Status of Raspberry Pi native support

[x-vision]

Let me turn that question back at you: what would your "clean" AROS port that has virtually no software available offer compared to Linux? People with nostalgia would play around with it a bit, and then go back to Linux and Amiga emulation. An x64 port of MorphOS would face the same issue. On the other hand, if it offers the same level of 68k integration as MOS or OS4 currently on PPC, then you have an NG Amiga OS that can run system friendly Amiga programs out of the box, and could potentially offer more features for native software (access to more memory, set the processor affinity for threads, etc.). This is why Michal decided to target big endian ARM to begin with.

Are you comparing with Linux? really there was no better answer than that?? that option is always there, but I didn't mean that the first version it is aimed at new users, and the porting of apps is not so hard, as Paolo is already proving and doing.

But Aros is precisely for people who don't like linux for many reasons, because there are reasons for that, but you have to offer a viable alternative. Something kind of serious. It was said so many times here that a lot of users could like it for their Pi because its ease of use against the demanding knowledge of linux. And it could even compete in responsiveness.

Or ok: forget it. Let's stick forever behind everything else and being always supporting ancient features with ancient solutions until we get completely dissolved in computing history, as it is already happening. I say there is a chance for having a future, you say there is no future, let it die peacefully.

[BSzili]

Or ok: forget it. Let's stick forever behind everything else and being always supporting ancient features with ancient solutions until we get completely dissolved in computing history, as it is already happening. I say there is a chance for having a future, you say there is no future, let it die peacefully.

That's exactly what my goal is, so I'm glad we agree at least on this point 

[nikos]

x-vision:  Why do you think porting of apps. is not so hard? It is cause it is from other Amiga ports that we are compatible with. No offence to Paolo but he did not port any advanced stuff.
At once we break Amiga compatibility it is very hard porting software from anything. Even how powerfull AROS have been compared to other Amiga like platform it is not we took huge advantage of it. Why you think Amiga classic is way more popular than any Amiga NG system? It is cause it have lot's of good software and games. I don't even see the need for so up to date hardware. Greatest update to PC hardware the last years been SSD unless you like to play the most advanced games.

Regarding Pi we will have a very cheap NG Amiga system. If people like BSzili will use it I'm sure he will port lot of stuff to it as he already done to AROS. That will at least make me happy. It is something for fun. Whatever Amiga system will die when we are gone. I agree

[cavemann]

Personally I have no interest in Pi, but it's obvious there is enough interest for AROS to explore that direction. Although, I'll bet that some out there would prefer to see Os4 on Pi.   

[nikos]

Personally I have no interest in Pi, but it's obvious there is enough interest for AROS to explore that direction. Although, I'll bet that some out there would prefer to see Os4 on Pi.   

I would prefer i386, amd64 as well. The problem is that it is not a success. Where can we be more successfull and why are we not more successfull already?

First and foremost software is everything. OS without software is nothing. We have a lot of software for AROS but most are no good. The ones that are good you can also find on other platforms except Zune tools like Zunepaint and Zuneview.
Since AROS is an Amiga clone I'm sure integration with classic is very important and where never good enough. Integration in Amiga NG and MorphOS where better and felt more like native. That might change with Pi.
Pi is also cheap and future proof with arm onboard. We will probably never see anything new from PPC unless something fpga but that is not very likely.
   

[aurabin]

PowerPC is not dead..

There is the Power9 Processor from IBM and a very Powerfull Workstation System with Power9 CPU
https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/

[Samurai_Crow]

PowerPC is not dead..

There is the Power9 Processor from IBM and a very Powerfull Workstation System with Power9 CPU
https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/

...it's just on life support.

Let's try to stay on topic.

[x-vision]

x-vision:  Why do you think porting of apps. is not so hard? It is cause it is from other Amiga ports that we are compatible with. No offence to Paolo but he did not port any advanced stuff.
At once we break Amiga compatibility it is very hard porting software from anything. Even how powerfull AROS have been compared to other Amiga like platform it is not we took huge advantage of it.

