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209 Comments
- spindigg, on 11/22/2008, -2/+70Linux need to forget about what Microsoft and Apple are doing and just focus on the end user. It's what they want that's important. If it's a great experience, they'll use it.
- DonJuanAussi, on 11/22/2008, -2/+63The Amiga, and the OS Workbench was fast, small, fun, had an intuitive UI (computer newbies were running at full speed in 24 hours with an hour of one on one tutoring), took a complete beginner two days to learn how to customise the boot sequence to make their own custom boot disks, could boot in 6 seconds using hacks, or 10 seconds (without a hack) on a standard professional machine, had 70% of the new OSX features (ever wonder where Apple was getting the ideas for their new features?), it "just worked" long before Apple did (in fact the Amiga did not use hardware drivers because the cards would completely auto configure), had powerful tools like Directory Opus and Cygnus Ed if you wanted to do anything more than move windows, had intuitive art and animation programs like Deluxe Paint, Personal Paint, Photogenics and others, and it had a strong community that never excluded newbies... my Amiga club had a dozen part time tutors (I was one of them) who worked for free to teach people on their own machines in their own homes.
Oh, did I mention that it was all a lot of fun? - Canuck, on 11/22/2008, -1/+46I loved the Amiga back in the 80's. I only had a Commodore 64 but a friend had an Amiga and I was at his place as often as possible.
- AltF3, on 11/23/2008, -4/+46"it "just worked" long before Apple did"
I still have plenty of problems with Apple products, lets not agree with their advertising just yet. - inactive, on 11/23/2008, -3/+38linux should be linux.
- Barackalypse, on 11/23/2008, -7/+38I don't know that copying a product that is no longer comercially available instead of one that is actually increasing its market share as time moves forward is the best advice. Its kind of like saying we should evolve to be more like dinosaurs because they were awesome, but ignoring the fact that they went extinct.
- koldmilk, on 11/23/2008, -1/+27http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbbaksn_vk
- thePTS, on 11/23/2008, -2/+23I like the intent behind the article, but I don't get why people keep insisting that the UI was what was good with the Amiga.
The best parts of the Amiga's graphics, was the fact that it used parallel processors for graphics (like todays graphics cards); the blitter and the copper. This made the UI so smooth that Win 3.1 and even Windows 95, many years later, seemed sluggish and laggy in comparison.
More importantly, Amiga succeeded in combining what is now the console gamer segment, with the current linux / "creative computer kid"-segment. The combination of these two segments gave us, for instance, Amiga's exceptionally active demoscene.
If someone is able recreate this kind of "hybrid" scene of awesomeness, nothing would be better. But that said - I don't think the UI had very much to do with it. - bodger, on 11/23/2008, -0/+20Maybe they want the kernel to randomly throw Guru Meditation errors?
ahhh, good times, good times. - deadbaby, on 11/22/2008, -20/+39http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.me ...
I'm not sure how anyone except a recovering Amiga fanboy could think this is a good UI to copy. - inactive, on 11/23/2008, -0/+18It worked for BeOS, and really was a stellar Operating System.
"BeOS is Amiga done right" - Jean Louis Gassee
Till they put the head of Sales/Marketing in charge of the direction of the company that is. - MtheoryX, on 11/22/2008, -6/+22Playing with his Amiga.
Oh, I see. Is THAT what you kids called it back then? - crapuccino, on 11/22/2008, -0/+16I sold my collection of Amigas a while ago. I hand't powered them up in a few years, but they were sill a wrench to let go, expecially my beloved B2000 that got me through college.
A truly wonderful machine that was way ahead of it's time, but made so little of by it's manufacturer. - bodger, on 11/23/2008, -1/+14...and don't forget the weekends of taking your Amiga, a null modem cable and a copy of Stunt Car Racer round to your buddies house.
- DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -2/+15That is more of a pic to show what they can do with addon tools.
The mess of windows is actually a lot more controllable than it looks. Windows on OSX and MSWindows are a lot less controllable than on Workbench.
