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Year of the Amiga Unix Desktop 2026

Amiga Unix, again

Amiga Unix — Amix — was Commodore’s System V Release 4 for the Amiga: shipped in 1990–92 for the
A2500UX and A3000UX, then left where it stood. amigaux.org is an unofficial community project that
picks it up again: Amix on 68040 and 68060 machines and on today’s accelerator hardware, with a
modern toolchain, a package manager, and drivers for cards that never had any. The work is done in
the open, and written down as it happens in the
grimoire.

By asokero, isoriano1968 and jusii.

Soon: install it yourself

The install medium boots from floppy and CD-ROM on real hardware — floppy image and ISO under
emulation — and takes care of the whole installation, interactively or unattended. With supported
hardware, getting Amix onto a machine comes down to following the prompts. The classic tape
install follows later.

From there the network takes over: apkg installs packages straight from
pkg.amigaux.org — grep, gzip, less, patch and zlib to start with, and more GNU and BSD
tools as they are built and tested.

# apkg update
catalog updated: 39 packages
# apkg install less
downloading extra/less-704.pkg …
installed less-704

Installing Amiga Unix on a 68060: the installer asks for keymap, disk, sizes and package set, then summarises what it will install. — **Installing on a real 68060.** Keymap, disk, partition sizes, package set — then
it shows you what it is about to do. Real time, with the long waits taken out.

First boot: Amiga Unix asks for a nodename and domain, writes its hosts file and comes up at a login prompt. — **First boot.** It names itself, sets the clock, writes its hosts file — including
the package repository — and comes up at a login prompt.

Where we are

Working today

68040/68060 support — Amix 2.1 on a real 68060, with or without FPU; an MMU is mandatory.
The kernel: asokero/amix-040-060-port
Z3660 accelerator — native SCSI and ethernet drivers, proven on real hardware
A4091 / A4092 — a Zorro III SCSI driver and an auto-detecting kernel
Installation — from floppy + CD-ROM on a real machine, or floppy image + ISO image under
emulation, interactive or unattended; the classic tape install follows later
apkg — a remote package client with a hosted repository (catalog, dependencies, upgrades),
and the first modern GNU tools packaged: grep, gzip, less, patch, zlib
A cross toolchain — Linux-hosted m68k-cbm-sysv4, building all of the above
An OpenLook desktop that comes up ready on a fresh install
Quake — runs; a benchmark more than a game, for now

In progress

RTG graphics for the Z3660 (ZZ9000-compatible) — running under emulation, real hardware next
Ethernet throughput in the accelerator firmware
X11R6.3 and Mesa as packages, from the community ports; the wider userland after that
A read-only CD filesystem (ODFileSystem port)
Install-media polish: a repair path, guard rails; the tape version

A native, modern gcc on the box
RTG on the real accelerator
The packaged X11R6.3 / Mesa stack
The firmware ethernet fixes
Then the full launch here: packages, source, instructions and manuals

How it’s built

Part of this work is done with generative AI in the loop — models reading the old kernels in binary, as no
source is available, and writing drivers and notes — with people setting direction, reviewing every change and testing on real
hardware, where it either boots or it doesn’t. Other parts are done the classic way. The grimoire
records both, confidence-tagged, so you can see what is verified and what is still a guess.

The code

The kernel

Drivers and hardware

Graphics and X11

Built on

Tools and docs

💬 **What’s your take?**
Share your thoughts in the comments below!

#️⃣ **#amigaux.org**

🕒 **Posted on**: 1789950292

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