Advanced stuff is never easy to port, but once GCC is in good condition, porting to 64 bits won't be specially complicated. If you said making something multicore, or translating all the graphic tasks taking advantage of latest OpenGL, etc... I would maybe agree. But worrying too much about 64bits sounds like a lame excuse.

Why you think Amiga classic is way more popular than any Amiga NG system? It is cause it have lot's of good software and games. I don't even see the need for so up to date hardware. Greatest update to PC hardware the last years been SSD unless you like to play the most advanced games.

NOSTALGIA. Just that. I won't even comment on the pc hardware statement because it so... :facepalm:

Regarding Pi we will have a very cheap NG Amiga system. If people like BSzili will use it I'm sure he will port lot of stuff to it as he already done to AROS. That will at least make me happy. It is something for fun. Whatever Amiga system will die when we are gone. I agree

I disagree. I am AGAINST that. So I think you better suit to OS3 or OS4 fans than Aros, because with that attitude Aros would have never been done. Apple would have never move from MacOS 8 to X, etc, etc... I could keep bringing examples for ages.

Personally I have no interest in Pi, but it's obvious there is enough interest for AROS to explore that direction. Although, I'll bet that some out there would prefer to see Os4 on Pi.   

I would prefer i386, amd64 as well. The problem is that it is not a success. Where can we be more successfull and why are we not more successfull already?

First and foremost software is everything. OS without software is nothing. We have a lot of software for AROS but most are no good. The ones that are good you can also find on other platforms except Zune tools like Zunepaint and Zuneview.
Since AROS is an Amiga clone I'm sure integration with classic is very important and where never good enough. Integration in Amiga NG and MorphOS where better and felt more like native. That might change with Pi.
Pi is also cheap and future proof with arm onboard. We will probably never see anything new from PPC unless something fpga but that is not very likely.
   

Always looking to the past eh? PPC, really?? I have some news: old software is not important anymore. Even Directory Opus is not important anymore, and even rejected by many users, as Paolo recently found out. Run Amiga software? sure, but it is not the most important feature anymore. A good emulation layer it's more than enough. It is more important to take care of the present and the future, as Aros developers always knew (when they thought they would have to support new hardware, new features, and improve already ancient features, they needed to create new ones) this day would come. Keeping always stuck in the past is more comforting, but it is also the path to death.

If you don't risk, you'll never win.

[nikos]

X-vision:  So what software for AROS is so important to run? Software development take years to bring to perfection. There are some ports from SDL and very few native apps. Classic have lots of games, scene productions and apps. that are really good. Not found on other platforms. I'm not using classic Amiga cause it bring back memories. I don't like that much the games released  anymore. There are some like Dirt Rally 1 and 2 + Rocket league but I enjoy mostly older games. Recently I played R-type Delta on PS1 a lot. Even new consoles bring back old titles and they start to sell Nintendo and Super Nintendo hardware again. Problem is that it look mostly crap on digital display, but that most don't understand.
On classic there are many quality releases, mostly from the scene. www.pouet.net
Last year we got a great Amiga 500 commercial game called Worty. This year Amiga 1200 game Reshoot R.
AROS have a chance to be a bridge between classic and new. That is in my opinion the only way it can be successful. It will never be mainstream.

[OlafS3]

Let me turn that question back at you: what would your "clean" AROS port that has virtually no software available offer compared to Linux? People with nostalgia would play around with it a bit, and then go back to Linux and Amiga emulation. An x64 port of MorphOS would face the same issue. On the other hand, if it offers the same level of 68k integration as MOS or OS4 currently on PPC, then you have an NG Amiga OS that can run system friendly Amiga programs out of the box, and could potentially offer more features for native software (access to more memory, set the processor affinity for threads, etc.). This is why Michal decided to target big endian ARM to begin with.

Are you comparing with Linux? really there was no better answer than that?? that option is always there, but I didn't mean that the first version it is aimed at new users, and the porting of apps is not so hard, as Paolo is already proving and doing.

