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simpleblue
November 13th, 2011, 03:47 AM
There is a new distro called 'Commodore OS' that appeared on Distrowatch:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=commodore

Here is the website:
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx

It's a hefty download though, 3.77 G on torrent (This is not including the 3.3 G torrent file that provides extras). Right now it's downloading at 1.50Mbs on my machine. It's based on Linux Mint and apparently comes with tons of software including a bunch of Commodore Emulators and programming IDE's...


Classic Commodore
Feeling nostalgic? A goal of Commodore OS Vision is to simplify classic Commodore compatibility, with integrated features to launch classic 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit era software via emulation. As Commodore OS Vision continues to develop, we will continue to improve this feature through updates, that further allow PET, VIC-20, CBM-II, C16, C64, C128 and Commodore AMIGA software to be launched effortlessly. The is no need to bother with floppy disks these days, as many games can be legally puchased and downloaded from the internet directly on to your computer. Commodore OS Vision even has an option to boot directly into full screen C64 emulation with the READY prompt. (ROM files and classic games are provided with our machines and purchased media only)
Programming
Commodore OS Vision aims to provide the best programming tools for an array of programming languages, with options for beginners all they way up to IT professionals.
Several integrated development environments are included as Commodore OS Vision Extras allowing you to program in BASIC, Java, C/C++, PHP, Perl, VB.NET, C#, Python and HTML. There are also an array of web technologies and frameworks available.
An extensive list will be provided shortly, and this will grow through subsequent releases. Commodore uses BASIC:

Here is an example:

10 PRINT "Hello, I'm the Commodore 64 - What is your name ";:INPUT A$I know this is 'Just another distro' but this one really caught my eye. I'll be trying it out as soon as the download finishes and maybe post a few pics.

Any thoughts?

sffvba[e0rt
November 13th, 2011, 03:50 AM
A company that bought a trademark and has been trying unsuccessfully to cash in on it for ages.

As for the distro, it is a remix of Mint 10...


404

forrestcupp
November 13th, 2011, 03:59 AM
You can easily do all of the same things on any distro or even Windows. Just change your wallpaper and install an emulator and programming tools from the repos.

It's cool somebody threw this together, though.

Lucradia
November 13th, 2011, 05:54 AM
Not like you need it with Amiga OS recently updated.

jonkiribati
November 13th, 2011, 10:05 AM
lol very interesting but I still have a Commodore 64 :p

BigSilly
November 13th, 2011, 10:11 AM
You can easily do all of the same things on any distro or even Windows. Just change your wallpaper and install an emulator and programming tools from the repos.

It's cool somebody threw this together, though.

Yeah you can, but I agree that it is pretty cool that someone put this together in this way. It looks seriously lovely in the video, and really does a lot to live up to the old Commodore name, and perhaps even to entice new users. It's a terrific trailer.

I'm really going to have to give this one a go. I'll probably buy a beige box and keyboard if it works well. :D

simpleblue
November 13th, 2011, 06:47 PM
The the bootup stalled and crashed luckily leaving me with a command line. I plugged in the ethernet cable, did an 'sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade', rebooted it worked! :P

The startup and shutdown screens put anything I've seen see far to shame. It's a fullscreen animation of a galaxy and planet earth with explosions and has the Commodore logo. Simply amazing.

When you boot into Gnome you are greeted with talking espeak. You'd think you were in a dream. It's that's cool. The computer talks to you and asks you to download the proprietary drivers, ask you to agree to the rules of the OS, and explains some other things. You'll see that the mouse never stops spinning and something always seems to be moving on the screen. The compiz effects are maximized. There is a shortcut screen right there on the desktop to show you. When you maximize and minimize stuff or make an error you'll hear the classic Commodore sounds. When you kill an application you hear the distorted "Ksshhhboomahhh" like when you kill an spaceship in astroids. I was practically jumping up and down with excitement. You'd think I was 5 years old! :P

The part that get me a little upset is that the BIG thing that you want and love with this OS is the Commodore Emulators. They seem to be there, and I'm by no means an expert, but I gather that you need to buy the games to get it to work. When I tried to download another emulator in the Software Manager I only saw one of them and it was already installed - Vice. Perhaps Commodore has disabled them somehow. :(

There are tons and tons of games. Good ones. Lots of programming programs. Like Qt-Creator, which I like because I dabble in C++. An old Amiga graphics editor to play with.

