A great AW.net moderator Eliyahu has made this simple and nice guide
a few months ago we had another new-to-OS4 user ask the same questions. i responded in this thread, but i’ll repeat it here, too:
there is a tremendous amount of software that works well on amiga NG machines, both classic software from the 68K days as well as more modern applications. obviously exploring os4depot and aminet should be your first stops, but here are some of the tools i use on my SAM on a regular basis:
* astronomy: i’m a bit of a ‘backyard astronomer’ as it were so my absolute favorite amiga application is easily the superb digital universefrom bill eaves. it is commercially available, but very reasonably priced, and unlike astronomy programs on other platforms, this one gets you the information you need for observation quickly, easily, and without flim-flam. it is also hugely scriptable via REXX and is nice for demonstrations i sometimes do for neighborhood schoolchildren. a version of celestia, an open-source program from the GNU/linux world, is also available although requires miniGL — so you may have issues running it on your X1000 before the release of OS4.2.
* audio: coupled with a nice audio card, you’d be surprised what you can do with a modern amiga. previously commercial, audio evolution— a multi-track audio editing suite — is now available for free. additionally you’ll also want to check out HD-REC if you’re into MIDI. you’ll also want to try soundFX 4.3 on your system as well; although a classic application it works beautifully on my SAM. of course if you want to build up your MP3 collection, you’ll want ADripper to rip your CDs, tunenet or amigaamp3 to play them, and amipodder if you’re into podcasts. amuse is also good if you need a last.fm client. lastly you’ll want to play MODs — this is an amiga, after all — so check outmilkytracker, or hivelytracker, or schism, or ….
* emulation: there are emulators available for just about every classic computing or console platform you can imagine. among the ones i use are amiNES (for the original NES console), basilisk2 (for the classic Macintosh), DOSbox (for old DOS programs), E-UAE (for amiga games that ‘pound’ the custom chipset), hatari (for atari ST programs), KEGS (for apple IIgs emulation), VICE (for C64 and C128 games), and warpSNES (for the SNES). you’ll also find emulators for spectrum systems, amstrads, the original playstation, neogeo arcade games, and many others.
* graphics: most of the graphics tools i use from the classic days. among them are imageFX, photogenics, and fxpaint — which are available commercially — and tvpaint, personal paint, and perfect paint — which are freely available. probably the most used on my SAM is the photoshop-like arteffect from alinea, available for e15 including a printed manual. there’s also terrific 3D applications including the modern blender, the still-commercially available aladdin 4D, and the freely available lightwave 3D. if you want to work with vector graphics, check out amifig or the classic drawstudio v2.0, although finding the latter isn’t easy. there are many available graphics viewers out there for browsing your photo collection: amiphoto from alinea is my personal favorite, although warpview is excellent as well. some folks like loview.
* internet: this has been touched on by previous posters. among the tools to check out are, for IRC, amIRC for OS4 and wookiechat. for instant messaging you can use jabberwocky for google talk (and other services using a jabber backbone) and sabreMSN (for windows live messaging). folks have touched on browsers well enough: i find netsurf and MUIOWB to be my personal favorites. there is a native version of newscoaster for USENET newsgroups, a twitter client called amitwitter, and a telnet/SSH client called amtelnet (although for connecting to most systems using SSHv2, the openSSH client on os4depot is a better bet). remote access to your other systems can be done via either RDP or VNC with the remote desktop client and twinVNC respectively. there are several bittorrent clients — such asctorrent and transmission — but i’ve never been successful with either. lastly you’ll want to check out xnet-rss for RSS streams and subscriptions, and either YAM or simplemail for email.
* productivity: this is an area of relative weakness for our platform, most of the office tools for amiga NG very old indeed. that said there are some pearls, such as MUIbase as a database system, pagestream for page layout, and the amicygnix environment which brings tools like abiword and gnumeric to the amiga. on the classic side you might be interested in amigawriter from alinea (still sold today) or wordworth 7 for word processing. some folks swear by finalwriter 97, but that’s rather tough to find a copy. spreadsheets are rather old: some still use turbocalc 5, although i much prefer staram plan which is available freely.
* video: there are two varients of mplayer, the older reaction-based version and the more recent MUI-based port from morphOS. i’ve had much better performance with the reaction version, and coupled with mplayer-GUI, i quite like it. i’ve also purchased DVplayer and recommend it wholeheartedly. if you need to convert between formats ffmpeg and its accompanying GUI utility is rather useful and full video editing is possible in blender.
this post is getting way too long, so i’ll skip games and utilities for some other time. enjoy your new amiga NG!
Thanks Eliyahu and dis one from DJ Rikki and great Hollywood designer
Another episode in „Abuse someone elses work““, this time AROS Barron has previously spitted on.
Added C64 ROMs and AROS ROMs for Amiga emulation (The ROMs are not 100% compatibile but are close). The C64 and AMIGA emulation are now launched full screen. If clicking on a C64 game does not work you may need to tweak your emulator settings to enable either full screen or windowed playback.
Another point well taken: they will just abuse someone elses work and never countribute even by bounty. What they would do if there was no Debian, MINT and AROS? Make a Windows free software under Commodore Windows with blessings from M$?
And just to elaborate on my response. Cloanto just wanted to know if we were including their product in Commodore OS and wanted an explanation of what we were doing.
They were fine with it once they realised we weren’t including their product, and in fact were promoting their product to Commodore enthusiasts.
One day dem a partners with Cloanto, other day Amiga Inc can give dem ROMs, third day thieves and liars
And yes … InI forgot Leo`s stance on AROS
Sent: 1-Nov-2010 8:04:08
to BigBentheAussie
Quote:
OK, you could donate 1$ or 10$, 100$ if your Commodore USA Amiga`s are going to use AudioHD since driver would benefit you too and you would have it in several months waiting for others to give their contrib (like AresOne does)
We are still on the fence regarding AROS because we are waiting to hear back from A Inc’s lawyers regarding Hyperion’s threats. They’re taking their time.
We won’t be releasing any Amigas until next year so we’re in no rush.
We are not going to spend a single cent until we know where we stand, what we can do, and what we can’t do.
The drivers therefore ARE NO BENEFIT to us until we are 100% sure we’re not going to be sued.
On top of that, given the the many months of negotiation regarding this driver with Stephen, where he attempted to play us, and then brag to everyone that he nearly did, and you can see that we have less than zero intention of bowing to his ransom demands. Demanding us to spend our money on a community that has shown such open hostility towards us is not the way for you or the community to get what they want.
This is political, and I guess it is something you cannot recognise from your armchair analysis of the situation.
Look at it from the eyes of a company that is attempting to be more than a backyard operation and you will see that there must be absolute certainty regarding all things because the stakes are too high.
This amount was a drop in the bucket of what we were prepared to spend to attempt to raise the status of AROS to that of a mainstream OS.
The reaction because we didn’t jump when the self appointed kings of AROS demanded we should does not exactly instill us with confidence in investing in AROS.
We don’t like the direction these people are pushing AROS nor the IP issues they are hell-bent on creating in future.
And based on their behavior to date and the various threats they have made we certainly don’t want to work with them.
Maybe you haven’t seen the nonsense we’ve had to put up with both publicly and in private.
Our will to try and accommodate the community regarding AROS is steadily declining.
The community doesn’t buy anything anyway, and is so fragmented it’s a lost cause.
The AROS community should be trying to gain our support rather than just annoying us, because our support would have been FTW!!!
They’ve looked a gift horse in the mouth.
On the Edge: Spectacular rise and fall of C=USA 