But Aros is precisely for people who don't like linux for many reasons, because there are reasons for that, but you have to offer a viable alternative. Something kind of serious. It was said so many times here that a lot of users could like it for their Pi because its ease of use against the demanding knowledge of linux. And it could even compete in responsiveness.

Or ok: forget it. Let's stick forever behind everything else and being always supporting ancient features with ancient solutions until we get completely dissolved in computing history, as it is already happening. I say there is a chance for having a future, you say there is no future, let it die peacefully.

Compete with Linux? What drugs do you take? I want them too 

Seriously Aros cannot compete with mainstream platforms (and Linux is mainstream too)

And "future" is a big word, you certainly define "future" different than other people

Even if Aros would be modern in todays sense (full memory protection, SMP, 64bit and so on) it would still be a small exotic platform and not get new software, even worse all existing software would no longer run on it. A new platform without software and money behind it, looks like a success 

BTW you are always mentioning "we" in your posts

Who is the group you are talking for?

Everyone here is talking for himself. You do do not like RPi? No problem you do not need to use it. You want to add new features to Aros? No problem Aros is open source. If you cannot do that because of no knowledge then you have to accept whatever direction others are heading with Aros.

[x-vision]

Let me turn that question back at you: what would your "clean" AROS port that has virtually no software available offer compared to Linux? People with nostalgia would play around with it a bit, and then go back to Linux and Amiga emulation. An x64 port of MorphOS would face the same issue. On the other hand, if it offers the same level of 68k integration as MOS or OS4 currently on PPC, then you have an NG Amiga OS that can run system friendly Amiga programs out of the box, and could potentially offer more features for native software (access to more memory, set the processor affinity for threads, etc.). This is why Michal decided to target big endian ARM to begin with.

Are you comparing with Linux? really there was no better answer than that?? that option is always there, but I didn't mean that the first version it is aimed at new users, and the porting of apps is not so hard, as Paolo is already proving and doing.

But Aros is precisely for people who don't like linux for many reasons, because there are reasons for that, but you have to offer a viable alternative. Something kind of serious. It was said so many times here that a lot of users could like it for their Pi because its ease of use against the demanding knowledge of linux. And it could even compete in responsiveness.

Or ok: forget it. Let's stick forever behind everything else and being always supporting ancient features with ancient solutions until we get completely dissolved in computing history, as it is already happening. I say there is a chance for having a future, you say there is no future, let it die peacefully.

Compete with Linux? What drugs do you take? I want them too 

Seriously Aros cannot compete with mainstream platforms (and Linux is mainstream too)

And "future" is a big word, you certainly define "future" different than other people

Even if Aros would be modern in todays sense (full memory protection, SMP, 64bit and so on) it would still be a small exotic platform and not get new software, even worse all existing software would no longer run on it. A new platform without software and money behind it, looks like a success 

First of all: Respect. We are trying to have a constructive discussion here, no need to make this forum a new Moobunny or Ann.lu

Second: maybe instead of asking for new drugs, you need to remove some (or ask for) what is affecting your eyes, because I never said Aros can compete with linux (just maybe, and I remark maybe, in responsiveness, nothing more). I just remembered that lots of people don't like Linux and prefer alternatives if they are available, and there were around 10 million Amiga users at some moment, many of them technology geeks who buy Raspberry Pis, and would love to try an Amiga system on them. This is a great target audience for Aros, so we should not miss it offering a capped system (no memory, no multicore, etc...).

But all this seems like a pointless discussion also because there is already an ongoing m68K JIT emulator in ARM Aros being developed by M.Schulz (https://www.patreon.com/posts/always-remember-24683131) and he is aware of how troublesome is trying to stay BigEndian, so the only future proof path is to properly support all the available resources of the hardware, not trying to cut our wings again and again and once more, just for nostalgic reasons.

