AmigaVSLinux

[ppcaddon]

i love Linux/PPC :)

[thedrummerboycr]

The only thing is with that Startup the Amiga looks like a PC, not like a Real Amiga!- But its a goo demostration about any real good OS.

[elwoodfr]

@thedrummerboycr This is only the kickstart module load that you see in text form. The from 5:02 on you see the OS loading with an AmigaOS picture. No lame text there :-)

[thedarkhenrik]

I have a few problems with this comparison:

1. AmigaOS4 is PPC native, linux is not

2. Linux probably doesnt have acellerated video drivers for PPC (no 3d or video acelleration)

3. All unix based operating systems boot slower than "regular" operating systems (debian took 14 sec on my dual xeon 3ghz, configured like your setup with XFCE)

4. A working flash plugin for the browser would be more impressive

[elwoodfr]

@thedarkhenrik 1) Huh? Here Linux doesn't run emulated but native on the hardware.

2) I don't know really.

3) depends on what you call "regular" :-)

4) I agree. One day....

[merkur32123]

@thedarkhenrik Linux DOES have a PPC Port.

[ppcaddon]

nice!

[rasvoja]

Know how lame CUSA is

[elwoodfr]

@rasvoja Agreed. Those guys are in the same boat as Mehdi Ali and Irvin Gould, the people that brought Amiga Inc down.

[tadevokle]

What kind of boot manager are you using?

[elwoodfr]

@tadevokle It's called "Second Level Booter" and is released as part of AmigaOS 4.x.

[sleary78]

A fairer test would be to use MPlayer on both AmigaOS and Linux.

[RobertC19850209]

amiga is unix based these days? cool

[elwoodfr]

@RobertC19850209 Huh? Not at all. It's still AmigaOS and nothing else.

[RobertC19850209]

@elwoodfr i take it that AROS is not really amiga compatible then.

[elwoodfr]

@RobertC19850209 First of all, AROS is not AmigaOS, it just looks like it. But AROS is "source compatible" with AmigaOS 3.x so if you have the sources of an old program you can compile it for AROS. Also AROS and AmigaOS 4.x can run old binaries inside an UAE emulation.

[RobertC19850209]

@elwoodfr damn, and there's no way to run OS4 on an x86 machine is there?

[jquast01]

@RobertC19850209 See 'ixemul', a BSD layer of libraries for AmigaOS, copied mostly verbatim from netbsd in ~1992. Using ixemul, any general unix software can be ported very easily to AmigaOS with a few minor exceptions, such as managing fork() differently due to different memory model, and most often, a dependent library is not fully ported, such as Qt or SDL. These ports are, however, getting worked at in the amiga developer community.

[RobertC19850209]

@jquast01 i just wish i could run OS 4 on my pc, i can't afford the silly rules that apple and others have come up with where you need their hardware to run their OS

[aleextra]

Stupid comparison. Try xterm on debian and mplayer, not totem!

[Gromozvon]

Fiilip, ты идиот.

Не надо сравнивать теплое с мягким.

AmigaOS created and optimised for this hardware

Debian not

Do you specialy tuning Debian Linux for Amiga hardware? NOT!

[elwoodfr]

@Gromozvon It would be optimised if the developer would have nothing else to do but the OS lacks many features so developers are adding new features. I doubt AmigaOS is that optimised for PPC.

[gpfwestie]

@elwoodfr Debian, XFCE both good choices for a comparison, Totem not brilliant, but I think that's the default debian player. In any case I think you made your point - AmigaOS is faster.

Linux however is nothing if not flexible. The loading speed is due to lots of probing for hardware and module loading. A monolithic kernel with just your hardware (eg Gentoo) would be much closer to the boot speed of AmigaOS.

Installing Gentoo is no mean feat though.

[gpfwestie]

@gpfwestie Also fluxbox is a much closer match to Amiga OS and is a lot faster (I use it on a 233Mhz 486dx SOC - a lot slower than that Power PC).

[elwoodfr]

@gpfwestie Thanks. I didn't know that. And there is Gentoo PPC :-)

[Crustenscharbap]

Oh this is long. I had a real Amiga 4000. Amiga OS was bootet in around 15 secounds. With Kickstart 17 Secounds. 