Here is the screenshot:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/download/file.php?id=8989

Quadunit404
November 14th, 2011, 03:19 AM
That theme is... not easy on the eyes. Way too much blue.

Just stating my opinion :P

ronacc
November 20th, 2011, 02:23 AM
an interesting Ubuntu derivative I ran across . see SS , and here for a description
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06981

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 02:43 AM
Interesting.
Do you need both downloads or is the second disc optional? It's not clear to me :-)

ronacc
November 20th, 2011, 03:07 AM
I just d/l'd disk 1 and that gave me what you see in the ss , disk 2 says it is "extras" I'll d/l it later and see whats on it since they are dvd's and 3 + gb disk 1 is very complete .

the torrent was running very fast earlier only about 3 hrs for 3 + gb .

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 03:16 AM
Thanks :-)
Am d/ling as we speak at about 500 kb/s

Hedgehog1
November 20th, 2011, 06:11 AM
Now if I can find my old Commodore Amiga stickers somewhere, I can load this on my netbook and put the old stickers on the outside.

The Amiga OS was the best desktop of it's day. I was editing video and doing full color pictures on it when other systems offered 16 levels of gray scale.

It also could truly multitask; I could format a floppy, play music and edit a photo all at once (and people were overwhelmed by that in those days). Now we take this for granted!

It is nice to see two of my beloved desktops meeting up like this.

I still think I will stick with straight Ubuntu (Ubuntu 12.04 is gonna be just awesome!!!!!!); but it is fun to see.

The Hedge

:KS

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 08:20 AM
It's quite good :-)
It's responsive, even though it's using 456MB of ram at idle.
Nvidia driver installed ok and it's working well. Nice compiz effects :-)
Conky is a bit out of kilter but can fix that I suspect.
Lots of stuff as standard. Installed it uses 8.04GB so it's quite a size.
It's very blue :-)

VinDSL
November 20th, 2011, 08:31 AM
Heh! That's a h00t!

Did you watch the video, on the product page?!?!?

Linkage: http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx

Elfy
November 20th, 2011, 09:30 AM
Thread moved to The Community Cafe.

ronacc
November 20th, 2011, 11:31 AM
anything that comes on 2 dvd's probably wasn't intended to be a lightweight .:lolflag:
poking around in /etc/apt/sources.list it's based on maveric with add ins from mint10 commodore and 3 ppa's .
I wonder how it will handle a dist-upgrade that might be a real mess .:lolflag:
I think I'll keep this one around for awhile .
If you check appearences>backgrounds most of the alternatives are very green , obvious where they came from.:P

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 03:48 PM
Indeed, Mint/Maverick.
Backgrounds are either electric blue or very greeeeeeeeeeen, as you say ronacc :-)
Compiz is a bit resource hungry with effects in use. Some effects are quite interesting :-)
I've not even looked at commodore extras yet. Could that be the stuff available on the second dvd, do you think? I'll make some enquiries.

ronacc
November 20th, 2011, 04:44 PM
I'm burning disk 2 to a dvd right now , I want my boing ball and kanakus balls .:P

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 05:00 PM
:-)
Please tell what's on there :-)

ronacc
November 20th, 2011, 05:29 PM
a boat load of debs and a boatload of other stuff that archive manager couldn,t read you install it by (with the dvd in the drive ) go to system>commodore extras>install commodore OS extras , it just finished installing , now to see what it added . back soon .

edit : so far I've found a bunch of music and games under the A500 and C64 dirs nothing in the other dirs ( accessed from the C= icon in the dock )

Quackers
November 20th, 2011, 05:37 PM
:-) It's like Christmas early :-)

Quackers
November 21st, 2011, 04:08 AM
Oh my, it grew to 16.9GB installed size when I ran the extras :-)

ceti331
November 21st, 2011, 04:20 AM
is that true ARGB alpha enabled in the gtk theme ? (e.g. transparent menu bars)
i've never got that working myself, it's something i'm after.

