HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Could Commodore have ported AmigaOS to run on top of Linux?


Maybe they could have even hired Linus to lead the project?


  👤 tssva Accepted Answer ✓
Why would they have? Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. That’s the same year that 3 years after having released the initial version of his hobby OS Linus released the 1.0 kernel. A kernel which supported only 32-bit x86 processors. Why would Commodore target an unstable and feature lacking hobby kernel which targeted a different processor family? What problem would they even be trying to solve by porting to a different kernel?

For the sake of argument let’s assume there is some perceived benefit for porting AmigaOS to running on a Unix based platform. Commodore had Amiga Unix which was a port of AT&T Sytem V Release 4 which they sold as an alternative to AmigaOS. Wouldn’t this have made more sense for them to target?


👤 cheaprentalyeti
You can buy an amiga emulator now that will run on linux (or Mac, or Windows) if you want.

👤 talldayo
Who'd buy it?