keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (04/30/86)
In article <162@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes: >In article <794@ccird2.UUCP> rb@ccird2.UUCP (Rex Ballard) writes: >>with translaters to go Atari-> Mac, and Atari -> Amiga. Another possibility >>is that a third party such as DRI, MicroWare, Metacomco or ??? could come up >>with operating systems which would provide the best functionality of all >>these machines and still be tranparent to application software. Possible >>candidates include Concurrent GEMDOS (is it coming?), OS-9 68K, Tripos, >>GNU with VDI, Windows, UNIX, or ???. At this point, it looks like OS-9 >>will be the first contender. I'm not at all convinced that OS-9 has much chance here. And, I don't think it has anything to do with how good of an OS it is (unfortunately). I would expect that GEM may have the best chance. Why? You can get off the shelf applications for GEM of the sort that most people are interested in. Languages are not applications. Spreadsheets, Word processors, painting packages, DBMS programs, games, THOSE are applications. People want to buy PeeCee DOS emulators for their machine, NOT OS-9, and certainly NOT because PeeCee DOS is a better OS. GEM is not owned by one of the hardware manufacturers, who would probably want to keep you locked in to their hardware and not let their OS run on other machines. This is what will rule the MAC OS out. TRIPOS would only have a chance if Amiga would consider selling Intuition (their graphics/windowing software) to go with TRIPOS. This would actually be in Amiga's best interest, TRIPOS and INTUITION running on a ST would sell a lot of Amigas, both by expanding the attractiveness to developers of developing Amiga compatible packages, and by magnifying the performance and feature differences of Amigas vs STs. Otherwise, TRIPOS has the same problems as OS-9. GNU might have a chance, because it's free. There is no way I am going to BUY an OS for my machine even if it is a great OS, if there are no (or almost no) applications that run under it. If it's a FREE OS, (public domain or similar) THEN I might be inspired to run it on my machine. If Atari, Amiga, Apple or some Alternate manufacturer produces a machine that comes with OS-9 plain vanilla, and developers decide to get behind it, then OS-9 has a chance. Until then, OS-9 is at the level of the 8-bit CP/M systems, because there will be no applications that will use any graphics, windows, or other neat stuff that you need to sell applications these days. I don't need OS-9 to run 'C', assemblers, Modula, Pascal, Lisp, Basic, Forth, etc. on my Amiga, or to be able to print stuff while I'm editing or compiling now do I? Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd # cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa
peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (05/09/86)
> I'm not at all convinced that OS-9 has much chance here. And, I don't think > it has anything to do with how good of an OS it is (unfortunately). >... > I don't need OS-9 to run 'C', assemblers, Modula, Pascal, Lisp, > Basic, Forth, etc. on my Amiga, or to be able to print stuff while I'm > editing or compiling now do I? Once again, the good is the enemy of the best. Does anybody know anything about running GEM or Intuition or even a generic windowing system (with each window being a virtual terminal, of course) under OS/9? That's what we really need. -- -- Peter da Silva -- UUCP: ...!shell!{baylor,graffiti}!peter; MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076
daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (05/12/86)
You could certainly make Intuition calls from OS/9 just as easily as you
could from AmigaDOS. You'd have to rewrite some of the support functions
(like OpenLibrary()) to look for OS/9 style directories instead of AmigaDOS
logical names, but other than that they'd be little problem, I imagine.
--
Dave Haynie {caip,inhp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
"There, beyond the bounds of your weak imagination
Lie the noble towers of my city, bright and gold"
-Genesis