I don't even see the point of all this already: old software and games were not ready for: hd install, 3d hardware supported graphics, audio hardware different from paula, even some behave bad when the processor runs higher than 7 Mhz, so, what should we do? stick to that? or create patches and emulation layers to support old software, but from a modern system? it is obvious we cannot keep stuck to 30 yo hardware, and code which in some cases just run in hardware which is not even supported anymore.

[dizzy]

I have a Pi Zero and one of the first Pi's ever made, I don't have real use for them. I bought Pi3 I think for my 10 year old son (He likes to run the old game emulator on it, NES and such... Or atleats when he gets of dicking around with Unity. There's some insane shit he does with it, I have no glue. I blame Brackeys for it, https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys/videos) That's my retirement plan... It's that or Formula 1 or icehockey, not much to choose from.

Pi's are really slow running a Linux desktop, painfully slow. AROS/AmigaOS shell beats that in a heartbeat, not to mention Workbench. Pi's aren't used or can't be used for replacement of Linux running on multicore and fast GPU... It's just too slow for it and still it has a gigahertz CPU and decent GPU... Distros of Pi OS are also huge...

Pi's seem to run mostly some scripts and network stuff, you know, internet of things... We could make that less painfull atleast for the scripting part? I have no idea what scripts are run when I fire up my Fedora 30. Also as I've done some USB serial things with my stm32 endevour I had to remove Bluetooth from Linux... It always tried to communicate with my serial device... AT commands what?!? Where are they coming from?!? Why?!? I seem to have no control over my machine... Everything needs privileges even if they are physically connected to my computer and I specificly run a certain program... Let's wait until the keyboard and mouse needs privileges, that's a no no regarding security...

Even the baremetal guys are cooking up some sort of OS for their OS'less systems, maybe we can tap into that niche?

[salvatore]

b-plan didn't succeed with morphos either years ago, and yet the systems were perfomant, server side linux says a lot on the mainstream side, many use windows to play "I'd say a lot", macos is a platform for software side professionals, I use aros because in the past I used to use amiga, and who uses these systems I think they did like me once.
"What's the worry?", I think we'll have the x86_64 bit version and later it will support multicore:
"the software?"
we will never have adobe suites, you have to be realistic, but maybe updated owb and some other utility software.
I can make music with aros, I'm not a professional but I can carry on my hobby quietly.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

[paolone]

I'd prefer x86-64 related things being kept outside of a Raspberry Pi discussion.

But, since I've been mentioned, I would like to make these clear:
1. I am no coder at all and I am NOT porting anything. I am only trying, from time to time, to COMPILE sources that others have written, using the AROS build environment.
2. PORTING and COMPILING are two very different kind-of efforts. PORTING would mean handling the sources and modifying them to follow rules and best practices I don't even know about. For instance, if I have correctly understood, replacing all 32-bit only structures (LONG?) with 64bit friendly ones. COMPILING just means let those sources build with a 'make' command. The former is a far more difficult operation than the latter.

3. If a program compiles at first, I am happy. If a program does not compile and I can fix this by editing a mmakefile.src file, I'm less happy but more proud of the result. But if a program does not compile due to 64bit incompatibilities, or to other language specific mistakes, or to unknown options (flags?) I should pass the crosscompiler... well... I simply stop and ask more skilled people to do that instead of me.

Do not underestimate the effort needed to PORT a big project from an architecture to another. I wonder how many years it will take, for instance, to port Magellan to x86-64. And, on the contrary of what I've read here, it *IS* a important program to me, since it's the default GUI of my operating environment. Moreover, most of Icaros goodies are available only if Magellan is the working GUI of the system. I'm really not so interested in people "rejecting" it.

[nikos]

Yes. DOpus from version 4 and up is why many use or used AmigaOS. It is a true workbench replacement if you like. I know some don't like it but that is how it is with everything. Personaly I love it. AmigaOS or Amiga like OS is not the same without it.
Like Paolo say it might be a nightmare to port to 64-bit. Maybe that is another reason to stay 32-bit with Pi version.