"Memory protection". You asked for one feature only. As a developer I hate when input.device or Intuition crashes or locks up because of some mistake somewhere.
Rock lobster bit me - so I'm here forever X1000 + AmigaOS 4.1 FE "Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system." - Seymour Cray
The best browser for Amiga systems is Wayfarer (MorphOS): it struggles with speed even if it is capable of displaying every websites (including YouTube using the mobile version).
The reality, as already explained by Jadacap AND Afxgroup AND Kas1e AND Joerg, is that having a modern and fast web browser on a monocore Big Endian architecture will never be achievable at a decent speed to be able to enjoy actual web surfing.
From Kas1e: Quote:
Browservice sounds like way to go for sure(...)
From Joerg: Quote:
Execute browservice on this Linux host, which can use the additional CPU cores (X1000 and X5000 only)...
From afxgroup: Quote:
I think this is the best solution on our platforms..
So, if all the WebBrowser experts say so, I don't think 10 000€ would change anything at the actual limitations.
Or throw in $10,000 and port real stuff instead of a kludge.
$10,000? For a real port? Where do you find such prices and people willing to do so? :) $100,000, then yes, maybe you’ll find someone brave enough to spend years of their life fighting with this madness called the modern web. See how many years Jacadcaps spent on Wayfarer for MorphOS and how much he did, and in the end, what? A browser, which still doesn’t work on some pages being so slow that it’s impossible to use. Yes, it’s better than Odyssey, of course, but it’s really slow on our hardware, has no JIT, and has all sorts of related issues because of that. And that’s for a professional programmer spending years of his life on a proper port. Do you need a browser where you won’t be able to use modern sites and still have to use other hardware and another browser anyway? IMHO, the only real way is what K-L says. We have no other choice today.
@All I may say unpopular things, but if asked for one feature, it should be “just more interesting and quality software,” and that’s all. Everything which we need OS provides already.
No need for SMP. That’s just banana thinking; it will change nothing. It will be ugly, buggy, and won’t speed up anything because of how the whole AmigaOS is designed. It will be the same as extended memory: hardly anyone uses it (i know about exceptions, but still).
No need for memory protection either. It’s Amiga; we’ve been here for 30 years, and everyone knows how it works. When we need real work, we all switch to Windows/Linux anyway. Without memory protection, we wrote software in a good way to avoid constant crashes. With memory protection, you’ll step onto the same road as other OSes : buggy and forgiving software. Maybe in one way it helps, but didn't in another one.
As we’re obscure, we have no viruses, no malware, no exploits, no need for security (I always laugh when people ask for “security fixes,” like someone uses AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS for reall important stuff, which can be easily hacked with or without those "security fixes").
So, for me—and this is, of course, IMHO—we only need new classes for ReAction, new native software, and to keep going the way we have until we all die or the whole Amiga thing fades away, just like other things before it. But after all these years, hoping and wishing for SMP, full memory protection, or someone making a browser again and again every few years… I don’t know. We just need to keep it as it is, just improved. IMHO.
Memory Protection for me too Unicode UTF-8 then enhanced WB. real Multicore enhanced network
More than the asked "1 feature", but it's like asking "what would be the one feature you would like to add to your 1920 vintage car?
W: A faster engine!! A: you need better brakes!) W: Ok, then that it uses less power A: You need a better engine! W: Mmh. ok, then make it more silent A: You need to change a lot of parts and materials, and newer tires, but you need new wheels...
I think it be nice with private stack, AKA UNIX stack, legacy mode can run with old stack.. its a small change, but can make software better. And can protect programs from memory corruption.
Intuition needs a complete overhaul, too easily locked up.
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
If I had money to develop one thing, and the people to do that, would be a way to bring it to more people hands. To make it more accessible and grow the user base.
Without a good user base, you can't expect developers to work on custom applications for it, nor any company to burn money, without making any profit. I heard a lot of OS4 developers leaving because the user base is too small.
