Beyond AmigaOS - Weird and obscure Amiga Computer Operating Systems

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This video explores the variety of often unknown or overlooked operating systems that work with Classic Amiga computers. Also exploring the official release of an AmigaOS on x86 processors. It's designed to help educate people and inform them of systems they may not be familiar with.
All systems mention on this video can be downloaded, links below!
P.os Pre release CD
archive.org/details/pos-amiga
Amiga Unix
www.amigaunix.com/doku.php/do...
Opus Magellan
github.com/MrZammler/opus_mag...
Scalos
sourceforge.net/projects/scalos/
Aros
aros.sourceforge.io/download.php
Amiga OS XL
archive.org/details/amithlon
Rebol
www.rebol.com/release-archive....
00:00 - Intro
01:20 - P.os
04:38 - Amiga Unix (Amix)
10:23 - Sponsor
10:52 - Scalos
11:56 - Aros
12:28 - AmigaOSXL
14:47 - Rebol
15:50 - Outro
Most images used are available on public databases and amiga history sites.
Videos used (Clips are kept short and credited, contact with authors attempted)
Amiga 3000UX - dual booting Amix (Amiga Unix) and AmigaOS. - Win Heagy
• Amiga 3000UX - dual bo...
WinUAE running Scalos The Amiga Desktop Replacement - Michael Sykes
• WinUAE running Scalos ...
Amiga OS 3 9 XL on Intel hardware 8m chip 900+mb fast 400+mhz 040 ??!! -
Chris Edwards Restoration
• Amiga OS 3 9 XL on Int...
Tweet me @RetroRavi
- The Retro Hour Podcast -TheRetroHour.com
My weekly gaming podcast with Dan Wood and Joe Fox
- Remotely Interested Podcast - remotely-interested.com
My Monthly Technology Podcast With Adam Spring
- 8bitmix - 8bitmix.com
My weekly Dj show and podcast
mixing on Classic Amiga Computers

[@fmlazar]

Scalos and DoOpus are incorporated into a lot of present works such as PiAmiga and AmiKit.

[@kratafila]

Ravi, you produce the best Amiga historian videos on KZbin. More information and content than some of the big documentaries there...

[@Djformula]

Wow, thank you!

[@fischX]

Opus Magellan was so flexible - you could change everything, you could use regular expressions to design menu entries I guess no OS had ever such a radical approach to be configured in any possible way. You missed "egs enhanced graphics system" that was a super weird and rare one you got it with early graphic cards looked dope but was out of the price range of most Amiga users and lacked compatibility

[@brodriguez11000]

I think Gnome with their spatial browser tried.

[@philipproedig]

Yes, Amiga has always been the better Mac. Not only because of its much configurable Desktop and GUI design (customize as you wish by using MUI, Reaction, Opus Magellan, ScalOS and so on, look at Amikit) but also by running MacOS on it via Shapeshifter, FusionPPC, Basilisk II,.....The Amiga boots sometimes faster into MacOS by equally the same hardware specs than original classic Apple Mac and still running its own OS still in the background (Multitasking)....Amiga rulez...

[@goldenappel]

POS, given what that became an acronym for, has to be the most unfortunate OS name since Atari's TOS

[@Djformula]

haha! yeh not the best lol

[@6581punk]

Point of Sale? :D

[@RasVoja]

Nevermind, its greatly improved Workbench

[@keyboard_g]

Thanks Ravi. Would enjoy an additional video on the later Amigas as well. I learned a lot here. 👍

[@chuffa1130]

Thank you for sharing and keeping this operating system alive, I had an Amiga 2000 if so awesome way ahead of its time with the sound card built in functional sampling applications it's a shame it wasn't marketed better it was unbelievable

[@Djformula]

Thanks man

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Fantastic video Ravi! - Boat

[@Djformula]

Thanks man

[@proteque]

I had totally forgot about P.OS! I did try it back in the days.

[@keyboard_g]

QNX was acquired by Blackberry and was backing BB10 os for a while and now serves as the base for their automotive and embedded stuff.

[@robclaridge6236]

I cant remember for the life of me what it was called now, but there was something given away on a coverdisk back in the day. Seem to remember the disk having a very stark black and yellow label. It was set out much like DOpus (I guess we call it a commander interface on modern PCs these days?), and it had every single decompression tool and unpacker you could think of baked in. Really was always on standby when I needed to get nitty gritty.

[@newkfromrotterdam]

just a shot of one of my favorites, maybe "DirWork" ?

[@imalebowski]

Always amazed at how you can talk for minutes about things you know nothing about. I don't mean that in a snarky way. Just that most people would be too scared of looking stupid but you really embraced it. Good video. I'd like to see your take on installing and using these OSes even if they fail. Sometimes knowing what doesnt work is more valuable than what does. I think Scalos is in either pimiga or coffinos. Might also be worth looking at Oberon as well as Rebol in depth. Amix is awful but Minix is worth a boot.

[@Djformula]

Thanks for your kind comment. I try to research a lot but you have to be honest and say you don't know it all. I get what your saying. Would love to try them all out if I had time. Will try out Oberon, sounds interesting. Thanks for the tip

[@byrons8956]

I’m a Unix/Linux person and have always liked the idea of running those OSes on my A3000/060. I’ve installed RedHat and other Linux distros, but always wanted to sit down long enough to install Commodore’s Unix Amix version. Sad that Commodore ruined so many deals on getting the Amiga hardware and software updated to keep pace with other systems.

[@linuxization4205]

Really, if Commodore just made their Amigas into Unix workstations, they would be seen as a cheaper alternative to Sun and possibly not have gone bankrupt. Technically, Amiga UNIX and SunOS could have binary compatibility.

[@byrons8956]

@@linuxization4205 Commodore had already discontinued the A3000UX system and I ended up buying SPARCstation 20s, just reminds me of the NewTek deal that failed too.

[@habitek]

Such a nice video. I never know before about some other OS. Still - in my opinion - classic WB with NewWB icons is a best and beauty.

[@mmille10]

You made a vague request "for those who have used Unix" to educate you. I used Unix when I was in college, but mostly on minicomputers. I only used Unix on a microcomputer once, and that was on the Mac SE/30, with Apple's A/UX. While you wouldn't have been able to run Amiga applications on Amix, or ST applications on the Atari version (except via. emulation), you could run Mac apps. on A/UX, if they were compatible with System 7. I think for those who were power users, Unix was a gem. It really felt like it had a "universe" all its own that was limitless (though, you can experience this today with Linux, or on macOS, using Terminal). The first time I got on the internet was on my school's Unix systems, in 1989. It was all text-based at the time. So, you accessed all of it through command-line tools. What you were showing with the UI for Amix was X/Windows, which was something I used in college. The main advantage I got out of it was I could open several xterms at the same time so I could edit my code in one window, and compile/debug it in another, for example. There was a game you could play on it called netrek, a top-down multiplayer video game based in the Star Trek universe, which was the first multiplayer game I played on the internet. It's still around. I had the chance to use a Unix-like OS on my Atari Mega STe, called MiNT (for MiNT is Not Tos). It was an adjunct kernel that was able to multitask with GEM (I could have a few MiNT processes running alongside a single GEM process). It had all of the tools I'd come to expect on a Unix system, but a major thing it lacked was virtual memory. It had no ability to swap to disk. So, everything I was running had to fit in RAM. From what I read, it was even possible to run X/Windows on it, but it ate up a lot of memory. I had 4 MB in my STe, and it sounded like X would've used up most of it. I didn't get into that, but more and more, MiNT became the reason I used my Atari (not GEM so much), simply because I kept finding interesting stuff I could do in MiNT that I couldn't do with tools made for GEM or TOS. A big one was shell scripting. I had a TOS shell that I could run from GEM, but I couldn't do nearly as much with it as I could do in MiNT. It was more like MS-DOS, or, more accurately, CP/M, and the toolset was much smaller, and less powerful. The thing about using Unix on a microcomputer was it didn't give you any greater speed than using Workbench, GEM, or Finder, as you could see in your video. Things ran rather slowly, as compared to running Unix on high-end hardware. What it gave you access to was the toolset, which was massive, and the shell, which you could use to connect different tools together to do some powerful stuff.

