| Kickstart is similar to a BIOS on a
PC. This is part of the computer that contains the programs that tell the Amiga what
to do before portions of the operating system are loaded into memory. In all Amigas
except for the A1000, Kickstart is located on a ROM chip. A1000 machines have a Kickstart
ROM image on a floppy diskette.
You will also find a Kickstart Disk for some A 3000 systems, as an upgrade to the
Kickstart they already have. |
AmigaDOS is the Disk
Operating System of the Amiga. It is the
underlying backbone for Workbench. When you open a "Shell" or a "CLI",
you are using the Amiga's DOS system. One of the strengths of the Amiga is that it does
have a Command Line, AND the GUI.
There are things you can do with a command line, you can't do with the Workbench.
The Amiga has an advantage over the other top two PC's in this area because
1) The Macintosh doesn't have a Command Line
2) The Windows machines don't have a Command Line that is integrated with the GUI.
(try to launch a Windows program from DOS)
(launch an Amiga program from the CLI) |
Workbench is the GUI for the Amiga.
(GUI stands for G_raphical U_ser I_nterface.)
Which consists of (WIMP windows, icons, menus and pointers.)
Despite Apple's and Microsoft's claims of inventing the "GUI", the GUI was
actually first developed by people working for Xerox (yes, the document
company). The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Later-- 'adapted' by
Apple, ported to the Amiga, then again redesigned again by Microsoft. I have heard
stories that after Apple had gotten a peek at the GUI from PARC (XEROX), some of those
developers left PARC and worked with the Amiga project. (true?). |
| Intuition You will sometimes hear
the term intuition. (Especially in error messages). Intuition is (from what I can tell)
the name given to the Kernel of the Amiga. I am not sure this is totally true, but it is
probably close enough to make no odds.
Just know it is a deep layer below the Workbench, where commands live. |
AmigaOS encompasses
all of these things, meaning literally, the Amiga Operating
System. So, for example, when you refer to the version of your OS,
you say "AmigaOS 1.3" or "AmigaOS 2.04" or "AmigaOS 3.1". This
term was established late in the Commodore days and made official by Amiga Technologies,
during the short time when Escom owned the Amiga.
About the same time that Macintosh started calling its Operating System an OS. Due to
the fact that Macintosh,at the time, were allowing clones to be made and they had to make
it clear that these Computers were running the MacOS, instead of them being Macintosh
computers.
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