I love how much development work is still going on for the C64 (and other old computers). There seem to be more game launches now than during some months during it's heyday
this site has been a great contribution to the commodore scene for a long time -- even before the OS was available. Greg has probably the best "buyers guide" out there for new people, his blog is full of 6502 programming tips, and the luggable c64 mod was great too.
for a long time, the "c64 OS" was tantalizing, sitting there on this site that we're all familiar with but still out of reach. he's been working on it since 2016. i'm looking forward to finally getting to try it!
"komoda & amiga plus" (a polish/english magazine) issue #20 included a fantastic interview with Greg. he talked about his inspirations from GeOS and some of the techniques he used to get things to feel truly snappy on ancient hardware.
I hope the future has more of this. As with many things in contemporary life, operating systems have become so complicated. It’s refreshing to see something much simpler that one or a small number of people can hone to perfection.
Not open source, yet somehow expects people to work on it for free anyways.
I don't get it. What a wasted opportunity.
On a personal level, I would otherwise buy the book and other merchandise, and jump right into developing some tools for it, just to try it out.
But with it not being open source. I abhor the idea of supporting it in any way, to the point that the idea of writing software for it makes me physically sick. Hell, I don't even want to try see it.
You could use ConTiki OS instead. The C64 version isn't as polished as C64 OS, but it's not bad, and it's entirely opensource. Of course it's a bit of abandonware ATM, but it had lots of features: a web browser, an IRC client, a Twitter client...
the author deliberately omitted copy protection, went to great effort to make the software extensible by the user, and hopes to make a little money from nearly a decade of work -- for me, there's a good enough balance of software freedoms. it's okay if that's not free enough to meet your standards.
it's worth considering that the commodore scene is tiny, and that Greg's site has long been a key resource in the community. his buyer's guide and programming tutorials are widely cited -- these are resources he contributes freely. Greg's influence has helped increase the size of our community by lowering the barrier for entry.
i do hope that one day he begins open-sourcing (at least) the core applications. but i don't object to his release model.
edit: removed 1 clause. 'vitriolic' wasn't fair, i apologize.
>for me, there's a good enough balance of software freedoms.
For me, it clearly is not. It being an OS, there's an implicit expectation that third parties will write software for it, and it just doesn't sit well with me.
>it's worth considering that the commodore scene is tiny, and that Greg's site has long been a key resource in the community. his buyer's guide and programming tutorials are widely cited -- these are resources he contributes freely.
I used them before, love them, even have a local backup in case they go away.
But as for C64 OS, only disappointment. I had some expectations, which were just betrayed.
>Greg's influence has helped increase the size of our community by lowering the barrier for entry.
And yet, a new proprietary OS raises the barrier of entry. It creates yet another silo. To access it, having a C64 is not enough, you'll also have to buy C64 OS.
>but your comment is unnecessarily vitriolic.
Is that because it disagrees with your views, while politely describing my actual feelings on the matter? I do not appreciate being told that my feelings are not valid.
It really makes me sick, and I am less willing to participate in the C64 community now, as my energy will be drained every time I reference his excellent documentation.
