Decreasing compatiblitiy of OS4 a good thing?

@OlafS25

I’m in between.

I see no point in dropping support for legacy programs. But I do see the need for change.
if look at the belly of the beast it's not pretty. From security and system stability point of view.

This is about system stability... the OS simply does not care about concurrency well, it was never built for SMP.. asking developers to manage L1 cash manually, in all shared list and public structures as well as message structures. Is a big ask, and not likely that is going to be success.

We might even want a true 64bit OS, the web browsers need all the memory it can get.

Compatibility can be maintained by sandboxing, it’s not same as emulation, we not talking about CPU emulation or hardware emulation, we just translate API A to API B.. if possible. Basically, a window manager that talks to host OS, and handles IO, keyboard, mouse, serial, parallel, network.

The main reason why it’s necessary is system stability, it’s far too easy to crash the OS, corrupt memory and file systems.

I’m not too worried about hacking, we have lived with this OS for decades knowing it limitations, and community has been tiny, but changing how the process stack works, can improve security. And improve stability. I think it might be worth it, even if you break a few eggs.

When it comes to AmigaOS3.x I see no reason why we can’t bring it on for the ride.. encourage better API’s there ensure portability, I see no reasons why improvements in OS4, cannot benefit OS3 as well.

Becoming UNIX / Linux… no that’s not the point… nor is it a good idea to build a card house on top..

@LiveForIt

Ditching 68k has advantages and disadvantages

To name a example where I come from... AROS

it is about being API compatible but not binary compatibility. That finally means integrating 68k only by emulator. The advantage you can basically make changes to the OS without caring about breaking compatibility with 68k. That makes it possible to do currently a migration from 32bit to 64bit. But this of course comes with a price. You can as example not use original 68k libraries in the system like those needed for arexx. I think this is possible in amigaos because of petunia. There is a replacement for it but it is not fully compatible. You also must run emulation to use 68k. That is creating a different feeling at many users obviously.

So short... if you want to move forward you have to ditch 68k compatibility and the way 68k is currently integrated in but it will also feel different if you still use 68k apps.

I do not know if 68k integration like it is currently done in amigaos has still the same meaning as it had in the past. I know that at least in past 68k integration was a reason why people preferred one system to the other.

After I wrote the message below, I realised everything has been said already.
I'll post it anyway.

I am using a lot of 68k software too.

WordWorth
TurboPrint
ArtEffect
AREXX
CubicIDE
PageStream4 (Since PGS5 is buggy at least)
To name a few.

What bothers me most is being stuck with a system where a single misbehaving program can bring the whole thing down. Then there's the nice hardware with multiple cores and being limited to just one.

The OS should move on.
Then developers would also be more interested in it when better development tools are available, and this too seem to be related to the OS being stuck too much in the past.

AmigaOS 3 is being developed further, so there is the alternative with Vampires and other "68k" hardware.

All other OSes have moved forward; we should too. To me, it seems silly to have two parallel OS 3.x and 4.x, with the only difference that one does run natively on hardware that can only be supported partially, at half the speed.

To have fairly modern browsers, especially since a few of us in the thread want one, we need to move forward. And we need a 64bit os for modern browsers. I don't think there is a way around it. we might be able to to get along for limited amount of time, but sooner or later nobody will be able to to take webkit and make it run on 32bit.

I vote for moving forward, but I wish a better and faster e-uae was available.
Judging from the explanations of kas1e, I think that is a good way forward. So count me in with kas1e and Andrea. and thanks to LiveForIt for cooking up some mystery better development tools.

@OlafS25

Quote:

it can be quite fast... and feel quite normal, if you don't go for a full emulator. A600GS / A1200GS - AmiBench is moving in that direction.