Timberwolf (a.k.a. Firefox) Alpha 1 For AmigaOS

An anonymous reader writes "We're happy to announce the availability of the first alpha release of Timberwolf, the AmigaOS port of the popular Firefox browser. Timberwolf needs AmigaOS 4.1 Update 2 installed. Please read the documentation for information about usage and limitations. This is an alpha release, meaning it will have a lot of problems still, and be slower than it should be. We are releasing it as a small 'Thank you' to all those that have donated in the past to show that development is still going on. Timberwolf is available on os4depot.net. For further information and feedback, check the Timberwolf support forum on amigans.net."

Re:...really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not AS obsolete as one might think, amiga OS 4.1 update 2 was released in 2010. Amiga OS 4 was released in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_OS_4

Re:AmigaOS

[idontgno]

I'm not sure what you mean by "official Amiga". OS 4.x is strictly PPC, and specifically "AmigaOne, SAM440EP and Pegasos II" (from the "AmigaOS 4.1 Update 2" link). By my definition, there were no native PPC Amigas (i.e., from Commodore); those were all 680x0 machines like God intended.

I guess that just goes to show you the unsettled state of what's considered "Amiga".

Because it's OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

You can mark this as flamebait or whatever, but this was clearly posted here because of the novelty of porting a modern, popular program to an obsolete OS.

Which means that the obsolete OS still has users -- so I think my question has some merit.

The wonderful thing about open-source software is that "because you can" is a perfectly valid reason, as are "because I personally want it" and "because it's a challenge."

If this was an announcement of, say, Microsoft Office or Adobe CS5 being ported to an obsolete OS, you'd have to wonder about the sanity of the company in question.

Re:...really?

[91degrees]

OS4.1 is a decent enough OS, and the current Amiga OS machines have fast modern CPUs.

Some people simply like Amiga OS. The way the Amiga does screens (every application on its own desktop at its own resolution) and the fast boot time and the datatypes system are all pretty nice innovations that you don't get with other platforms.

Re:...really?

[aliquis]

It's quite simple:
The most used software of todays computers for most people is the web browser.

So having a decent web-browser make AmigaOS much more usable. And for most else it already have good software. Sure it may not be the state of the art for video editing or something such but for everyday use everything is there and people enjoy their old apps I assume.

Origyn Web Browser is a Webkit based browser for MorphOS and AmigaOS4:
http://fabportnawak.free.fr/owb/ [fabportnawak.free.fr]
http://os4depot.net/share/network/browser/owb.lha [os4depot.net]

Someone has obviously made it possible to play Youtube videos from within iBrowse, which atleast back in the day was an Amiga browser not based on any other engine which I know of:
http://os4depot.net/share/network/browser/ib_youtube.lha [os4depot.net]
iBrowse web page:
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/ [ibrowse-dev.net]
Looks like it got a flash plugin for MorphOS:
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/news.php?id=1169229504 [ibrowse-dev.net]

And there exist a PPC-version of AWEB:
http://os4depot.net/share/network/browser/aweb.lha [os4depot.net]

Enough people use it that they have donated more than 5000 euro to get it ported to that page. I don't know if it handles the donation from the old project which was about the same think, getting a modern browser (gecko) on AmigaOS.

Re:You do all know that Amiga OS 4.1 is new, right

[Per Wigren]

New as in april 30th, 2010 [hyperion-e...inment.biz] even...

Re:AmigaOS

[TheRaven64]

They probably can. The PowerPC instruction set was designed to make it easy to emulate x86 and m68k. The AIM (Apple, IBM, Motorola) group wanted to run Windows and MacOS on them, emulating the legacy architectures for old code. Given that most m68k Amigas had an CPU running at under 8MHz, and even the upgrades only went to about 40MHz, it's not much of a stretch to expect a 533MHz PowerPC to be able to emulate the m68k chip much faster than the real thing ran. Unless, of course, you bought one of the 300MHz m68k expansions that came out a couple of years ago, and even then the PPC is probably faster.

Re:...really?

[abigor]

No memory protection is one reason why Amiga OS is fast. Unfortunately, it's also a big reason why it's obsolete, regardless of the chronology of its latest updates.

Re:AmigaOS

[ninjakoala]

"Official Amiga" is, I guess, the system running "Amiga OS" from whoever has the rights to call it that. The name has been shifted around a lot, but the PPC systems run an operating system directly descended from the m68k Amigas.

Macs run on x86 instead of PPC or m68k these days too.

The right to use the Amiga-related names lie at Amiga Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment CVBA (some usages exclusive to Hyperion - some on license). Hyperion works with third parties to deliver machines. The AmigaOne X1000 from A-Eon will be the first fully Amiga-branded machine (branded case, mouse, keyboard) to release since Amiga 4000T.

Re:...really?

[commodore64_love]

AmigaOS 3.x and 4.x both have memory protection, same as a modern Mac OS X or Windows 5.x/6.x have memory protection.

3.x was released in 1992