[azidahaka2]

really great vid mate! too bad there's no AMIGAOS for old macs like G3 (working properly i mean) and that ACUBE machines are absolutely OVERPRICED in an insane way... :(

Hope they port AMIGAOS 4.1 to ps3 now that has been completely opened :)

[advantis03]

Instant shutdown. So there's no filesystem to corrupt? Or the filesystem is written straight to disk and no caching or buffering happens on write? Well, I can use Linux like that too, but it's gonna be slow as hell. How does AmigaOS manage this?

[elwoodfr]

@advantis03 Several answers. 1) On AmigaOS, there is no activity that you are not aware of. So you always know if "you" (and not the OS) are writing to disk. If you do so, just to switch the computer down. If you don't then you can freely switch it off. There is no write cache. 2) If the machine goes off (electricity problem or whatever), of course you lose either a part or the whole file that was being written on disk. The same would probably happen on other systems.

[elwoodfr]

@advantis03 3) The swap partition doesn't need to be turned off. It's content is of no use. So writing just stops where it was and that's all. The swap is automatically initialised upon the next startup.

[mspeter97]

@elwoodfr just one question Amiga si better than linux then?

[Dubbzee702]

renkinjutsu01

Looking for a cheap (250$) PPC?

--- NINTENDO Wii ---

I installed debian etch on mine XD

[vojinvidanovic79]

What about performance after PCI patch?

[elwoodfr]

@vojinvidanovic79 With the publicly available patch, I have 27 MB/s in VIDEO READ (Ragemem figures).

[vojinvidanovic79]

@elwoodfr

How fast is it compared to any Radeon in PeeCee?

[SuperDave341]

Both OS are not the best one to play video game with their original CD

[elwoodfr]

@SuperDave341 On the video I didn't play from CD.

[JadeEyedWolf]

Someone should make an optimized build of Amiga for mobile devices! Could you imagine how cool it would be if the Amiga source code went open source and had the same kind of user base as say, Android? That would be smokin'!!!

[elwoodfr]

@JadeEyedWolf The same would happen *without* going open source ;-)

[elwoodfr]

@JadeEyedWolf "open source" doesn't mean "it will work". You just need to be cool :-) Note that AmigaOS already runs on a PDA (proof of concept).

[fuzzywzhe]

@JadeEyedWolf I loved Amiga, but it won't catch up to Linux ever.

The reason that the shittiest OS won out in the early 1990s (i.e. Windows) was not because it was the best, but because it was the cheapest.

Linux and android is free. Try to get cheaper than that.

[usd25674]

Wow very informative.

[LOLDISNEYLAND]

Cool. I wonder why Amiga is so quick and Linux so slow. Is it because Amiga is optimised for the ppc?

[elwoodfr]

@LOLDISNEYLAND It would be optimised if the developer would have nothing else to do but the OS lacks many features so I doubt AmigaOS is that optimised for PPC.

[paxcoder]

@LOLDISNEYLAND because Debian has a lot of features to start up. I'm not saying stuff aren't bloaty, but there's definitely more stuff to boot than with Amiga.

[lgblgblgblgb]

@LOLDISNEYLAND because Linux as a UNIX-like (not direct derivate though) OS comes from the "top", I mean world of servers, and only recently started to got some really good desktop techniques. A comparison about server abilities between AmigaOS + Linux would give different result, I guess :) Anyway things are changes slowly, fortunately. Btw, as an ex-MPlayer developer I happy to see MPlayer running on AmigaOS :) :)

[ematech]

all linux are different rpm, Amiga rulezz

[renkinjutsu01]

I love mplayer.. Also, do they still sell powerpc computers? I want one.

[elwoodfr]

@renkinjutsu01 Who "they"?

[renkinjutsu01]

@elwoodfr Anyone in general. Apple ship all their computers with Intel now. I don't know where to look to find a nice PPC machine to play with. And PS3 removed their OtherOS feature =\

[elwoodfr]

@renkinjutsu01 The current Amiga computers are built by ACube Systems. Check their webpage. They have resellers worldwide or can ship directly.

[nuckles0000]

Build a proper kernel for ze linux please

[LarryTheTubaBoy]

Of the two, which OS would you say is more compact?

