Workbench was provided either on floppy disk or later (as part of AmigaOS) on CD-ROM. Workbench was shipped with all Amiga models from Commodore.

This setup streamlines the process of launching games (which typically do not require Workbench) and ensures that memory is not used unnecessarily by the OS in memory-limited systems. As a consequence, it is necessary to boot from a system disk to launch Workbench. Workbench itself has always been a disk-based component, though much of the underlying functionality is stored in the Amiga's Kickstart firmware, usually stored in ROM. Applications launched from Workbench could report their success back to Workbench, but this was not a requirement and few actually did.

This is achieved through Exec, the Amiga's multi-tasking kernel, which handles memory management, message passing, and task scheduling. The underlying AmigaOS allows the Workbench to launch multiple applications that can execute concurrently. Workbench requires a two button mouse, where right click operates pull-down menus and left click is used for all other purposes. Intuition also handles user input events, such as, input from the keyboard and mouse. Later versions of AmigaOS enhanced the interface with more complex object-oriented widget systems, such as gadtools.library and BOOPSI (AmigaOS 2.0 and later) and ReAction (AmigaOS 3.5 and later). Intuition manages the rendering of screens, windows, and gadgets (graphical elements, equivalent to widgets). Workbench utilizes the Amiga's native windowing system called Intuition to provide the graphical user interface. Under this concept, each drawer (folder) opens in its own window, rather than within a single browser under the now more common navigational concept. Workbench is a spatial file manager in the sense that it uses a spatial metaphor to represent files and folders as if they are real physical objects. These representations may be considered somewhat unusual by a modern user, but at the time there were no commonly accepted metaphors and Commodore chose to use different idioms from their competitors ( Apple had already pursued legal action to prevent other software companies from offering graphical user interfaces similar to its own). The desktop itself is called Workbench and uses the following representations: drawers (instead of folders) for directories, tools for executable programs, projects for data files, and a trash can as a folder intended to contain deleted files.

a workbench for manual labor), rather than the now-standard desktop metaphor, for representing file system organization. The Amiga Workbench uses the metaphor of a workbench (i.e.

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