My platform of choice is the Amiga, which may be inevitable as I seem to be set in my ways, having started programming on pre-chip `dinosaurs` (Univac, IBM, GE, Honeywell, etc.).

It is not that I would ever refuse to try whatever is available, far from it, playing with OSs is what I do for fun. Mostly by using emulators on the platform that`s most capable of performing exactly as I expect it to. That`s the Amiga. Its OS won't get in our way, it won`t restrict our freedom (especially by senseless patents that try to stop developers like myself, and only serve to protect excessively greedy monopolies), nor will it annoy anyone by being excessively `user-friendly,` while boasting streams of hype like the proverbial spiky-haired office dude, aka know-it-all.

Amiga is a friend - no matter if male or female - sex is not involved, and I do use a very nice audio player written by a female programmer. For me it is simply about making an individual and practical choice, backed by decades of experience hacking around with software on more systems than most others have ever heard of. If an OS (or its creator) won`t respect me - then I won`t respect it (or him/her) either.

Amiga is polite and friendly. If I decide to stay online, it will save the settings to the drive and they will be automatically loaded the next time I start the program. We can all appreciate simplicity, efficiency, consistency and elegance, and some of us will also appreciate fun! It was fun to run MacOS v8+ on the Shapeshifter emulator, and later v9.04+ on iFusion, the emulator running on my PPC accelerator card. It was different - awkward, cute, puzzling at times, subtly patronising, but not only allowed me to test my website in Netscape, Opera or IE, thus remaining compatible with the masses, but made me appreciate the Amiga even more, which made all this possible, without me having to go out and spend an arm and a leg to be able to occasionally use systems that try to dumb me down. Not to mention that there was an excellent and free astrology chart program available for the Mac, which could easily beat commercial offerings on any other platform. With Open Source (as an old hacker I want the freedom to change/improve whatever I can), which is not restricted with patents and mass markets only, the Amiga can at last keep up with whatever the "marketeers" try to fence off for their sole use. This means I will need emulators less and less.

Workbench has the ability to change language on the fly - and all programs will follow suit - try that with WinXP`s user interface! AmigaOS can be upgraded while it is running a time-critical shuttle uplink (this from NASA, wish I`d archived that back then!), and only ever needs to be re-installed if something drastic, like a hard drive crash, destroys files - smaller disasters can be easily repaired, as no files are locked in place. All that without a re-boot, if you know the shell, whereas Windows seems to live on reboots for even the most minor change. The Amiga is getting swifter with every new release, while the opposite is the case with the Redmond product. So f. x. Vista or W7 would not run on my old P3 hardware, and installed on my present box they`d gobble up all the additional resources and leave me no better off than half its capability.

Sadly my A4000 died in `07, after 15 years of solid use, followed a couple of years later by the Blizzard in my A1200, which left only the basic 2MB of RAM in it. My OS v3.9 setup is unable to run in that. Consequently I had to downgrade` to the P3 Celeron, with all its problems due to BIOS limitation of hard drive size, a puny PSU, and dumb WinXP, which brutally and sneakily enforces its depression on all - Marvin, the lift boy, was at least funny. On Amiga and AROS I can simply patch the filesystem to fix any drive size limits, while this 2001 BIOS will never be upgraded. As a result, I was being forced into buying a new box, so I built a Socket AM2 system with AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU and an ATI Radeon x850. Not quite cutting edge, but it can handle all my large drives, with power to spare, and the mobo/chipset is open source compatible right down to the BIOS, with Coreboot. This means I will not be forced into using only certain proprietary software that comes at a high price, nor into having to replace the entire machine, unless I want to.

The line between extortion and business is getting more and more blurred as we approach the perfect throw-away system, the wet dream of greedy suits and marketroids. Sadly it is all a reckless waste of the planet`s resources, that can only result in future generations ending up in poverty, with nothing left working due to this planned obsolescence. (see the Zeitgeist Movement where you can also download and watch their videos.)

