[This was written in March 2003]

Some days ago, a MagicASL user emailed me with some questions. I answered some and I told him that I'm now using Linux, so he suggested that I should take a look at the new Amiga:

> Most Amiga owners don't love their machines but are supporting the new
> Amiga (which will run Linux) and OS4.0.
> Maybe you should consider coming back to the Amiga, your'll find alot
> has changed since you last used your A3000.

I don't feel like arguing about why I moved to Linux and why I won't move
back to the Amiga (certainly not because it will also run Linux -- my
Athlon is way faster and cheaper, thanks). But I have to say that I
independently concluded what Henry Spencer said years ago:
"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
One of the triggers for this was that during the last months with my Amiga
I found myself more and more entangled in the Geek Gadgets "distribution"
(for those that don't know, it is (was?) a port of many FSF tools, such as
GCC, diffutils, fileutils, etc.) and one day my subconscious self popped
out and said: "are you getting dumber than usual? Why don't you just go
for the real thing?"

Sorry, I read through the OS4 specs: protected memory is mostly there but
"turned off by default because it causes incompatibilities". Yeah, sure.
I'm a software engineer, dammit, I *need* protected memory to be able to
do any serious work; I also want a multiuser system, threading (again,
mostly there in OS4... sorry but 10 years of Commodore exhausted all my
ability to wait for the next release). Finally, let's admit for a second
that OS4 is sufficiently mature to compete with Linux for my needs (and I
bet it will not): I won't even consider touching it with a ten foot pole
until I get the _complete_ _source_ with a reasonable license.

It's not that I now hate the Amiga, its OS or its users -- if there were no
free (in both senses) or reasonably cheap/open Unices available I would
still be using my Amiga over Windows, that's a no-brainer. But *for*
*what* *I* *do* Linux is better in every possible aspect, I won't go back
and I won't waste time developing software specifically for the Amiga
(unless paid to -- that's also a no-brainer, of course).

[and I told you I wouldn't argue -- I could say much more]

This was not meant to be a flame or something, it's just that while writing I rationalized some of the reasoning behind my switch and I just had to write it down.

Copyright © Flavio Stanchina
July 22, 2009 at 00:48:28