GNU Development Possible?

[Craig Burley]

Is Amiga UNIX going to be sufficiently solid to enable me to get
GNU EMACS, GNU CC, and other GNU software up and running, and to
continue development of GNU Fortran (gf77) on it?  If it was and I
decided to do that, the gf77 would be available for the Amiga
sooner than most other machines (especially those not 680x0-based).

I'm currently using the 680x0-based HP workstations here at the
Free Software Foundation, and they're great -- fast and solid and
all that.  But I'd like to save the 2.5 hours per day commute
(not to mention the commuting costs), and I've gotten mail on this
issue from people recommending the Amiga.

Although I don't have much $$ to spend, I do have both a Mac SE/30
with 8MB/80MB and a Mac SE with 2.5MB/20MB, and could sell either
one or, if absolutely necessary and Mac emulation were available
on the Amiga, both.  Although I do like the Macs, for various
reasons primarily having to do with the Apple boycott, I'd like
to get away from doing free software development on the Mac.  (That
is why I don't simply get A/UX and use it on my SE/30.)

I'm interested only in 68030-based machines, as powerful as
possible -- though my 16MHz 68030 Mac is plenty fast for work under
the Mac OS, I realize that an equivalent Amiga might be a bit
sluggish running UNIX, so I'd like to get a 25MHz or above,
perhaps with cache or a zero-wait-state (whatever that means)
memory subsystem.  What are the available high-end models?  Although
I've been told that the "fastest" Amiga is a model that is not the
high-end but enhanced with an accelerator, I don't know how well
this would work with Unix and such.

I also know nothing about the availability of monitors on Amiga;
is the architecture open enough to allow a variety of choices?
Although color and gray-scale monitors can be lots of fun, I'd
lean towards a solid monochrome display over anything fancy even
if I were offered a choice without having to pay.  If I saw a
color monitor that did B&W as well as a given monochrome, however,
I might be persuaded.  What's the status of this kind of stuff
on the Amiga?

If I end up getting an Amiga, I might start writing some good,
useful personal software on it for use under UNIX & X or perhaps
even the Amiga OS, and releasing it as free software.  That's
why I'd like to find a "personable" machine (i.e. like a Mac in
terms of accessibility and affordability) not sold by Apple --
so any efforts I expend making free software for it can
benefit more users than if I get a Next, Sun, or whatever, since
they're workstations with little need for personal software.
I might end up doing primarily development software for a while,
like Fortran and C compilers, however, so I'm not sure what is next,
which is why I want it to run UNIX (aside from getting me through
the remainder of gf77 development, if I get it in time for that).

Anyone with good, definitive information on these topics, please
email me or, if it's general enough, post a response.  I don't
know if it's wise for me to say I'll post a summary later -- my
needs are probably rather unique, since I'm essentially self-
employed, doing the gf77 work as a volunteer, and hence plan
to work on my Amiga full-time (except for when I'm doing
contracts, when I'd like to be able to bring my Amiga along as
a front-end development machine with my home-grown environment on
it -- as I've been successful doing with my SE/30 in the past).
I.e. I'm not looking for an evening/weekend-hack machine only.

(Although I enjoy playing games on computers, I no longer spend
any significant time doing so, so I'm not really interested in
the availability of game software.  MIDI software, however, is
critical -- I do have synths and use Pro 4 on my SE/30, and have
some ideas for unique MIDI-related software to write for
end-users that I'd like to pursue.  I believe the Amiga is an
excellent MIDI machine with lots of good software.  If this
belief is wrong, please correct me!)
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley at ai.mit.edu