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The AmigaOS may just be remembered as an operating system from the 80's and 90's, but it is still alive, and has evolved into a modern OS, the latest release being 4.1 in Dec. 2014, with a modern UI Workbench supporting a lot of modern software.

However, the main hardware family seems to still be PowerPC, and it is not clear to me if it can run natively on an x86 architecture. Of course, I can in worst case go after specific hardware, like from this list, but does anybody has a straight forward approach for doing this on standard x86?

I am not looking for some retro emulator, as that has nothing to do with the modern Amiga, but a VM approach, Linux preferably, might be possible if x86 is not.

Any good ways to get the AmigaOS 4.1 to run on x86?

Edit: There seems like a tutorial for installing an earlier version, AmigaOS XL, from 2002, at x86 systems. The hardware emulation seems pretty straight forward, so if something similar for the 4.x series exist, I will be very thankful.

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You can't AmigaOS requires PowerPC processors

A PowerPC microprocessor is required for the most recent release, AmigaOS 4.

Supported hardware

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  • Its worth adding nearly all of those are out of stock :(
    – Journeyman Geek
    Mar 26, 2016 at 13:13
  • It seems like the only option left is to run the OS 4.1 through the Amiga Forever. That works well on normal PC hardware. Mar 26, 2016 at 13:36
  • Check eBay maybe you can find used
    – SeanClt
    Mar 26, 2016 at 14:20
  • Thanks anyway, it seems pretty clear now that PowerPC is the hardware I need, although there are some pretty decent emulators out there. Mar 26, 2016 at 15:49
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I know this question is over 2 years old, but have you taken a look at AROS? AROS is an Amiga-like OS that runs natively on x86 hardware. There's a distro of AROS called Icaros Desktop which is frequently updated, and works on both bare metal hardware and in a VM.

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Not sure if WinUAE classifies as a retro emulator, but it runs AmigaOS 4.1 FE. It uses QEMU for the PPC emulation, and it runs at an acceptable speed on my Phenom II X4 CPU. I use AmigaForever instead of using WinUAE directly. It's prepared to be set up with AmigaOS 4.1 FE Classic (the "classic" is important").

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