[elwoodfr]

@LarryTheTubaBoy What do you mean by compact? The one taking the less space on disk? My AmigaOS system is using now 256 MB of my hard disk and there are plenty of fonts or other non useful data on it :-)

[AmiApache]

NOt true about CPU.. Even with practically 1 or 2 % of CPU-time left Amiga can handle request the user has asked to. Example: When i was using my A2000 (Sold) the system responds immediately when i click something... Try that in a PC loaded with Windows, linux whatever. Btw, i have couple of real servers based on INtel-chipset and theyre sluggish when something come too close of CPU using or memory. Amiga dont need any of the systems with "Protected memory"

[kensou13]

awesome how amigaOS is faster than Linux

[vojinvidanovic79]

People could detect virus infection in past just by disk drive activity without user activity ... How often Windows perforks this massive hazard and slowdown and how to overcome it? Adding more RAM does not help. Meanwhile, AmigaOS is 200MB ...)

[vojinvidanovic79]

Disk writting?

Amiga finishes the job hard drive fast, and stops using it.

Yes, quick power off is not a hazard, its a feature. I hope you would save the dociments? However, some nice turn off with Amiga turn off logo I hope will be made just for such people :-))))

[vojinvidanovic79]

Nice demo. With more Linux and OS4 apps more comparison

on Pegasos, A1, SAMS and X1000 we hope, will be availiable.

[namayake]

Yeah, after viewing this video I totally understand why people would still be using AmigaOS even today. It's a lightning fast real-time OS. BeOS was the same way. The same thing could be done on a FOSS Linux based OS, but no one in the FOSS world can seem to figure it out. It would be great if they could study the code of either AmigaOS or BeOS and just implement what they're doing, but both are proprietary. Here's keeping my fingers crossed FOSS developers figure it out in the near future.

[elwoodfr]

@namayake

In the meanwhile, use AmigaOS / BeOS ;-)

[wodzupl25]

you are stupid mor components it can run amigaos is lame die olfasion shiti system die and stay dead

[elwoodfr]

@wodzupl25

You are right, Win7 is much better. LOL :-)

[oogaw]

It's pretty ironic you use mplayer in OS 4.1, when it's probably the fastest media player and grew up on Linux.

Still, nice demo. We've gotten too used to GUI sluggishness slowing us down.

[robdun]

I love Amiga, you can do anything when you first press the button to turn on your machine.

[holodock]

Say what you want but the best thing about Workbench was that you could unplug it anytime you want and you would still make no harm to the system ;)

[darthirakli]

AmigaOS and Dido FTW!!!

[Piasintei71]

Amiga is the best, linux ? not

[kikegall]

GNU / Linux is an OS platform. Amiga is a better platform an OS itself (AmigaOS)

[levagastir]

@Piasintei71 Linux sucks.What about support for mobile broadband in Amiga.If then i will try it.I have not tried it.Amiga was the best in the eighties and seems to have built an OS for the ordinary users and not the big servers

[Spiderwick1989]

acube systems is italian!!!!!!

[rasvoja]

@Spiderwick1989

Yes, and Hyperion is Belgium.

[gnuguz]

mplayer is a linux native application ported to many OSes. Why do you use totem in linux and mplayer in amiga?

[elwoodfr]

At the time of the video, Mplayer crashed. I tried again since and I could use it. You're right, it is a bit faster than Totem.

[shiroidebukujira]

install insserv... debian will boot a bit faster then ;)

[elwoodfr]

I did

apt-get install insserv

update-bootsystem-insserv

and rebooted but I didn't see any difference.

Thanks for the hint anyway.

[shiroidebukujira]

From the README.Debian --

# Enable parallel booting echo CONCURRENCY=makefile >> /etc/default/rcS

You should notice stuff starting in parallel on the next boot, which can reduce your boot time dramatically.

[elwoodfr]

Also it says:

> It will ... run N scripts in

parallel during boot, where N is the number of CPUs or cores on the machine.

But there's only one CPU and core. :-/

[shiroidebukujira]

hat isn't in any of the readme's with insserv on my box. According to what I've read the startpar mode starts 4 tasks par cpu, concurrency was the same I thought, but maybe not. Anyhow try startpar too.. allowing Exim etc to start in parallel with other stuff will reduce your boot time a lot.

[elwoodfr]

I appreciate your help but startpar doesn't make it automatically and I'm not interested in tweaking this thing enough to dig into how startpar works :-/

Thanks anyway.

