The chronological history of AmigaOS.

In this video, I narrate the captivating tale of the AmigaOS's evolution over the years. I focus on the significant versions, avoiding delving into every minor update, and instead, provide an overview of the broader picture, highlighting the notable features introduced in each version.
00:00 Intro
00:49 AmigaOS 1.x From Commodore
01:58 AmigaOS 2.x From Commodore
03:55 AmigaOS 3.x From Commodore
05:45 AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 From Haage & Partner
09:35 AmigaOS 4 From Hyperion
12:15 AmigaOS 3.1.4 From Hyperion
14:15 AmigaOS 3.2 From Hyperion
15:08 Outro - What should you use?

[@PeranMe]

This was great, getting the history of AmigaOS in compressed form like this! Much appreciated!

[@proteque]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@paulciurej]

I'm saving for the X5000 now.. Can't wait to have it here...

[@proteque]

I did write you an answer but I think I forgot to press the button to post it. I hope you get your X5000. Expensive stuff! While waiting you can turn to fs-uae for running AmigaOS 4.1 if you like.

[@paulciurej]

Thanks me too. Thats the plan for now..@@proteque

[@AtariCrypt]

That was really interesting. Yep I’m an ST guy but I genuinely enjoyed this. Good to see the evolution! 👍🏻

[@proteque]

Glad you enjoyed it. I never saw an ST in the A500 days. Everyone around me still had c64, Amiga or parents pcs. The later years I have used the ste a lot (in the shape of tje mister fpga). mostly demoscene stuff but also tested a few games (that was made for the st though, not ste). A cool machine as well.

[@AmigaCammy]

Thank you for making such an interesting and thorough history of the Amiga OS. It's my favourite Operating System and it makes me so happy that it is still being developed and so much great software and hardware is still made for these incredible computers. Cheers!

[@proteque]

Cheers! Thanx for the comment. Inspiring with kind feedback like this.

[@Dunbar0740]

Interesting video, thanks for uploading. There was a Workbench 1.2 for the A500; it shipped with early "chicken lips" A500s.

[@proteque]

Thanx for the info. Did not know that. Only saw 1.3 back then on a500 myself. Even on the chicken lips version. But maybe later revision or people updated.

[@Pedrohenrique-jw6ji]

Cara que vídeo incrível, muito bom conhecer sistemas operacionais antigos

[@tekk9995]

Nice!

[@GerCompanyMan]

What about MorphOS, Aros, ArosX86 or the OS3x custom Distros as Amikit, Pimiga, CoffinOS, etc?

[@proteque]

All clones and distros is planned for an own video. They deserves to shine as well. :)

[@airjuri]

Back in -92 I upgraded my A2000 ROMS to 2.04 to handle hard drive thingies better. ARexx manual that came with that upgrade package was great.

[@proteque]

Nice. I had an A2000 as well for period around 96 or so. One of the best Amigas I have owned. Beefed it up with 040/40, scsi hard drives, gfx card and 128mb ram. Very beefy machine. The way most programs integrated ARexx support and that is succeeded was great. That way every program could use any other program "as a plugin" like that was a really strong card for AmigaOS. I think OS/2 did the same, but sadly Windows is what came out on top on the PC. Thanx for sharing :)

[@semicuriosity257]

Amiga 500 rev 3 to 5 motherboards had AmigaOS (Kickstart/Workbench) 1.2. I have Amiga 500 Rev 5 and 6A motherboards.

[@mkrleza]

Stroll down the memory lane... Sweet and sad at the same time.

[@proteque]

Yes, I agree. It was nice to feel so passionately for something, yet sad it went the way it did.

[@magicflyinggekko8587]

Very nicely done, great job. Took me back when the A500 just came out and the upgrade from my previous C64 opened a whole new world at the time for me. People in the PC era don't understand what a quantum leap this was. Again, great job! Since a lot of retro gamers and enthusiasts are using emulators now, would be great to do a comparison video between them, like Amiga Forever, AmiKit , etc

[@proteque]

Thanx for your kind words. There is a bit of a different as most people emulate an Amiga they could never dream of owning back then. Superfast 060, rtg etc. Beside from that the emulation in uae is very correct.

[@TorquemadaRex]

I wish it would run nativ on a PC.

[@proteque]

Have you looked into AROS? It is quite close to the original AmigaOS and runs nativly on PC.

[@stephenwhite506]

How do Coffin and Coffee fit in?

[@proteque]

Coffin is AmigaOS 3.9 with some hacks/addons on top of it. Need to check about Coffee. I don't know. Will do some searching later.