I do recommend that someone try a modern patched version for 30 minutes if you can find someone with a machine they still run. I would be surprised if you were not pleased with the experience... and the trick here is for Linux to COPY the experience... and then try to leapfrog into things that we only dreamed about back in '93. No one is seriously suggesting anyone try to bring the Amiga back for the wider population. - YodaJones, on 11/22/2008, -4/+16Interesting idea, but not the best GUI in the biz either.
- lemur, on 11/23/2008, -0/+12"I sold my collection of Amigas a while ago."
You're a monster! Who knows where those poor Amigas are now... - TheKitchenSinkX, on 11/23/2008, -4/+14Honestly, I like the look and functionality of Windows XP. Now if I could get that a lot less bloated, buggy, prone to attacks, and retain its compatibility with games, I'd be quite pleased indeed.
- DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -0/+10The Amiga's Workbench looked very close to this when PCs were still on MSDOS, and Macs were still mostly black or white pixels (not even greyscale).
The icons on the screen are also animated. The Amiga had limited animation on icons in 1985.
I know in '93 I was asking for windows, icons, text labels and other GUI tools to be "alpha equipped". Microsoft has taken the last 15 years to bring them to the desktop. If the Amiga did not have a crap company running the show for it (until it went belly up in '94), Alpha channel desktops would have been around by 1995. - DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -1/+11Have you ever used Workbench? If you have not, then I would advise you try it before claiming it is dinosaur like.
In fact when I finally had to switch from an Amiga to Windows in 1999, it was like losing both my legs and an arm. Windows was seriously behind technologically. It still is in a few areas. I believed it was just me being uncomfortable with a new system... no it wasn't... Windows really did, and still does suck. Windows is still stuck behind an OS that stopped development in '94. - dannystaple, on 11/23/2008, -0/+9Perhaps what they meant is not so much "linux" as the kernel, or "linux" as the developer, but "linux" as the concept people gather round, as in distributions like Ubuntu, Redhat, Debian and Suse. If you are being a pedantic purist, then "Linux" in your sense has no user interface at all, that is a layer far from the Kernel, and Kernel developers. One mistake linux has thankfully avoided is not tying the UI and Kernel layers to closely together.
This is based on the idea that the Amiga really was a comfortable and pleasant computer to use, and although modern concepts from Windows and Mac are worth taking on board, concepts from the Amiga interface should also be considered too. Of course, innovating as well as imitation is good, and going one track - only Windows imitation would be a serious flaw. - Torley, on 11/23/2008, -0/+9But stay away from the Guru Meditation.
- momomorrell, on 11/23/2008, -5/+13i'm sorry, but you have to admit that leopard is a fine looking OS, i switch back and forth daily from xp/leopard/ubuntu/win 200 pro/ and there's something about the mac desktop that's just great to look at.
now the finder....ugh. - tnoy, on 11/23/2008, -0/+8Real men us telnet to browse the web.
- Blazer, on 11/23/2008, -2/+10It's a UNIX system! I know this!
- alphaterminus, on 11/23/2008, -0/+8Amiga didn't fail because of itself, it failed because Commodore executives were equivalent to Hank Paulson - crooks who should be tarred and feathered in public while having their genitals shoved in a Datasette recorder on fast-forward.
- Philbert, on 11/23/2008, -0/+8You know that Amiga is still going strong right? AmigaOS 4.1 was released just last month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS_4.1#AmigaOS_4 ... - inactive, on 11/23/2008, -1/+9Amiga = Girl Friend in spanish (not girlfriend as in a relationship).
- scy1192, on 11/23/2008, -0/+8Instead of copying, improve upon their ideas and IMPLEMENT THEM WELL.
- r337ard, on 11/23/2008, -1/+9http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_is_a_kernel_Now_S ...
- kiwimonk, on 11/23/2008, -2/+9Linux shouldn't be copying anybody. Like with Beryl.. Blow people minds in whole new ways.. Run OSX and Windows Binaries .. Make it stupid not to switch!
- acherion, on 11/23/2008, -1/+8Funny how people aren't wanting Linux to emulate Atari TOS ;)
Signed,
- ex Amiga fanboi - DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -1/+8Sorry Bosskey, but you have obviously not tried the Amigas Workbench. The Amiga was the games computer of it's time, as Windows is today. The Amiga was sold as a business tool (Hell, you could even drop in an 8086-386 CPU if you wanted so you could MULTITASK Lotus 123 with Amiga software... oh and Amiga AND x86 CPU cost less than the same PC), it was the standard art machine, it was the standard video editors machine, it was the standard animators machine, it was sold as the ultimate home users machine, and it was used for many industrial applications where human safety was critical (ie. Disney rollercoasters).
