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Amiga goes Linux - commentary by Robert Niessner

The latest decision by Amiga Inc. not to use the QNX OS now and instead use Linux has hit the Amiga community quite hard.

The essential question now is: "What does this all mean"?

Inevitably the assumption will be made that Amiga Inc. is attempting to jump on the band wagon, to get a bite in the big Linux kitchen. The direction they're taking is not quite so stupid: many people are fed up with the Micro$oft Empire and are searching for an alternative. If someone were to now present a new platform with made-for-Linux hardware instead of an Intel-based computer - surely all Linux worshipers would get wide-eyed and fall for the product. With a little history-making marketing strategy, they could attract tens of thousands to the Amiga in one hit - with the motto "Essentially Linux".

Regarding lack of software, you shouldn't have any worries. There's plenty, as much as sand on a beach, and in any case big firms are becoming weak at the knees with Linux at the moment. Gateway itself could lend a hand in one way or another. I also wouldn't be surprised if Gateway suddenly introduced Intel-based Linux computers to their product range.

The question that still remains unexplained is how compatible is the placement of the AmigaOE on the Linux kernel to the rest of Linux. Drivers can't be so simply translated, as Collas would lead us to believe. And LinuxPPC already runs on the Classic Amiga, despite the fact there's still no driver for the UW SCSI of the CyberstormPPC...

Perhaps Amiga Inc. would like to save money in development and leave everything to be programmed by the community, gratis? These thoughts don't seem to be so absurd; in end effect Open Source is really just a great Hype anyway. And it is also quite nice not to have to part with pennies for innovations.

One could say about QNX that till now you could see a demo and recently also a few screenshots, which to a certain extent shows an impressive GUI. It seems QNX really has competent designers behind it, but that is in no way conclusive of a finished AmigaOS, with its look-and-feel, and no-one can say beyond doubt whether this all means a loss for the future NGAmiga. Too much is being speculated and quibbled; some users are probably even using crystal balls to get a glimpse of the near future, destabilizing the community with rumours and emotion. :-) In the end there's nothing else remaining except to further wait and see what the face of the Amiga past, for every user familiar territory, will mean.

On the other hand, there is the question Where's the Amiga Revolution when they are anyway advocating an old proprietary UNIX (Posix). The niceties of the AmigaOS are its practical functions and speed. The AmigaOS was certainly not especially simple to use, but the technology of its genius is revealed when you understand the system directory structure - right up till today.

Whether Linux is brilliant or not, I venture to doubt, as there are too many programmers tinkering about and too few users around, and as is well known, one group has different ideas about User Friendliness as the other.

Had Micro$oft built the most important parts of Amiga functionality into windows, I would have run over with fluttering flags - but in the end it's really down to feeling good with an operating system when at work! For example screen swapping, locales, device handling, clear system structure, ramdisk, etc.

One notices how good OS3.1 is when practically everything and all PC-Trends have found their way to the Amiga. Sure, it has its weaknesses, but show me an OS that has nothing to show for itself. And even though the AmigaOS has no memory protection, I have, in my long Amiga career, had fewer losses of data than in 3 years on Mac or PC. Which OS can be copied to another partition, the System partition formatted, the contents copied back and then normally carry on working?

That all being the case, the future lies in tangible proximity, the world will not go under, and Amiga Inc. will some day bring out an AmigaNG, be it revolutionary or not.

Robert Niessner
Steve Bowman