i have to say, i liked the idea of the retro font but it does look hard to read for lots of text.

i gather this distro comes with , amongst other things, a D-paint clone out of the box? (graphx2 ?)

cariboo
November 21st, 2011, 04:32 AM
Merged two threads on the same subject.

ronacc
November 21st, 2011, 03:09 PM
thanks cariboo907

@ ceti331 yes graphx2 is included and looks like dpaint used to :)

@ Quackers my test box has almost 2 TB spread across 6 drives so I always give my installs plenty of room in this case 30gb / and 60 gb home so I wasn't too concerned about how much space it took :P

Stovey
November 21st, 2011, 03:38 PM
lol very interesting but I still have a Commodore 64 :p

Me too; if I want to use it I just plug it in and turn it on. Last time I did that though it was not really nostalgic, just brutally slow and irritating. Hence the 2012 Commodore OS I suppose.

I replaced the CPU in both my C-64 and 1541 with "Supercard" IIRC. There is a flipswitch to turn it on, and it increased the speed of the C-64 dramatically! And it pre-assigned the function keys and did other nifty tricks.

I needed the extra speed because I was running a BBS. The year was 1986! :)

ronacc
November 21st, 2011, 04:05 PM
my C64 and C128 were stock except for a GEOS cartridge for each but I put a megamidgit racer with a 68030 & 68882 & 8mb ram in my A500 and it was faster than the windows box that replaced it after a lightning surge on the phone line took out the modem AND the serial port in the mid 90's .

Rupettux
November 22nd, 2011, 04:57 PM
I was born in the 90's so I didn't get to see any Commodore's, but I have the Commodore 64 app on my iPhone and I enjoy it very much. I especially like playing with Commodore 64 BASIC since I'm a Computer Science student.

This new OS looks pretty cool. It's just a little resource heavy from the looks of it. I mean you can't run that much Compiz on a wimpy laptop that's for sure. I will probably load this on my home desktop that has a core i3 (sandy bridge) and Nvidia graphics and see what it can do. It can't be that bad, it is using Linux Mint as its base which means down under all that retro blue theme there's Ubuntu.

forrestcupp
November 22nd, 2011, 09:46 PM
I was born in the 90's so I didn't get to see any Commodore's, but I have the Commodore 64 app on my iPhone and I enjoy it very much. I especially like playing with Commodore 64 BASIC since I'm a Computer Science student.

This new OS looks pretty cool. It's just a little resource heavy from the looks of it. I mean you can't run that much Compiz on a wimpy laptop that's for sure. I will probably load this on my home desktop that has a core i3 (sandy bridge) and Nvidia graphics and see what it can do. It can't be that bad, it is using Linux Mint as its base which means down under all that retro blue theme there's Ubuntu.

If you want the C64 experience, but don't have the resources for this distro, just install Vice in some other light weight distro. You can have an emulator in any distro you want.

Rupettux
November 22nd, 2011, 09:54 PM
If you want the C64 experience, but don't have the resources for this distro, just install Vice in some other light weight distro. You can have an emulator in any distro you want.
Thanks, I'll try that out. I don't like to use a lot of system resources on eye candy.

Shibblet
November 23rd, 2011, 02:45 AM
Looks like a Linux Based OS designed for their new computer release.

They're cashing in on the nostalgia ticket.

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

3rdalbum
November 23rd, 2011, 04:31 PM
Kinda reminds me of Copland PPC, a Linux distro I created based on Xubuntu, for PowerPC Macs.

It used Xubuntu to create a Mac OS 9-style desktop complete with "Control Strip" and the application switcher menu, plus MacOnLinux, netatalk, and a "Chooser" program similar to the one in classic Mac OS. The feature I was working on was the ability to run an x86 Linux web browser and the x86 Linux Flash Player plugin so you could have Flash support on Copland. This would have happened via Qemu's "user mode emulation".

Seems quite similar in principle and technology to what the Vision developers are attempting, although they're not attempting to recreate the Commodore user interface.

forrestcupp
November 23rd, 2011, 06:43 PM
Kinda reminds me of Copland PPC, a Linux distro I created based on Xubuntu, for PowerPC Macs.
Lol. You made a Linux distro to run specially on Mac hardware and tweaked it to look like the OS that originally came on that hardware. :)

DeadSuperHero
November 23rd, 2011, 10:53 PM
I've kind of been mad about this ever since I saw them announce it.

