smaller niche than the mac one.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close