🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DEVEN.89Mar14110615@daniel.pawl.rpi.edu> deven@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven Corzine) writes:
>AmigaDOS, however, just plain sucks.  It's a shame that people get
>such a poor opinion of the Amiga's OS in general when it is only the
>DOS which is so lame.  Such is life.  AmigaDOS needs to be replaced.
>IMHO.

	AmigaDos isn't totally bad.  It has some nice paradigms, some that are
much nicer than standard Unixes: easily mountable devices and handling of
removable media, user process filesystems (ala Mach), a message based filesystem
interface (as opposed to a monolithic kernel), unlimited numbers of open
files, some support of file locking (not totally complete yet - mainly an fs
issue).

	It is _currently_ written in BCPL and some asm.  This can be fixed.
Some of the interfaces use BPTRs and BSTRs, these can be mildly annoying but
aren't a big problem for most people, since most developers see only the C-
compatible dos.library interface.  Shell writers are the one exception to that,
and in 1.4 we hope to make it easier on them.  Sparse documentation on some
things didn't help either, but again it mostly affects shell-writers.

	The other major thing involved are the commands in the C directory.
They're not the same as Unix or MsDos, just close enough that people can get
confused sometimes.  They were originally low on functionality in some places,
that has been and is being improved (look at 1.3 for some good examples).  Most
are still in BCPL, that will change.  If you prefer, there are the arp commands
written in ASM, and using the arp.library.  They are smaller, and the arp
people added a number of options.

	The 1.3 AmigaShell is an improvement over the CLI.  Even Matt Dillon
(of csh fame) seems to really like it, and has switched over to it from his
own shell.

	Essentially what I'm saying is that it's been "fashionable" to 
denigrate AmigaDos, with some justification, but not as much as people often
imply.  The justification is much smaller in 1.3, with AmigaShell, new command
options, FFS for faster HD access, etc.  The justification will get much smaller
in 1.4.  The worst remaining problem, that of people writing shells, should be
dealt with fairly well (or I'll eat my terminal :-).

	Lastly, it's easy to say "AmigaDos sucks, we should throw it away and
start over", but in reality that's not a good option.  We would throw away
all the work people have done to work under AmigaDos, all old disks would
no longer be useable, old programs wouldn't work, we'd trade our current
annoyances for a brand spanking new set of _bugs_ and annoyances, and destroy
what confidence we have generated in the Amiga.  Plus it would take a MAJOR
effort to do that, compared to fixing what problems exist with it.

-- 
Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup