Timberwolf (Firefox) Beta For AmigaOS 96
An anonymous reader writes "News from the world of AmigaOS that the Beta version of Timberwolf (a.k.a. Firefox) was made available last month."
Timberwolf is a port of Firefox to the AmigaOS (the name change is for similar reasons to Debian's use of Iceweasel name) and has been under development for quite some time. The AmigaBounty project page has screenshots and even more info for those interested. There's a video of the browser in action, but beware of the cheesy soundtrack.
T-t-t-t-t-t-tiiiiim-beeeerrrrr (Score:3, Interesting)
For all who don't know what I'm talking about:
http://frededison.free.fr/ [frededison.free.fr]
or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...
Timberlake (Score:2)
Steer him clear of a Karaoke machine but as an actor he wasn't too bad in In Time. :-)
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Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.
For all who don't know what I'm talking about:
http://frededison.free.fr/ [frededison.free.fr]
or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...
Hahah! Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head for the next couple of days. ;-)
But seriously, thanks -- nice link.
Fuck weeklies (Score:1)
Fuck weeklies, Nightly FTW.
Re:Aren't they all betas? (Score:4, Funny)
Does the Amiga OS (Score:4, Insightful)
have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?
I get people like to do this stuff for fun and nostalgia. That's fine. It's just been so long since I have used an Amiga I can't think of anything today that it does better then Win7/OSX/Linux
Re:Does the Amiga OS (Score:5, Informative)
No, no advantage.
It's still a very *efficient* OS, but it lacks about a zillion features that any modern OS has. Protected memory, for one.
But for day-to-day use? It's pointless and stupid. You can't do anything with AmigaOS that you can't do faster and better (anc cheaper- modern Amiga hardware is ridiculously expensive) on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.
Still, AmigaOS has a lot of neat features. It's still very well-designed, and it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.
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Oh, no argument form me on the design. I though maybe there was a file system property I had forgotten about.
Thanks
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Re:Does the Amiga OS (Score:5, Funny)
Last time I checked, you cant get a PC virus to run on a potato either.
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Last time I checked, you couldn't eat an Amiga. Just saying...
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Safer purely due to security through obscurity... AmigaOS has virtually no security features, it doesn't even have a concept of users or of protected address space so a vulnerability in any userland application is effectively a kernel level exploit.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does the Amiga OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Since 64-bit CPUs are now common (except ARM), I'd think they could leapfrog 32-bit, and go directly from 16-bit to 64 bit and be there on PPC or MIPS. Do something like using the top (or bottom) half of the address space as reserved for the R/O, and leave the other half there for the memory to grow. That would still give the user up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 bytes to address. In fact, they could even toss in some compatibility features w/ the old 16-bit Amiga DOS.
But I only see the point if some computer manufacturer bundles it w/ a new computer that can't run Windows, such as a MIPS or PPC based computer. No point in having this to port it to PCs - there are already too many alternatives for PCs, and as others have noted above, there is no reason to prefer it to Windows7/OS-X or any of the Unixes.
What about AROS? (Score:4, Informative)
AROS [sourceforge.net] is AmigaOS 3.1+, with extra bits, re-implemented as a portable OS (not just x86, but ARM, 68k, PPC). AROS is/was for users, by users, without (scant!) profits getting in the way of rational decision-making.
The reason the various zombie shells of Amiga, Inc. and its contractors/IP licensees never did an x86 port is because by the time the AROS guys were actually doing it, the Amiga market was so small that monetizing such an effort would have been impossible without proprietary hardware in the first place.
I'm glossing over the fact that PPC was technically also a much easier challenge than going x86, but I think that's the reality: there always seemed to be more money in what was left of the retail/reseller network for hardware, than software.
I'd also like to point out that AmigaOS had virtual memory, even in the classic 3.x OS with add-ons, and many popular software packages were written to be "VM friendly". Also, AmigaOS 4.x has protected memory, but the implementation has some interesting twist which I forget the details of (but seemed a good compromise to transition AmigaOS 3.x apps into the new protected-memory world).
Even with protected memory enabled, it sure as hell boots faster and starts apps quicker than the shiny new Asus laptop I bought last year...
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Yes, the blatant attempts at profiteering were the final nail in the coffin for the Amiga...
Back when i had a (relatively highend) Amiga, in order to connect it to the internet i would have needed to buy a tcp stack, and then buy a browser, even things like ftp, irc and telnet clients had a price tag attached! Even MS and Apple don't charge extra for basic things like that.
And AmigaOS 4, not only expensive in its own right (even free niche os's have trouble gaining traction, what hope does an expensive one
Point of fact on "profiteering" (Score:2)
Yes, the blatant attempts at profiteering were the final nail in the coffin for the Amiga...
