16-Apr-2024 17:39 GMT.		 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
[Forum] The anti-AmigaOS4 trollANN.lu
Posted on 03-Sep-2004 11:39 GMT by Willem v/d Werf160 comments
View flat
View list
Trolling has almost become a dominant behavior on Amiga/AROS/MorphOS forums and leaves its marks on the reputation of the community and that's why I think it deserves an article and an open discussion. I have been lurking on Amiga forums for quite some time but our local Amiga usergroup closed its doors many years ago, all I own is a A1200 without too impressive specifications and hopefully one day a new Amiga computer. This is mostly a summary of my personal experiences and my interpretation of events which I use to investigate the anti-AmigaOS4 trolling we see today by mostly a small vocal group of AROS and MorphOS supporters. I will name no names and it's really more relating to a diverse group of people often acting in a rather similar way when it comes to AmigaOS4. Please read the whole article before just flaming away. Trolling has been on the rise and it seems to be worst around times when there is something positive to report with regard to AmigaOS4 progress. One big shocker must have been when AmigaOS4 booted in Workbench for the first time on AmigaOne hardware many months ago. Judging from many previous comments this was something many AROS/MorphOS advocates would never have expected to see happening. The core developers stated that this was an enormous milestone for them, although at this early stage the general performance wasn't really impressive yet, but would greatly improve in course of time. When this positive news arrived one thing was very obvious, trolling had gone through the roof yet again!

Videos of AmigaOS4 booting for the first time made various vocal AROS/MorphOS advocates claim that AmigaOS4 would be hopelessly slow and flawed when finished, despite the fact that the developers and various other people explained to them that this was due to things like interpreted emulation and a generally very early AmigaOne version. Most trolls immediately claimed that this was impossible to be the case and continued insisting on AmigaOS4 being hopelessly flawed.

When at a later stage development reached another milestone and a video demonstration of native drivers finally proved that AmigaOS4 is indeed turning out to be blazingly fast trolling went through the roof yet again and this time with people even claiming that the video was faked. New videos then debunked these claims without any reasonable doubt finally leaving lots of trolls without further ammunition for now.

Soon the AmigaOS4 DMA drivers are expected to be released and Hyperion is said to have taken extra care to make the trolling regarding alleged 'non-working DMA support' go to rest for once and for all. Despite the fact that many Beta-testers already confirmed that DMA now functions properly the mass trolling never really ended. According to Hyperion the DMA troubles with Linux are due to a later discovered incompatibility of a uncommon ArticiaS feature and between the current LinuxPPC kernel and explained that this would thus be of no problem and actually this feature would offer a performance benefit to AmigaOS4 users. I expect that the trolls will go through the roof again if they are proven wrong yet again, so be prepared!

Generally success seems to run parallel with these trolls getting upset. Be it about hardware milestones like Eyetech's announcement of new MicroA1 boards becoming available or new AmigaOS4 milestones reached under the leadership of Hyperion. Another such example is also AmigaWorld.net which has lately grown in popularity at amazing rates and is now receiving around one million page views a month! AmigaWorld.net is a website specifically developed as a source for AmigaOS4 supporters, but occasionally you will see a MorphOS or AROS troll sharing their outrage there, starting fights and later retreat to other forums to share their outrage yet again about being moderated. Be it outrages about not be able to insult people freely, outrages about OS4Depot allegedly 'destroying' Aminet 'because it only distributes AmigaOS4 software' (like various MorphOS web sites, but these are not a target), or outrages about weekly Q&A sessions with Amiga Inc's CTO, who was backed by an impressive list of AmigaOS4 (mostly the Frieden brothers) and AmigaDE developers to answer technical questions as well as possible, or outrages about Amiga Inc's problems this community portal itself cannot do anything about, examples are plenty!

OK, let's get to Amiga Inc then, a small company which had mega-lo-manic plans but eventually ran into financial problems a few years ago. Interestingly the same people who cried outrage about Amiga Inc's financial problems later vividly tried to belittle Genesi's almost identical financial problems (most importantly not being able to pay its employees anymore) and trashing their 'great' plans and Amiga community focuss! When Amiga Inc's problems first came to light there were many trolls claiming even that without any doubt they knew the company had gone into bankruptcy ans spread this misinformation all across the internet. The shock would probably have been great for these trolls when they later discovered that Amiga Inc was indeed still alive and has just recently been taken over by people who don't seem to have the well known money problems of the past. And maybe even more funny are claims that Amiga Inc would have hired the people at AmigaWorld.net in some way and claims that web sites like ANN and AO would operate far more independently. This while fact really is that Amiga Inc never sponsored AmigaWorld.net but Genesi did indeed sponsor both ANN and AO web sites, seemingly (ab)used their websites for propaganda purposes and even employed these webmasters.

Regardless of all this there seems to be as good as no AmigaOS4 advocate trolling on MorphOS or AROS-only forums, nor does there seem to be anyone crying outrage all the time when it's of no concern to the AmigaOS4 project. The general attitude just seems to be "Oh you like MorphOS, good for you. I 'am getting'/like AmigaOS4 instead. :-)" What makes the general AmigaOS4 supporter so different from the more vocal MorphOS/AROS supporters? Both 'camps' originate from the same Amiga community! So somewhere there seems to have been a split between two very differently thinking fractions of the Amiga community.

Please use calm argumentation instead of the more attacks and flaming in reply to this article. Sadly I can imagine that the people who feel liable with regard to all the mentioned trolling will not act differently in reply to this article.

Willem v/d Werf
Back to Top