Tue 9 Jun 2009
AmigaOS 4.1 in all its glory
AmigaOS 4.1 is not vintage or retro so you might wonder why such topic is the matter of the day here in the underground bunkers of Vintage Amiga Hardware Blog?
Yours loyally have been using AmigaOS 4.1 for two weeks now and it hit me today that 4.1 is just as much retro as Workbench 3.1 is.
Why is that? –you maybe wonder.
Lets imagine that someone took the source for Workbench 3.1, modernized it, added quite a lot of functionality but kept all the things you like in Workbench and ported it to much more modern hardware than 68k Amiga systems will ever be?
Sounds like a fantasy?
That is not a fantasy, it is actually for real. 4.1 is the same OS as Workbench 3.* to a degree and in that sense a modern hardware platform running AmigaOS 4.1 is at the same time as is cutting edge just as much retro as any A1200 running Shadow of the beast.
I am not going to focus on hardware in this review but I should mention the platform I am running 4.1 on which is a bplan Pegasos 2 with a G4 1 GHz CPU, 768 MB and a Radeon 9200 graphics board with 64 MB RAM.
About two and a half years ago I wrote a review on this blog of AmigaOS 4.0 ported to classic Amiga.
Much of the same criticism I pointed towards AmigaOS 4.0 is still relevant. Older applications (read, 68k applications) often do not work or are unstable (more about this later). I still think there is much work that needs to be done from the usability point of view, especially thinking of the GUI prefs application which probably is a new world record in the amount of clicks you need to do before finding a combination you are satisfied with. The prefs part of AmigaOS has got complaints from others too, and I am starting to agree with them, but more about this later in the summary about changes needed to be done.
Amiga means different for different users. For some users, the thought of Amiga is a games system, for others it was a moment of time where you could do anything, be anything and go for anything you wanted at that moment of time.
What if you could go back there?
AmigaOS 4.1 running TuneNet and that Astroids clone in a scalable WB window
Everybody knows you can replace your workstation with an OS4.1 system, but it is up to you to decide how much fun it is going to be, and ultimately why you want an OS4.1 system. It is easy to sit on a forum with 6000 posts and declare 4.1 as useless junk, and in some way it is.
Nobody needs 4.1 in reality -seriously- but there is a solid but small growing user base of hardcore Amiga users who would do anything to experience what it is like to be in the premium Amiga club, and for those at least now, there is an option to do that.
Yes, in a perfect world it should have been possible to install 4.1 on your old x86 workstation collecting dust in the closet, saving you a lot of cash. But this is here and now, and this is the cold harsh reality. If you want to hop on the AmigaOS 4.1 train it is going to cost quite a bit and you won’t get any use for your WHDLoad key if you are not a fan of UAE.
All right, enough of the Apple-inspired fanboy hype-train zomg wtf lol posting and onto the review.
One of the big differences between AmigaOS 4.0 and 4.1 is that the windows are now rounded on the top corners. The top corners are rounded to mark that 4.1 have a new window system supporting true transparency which is actually really cool. Whenever you move a window that window becomes transparent while in movement. There is no noticeable slowdown with transparencies enabled.
Initially I thought I would grow tired of the rounded corners, I like my WB to have square windows, but I actually prefer them the way they are now.
I have not actually noticed other changes from AmigaOS 4.0 classic but I bet there are loads of other changes if you decide to hunt for them. What I noticed right away was that overall 4.1 felt very fast, on drives formatted with SFS filesystem, PNG icons fly and appears in less than half a second even if you are opening a drawer with hundreds of them. Yes, this is not your papas Amiga system from 1991, imagine what would happen if you let this beast loose on a 4 GHz 4 core box?
That speed is actually felt everywhere, OWB, the internet browser starts in a couple of seconds, two at most (keep in mind I am running a 5400 RPM hard drive). It is still in somewhat beta phase but OWB is rock solid, capable of modern sites and is a major leap over all other Amiga browsers. Once OWB is finished and Flash is ported to Amiga we are right there with Linux, PC and macs, at least when it comes to browsing the web.
If you know Amiga you know that right Amiga-key + E opens up an execute window where you can for example type in “cli” to open up a CLI window. You probably know that Amiga-key and M lets you flip between multiple opened Amiga screens, so if you have an application in the background on its own screen you can flip it to the front with Amiga-key + M. Guess what, those shortcuts are still here, and that is one small piece of the puzzle why AmigaOS 4.1 is such a pleasant system to use for us hardcore Amiga users. Suddenly you have power-apps in a power-OS. Give AmigaOS a couple of years more and let it be ported to next-gen hardware with input from usability experts and watch AmigaOS blow MacOS X out of the water, never to be seen again.
AmigaOS 4.1 running DOSBox on my Pegasos 2 1 GHz box
A small user base is backing up modern AmigaOS with applications. Suddenly it is more interesting to see what 4.1 can do with modern apps than with the old portfolio of 68k applications. It is more interesting to see the limit of AmigaOS and what to expect of the future than hold on to the past. Some 68k apps will never run on 4.1, just accept that and move forward and be glad with what works, I would like to have proper 68k Paula sound on my 4.1 box, but the harsh reality is I will never have that. And guess what, fuck it, I am having the time of my life with 4.1, screw 68k apps and keep an A1200 in the closet for those times when you lounge back to 1993.
As probably have been noticed, all is not good in Amiga-land. If you are a fanboy you accept this because the producers of AmigaOS 4.1 are a small studio, probably 0.0005% the size of Microsoft. If you are a realist, AmigaOS has some fundamental flaws inherited from the source of Workbench.
Because AmigaOS is AmigaOS it is in some ways still the same OS as 3.1 was back in the day. I noticed almost immediately that working on the OS instantly became a click-fest with more than ten open windows, it would have become twenty if I did not close some windows down. Yes, back in the day we had DOpus 5 for these situation offering a Windows explorer type window, but there is no ready solution of 4.1 yet. Setting up a good dock with shortcuts for often used applications is the way to go, but to be honest, something needs to be changed if you do not want to get a mouse elbow (not that most Amiga users are under 30 years old, so we can destroy our arms for the 30 more years we will live perhaps, all in the good name of Amiga).
You see many of these issues when you are working around Workbench, if you are a novice many things will be missed out because there is a lack of documentation of how you can do things and what you can install to enable that functionality. With a Windows or Linux system, learning these tasks become a chore, with AmigaOS not so much, if you have been getting gray hair sitting in front of your boring XP box at work counting the hours left of the day while improving your post count on EAB maybe a 4.1 box is just what you need to get that spark of genuine interest for Amiga ignited again?
I am going to be totally honest with you on this one, I suck at writing reviews. But if you missed out, AmigaOS 4.1 kicks all kinds of ass. It is not there yet when thinking of boring Windows and Linux boxes, but where it is now is a great start and the momentum is in motion, you should get there to because then you would have lots of fun and you could join the beginning of exciting new times in the Amiga universe.
Give it some more years and maybe it will kick other OS asses off too!
And if it does not kick the other systems asses, is that really such a big problem?
Fuck it, let they get bored with their Win/Linux/Mac-systems while hardcore Amiga users have all the fun!