Quickly is the operative word. While the installation was a fairly clean one, Debian boots to the login prompt in under 30 seconds - making a pleasant change from Mandrake on my venerable K6-2 box, which takes an age, or my trusty Powerbook G4 running MacOS X that needs a good minute or two.
So there you have it - Debian Linux with KDE. If you've used Linux or one of the BSDs with KDE, you should be right at home. For those without experience, the bible will help get you started and there's always the mailing list and the myriad of Linux resources out there for free.
Unless you're lucky enough to be beta testing AmigaOS 4 or know how to prise a copy from Hyperion (I tried, I failed) the next step is to install the supplied copy of UAE (the famous Amiga emulation software) and give that a go. Eyetech supply the latest PowerPC build of UAE along with a licensed 3.1 ROM, AmigaOS 3.1 and a selection of pre-installed software including Scala, Wordworth and Photogenics taken from the old A1200 Magic Packs. If you have a real Amiga, or AmigaForever, you can use those for licensed ROMs, OS and applications - I transferred my old laptop installation across without any fuss.
The only comparable set-up I have is of MaxUAE running on an 867MHz Powerbook G4. MaxUAE seems a little sluggish in comparison, though a few benchmarks (including 68K OGR/RC5-72 client and PersonalPaint) didn't pick up any significant differences between the two. However, I did notice that the AmigaOne's copy of UAE was too fast/sensitive - keyboard presses tttteeennndddeeddd tttooo rrreeepppeeeaattt and double-clicks would go unnoticed. Some fine tuning of mouse and keyboard settings managed to reduce these to the level of minor niggles and I'm sure there's more I can do to solve this, but it works fine enough for average use.
UAE for PowerPC does have one major problem, for me at least, and that is the lack of TCP/IP support. This cripples MaxUAE as well and is the major reason I can't replace my A4000 with either the AmigaOne or Powerbook, because I rely on my A4000 for a lot of Internet and TCP/IP network access. All you budding developers out there might want to take a look at this - I might even have a go myself if I have the time, but don't hold your breath.