It's bad enough that they yanked the Commadore brands away from the actual people that are making real Amigas anymore, Hyperion Entertainment, A-Eon, ACube, and the select few others that even bother. It's kind of insulting to see the Amiga X1000 be pushed to the side for this little nostalgic machine that just crams in modern hardware that is completely incompatible with the modern AmigaOS 4.x series.

I dunno, it's just really disappointing. The distro looks absolutely terrible to me. It's like they decided to just copy Hardy Heron, slap a bad theme on it, and choose a bad font to go with it.

I wonder if they used RemasterSys?

Quadunit404
November 23rd, 2011, 11:01 PM
I dunno, it's just really disappointing. The distro looks absolutely terrible to me. It's like they decided to just copy Hardy Heron, slap a bad theme on it, and choose a bad font to go with it.

Good to see I'm not the only one who hates the aesthetics here.

Deano252
February 27th, 2012, 07:19 PM
Interesting.
Do you need both downloads or is the second disc optional? It's not clear to me :-)
Disk one is the main OS and Disk 2 are the extras. They contain additional applications and is not required to run. The core OS has some of the basic essential apps out of the box. but if you want some extra goodies (and there are some good ones) I would install the extras as well.

I heard about this OS a couple of weeks ago after reading an article about the new Commodore 64X (Basically a PC in a C-64 case). apperently the Commodore OS will be shipping with the C-64X when its officially released.

That being said. It made me go through all my older components and put together a decent system to run the OS on.

I have Commodore OS running on the following setup.

Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz
4 Gigs Memory
ASUS PSVD2-X Motherboard w/ Integrated sound (I forget the specifc chipset)
GeForce 9400 GT Video Card
1Tb Wetern Digital Hdd

The first time I Put the OS DVD in the drive I selected Installation menu and that seemed to not do anything asside from stay on the loading screen.

The second time around I just let the DVD auto boot and it installed fine.

I haven't played around with it too much seeing as I only installed it yesterday evening. But, my first thoughts are that its really nice. If you were one of those kids that had a Commodore 64 back in the day you will appreciate this OS all the more. The windows have that Blueish background with the Commodore font that we all are so used to.

On the downside, there is not a ton of support out there. And Commodore has made it very clear they they are not currently providing support for the OS at this point. They have put the Statement not only on their web page, but also on the terms of aggreement whe you install the OS.

dagroves
February 27th, 2012, 07:23 PM
Can anyone tell me what the game is on their website on the video at 1:19
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx

swright007
February 29th, 2012, 10:43 AM
I remember being a teen, just before getting my C64, watching the ads for it by William Shatner.

Hylas de Niall
February 29th, 2012, 01:04 PM
Can anyone tell me what the game is on their website on the video at 1:19
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx

That's 'Torus Trooper'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FQBcSIxaBY

nutpants
February 29th, 2012, 09:28 PM
if he had been smart he would have created a all in one computer built into the keyboard much like he did but with a hdmi out and much nicer more modern look all around then put ubuntu or mint on it and sold it for the same price point as the atom desktops out there..
just hook up to your hdmi tv and go..
sell a million for 150$

commodore was the brand name..back when brand name mattered
i was lucky enough to have the vic20, c64 and the Amiga 500 back in the day
when a 300 bbs modem was scorching fast speed..

just wish they would remake some of the games from back then.
carrier command (yes i know its coming) beach head,and all the other one
hit wonders.

spannernick
October 30th, 2012, 07:17 PM
Yes I am not a fan of the c64 pc...well thats what it is...:)

Oh and theres a 32bit version of the OS out now..

http://cbmosvision.webs.com

LazarX
November 12th, 2012, 05:53 PM
I've kind of been mad about this ever since I saw them announce it.

It's bad enough that they yanked the Commadore brands away from the actual people that are making real Amigas anymore, Hyperion Entertainment, A-Eon, ACube, and the select few others that even bother. It's kind of insulting to see the Amiga X1000 be pushed to the side for this little nostalgic machine that just crams in modern hardware that is completely incompatible with the modern AmigaOS 4.x series.