[@proteque]

(Not hacks as in something lazy btw. Coffin is super)

[@SEngelsg]

Amiga and it's OS is probably the closest thing I will ever come to a religion. What is seldom talked about is the fact that exec.library was in fact more or less a decent microkernel with a lot of Unix concepts. We had preemptive multitasking, a fully featured GUI, pipes, device handlers etc... all in a little 256KB ROM while the others barely could do cooperative multitasking. The Amiga operating system was truly unique and impressive for it's time. It's downfall was in my opinion the lack of memory protection e.g. the requirement for a MMU. Yes, AmigaOS could run fine with a MMU, but it did not make use of it internally which was a nail in the coffin when programs got larger and memory requirements grew. I am ashamed of myself for having used Windows from about 2000 until 2013, but in 2006 I started using Debian out of necessity and these days (November 2013 - May 2024 and beyond) I am all on Debian GNU/Linux which actually do have a lot of the Amiga spirit in it. Switching to Debian full time is the best thing I ever did as it made computing fun and useful again , just like it was (and should be) on the Amiga. Come to the penguin side :)

[@proteque]

I have used Linux since around 98 myself. First slackware, later debian. As a main os since 2000isj, when my Amiga was not really usable anymore due to old browsers. Never liked Windows enough to be able to use it without anger myself. So I have dodget it bot at home and in work. :)

[@retropaganda8442]

I fear my syndrome is going to kick in again!

[@proteque]

Hope it is a syndrome that gives you joy then :)

[@retropaganda8442]

@@proteque the infamous Amiga syndrome

[@vertigoz]

2018 - a company chosen to do the port the OS to PPC over MorphOS decided PPC was not enough and decided to start developing for 68k, pretty muchas if they owned the thing. Their business model? Free labor... Amiga is indeed a sad story, a computer who had everything to be at the forefront of technology is now hostage of a PPC licensee which filed for bankruptcy in 2018 ...

[@rebeccaschade3987]

By this point, I have absolutely no idea who to believe. There seems to be a "Team Hyperion" and a "Team Cloanto", and they hate each other, and they both claim that their team are the good guys, and that it's the other side that keeps doing the crap stuff. What I've seen, is that Cloanto has done absolutely zero to keep the Amiga alive as a system, and only focusing on their emulation package Amiga4ever (which I own). So...does that make them the bad guys? Then there's Hyperion, who are working to make more up to date versions of Amiga OS for those of us who use real Amiga hardware... But apparently they steal independent developers work and they use a license they don't really have the rights to... Although the courts reckon they do... So...does that make THEM the bad guys? And then there are some people who make long articles listing evidence to show why Hyperion actually are the good guys...at least sort of. And then there are other people who make articles listing their evidence that Cloanto is really just run by some super nice guy who loves the Amiga, and he's really just the victim here, and he's definitely the good guy, and Hyperion are evil incarnate. There doesn't seem to be any truths in this that is visible to the general public. All I know is that Cloanto has brought absolutely f**k all to market since Personal Paint, and Hyperion are actually providing substantial updates to Workbench. Stuff that makes my Amiga experience more enjoyable. I'd actually really love to know the actual facts, cause the whole Amiga ecosystem, while obviously actually dead in the commercial sense, seems to be such a complete fustercluck.

[@vertigoz]

​@@rebeccaschade3987 Cloanto has just bought Amiga, they have done their share while licensee paying their share, and in the end they actually bought the Amiga. Still, I remember what Hyperion promised at the time regarding PPC, and that's one of the reasons we didn't got MorphOS as AmigaOS. We got a sub par AmigaOS, who was delayed and delayed and nothing to write home about. Besides, if today someone buys Amiga OS 3.2 you should at least know that not a cent goes to the developers... does it make any sense? Well that's Hyperion business 101

[@proteque]

I haven't really dug into the details of this mess myself so I try not to mention any of it as I may get it very wrong. However, I do enjoy that it still is coming new OS versions for my Amiga.

[@vertigoz]

​@@proteque I had made an inroad of what workbench 3.1 + Aminet tools and how far it could go, and got very pleased with the result. There's a lot of hidden gems on Aminet that can push your wb3.1 well beyond its original scope! 🙂

[@one_b]

@@rebeccaschade3987 I don't care about the actual facts anymore. I wish I could be lucky enough to win one of these billion dollar Powerball lotteries in the US, throw a couple million each at Cloanto and Hyperion to release all their claimed rights (since they can't seem to play nice), and I would opensource it all under a permissive license with "official" releases guided by foundation like how Blender does it. Get some of the old time guys like those with A-EON to help steer the foundation.

[@Lucretia9000]

Shame the price for morphos is 3x that of AmigaOS 4.1. Any idea why it's called "Final Edition?"

[@proteque]

You got me curious there so I tried to find out but without any word about it from hyperion. My guess however is that there will not be any further development on the AmigaOS 4-series. Seems MorphOS is the way forward on the PowerPC route of Amiga-use. Personally I would hope AROS became the way forward as it is open sourced.

[@cv643d]

@@proteque I think the next version is going to be dual core, so the final version is the final version of the version before AmigaOS goes dual core

[@cv643d]

@@mojojojo1529 "AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition defines the new baseline by consolidating all previous updates, bringing new long awaited features and stability improvements and last but not least enabling the user to make a clean installation in one go.". They consolidated lots of update into one single installation, it was the logical step before going to 4.2, however 4.2 never happened (multicore version).