Then we will have a bigger chance to have all the previous requests done. But if the market is shrinking because companies sue each other, or not cooperating for the best of the community, or there is no will to be in a better place, adding the previous mentioned features will change nothing because there will be no one here to use them.
$10,000? For a real port? Where do you find such prices and people willing to do so? :) $100,000, then yes, maybe you’ll find someone brave enough to spend years of their life fighting with this madness called the modern web.
Even $100.000 is way too few, at least I wouldn't do an AmigaOS port of Chromium or FireFox for that. 10-15 years ago: Sure. Now: Definitely no more, current web browser are 100 times more complex than they used to be 10-20 years ago. For a very short time we had at least something similar to a modern web browser on AmigaOS (OWB), but 99% of that wasn't my work, I just implemented the very small AmigaOS related parts. Several bug fixes in the system independent parts, like the initially very broken cookie support. as well, but those were even smaller parts of the work. OWB only worked as long as Pleyo had 3-5 full time developers working on it, implementing, and especially updating it several times per week, the OWBAL platform abstraction layer to add or update support for any WebKit, WebCore and JavaScriptCore changes.
Additionally the target platforms of OWB were embedded systems like smart TVs, set top boxes, etc., with very limited CPU, RAM, etc. resources, making it usable for AmigaOS as well. I don't know any current browsers which still target such platforms, except for BrowService and, in case those still exist at all, something like Opera Mini and Puffin, which basically did the same: A server running the browser engine, even incl. flash content in case of Puffin, and the client only displaying images rendered by the server.
For the people thinking that $10k or $100k would get them a working and usable browser, let me quote a relevant part of the TenFourFox post mortem: Quote:
Writing and maintaining a browser engine is fricking hard and everything moves far too quickly for a single developer now. However, JavaScript is what probably killed TenFourFox quickest. For better or for worse, web browsers' primary role is no longer to view documents; it is to view applications that, by sheer coincidence, sometimes resemble documents. You can make workarounds to gracefully degrade where we have missing HTML or DOM features, but JavaScript is pretty much run or don't, and more and more sites just plain collapse if any portion of it doesn't. Nowadays front ends have become impossible to debug by outsiders and the liberties taken by JavaScript minifiers are demonstrably not portable. No one cares because it works okay on the subset of browsers they want to support, but someone bringing up the rear like we are has no chance because you can't look at the source map and no one on the dev side has interest in or time for helping out the little guy. Making test cases from minified JavaScript is an exercise in untangling spaghetti that has welded itself together with superglue all over your chest hair, worsened by the fact that stepping through JavaScript on geriatic hardware with a million event handlers like waiting mousetraps is absolute agony. With that in mind, who's surprised there are fewer and fewer minority browser engines? Are you shocked that attempts like NetSurf, despite its best intentions and my undying affection for it, are really just toys if they lack full script runtimes? Trying and failing to keep up with the scripting treadmill is what makes them infeasible to use. If you're a front-end engineer and you throw in a dependency on Sexy Framework just because you can, don't complain when you only have a minority of browser choices because you're a big part of the problem.
This was 5 years ago. Things have gotten much, much worse since then.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Let us hope that digital sale of AmigaOS 4.1 FE (so that people can try it with QEMU) will help with that, as well as the upcoming Mirari board of course...
stack should be private / protected, and safe.... that's not the case for AmigaOS. I know its boring low level stuff.. but its important.
the most frustrating, time a developer has, is when one program is crashing another program, developer will look for bugs in the wrong place it can be pain for users as well, if you installed some crap..
Edited by LiveForIt on 2025/9/16 22:07:09 Edited by LiveForIt on 2025/9/16 22:17:37 Edited by LiveForIt on 2025/9/16 22:18:32 Edited by LiveForIt on 2025/9/16 22:19:26
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
Oh, the program stack. It would be protected as you mention, in a system with MP I guess.
@kas1e MP wouldn't be necessary if people (coders) would be perfect but we say that perfection does not exist. We then need a solution not to waste our developers time.
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