I dunno, it's just really disappointing. The distro looks absolutely terrible to me. It's like they decided to just copy Hardy Heron, slap a bad theme on it, and choose a bad font to go with it.

I wonder if they used RemasterSys?

I wasn't really impressed with Hyperion or any of the others. Spend thousands of dollars to run Amiga OS on antiquated CPU's? No thank you. Companies fighting over which is the real Amiga, preventing anything from being done until the platform had fallen completely out of relevance? This is a package that runs on the laptop I have, and it's FREE in the proper linux tradition, plus it provides support for those commercial offerings like Amiga Forever.

If any of the Amiga successors had actually wanted the Amiga platform to move forward they would have taken advantage of all of the 040 Macs that were out there and offered a package. If YellowDog could market a PPC Linux with a fair degree of success until Mac switched over to Intel, there is no reason that a software kit could not have been offered. But instead they all insisted on us buying proprietary, expensive, incompatible, and more to the point, increasingly out of date PPC hardware.

Jakin
November 12th, 2012, 07:24 PM
I wasn't really impressed with Hyperion or any of the others. Spend thousands of dollars to run Amiga OS on antiquated CPU's? No thank you.

Those new PPC cpu's that Hyperion and Aeon use, are anything but oldfashioned. One cannot compare a PPC architecture to x86 architecture. Just like you cannot compare ARM to x86. The reason for mac switching to intel... who knows, marketing (probably ease of compatibility)? It's not because intel x86 is something "better".

Also all the major game consoles of today are PPC.

mips
November 12th, 2012, 08:45 PM
I have zero interest in this as it's just a linux distro with a name to it. It has nothing in common with any of Commodore's old operating systems.

NormanFLinux
November 12th, 2012, 08:57 PM
Kinda reminds me of Copland PPC, a Linux distro I created based on Xubuntu, for PowerPC Macs.

It used Xubuntu to create a Mac OS 9-style desktop complete with "Control Strip" and the application switcher menu, plus MacOnLinux, netatalk, and a "Chooser" program similar to the one in classic Mac OS. The feature I was working on was the ability to run an x86 Linux web browser and the x86 Linux Flash Player plugin so you could have Flash support on Copland. This would have happened via Qemu's "user mode emulation".

Seems quite similar in principle and technology to what the Vision developers are attempting, although they're not attempting to recreate the Commodore user interface.

If someone could compile Pantheon Shell for PPC, we'd have a working replacement for Mac OSX Leopard which is showing its age and is no longer officially supported by Apple. It can be themed to look like Mac OSX.

Aarbron
November 16th, 2012, 11:19 AM
I used to be a moderator (then for a short while, admin) of one of the major Amiga forums (one of the controversial ones). I left a few years ago, but i still lurk in the scene, reading current trends/thoughts etc. CommodoreUSA proved to be a highly controversial endeavour. I think it has somewhat gone off the boil, to a simmer nowadays.

*personally*, i think it is an interesting product. A cop out? Perhaps. I think the Linux flavour is not a bad thing, in any sense. Many Amigans moved to Linux in the late '90s, including legendary Nick Veitch. so I don't think it's a bad move. Legendary Commodore Amiga engineer, Dave Haynie, has also for a number of years asked for a port to x86 (but was shouted down for it, by the purists......). We must not also forget, that with the then much slated new platform of Amigas, the AAA machines, there were strong and highly informed rumours that Commodore was going to move towards Windows NT (Linux would have been the better move ;) ).

My main problem was with some of the types that had gathered around the company (I used to moderate some of them before they became players in the company......). Some of the *reps* have shown an extremely unprofessional standard in making certain threats to certain members of the community. And they can be highly trigger happy, litigation-wise.

Other than this main gripe, and the fact that the hardware is still waaaaay too pricey (then again, none of the other *pure* Amiga products are cheap either), I wish the endeavour well.

