| From: | Clyde Hannan |
| Date: | 6 Apr 2001 at 11:48:15 |
| Subject: | Re: OS4.0 and DE, a naive question? |
"Anthony W. Prime" wrote:
>
> Gareth Knight. On Thu, 05 Apr 2001 you wrote:
>
> >> Rather than code OS4.0 for PPC/AmigaOne and in effect, run DE hosted
> >> on 4.0. Would it not have been better to code OS4.0 to run on/under
> >> DE thereby making it available to run on anything running the DE?
>
> >I think they are doing that.
>
> They *were*. Whilst no one has said the project is cancelled, Fleecy has
> dropped a number of none too subtle hints that the Classic OS will remain
> outside the DE, /with the DE being supported by the Classic OS/ from version
> 4.2.
Don't forget that from v4.2 it's also supposed to be hardware independent -
which means that it should run on anything - not just PPC and not just the Zico
specced machines. Which is sorta what they were aiming at anyway.
> So, if I interpret what I have read correctly, the OS will continue as a
> standalone product on PPC hardware, whilst the DE will largely be a powerful
> skin and JVM for Windows/Linux or whatever :/
I might be a bit confused but this is how I interpret things:
The AmigaDE is the Amiga Digital Environment which was what the new OS was going
to be called and be about - the write-once-run-anywhere-on-anything thing.
Then there was the Run-Time version which was just the essential bits licensed
to programmers who wanted their specific piece of software to run anywhere
without needed the AmigaDE installed - to run invisibly on whatever.
That is how things were. And as I understood it, there wasn't any real
clarification of what the OS would be like that would be the front end of the
AmigaDE that would run on the servers or desktops or whatever. The DE was the
sorta multi-media (in the true sense) layer that glued everything together that
sat in the background running the show, keeping things rocking along. What the
user would actually interact with - the GUI etc (a DE version of Workbench etc)
was not that clearly described or discussed afaik.
So now, what I assume is that the essential schedule / programme from Amiga has
not removed anything and not radically departed from their initial plan.
Afaik the run-time stuff is still going ahead as it was, the DE is going along
as it was, but what has really happened is that something has just been added -
in a rather confusing manner: Amiga OS 4-5.
Think of OS 5 as a brand new OS based on, around and tightly integrated with
the DE - the superpowered son of the Classic AmigaOS. Completely hardware
independent, highly powerful and born from the ideas and concepts of the classic
OS (Things like Datatypes, Workbench, Screens, Font-sensitive GIU's, Libs, etc).
OS4.x is the transition from Classic OS to NextGen OS. As each revision takes
place in OS4, its a step closer towards OS5. The DE gets brought in along the
way, bringing its world with it, which means that anything that the DE does on
other systems can then be done on OS4.x
What it means is that we loose nothing that we didn't have before. There was no
really clear picture of what would happen to the AmigaOS after 3.x. No clear
indication of what the DE-based OS would be like. Now we do. And that is what
OS5 is.
(My understanding anyway).
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