So all you good folks - you know who you are - who choose to regard me as "computer illiterate" until I "conformed" to humanity`s dark side, and would not rest bombarding me with regurgitated advertising until it was forced down my neck, all you have proved is your utter ignorance on the matter. Considering the lack of experience, or even the most basic knowledge, it took a great deal of arrogance to assume the right to tell an old pro what computer to use, and that despite having known me for long enough to wonder what I was talking about when trying to explain my work. Of course at the time you had no idea of what a computer could even be used for except to run a game. The price of ignoring experience is to be doomed to finding all your knowledge in hyped news and adverts - which only a luser will take as gospel...

Anyway, before I get carried away, better stop here - and stop using the ole windoze pretend OS. Easier to switch to gnu/linux as my main OS for the time being, allowing me to keep at least some sanity in my life. Of course this dual core AMD is fast enough to run AROS at a respectable speed within QEmu, and AROS can run my Amiga programs. So can e-uae, so I do have choices again. Oh happy days...

While Windows is some corporate types` idea of what should be popular, allowing them to spy on you as it calls home every time you boot it up, gnu/linux - and of course AROS - were built by many volunteers, who believe in individual freedom, which means that it is the people`s idea of what is useful, respectful, user-friendly, and safe too. This becomes quite obvious, once you begin to look past the glitter and hype.

It will run on the iMica Atom, or boards running OSS drivers:

...

My main machine has always been the Amiga 4000, the A1200 is for the odd scan and MIDI. The clone is mainly a 'badge' to show fools that I exist, and fills in for the odd task where the Classic Amiga has fallen behind. However, I am convinced that if it had only 10% of the funding and development that`s poured into Windows, it could easily jump light-years ahead of the entire pack - again...

Amiga at NASA.

A4000 (desktop) in PowerTower, OS3.9 + BB2. CSPPC '060 + 128MB (needs fixing, so now just '030 + 16MB + Oktagon), 9GB SCSI + 32x TEAC CDRW, 120GB IDE. CV64/3D + Dell E178FP 17" LCD TFT monitor (shared with the two clones via a KVM), Hydra Ethernet, VLab Motion, Delfina Lite DSP @60MHz, Canon BJC2100 via parallel port. Runs emulators for MacOS v8.6 on 68k and v9.04 on PPC.

Presently this one is still down, but I`m hoping...

A1200, Blizzard'030/50 + 32MB, SCSI IV + SCSI Agfa SnapScan, 4GB IDE with OS3.5 + BB2, VidiAmigaRT, TriplePlayPlus MIDI i/f, C= 1940 monitor. On-line via 56k ext modem and a PCMCIA network card.

Sadly the Blizz died, so now it`s back to `020 + 2MB and no SCSI. Since there is also insufficient memory to run OS3.9, I will have to re-install OS3.1 on its drive.

That was the fun part, from here it gets "serious"!

(meaning: bland, humourless, depressing, patronising)

AcerPower S57, intel Celeron @1GHz, 1GB RAM, 20GB PATA, DVD-ROM/CD-RW. Runs WinXP/SP3, and main apps are Apache, hMailServer, FileZilla ftp server, and rarely, Opera and Mozilla FireFox, though I have tried most other browsers, including IE. Connected to the net via 24Mbps ADSL - this machine`s sole purpose now is to run the servers in the background.

MSI MS-7260 K9N Neo series, socket AM2 Mobo inside an ASUS 738 Black/Silver Midi ATX PC Case with 500W PSU. The CPU is an Athlon 64 X2 @2.6GHz, kept cool by a copperpipe heatsink with a silent fan. It has 2GB of memory and an ATI Radeon X850XT (256 MB) PCIe card, able to handle two HDMI monitors. The system is populated with CD/DVD-RW, two 1TB and one 160GB SATA drives and now prints to a Canon PIXMA iP3600 via USB. Sadly only via Windows - the linux driver still has some quirks to be ironed out, wanting to rely on some obsolete library. Shame on you, Canon!

Just for the sake of completeness, WinXP Media Center (32-bit), is also installed, but for obvious reasons my main OS is the 32-bit Simplymepis gnu/linux (debian) distro, which works without much fuss. Both multi-boot with IcAROS and AVlinux (a real-time OS for serious music), and all this happens on the same box. All of them will also run UAE with a copy of OS3.9 from the A4000.

Now that I have AROS installed, both native and in VBox, I often boot into that, instead of any other. Running from its own drive, it almost feels like using an Amiga again...