My two cents! :)

Swagman
November 16th, 2012, 11:07 PM
I used to be a moderator (then for a short while, admin) of one of the major Amiga forums (one of the controversial ones). I left a few years ago, but i still lurk in the scene, reading current trends/thoughts etc. CommodoreUSA proved to be a highly controversial endeavour. I think it has somewhat gone off the boil, to a simmer nowadays.

*personally*, i think it is an interesting product. A cop out? Perhaps. I think the Linux flavour is not a bad thing, in any sense. Many Amigans moved to Linux in the late '90s, including legendary Nick Veitch. so I don't think it's a bad move. Legendary Commodore Amiga engineer, Dave Haynie, has also for a number of years asked for a port to x86 (but was shouted down for it, by the purists......). We must not also forget, that with the then much slated new platform of Amigas, the AAA machines, there were strong and highly informed rumours that Commodore was going to move towards Windows NT (Linux would have been the better move ;) ).

My main problem was with some of the types that had gathered around the company (I used to moderate some of them before they became players in the company......). Some of the *reps* have shown an extremely unprofessional standard in making certain threats to certain members of the community. And they can be highly trigger happy, litigation-wise.

Other than this main gripe, and the fact that the hardware is still waaaaay too pricey (then again, none of the other *pure* Amiga products are cheap either), I wish the endeavour well.

My two cents! :)

Interesting.

You probably know me, or "of" me.

I'm "The_Editor/Outcast" ... Big Bash Organiser extraordinaire !!

Cecilia used to hang out round these parts too

Aarbron
November 16th, 2012, 11:34 PM
Hahahahahahahahahha!

How you doing, mate?

It's Nick :D

Far out, you still got more posts than me :D

-edit-

Oh wow, hope she comes back, I always fond of Cecilia :)

Swagman
November 16th, 2012, 11:46 PM
Hahahahahahahahahha!

How you doing, mate?

It's Nick :D

Far out, you still got more posts than me :D

-edit-

Oh wow, hope she comes back, I always fond of Cecilia :)

Well bu99er my taytors !!

Small world mate.

Yay .. The Amiga crew finding it's way over here hehe.

Actually I may have more posts than you here but iirc it was you (or Stan) that helped me out when I first installed Debian on my AmigaOne ?

LOOK WOT U DID !!

hehe

Aarbron
November 17th, 2012, 12:08 AM
Well bu99er my taytors !!

Small world mate.

Yay .. The Amiga crew finding it's way over here hehe.

Actually I may have more posts than you here but iirc it was you (or Stan) that helped me out when I first installed Debian on my AmigaOne ?

LOOK WOT U DID !!

hehe

Haha, yes it is! I'm STILL wanting to come over for a few ales - fresh from the tap, UK style :)

My brother was always the more technical one than me. If I gave you two pointers, he gave you 200!

I've only just gotten back into Linux (at his behest :P), can't believe I had dropped it entirely past few years. Beautiful OS. Tried getting back into Amiga this year, but OS is too flakey, unfortunately. When my brother comes back down in a couple of weeks, he wants to install Debian on the A4000. Hope it's a successful install!

The family well?

Swagman
November 17th, 2012, 11:28 AM
The family well ?

Yes thanks although one of my daughters has flown the coop !!

I'd love the new X1000 but just can't justify the tremendous cost. The PA Semi cpu is no slouch though.

Who knows. Another couple of years and maybe we can have another Big Bash. Would be great to see you two here for that... & British Ales.

:-)

Aarbron
November 18th, 2012, 01:23 AM
Yes thanks although one of my daughters has flown the coop !!

I'd love the new X1000 but just can't justify the tremendous cost. The PA Semi cpu is no slouch though.

Who knows. Another couple of years and maybe we can have another Big Bash. Would be great to see you two here for that... & British Ales.

:-)

I remember when had moved out. Married?

I'm a nutter for new hardware (gonna be building a server in a couple of weeks, Xeon stuff), but even for me, the X1000 is just waaaaay to expensive, like Amiga 3000T too expensive. The other thing, I just don't see the software out there, to justify the exorbitant pricing. Most unfortunate. :( But kudos to Trevor for the deal on the ATi drivers.

Haha, Big Bash. We were always jelly that we were never there for that! Large quantities of the Amber Liquid to be had if and when! :D