[HN Gopher] The virtual AmigaOS runtime (a.k.a. Wine for Amiga:)
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The virtual AmigaOS runtime (a.k.a. Wine for Amiga:)
Author : doener
Score : 115 points
Date : 2026-01-08 00:48 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| kwanbix wrote:
| Wine for Amiga sounds like I can run Wine on my Amiga. Is to run
| Amiga software on a PC instead.
| sedawkgrep wrote:
| Literally the first line in the description:
|
| > vamos is a tool that allows to run AmigaOS m68k CLI binaries
| directly on your Mac or PC.
| paulmooreparks wrote:
| AINU - Ainu Is Not UAE?
|
| Just spitballing.
| bitwize wrote:
| Giving your open source project the name of an indigenous
| people is fraught with complications, as the ASF (Apache
| Software Foundation) is now discovering.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Come on, Apache Software Foundation is clearly named after
| an attack helicopter, and AINU after one of countless
| immortal spirits in the Middle Earth universe who helped
| create the world with her beautiful music.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The attack helicopter is named after...
|
| Hint: other helicopters were named Kiowa, Cheyenne,
| Blackhawk, Sioux, Mojave, Iroquois.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Just realized that the Amiga line lasted 19 years, from 1985
| to 1994.
|
| UAE was released in 1995, so it's over 30 years old.
| iberator wrote:
| Sir your math is wrong. :)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first time :)
| tejtm wrote:
| just carry the one back
| dizzy9 wrote:
| Unfortunately, both "amiga" and "vamos" are common Spanish words,
| making it difficult to search.
|
| So far it runs command-line Amiga programs only, but there's an
| open merge request to add GUI support.
| tejtm wrote:
| just checked and AmiNet is still up!
|
| https://www.aminet.net/
|
| maybe start your searching there
| skywal_l wrote:
| There is fundamental difference between Windows and AmigaOS is
| that you usually want to run Linux+wine on a the same hardware
| you would run Windows. That's why wine is not an emulator.
| Whereas, in the case of vamos, the AmigaOS hardware is not a
| PC.
|
| They explicitly states that in the link: "It will run typical
| console binaries that do not rely on user interface [...] This
| approach will not run any applications or games using direct
| hardware register access - for this use case a machine emulator
| like FS-UAE is the tool you will need..."
| vidarh wrote:
| There's a lot of Amiga software that doesn't rely on direct
| hardware access.
|
| Couple that with AROS providing implementations of all the
| important parts of AmigaOS, it'd be _possible_ create
| something that supported the GUI as well. It 's a decade+
| since I did any work on the AROS source, so I don't remember
| how much work it might be to retarget the window rendering to
| open and update actual windows of the OS it runs on, instead
| of compositing to a window representing the full screen.
|
| The caveat is that a lot of AmigaOS apps open their own
| "screens" (virtual desktops) and expect to be able to open
| windows on them, in which case you might end up with a bunch
| of full-screen sized windows anyway. Then you might as well
| run full AROS.
|
| For that reason I think the limitation of this is probably
| fine: Use this for command line programs you want to run in
| your regular terminal, and just spin up AROS or FS-UAE to run
| programs with a gui. I can spawn AROS with a custom
| StartupSequence to "boot" right into FrexxEd (an editor co-
| written by the guy behind Curl) and have it spin up the
| entire OS and the editor faster than a typical Emacs
| session...
| amiga386 wrote:
| The comparison with WINE is quite apt, though. Although it is
| using a 68000 emulator, unlike WINE which is purely native
| code, it is taking the same approach to implementing AmigaOS
| as WINE took to implementing Windows: it offers the normal
| API entrypoints, and as soon as programs call into them, it
| takes over and does things natively.
|
| VAMOS writes as few 68000 instructions into the emulator's
| memory as possible; as soon as the program calls an AmigaOS
| API, the emulator traps it and handles the implementation in
| Python.
| Narishma wrote:
| Wine for Amiga is as confusing as Windows Subsystem for Linux. I
| thought it would be a port of Wine for the Amiga but it's instead
| something to run Amiga software on PC.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| It also makes even less sense than the Wine name. "Wine is not
| an emulator" - but it is! It's an API emulator, not an
| instruction set emulator. "Wine for Amiga" is an emulator in
| both senses.
| petterroea wrote:
| My favorite piece of trivia is that main.c of the wine loader
| actually calls itself "emulator initialisation code" :D
|
| https://github.com/wine-
| mirror/wine/blob/master/loader/main....
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I guess a better description would be "Wine for Amiga
| software".
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| IIRC Amiga Forever by Cloanto already did something similar?
| mras0 wrote:
| Amiga Forever is a distribution of software (Amiga ROMs and
| OS disks) and a full system emulator: CPU, custom chips
| (graphics/sound/..) etc. It allows you to emulate various
| Amiga systems completely.
|
| vAmos is just CPU and an embedded ROM/OS replacement that
| does just enough to run (some) AmigaOS command line programs.
| The primary use case is for cross-development (running Amiga
| compilers/tools, testing simple stuff, etc.) without having
| to boot a full system emulator for each command and better
| integration with e.g. host-side Makefiles.
|
| With the vAmos=WINE analogy, Amiga Forever=VirtualBox/VMWare.
| doener wrote:
| The official name of this software is vamos - virtual Amiga OS.
| metadope wrote:
| _Si habla espanol_ : Let's go!
| layer8 wrote:
| Being preceded by "virtual AmigaOS runtime", I somehow had no
| trouble understanding it.
| fithisux wrote:
| It should be paired with a cross-compiler.
| mras0 wrote:
| There already exist cross-compilers (e.g.
| http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/ and various amiga-gcc
| versions). vAmos is more for the case where you want to use an
| Amiga-native compiler (say SAS/C
| http://pjhutchison.org/tutorial/sas_c.html) but work on
| Linux/Windows.
| billpg wrote:
| Could this be a the basis of an independent implementation of
| AmigaOS? At the moment, (I think) you still need a licensed copy
| of Commodore's OS to run an emulator.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| There is an open source version, named AROS, which you can use.
| anthk wrote:
| You can use the ArOS roms for m68k and Aros m68k itself, but
| you need to set a highend setup.
| amiga386 wrote:
| It's about a million miles away from that. It's a 68000 CPU
| emulator, with no Amiga hardware, and _just enough_ OS
| structures sprinkled into memory, such that quite a few Amiga
| CLI utilities work.
|
| What you're looking for is a ROM with a full implementation of
| AmigaOS, that can manage real Amiga hardware: that is only
| possible with the official ROMs or projects like AROS
| mghackerlady wrote:
| There's the free AROS for that, and the less talked about but
| arguably cooler nonfree MorphOS. If you have an old PPC mac try
| a trial of MorphOS on it, it's a very interesting little system
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(page generated 2026-01-08 23:01 UTC)