[@Djformula]

Thanks for the info, love star trek myself so cool to hear about that title.

[@Steve30x]

What I've been searching for with over 10 years though is on a demo floppy from a magazine there was a music demo and at the start it flashed the instrents being played. It started off with music playing on a black screen and suddenly it was like a floodlight (the same as lights up a person on stage) showing a drum kit. I can't remember the name of it

[@BenjaminVestergaard]

My first thought was BeOS, but then I realized that was for the PPC accelerated ones. One thing you don't mention is what kickstarts and chipset each require. Anyway, compatibility was always a challenge, AROS has been around for ages, and there's still things that won't work with their kickstart. And if you develop something on AROS there's no guarantee that it will work on a vanilla Amiga... Anyway, the Unix is interesting, because, in theory, it should be possible to compile a fully functional BSD from ground up and gradually replace all parts of the system with modern counterparts, but perhaps it would be very difficult to replace the kernel.

[@Djformula]

ah yes BeOS i remeber a lot of hype about that back in the day

[@RasVoja]

LOve your delivery style Ravi. I also grew up on Amiga :) Please AmigaOS was barebone junk, no drivers, no apps, so depends what do you see as weird Amiga versions. Thanks for pOS it was most interesting one

[@Djformula]

thanks man

[@NdxtremePro]

As a reminder, Chris Edward Pimiga distribution uses Scalos.

[@benutzer_definiert]

had the best time in my life with my A500, A2000 and A3000

[@Djformula]

agreed!

[@Turrican]

Great vid! Subbed!

[@Djformula]

Thanks Austin! Got some great ones in the works

[@NdxtremePro]

I don't know I would call them strange, but Debian and NetBSD both still release current OSes for original hardware. I beleive they require the MMU, and like Amix like more memory, but otherwise they work. NetBSD even has drivers for things like the ZZ9000 and other newish cards.

[@duncanwoodward6831]

Nice video and good to see these, would be nice to know what the requirements are to run these though. Example, p.OS, what does it need to run? Also, Debian Linux has an m68k version that can run on an Amiga with a 68030 in it - I've not tried it for ages and don't think the new versions support m68k any more, but back in the 2000s it was an option. My understanding is the reason for the '030 requirement is because it needs an MMU to function.

[@Djformula]

Amazingly p.os only needs 020 and 4mb of ram! A lot of these are low spec. Thanks for the info on debian Linux, I will have to check it out

[@PooperScooperTrooper]

Linux is great. It was like going back to the Amiga when I personally discovered it, in about 1997. It required more thought to get stuff working, as opposed to Windows which always seemed like more of an appliance rather than a fun part of the computer. I like to work for my OS!

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

well, i'm not sure, but wasn't the egs a Workbench replacement in the 90's too?

[@Steve30x]

I had an Amiga 500 as a teenager and I used to get the floppies on the magazine's. One of them had an Amiga os that was greyscale and the window frames were kind of 3D in shape. All icons were kind of 4D too.

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

Sounds like MagicWB which was quite a popular mod to Workbench. 8 colours rather than the standard four.

[@Lucretia9000]

QNX is POSIX it wouldn't need Linux, QNX was originally going to be the next base of the OS which never happened and blackberry bought them out and closed the source back up. Rebol (pronounced the same way as rebel, not "ree") is a weird language, closer to functional as I remember it. Carl designed exec.library, not workbench, he designed how the OS basically worked.

[@Rv-Tech]

Souvenir, souvenir.

[@6581punk]

POS, that's a blast from the past. I used to follow the Amiga stuff for a while after Commodore went under but I could see it going the way of Linux, too fragmented and too many options.

[@blackterminal]

That's what happens when no one is in charge . A mess.

[@romaneberle]

REBOL, yay :)

[@soviet9922]

You tested amithlon not amigaos xl, this products came packaged in a single box.

[@Djformula]

yes I show the package

[@RasVoja]

Too bad it cannot be bought today. closest to x86 Amiga OS 3.9

[@RainerK.]