[walter0bz]

For a retrocomputing fix, use "amiwm" for as the linux window-manager, it has emulation of the amiga's hardware desktop scrolling :)

i note that "enlightenment e16" also emulates something similar with it's dragbar.

Linux IS the "amiga" of the present day.

[JamesManes]

No it isn't. Not even close. Not even remotely close.

[walter0bz]

well what i look forward to is,

***Intel Larabee + Linux.***

hits all the spots. versatile-gfx-compue-power/fre­edom/innovation

cell+linux would have been nice but too much overlap between cpu/cell/gp-gpu. they needed cell to be vertex-shader.

[walter0bz]

hehe :)

and for me it's ok to use linux on an x86 cpu. sanitizes an otherwise unholy device. wheras the thought of amiga on an x86 cpu.. it's well... a crime against nature.

amigaOS/cell would be a great combo. sadly for it's great intent i am not sure cell will survive... oooecpu+gpu or larabee will be more usefull for more contexts

[JamesManes]

I haven't heard much on cell so I cannot argue there.

[walter0bz]

my 'path'

zx81 -> bbc micro -> amiga -> [YUK PC but fast pixel3d] -> risc console dev (Sony PlayStation, R-series CPU + graphics-chip)-> PC-ports..use 3DFX->linux-ps2-sony-fuckup-bu­t-dsp/gl>Microsoft console dev (yuk-X86 but gpu-new-organism)&ps3-cell-son­y-fuckup

Amiga name will live on with enthusiasts. Like i say, i only use linux today for "warm fuzzy feelings" about amiga+"religious" hatred of MS

For "class of 2010" will be something else.

[JamesManes]

Why would I care about your path? Class of 2010? lol wtf kind of reference was that. If you are looking into my age and graduation year I am graduation 2011. Started school a year later than everyone else.

[walter0bz]

imo Cell = Blitter

BLITTER:

(-) near-contemporary 2d consoles like genesis/SNES outgun for 2d sprite-game anim, so quickly obselete

(+) useable for wider range of gfx apps, versatile tool in hands of masses. Dpaint. 3d-vector..

CELL

can't compete OOOE cpu for regular code.. can't compete GPU for image-rendering.. but superior to both for physics/ray-trace. if could pick just one ISA it would be "cell's SPU"

thankfully cycle continues... and Larabee = 'best hope' for versatile s/w gfx tool

[JamesManes]

Ah ok. ISA is rather fucked now though... I mean its no where to be found on current Motherboards. I'm surer there are a few but still ISA is rather dead.

[walter0bz]

ah! thanks for your insight.

REWIND

">> linux=amiga of present day

>>>>No it isn't. Not even close. Not even remotely close."

please restate intent of original statement

[JamesManes]

Well you know I never really thought of it as a hobbiest OS. I always hear how Linux is "teh pwnage". Sad day. I should have known better.

I honestly see amiga as an OS that could have gone places. I don't really see Linux going anywhere. Not on the desktop that is.

[walter0bz]

haha ok.

btw ISA = "Instruction Set Architecture". not "ISA slot".

was funny to see mac go 68k->ppc->intel... what a stupid species humanity is.

I learned "profession" primarily on amiga so i hold this machine in v.high regard in all respects. thanks

[JamesManes]

Damnit all.

BTW The mac OS emulated 68k code on PPC for a long time. None of it was native code lololol

[sanarkhos]

Not true. A lot of Mac OS was written in C and was recompiled early on. The remaining assembly code was ported over time, and eventually turned into Carbon.

Some 68k code remained in Mac OS 9, but it didn't affect performance much.

[Oboema6]

Amazing how fast this is for a 667 Mhz proc. 8o

[LanHikari90]

I would never use a full desktop environment like XFCE on a slow PowerPC Amiga. Maybe you should just use a light windowmanager like Fluxbox. It would boot way faster.

[elwoodfr]

What is slow? XFCE? or the hardware? Hum... Anyway, using LXDE is much faster.

[LanHikari90]

The hardware is too slow for XFCE. I don't know if LXDE is faster (is it a window manager or a full desktop environment?), but I know that if you only use a light window manager like Fluxbox, AmiWM, GNUStep, etc. your computer will boot and maybe react much faster.

[vincent5975]

I've got the feeling you are using a software rendering under linux. Look at your X logs to check it.

[elwoodfr]

Hi, you are right. The log says:

[dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed to open the DRM

[dri] Disabling DRI

but note that OS4 uses software renderer too, AFAIK.

[f1lupo]

every Amigan knows that Amiga workbench is the best hands down! I've got my Sam flex @ 733 coming soon :-)

[pricey3000]

Can you play High Definition videos on your Amiga?

[elwoodfr]

I don't know as I don't have any HD videos (true). And even in my living room, I just have a standard DVD burner. No HD there too.

And ... I don't need it.

[jsuttonus]

Give it another 8 years.

[famsvir]

The comment at the end is wrong of course - shutting down the Amiga OS this way can cause disk corruption. If you reset the Linux system of course there is no disk corruption, the shutdown procedure is just to make sure everything is saved and tidied away properly.

Mplayer is available for both operating systems of course, but elwoodfr instead decides to show some other player on Debian.

The summary is: Don't buy this very expensive, slow SAM. For much less money you will get a fast PC.

[chfireball]

His comment is Correct of course!. the Amiga computers have always been shut down like this.

There is no need to " tidy up "

[elwoodfr]

- I switch off my Amiga since something like 15 years and I never lost any data doing so.

Of course, I don't do it when I know a write operation is in progress. And asthe system do not do any write operation without me knowing it, it's perfectly safe.

- At this time, I couldn't install Mplayer. I tried again and it worked. So I'll do a movie just for you.

- BTW, the Sam board power consumption is less than 20 Watts. ;-)

[famsvir]

- So whenever your Amiga is writing data you daren't switch it off. You should correct your video to explain about this massive hazard with Amigas.

- You can't get your Amiga to work reliably. Sometimes you can get mplayer working, other times not. Is it because you're incompetent or the Amiga is broken? Who knows.

- My far, far more powerful desktop PC is 30W. My laptop is 18W (with the LCD panel off) and it is more portable. They also both suspend to < 5W. The Amiga has no suspend.

[sqned]

Amiga kicks ass.

[elwoodfr]

One thing which is different is that there is no memory protection in AmigaOS. Maybe there are other reasons I don't know.

Anyway, we cannot say that AmigaOS is more optimised because only 2 people are working on it full time so they cannot do what thousands of developers do on Linux. :-/

[ice2642]

Amiga have memory protection in AmigaOS 4.0+.

Much thing on Linux, Windows, and MacOS-X the people get idea from AmigaOS. and if you put this 3 systems in one, you not have all things that AmigaOS have. but this ppl than show the OS just show the things like transparency, browser and other that all system have.

[tak178]

Your advantage is that Kickstart loads in ROM.

RISCOS as well as AcornOS also lead in ROM.

Linux and Windows were built upon different philosophies, and while AmigaOS may be faster with your hardware, I guarantee that if AmigaOS was on the hard drive, you'd have the same issues. This is the only reason that Amiga machines can be used on such slow architecture.

[elwoodfr]

No, with AmigaOS 4.x the kickstart is loaded from the harddisk. So the comparison is quite valid.

On the modern Amigas like the Sam440 used here, there is no more ROM modules.

[elwoodfr]

You can see the kickstart files being loaded from the harddisk at 4:53 on the video.

[tak178]

So where is the speed coming from on a 667Mhx processor, and an embedded one at that? It doesn't make any sense. This is why Amiga always perpelexes me.

[0ptimismPrime]

the reason AmigaOS boots and runs faster than Linux is because it lacks a lot to be loaded..... it doesn't start dozens of daemons/services and it doesn't have to have so sophisticated memory handling since protected memory is turned of by default (so it doesn't break compatibility with OS 3.x Apps).

So having to load, and later on run far less programs/services that then take up far less CPU cycles makes it quicker.

[tak178]

Thank you for the explanation. It's not that I'm a dullard, I just don't understand the underlying processes. :)

[jsuttonus]

So what's the point of this video supposed to be? That I can watch movies on Linux just as well as OS4 so there's no reason to buy overpriced proprietary hardware? LOL

[elwoodfr]

You missed the point, it seems. I thought it was really obvious. :-/

[amigaflame]

Very good!!!

Amiga rulez!!!

5 stars

[ikiret]

:-)

[markoseppanen1975]

Nice video!