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MS-DOS Announcement Dear Amigans, After 20 minutes of twiddling our fingers and shouting matches with our ex-development partners we have decided to use MS-DOS as the primary os/ui platform for the new AmigaSoFt Operating Environment OE. I know this decision won't come as a shock to all of you given the previous announcements/unnanouncements relative to the MMC/QNX/Linux and the kitchen sink. This was a very complex and difficult decision to make (took us 3.5 minutes) and I assure you I didn't make this decision without a significant amount of research and deliberation. We have been researching MS-DOS since our last 180 degree u-turn but we didn't make a decision until last Tuesday. We were planning to communicate it to the community a week before next years WOA which we plan to attend behind a bullet proof screen. I am pressed to communicate the MS-DOS decision before the technology brief bacause of information released by Red Hat in the last few days. This information had not been reviewed or approved for release by Amiga. In light of our Linux decision, this information is confusing and misleading so I would like to take the time to clarify the situation. I can't disclose any details of the Amiga/Red Hat discussions because of the GPL but I can talk about our decision to use MS-DOS. I think you will agree that this is the right decision once you understand the reasons for this decision. Before I continue, I should mention that our technology decision does not in any way reflect negativly on Red Hat. I believe that Red Hat is a good company with great technology. I just believe that MS-DOS gives us a better chance of executing our plans successfully. The decision to use Red Hat as our OS partner on our next generation multimedia convergence computer (MCC) was made late last year. When I took over as president of Amiga in February of last year, I initiated an in-depth review of existing Amiga plans and decisions. Then I scrapped all plans on Febuary of this year for consistencies sake. As president of Amiga I had to make sure that we were defining a strategy and an execution plan that would allow Amiga and the Amiga community to be successful. We reviewed our strategy, architecture decisions, technology partners, and execution plans. During this review period we also added a number of very talented and experienced people to help us finalize our technology and product decisions. I am confident that we now have a solid and exciting plan that people can have confidence in until the next revision. MS-DOS has been picking up substantial momentum over the past year as a viable, cheap OS alternative in the marketplace. This momentum, the vast amount of cheap MS-DOS applications from a wide variety of software vendors, and the growing availability of MS-DOS device drivers from hardware vendors, makes it a compelling candidate. Additionally, with all of the significant component suppliers putting resources on writing drivers for MS-DOS it was difficult to get them to port to yet another operating system. Using the MS-DOS OS as a foundation for our Amiga OE allows us to leverage a significant amount of available software drivers and utilities inlcuding cheap isa cards! This allows us to quickly support old graphics cards and other peripherals. Given the above-mentioned advantages, we decided to do an in-depth technical analysis of MS-DOS to determine if it was a suitable OS kernel for our new Amiga operating environment (OE). As we ported parts of our higher level operating environment and AmigaObjectTM architecture to MS-DOS, we discovered some significant performance advantages in the MS-DOS kernel in areas such as advanced hardware support and monotasking/mono user capabilities. Up to twice the performance of Windows NT on a 386!! Although MS-DOS configurations can be very large in size, the core pieces of the MS-DOS kernel are actually very small and efficient. In considering hardware requirements we also found companies working on hardware components that were optimized for the MS-DOS kernel. Additionally, MS-DOS is probably the most stable operating system available in the market. None of that pesky mem protection, RT and multi-user crap that helps users crash their machines regularly. After 2 minutes of in-depth research we were confident that we could build an extremely exciting next generation Amiga based on the MS-DOS OS kernel. Does this mean that the next generation Amiga will not be unique? Absolutely not! Remember that the OS kernel is only one component of the new Amiga OE and the hardware is unique. The text mode displays and low resource requirements make this machine stand out from the crowd. We will also be integrating multiple technologies including an efficient windowing environment (GEM 80286) and a unique user interface (Norton Commander). In summary, we decided to use MS-DOS because of the incredible momentum and the fact that it is solid technology and a good foundation for our new Amiga OE. Additionally, the MS_DOS community is an impressive force that we should be aligned with (nobody gets fired for buying Micrsoft). We share many common values and objectives with the MS-DOS community. Using MS_DOS as our OS kernel allows us to build a unique and revolutionary operating environment while leveraging the enormous momentum of MS-DOS. The soon to be released technology brief will further explain our architecture and plans for integrating all of the selected technology. Once you read it, I am confident that you will understand the revolutionary nature of the next generation Amiga. I assure you that Amiga and the Amiga community will be a driving force behind the next computer revolution.
Sincerely, PS this is reposted from a friend on the Moo Bunny and is not mine. And REMEMBER... THIS IS A JOKE!
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