Still using DirOpus, it's now an Explorer replacement on Windows.

[@Djformula]

It’s fantastic!

[@michalsulicki5148]

PegasOS?

[@NorthWay_no]

If you want to go way back you should check out Jazzbench.

[@Djformula]

Will check it out, thanks for the suggestion

[@keyboard_g]

Note to self: Never make a bit of software and call it a PoS. 💩

[@RasVoja]

Zee Germans :)))) But improvements are very nice, too bad there is no full release,. could be first AmigaOS 4 m68k, plus multiplatform - AmigaDE or Anywhere in one, and that I would support

[@barryon8706]

There are Point Of Sale software packages. Perhaps named in a more innocent time.

[@lars.stockmann]

For Amiga Users that want a productive environment on their 68k machines (020+), I cannot enough recommend Directory Opus. It is just so much more efficient to work with. The listers allow filenames to be changed in-place, sorting via click, to name a few things... and you can customize it alot. For example, create your own toolbar. However, it is still on your workbench screen. I had no compatibility issues with it. The best is, it is open source nowadays (version 5.91 can be found on sourceforge). It is also OS3.2 compatible (including the window drag out of screen feature) and I would always use it over classic WB, even in OS 3.2. So, there is no reason (apart from not having an 020+ CPU) to not use it in my opinion

[@Djformula]

Dopus was simply amazing, its even on windows 11 now days

[@RasVoja]

Thanks to Kas for bringing Magellan back to all camps

[@TheThore]

"Magellan" is neither pronounced "machellan" nor "magell-n". The last syllible is empasized, so correct is "MageLAN" (with g like in argue and LAN not like "leyn" but the a more like "u" in "function"

[@Djformula]

Thanks for letting me know

[@TheThore]

@@Djformula Ferdinand Magellan was a portugese nautic explorer

[@oo0Spyder0oo]

Why? The Magellan as in the explorer is pronounced muh-jel-un so why not this?

[@TheThore]

@@oo0Spyder0oo in reallity it is more like the spanish g like in paga (like hissing cat) but closer to "g"ame and not like in "g"ender. ;) Also his name was transscripted to different writings, as his real name was Magalhães. But you are right, the "hard g" is also not 100% correct.

[@oo0Spyder0oo]

@@TheThore I'm coming from its pronunciation in English as that's the language being spoken, of course names are much different in their original language. Just as English speakers say 'Paris', and the French sound it like 'Paree'. Since I can remember that's how Magellan has been pronounced, again, in the English speaking world.

[@philipproedig]

You forgot MorphOS

[@Djformula]

I will be covering that in a powerpc operating system video

[@marcindubiel8795]

@@Djformula MorphOS born from POS.. the same parents ;)

[@Djformula]

oh sweet!

[@daeel_rouge]

time flies and " modern' workbench look ugly , arggg

[@another3997]

It depends on what you're used to and what you like. Personally, I hate the UI of Win 10, and prefer the Win7 and XP UIs. Workbench did things differently to Windows, so people used to one probably won't like the other. Nowadays I find it hard to use Amiga OS, even though I used Workbench before I used Windows. I've had to use Windows for so long, it's become the standard, even if it's not the best. The mountains of eye candy in Windows, MacOS and many Linux distros are just a distraction.

[@daishi5571]

@@another3997 I remember when XP released and we laughed at it, calling it Windows kids/crayon edition. When Windows 8 was released one of the first things I did was buy a program to give me the back the functionality of the previous Windows by removing that stupid interface.

[@Jkauppa]

but why you should be sponsored above all others

[@Djformula]

A lot of people are supported by pcbway in the retro technology youtube category. I guess it's up to the sponsor who they choose to support.

[@Jkauppa]

@@Djformula tradition does not make it correct, I feel neglected and discriminated by your traditions

[@Jkauppa]

@@Djformula your law does not allow you to choose who dies or not, I make sure of that

[@Jkauppa]

@@Djformula dont you recognize where you "choice based system" leads to

[@Jkauppa]

@@Djformula I choose not to allow you to keep the bully system