Back when i had a (relatively highend) Amiga, in order to connect it to the internet i would have needed to buy a tcp stack, and then buy a browser, even things like ftp, irc and telnet clients had a price tag attached! Even MS and Apple don't charge extra for basic things like that.
At time time (due to Commodore's bankruptcy) there was no first party networking stack, browser etc. so all these had to be provided by third parties, hence most of these things being commercial or shareware. Don't you remember when you had to pay for Netscape or IE on PC? And the big fuss everyone made of Microsoft bundling their browser with Windows?
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Windows and MacOS also had no default TCP stack in those days, and yet free stacks were available... Even "demo" versions would function, while demo versions of the amiga stacks would disconnect you after 30 minutes.
You also had completely free operating systems such as bsd and early linux versions, which included a tcp stack by default.
Netscape was available for free to non commercial users, IE was available for free too (even for non windows users on macos, solaris and hp-ux)...
Also the "evaluation" versi
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Windows and MacOS also had no default TCP stack in those days, and yet free stacks were available... Even "demo" versions would function, while demo versions of the amiga stacks would disconnect you after 30 minutes.
You also had completely free operating systems such as bsd and early linux versions, which included a tcp stack by default.
At that point the Amiga user base was so small it's lucky there were usable stacks at all, no way a 3rd party company could make money releasing a free stack and not enough free software enthusiasts to release a decent free stack.
Netscape was available for free to non commercial users
At release Netscape was only supposed to be free for education and charity users, but yeah reading some more about it sounds like they were pretty loose with it. Again compared to Amiga's tiny tiny user base how would a commercial software company make anything free for non-commerc
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At that point the Amiga user base was so small it's lucky there were usable stacks at all, no way a 3rd party company could make money releasing a free stack and not enough free software enthusiasts to release a decent free stack.
There are plenty of niche platforms with enough open source developers to write basic things like a tcp stack and often a lot more, see bsd, aros, syllable, minix etc.
Commercial development for a niche platform is even worse (which is why it almost never happens), with the customer base being so small there is very limited money in it, which means either ridiculous prices or severe corner cutting to reduce development costs...
The end result was that the amiga applications were not only far more expensive th
You can't blame all that on the demo authors (Score:2)
Sorry, but it's totally insane to blame the lack of free/open software on the 'profiteering' behaviour of the very few developers who were left.
You say that that these developers drove users away - what nonsense! What drove them (and by 'them' I now mean: potential freeware/open source developers) away was a total lack of leadership and utter neglect of the userbase by the various zombie shells which owned Amiga, including Commodore in its final years.
Under Commodore, Amiga missed many opportunities; not th
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The Amiga never had a big FOSS scene, it was always much more centred around small time commercial and indie devs, with little open source and virtually no first party support. Who would have open sourced Amiga OS? Commodore? The people who paid for the IP after Commodore went bust? Not really sure what use the source would be anyway as it was very tied to the hardware architecture.
Most FOSS enthusiasts were on other platforms or started their own (Aros etc.), if someone had wanted a free TCP stack on Amiga
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It boots very fast.
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So does my foot~
Re:Does the Amiga OS (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6nRHNDY2Kw [youtube.com]
Quit putting the first half-sentence in the title (Score:3)
Does the Amiga OS have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?
This tends- justifiably- to be asked every time there's been a bit of Amiga "news" in the past few years (including that of the final release of Amiga OS 4, delayed for around 15 years).
If there *is* any major advantage, then no-one came up with one during any of those discussions.
Really, the Amiga OS nowadays is just a plaything for a few very hardcore hobbyists willing to pay for overpriced, underpowered custom hardware that isn't even directly compatible with the original Amiga anyway. Amiga OS (and
Re:Does the Amiga OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Speed. AmigaOS is bloody fucking fast and ought to be able to run rings around most OSes.
That's assuming you have equivalent hardware to your Linux system, which happens to never be the case.
And it's assuming you don't care that any of hundred tasks can write to any particular piece of memory, an assumption which usually isn't the case, though somehow in the 1990s I managed to get by with that, telling myself "run bugfree software, run bugfree software." Whether or not there's actually such a thing as bugfree software, or if Firefox could possibly be an example of it, I'll leave to Firefox hackers to advocate. (Good luck, guys, you're going to need it.)
And it's assuming that by "fast" you're not talking about the filesystems. The Amiga had some third-party filesystems that were pretty speedy for the time but somewhere around 2.4 Linux got into a league of its own.
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the 2.5GHz processor would be expected to boot faster than the 25MHz system, but in actual fact the 25MHz 68040 Classic Amiga A4000 will boot in 1 minute *or*less*...
And my laptop and desktop come out of sleep in like 3 seconds. Whoop-de-doo for your Amiga.
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That's apples and oranges.
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before the HD on my A4000T died, it booted more like in 10-15 seconds. And that wasn't even a fast HD.
Of course it's fast (Score:2)
Of course it's fast, programs are virtually running on the bare metal with minimal OS features/interference to slow things down.
Fun to mess around with but these days hardware has caught up with features expected of a modern (complex) OS.
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I find it more fun to just screw around with than the other computers I've got. I wouldn't suggest anyone else get one unless they're just 'into computers' and like messing around with stuff.
The one thing it does that I really, really wish Windows or OSX would do is its focus paradigm. Click to focus, but click does not raise window. It gives you the advantages of both click to focus - the focus stays where you want it even if you bump the mouse - and the advantage of focus follows mouse, that you can have
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If you're running Linux, then there are several window managers which provide the behaviour you desire... I always used to run windowmaker with a focus follows mouse configuration, where only clicking on the titlebar would bring the window to the front.
The idea of buying an 800mhz (single core?) desktop in 2009 seems pretty insane... Sure there is a place for low power hardware, but only when it's cheap (eg look at raspberry pi)...
Having hardware that expensive ensures that no new users will ever take up th
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Is it any more insane than buying any other toy? I mean, toys are generally pretty useless. There are people who spend more than a car costs on bicycles. Is that insane? People regularly spend thousands of dollars on pretty rocks or pretty pictures that don't do anything at all. That seems more insane to me than buying a toy, but they must enjoy having them. At least I can play with the toy. I've had my money's worth of fun out of it, so it doesn't seem like a waste to me.
Focus follows mouse with clicking t
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I prefer focus follows mouse, but it can be turned off. Clicking in a window should not bring that window to the front otherwise having the focus follow mouse becomes useless since any interaction with the window would bring it to the foreground...
The window should only come to the foreground if you click in a particular place, or if use a keyboard shortcut or modifier key in combination with a click... In essence, your requirements are the same as mine minus the focus following mouse.
As to hobbies... Peopl
Wait ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Do newer Amiga systems even have enough memory to handle the memory leaks in Firefox' add-on system?
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No matter how many articles come out that show Firefox's memory management to be competitive there's always going to be clueless trolls like you that are stuck in an infinite loop. Trolls to say something stupid and trolls to mod it Insightful.
Why don't you tell Adam he doesn't know WTF he's doing: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-17-firefox-10-ubuntu,3129-14.html [tomshardware.com]
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Sounds about right too - Chrome is incredibly memory-hungry in my experience.
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I yet have to see a Chrome install that manages inflate to 2.5+ GB.
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2.5+ GB? Chrome will hit 25+ GB quite easily if you let it and have enough RAM installed - it's just that each individual process generally uses less than a gigabyte of RAM, so it's very difficult to see how much it's using in a standard task manager or Chrome's integrated task manager. (Chrome does track its total memory usage but that figure is tucked away in the "Stats for nerds" section.)
Timberwolf? (Score:2)
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Does the output bounce around like the display that earned the MadCat its name?
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According to the story, the first time they encountered one, the recognition system couldn't decide between MAD (Marauder) and CAT (Catapult). Reports of this event later lead to the new name.
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If I remember Lethal Heritage correctly, Mad Cat was designated by Precentor Martial that way exactly because it has got arms like a Marauder but shoulder missile launchers like the Catapult, so AarghVark might be correct.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
I care. Other /. members apparently care. Since you don't care, why did you waste your time posting a comment?
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Isn't one of the great things about the whole open source thingy that even the most niche systems are catered for?
I don't run AmigaOS but I still think this is mighty cool.
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I care. I happen to like the amiga os, and wish a few more modern os's would take a lesson. (stackable, push/pull windows, a feature I greatly miss, dynamic ram drive, rad (bootabe ram drive), easy to use script control of most software, king-con (king con eats bash for breakfast), the amiga os has many great concepts that have been largely lost or poorly re-produced in other os's even to this day.
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I use Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6. If there's a way to push the topmost window to the bottom of the stack on either, please explain how to do it.
There certainly isn't a widget for it. Is there a keyboard shortcut or modifier-click that will do it?
The only X11 window manager I recall with that feature was one that was specifically trying for the Amiga Workbench look and feel, but I admit I haven't used an X11 based system in ten years.
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SET FILECOMPLETION=CD:DIRS;EDLIN:DIRS TXT DOC CFG;GIFCHECK:DIRS GIF
and typing "CD " and then CONTROL-TAB would give you a list of directories. For EDLIN it would also show text files. For GIFCHECK it would show directories and GIF files.
And when I type CD TOME it knows to swtich to \GAMES\ANGBAND\TOME.
(if I use CDD instead it even changes the currently loggged drive to C:)
If
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My 1979 Atari computer (HCS) has "recoverable" RAM disks. But that's because the device drivers/handlers that I use just don't bother to build a new file system (MyDOS) or else they only do so when they can find no existing one (SpartaDOS X). It's the same with the Amiga's "Executive Multitasker" and AmigaDOS as well. I can't imagine how your choice of OS would make any difference as RAM disks are handled by the device handler rather than the the OS itself.
(except for Linux; and even it supports FUSE!)
The s
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X11 based systems have thousands of window managers, some of which behave exactly like you describe and there are so many possibilities you can find one which exactly suits your needs. /dev/shm on linux, or /tmp on solaris.
Dynamic ram drive? Try
RAD:? Modern computers don't need to reboot anywhere near as often as amigaos did, even windows is pretty stable these days so the utility of a reset resident ram drive is fairly limited. And then you have flash drives, and you can even get pcie cards with a load of
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That archive contains (very old) sourcecode for bash, you can download it from gnu.org too assuming they haven't removed such old versions. You won't be able to get it compiled and running on amigaos, no idea why someone would want to mirror old non amiga sourcecode on aminet either.
It seems like kingcon merges some of the functions of a terminal with that of the shell, while unix keeps them in separate apps. From its readme, the features it provides have long been provided by x11 terminals such as konsole
source code license (Score:2, Informative)
"The source code of the port will be made available only as far as the MPL requires it, i.e. all modified source code files will be available for interested parties, but new files will not. This is in accordance with the requirements of the Mozilla Public License. "
that's the true amiga spirit when it comes to source releases. Release as little as possible. Got to make sure no-one else running any machines "similar" to the AmigaOS could possibly benefit from their work.
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I hope you also read through the entire source code. And compiled the compiler you used. And hand assembled the compiler you compiled the compiler with [scienceblogs.com] :)
Amiga OS4 (Score:2)
which requires a power pc accelerator, so if I take my 3000, spend a pile of money for a obsolete power pc card, and a pile of money for obsolete ram, I can run firefox on something I already know it sucks balls on?
I have a powermac 9600/300 with a pile of ram in it, a much better motherboard and chipset, faster video and disk I/O and guess what? Iceweasel is painfully slow in debian, classzilla is painfully slow in mac OS9, and if you want anywhere reasonable speed you have to drop down to a very basic gek
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which requires a power pc accelerator, so if I take my 3000, spend a pile of money for a obsolete power pc card, and a pile of money for obsolete ram, I can run firefox on something I already know it sucks balls on?
Obsolete ram is actually quite cheap if you check ebay. And if you're so worried about price you probably missed this story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/23/2312219/hyperion-promises-an-amigaos-netbook [slashdot.org] where Hyoperion is working on a low-cost PPC Amiga Netbook to run AmigaOS 4.x on
I have a powermac 9600/300 with a pile of ram in it, a much better motherboard and chipset, faster video and disk I/O and guess what? Iceweasel is painfully slow in debian, classzilla is painfully slow in mac OS9, and if you want anywhere reasonable speed you have to drop down to a very basic geko engine browser, and then its like 45 seconds to load slashdot with no javabloat ... or just use a text browser, maybe one with image support like links2.
You're kinda missing the point,just because OS9 is so slow doesn't mean that AmigaOS will be. I've used PPC Amiga machines (expanded old 68k machines not the newer pure PPC machines) to load slashdot, and they did it w
leave us be (Score:2)
AmigaOS today is for people that are obsessed with it. Either you are, and enjoy it, or you are not, and don't care. It can be a useful platform, though yes it does have some limitations today. I don't know why people post Amiga stuff to the non-caring Slashdot etc. sites. Move along and let us enjoy our hobby, we obsessors don't need your counseling and it won't bring us to our senses anyway.
Re:leave us be (Score:4, Informative)
No way! I haven't used an Amiga for 15-20 yrs and probably never will again, but I still have a soft spot for it and like to occasionally hear about what's happening with its latest incarnations.
After all it is very nerdy news, and that's what we're here for right?
Music in the demo video is so Amiga! (Score:2)
I ROFL'd when watching the video. Totally reminds me of playing Outrun on the classic Amiga. Thumbs up!!
Alternative approach (Score:1)