With a user base as wide as Windows today, Workbench back then makes Windows feel like the bastard son of two morons. - bipolarruledout, on 11/23/2008, -2/+9If that's the case then Linux will never be anything more than Linux.
- autogibberish, on 11/23/2008, -0/+7I think you missed the point. I don't think the author meant that it should be copied. Linux should take inspiration from Amiga's philosophy, the "user is #1". This wasn't meant literally, "Put Amiga's friendliness on top of Linux's raw power, flexibility, and openness-- now that would be a world-beater".
- dannystaple, on 11/23/2008, -0/+7I sold my A1200 to a guy in Australia. I hope he looked after it. It was very hard to let it go too - it was something I had treasured for nearly 12 years before letting it go in the end. Only when there was no room to store stuff was it considered.
- jasmus, on 11/23/2008, -1/+7lynx
- youannoyme, on 11/23/2008, -0/+6just play with cURL then
- mrtastycakes, on 11/23/2008, -0/+6I was using an ancient Amiga and an Atari for making music as recently as a couple years ago. This is a pretty common occurrence in the electronic music community, with its love for all vintage machines.
- joshuawilde, on 11/23/2008, -0/+6Stunt Car Racer! Holy crap and a half, was that the best racing game ever or what. Powering up the rollercoaster hill with the turbo and then flying over the top like a bird... until you plummet down to your fiery death, laughing like crazy.
- dent42, on 11/23/2008, -2/+8Well, with Ubuntu you just go to Applications->Add/Remove, use its search to get whatever app you want, click apply, and it will download and install it. That would be your easy button, I guess.
- Kappa, on 11/23/2008, -1/+7My first computer was Amiga
- graemee, on 11/23/2008, -0/+6Software Failure. Press left mouse button to continue.
Guru Meditation #00000004.000AAC0 - crapuccino, on 11/23/2008, -0/+5Compared to what? Max OSX? Vista? Gnome? KDE?
You have to remember that Workbench was up against Gem, and DOS in it's heyday - it was lightyears ahead.
If the investment had been put in, and CBM had paid Lotus and Wordperfect what they wanted to do the development, things may well have been different.
Instead, CBM were pushing it as little more than a games console. The rest is ancient history. - DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -0/+5It is not that easy if you are already staring at the application icon you just found. A right click menu command for uninstalling would be faster and easier than opening a separate uninstall utility and searching for the program all over again.
With the icon selected, pressing the delete key and confirming the uninstall is easier again. - evilcaptain, on 11/23/2008, -1/+6what about Archimedes?
I loved that desktop environment. - bipolarruledout, on 11/23/2008, -0/+5BeOS was an OS I could really get behind. The simplicity of the Mac, flexible platform compatibility, the speed and stability of Linux. To this day I still can't understand why Apple didn't snap it up instantly.... a media OS.... It was their CORE MARKET and still probably is. BSD? No... that's sooo unapple... but yet here we are.
- DonJuanAussi, on 11/23/2008, -0/+5Um... the Amiga hd drag and drop installing for most programs... in fact, drag and drop the program anywhere and it would probably work... add an assign to the startup sequence and it WOULD work anywhere. Deleting software was a delete key away.
- azbmr, on 11/23/2008, -1/+6Wine?
In all seriousness, CodeWeavers does a good job http://www.codeweavers.com/products/ - lilSears, on 11/23/2008, -3/+8With as much advanced stuff ubuntu has already, I don't see why they couldn't take it further to make it easier. For instance, I just used a mac today and realized that to install programs, all you have to do is drag and drop it in a folder. Why can't linux do this? This would save me so many headaches. Deb's are really easy don't get me wrong, but uninstalling the software is a chore and much harder than taking a file out of a folder and putting into trash. I don't mind learning about the OS, but really, I need functionality and less twittling with things to beat Linux into submission to make some hardware work. I want an easy button for linux.
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