Fist of all an explanation why this is in misc, while the ABOX and its OS descriptions are in the 'news' section. This is not a discrimination, but the decision I have taken is based on the fact that this is not a news at all and it is here just for completition of information and to be able to bring a comparison with the other OSes.
As said I do not express a particular point of view that is dependent of someone or something, but just my own, that may or may not be in agreement with yours. If so you are free to write me and you'll point of view will be published. See the disclaimer for further informations.

After having said that, let's start to talk about this OSes that is being developed by a company, proDAD, that in the past has produced programs like Adorage, Clarissa and Monument Titler.

First thing to clarify is the fact that phase5 is NOT collaborating with proDAD for the p-OS project, as reported by an Italian magazine I have read lately. proDAD is doing all the work, and the results of it is quite interesting. It will be a new OS very similar to the AmigaOS, with high (even though not perfect) source code compatibilty with it, no binary compatibilty, improved features and optimized speed in lots fields.

The binary compatibilty problem is soon solved by the fact that the new OS can run together with the old one, allowing the user to run "old" software and the new ones compiled for the p-OS together.
Source code compatibility is for C/C++ sources and requires just few modifications of the library function names to be called.

P-OS features preemptive multitasking, multiprocessing (support of more than a single CPU), will have real RTG, network support integrated in the OS, will have a rewritten DOS libray that is faster and more efficient, a new way to build GUIs (similar to the last GUI libraries based on hyerarchies instead of coordinates), new datatypes, many object will now be treated as OOP objects (text/graphics/animations and all graphical objects in general), a partially new intuition library with improved features like multiple layers in the same window.
The developer will enjoy new more powerful and professional tools to debug its programs. Actually, proDAD has put lots of work in this aspect as its OS, though going to be a good "restyling" and enhancement of the AmigaOS, does not provide memory protection or resource tracking. That means that the OS will enjoy much more speed with respect to the concurrent ones, but will suffer the same problems the AmigaOS has now, that is high instability not suitable for professional works like net serving (that requires guarantees on the protection of data between different tasks and high stability, that is a program that crashes must not bring down the entire system as it does now with the (in)famous guru alert).

However, the use of memory protection has to be integrated in a good way if high stability is needed (not like some famous crap OS that try to protect the data with all the disavantages involved such as high resources requirements and limitations of the speed and however it crashes at the first serious problem), and so a choice has to be made: performance based on the good quality of the applications, or high overhead to protect data that allow for the use and development of crap programs.

Between the two there is resource tracking able to keep a hystory of resources allocated by a program and able to release them in case the program is not able to do it itself (it has crashed or it has stopped execution for any reason) which requires less resources than memory protection and can help in some, not too serious, situations.

However, proDAD has opted for the use of nothing to keep control of the program, a opinable choice that however has its advantages together with disavantages. Among the advantages there's without doubts the high quality the programs have to guarantee to work under the OS.

But the disavantages listed above are also some of the reasons that made phase5 decide not to support such OS for thier A\BOX (see the article about the AboxOS).

This OS is then suitable for the current use of our machine as it is able to bring its OS (now 5 years old) to a new life making it compete with the "most modern" OS developed lately. But for a serious professional use of a machine, I would not say that this is the best solution.

proDAD has announced that their OS is going to be available for the 68k based Amigas, and then they are porting it to the PowerPC and spread also on other platforms.

For more informations about proDAD's projects look at their WWW pages at www.pdodad.de, and to their EpOS program aimed at register develepers of all categories (PD/shareware/commercial) that will enjoy direct support by the company with developing tools and news.