Version 1.3.2 of the Icaros Desktop is now available. Icaros Desktop is one of the prime AROS distributions, ready to be used on your desktop today - no fancy PowerPC hardware required (like with AmigaOS or MorphOS). If I can get this running, it might be about time we took a closer look at this, don't you think? Thoughts?
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Much like Haiku, it's chugged along under constant-but-slow development for a long time and it's starting to look really impressive. 3D acceleration, reasonably good support for USB devices, and an astonishingly high level of source compatability with other Amiga-like OSes make it a real winner. Also, while Icaros doesn't target this yet, the 68K version of AROS has really started to mature in the last few months, providing the Amiga hardware clone and emulation scene with a (legal) free OS capable of running classic software for the first time.
Go AROS!
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AROS has no memory protection. Which means that a something that caused a segmentation fault on Windows or Linux could potentially cause other programs to crash on AROS, including system stuff. IMO this makes it nonviable as a useful desktop OS, no matter how many other awesome features it piles on.
(Lack of a word processor and a decent browser don't help, but those can be ported in. The big issue with memory protection is that, according to the AROS devs, it is not on the agenda at all.)
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Memory protection is a controversial topic in AROS-dom. Some people think that having it would make AROS more secure and better able to handle ports from other (non-Amiga) systems. Other people point out that it would hurt performance and unless done VERY carefully would hurt source-compatibility with other Amiga clones and would almost certainly kill the binary compatibility that the 68K port currently has with AmigaOS.
RE[3]: No memory protection
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ncafferkey,
"No, memory protection hurting performance isn't a big worry among AROS devs or users. The real issue is finding a way to introduce it without breaking source compatibility (too much)."
I know very little about this platform, but I'm curious what kind of software requires the absence of memory protection? Is this because amiga apps routinely access hardware directly? Or they routinely read/write bios/os structures?
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AmigaOS is a Single Address Space OS, where an App or OS can pick any object of other applications. That makes data passing and sharing easy and fast. As I see it, the only way to do memory protection transparently is protection domains that require tagged memory allocations to specify data access rights.
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viton,
"AmigaOS is a Single Address Space OS, where an App or OS can pick any object of other applications. That makes data passing and sharing easy and fast."
Oh I see, thanks for the answer So it's about shared objects... Well I guess at least it's a good technical reason for not having protection.
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You can still emulate a single address space, with memory protection.
I can understand that adds some complexity to the OS design. But then the problem is then code complexity, not performance overhead from memory protection (which is practically a non-issue in most modern architectures).
But then it is not my project. So whatever it is they want to do, it is their pregogative.
Edited 2011-10-19 19:11 UTC
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This is my guess too.
Not that I think that no memory protection is a worthy goal, it is not, BUT in an ecosystem where there is no memory protection apps that leak memory or do other shit with memory get eradicated fairly quickly, because people will stop using them and get replaced by better alternatives or they will get fixed quickly.
In my years with the Amiga I haven't had real problems with seg faults. Blue screens on Windows were/are much more common.
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Or it could ultimately lead to relative scarceness of mature software, deficiency of features, slow development, stagnation, experiments not leading anywhere, hitting some limits of progress when the code base starts to become fragile?
Hm, that might partly describe what already happened, once...
Anyway, even the present ports of some important, big, and good tools don't seem so well, when compared to the originals on major platforms.
Also, we were probably doing much less on Amigas in the first place and/or we were more forgiving (or even: the past & rose-coloured glasses?)
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BTW, why does this particular memory issue remind me of Jason McMullan and his "Library OS" idea?
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwmcmullan_en.php
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...just like the original AmigaOS. IIRC this is because they were originally aiming to be source-compatible. I think this is related to message-passing, but I'm not sure.
Correct.
"Useful" is a relative term.
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2006-04-11
Thom,
If I can do it, so can you. If you want explicit partitioning and disk drive setup instructions, you can read the articles I did on version 1.2.6.
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201103/page15.html Part 1
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201104/page09.html Part 2
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201105/page07.html Part 3
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201106/page12.html Part 4
Please overlook the first sentence in the first article. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, I've since installed on real hardware, and it works just as well.
Gullible Jones is right, though. AROS has no memory protection. I've gotten the same occasional "guru meditation" screens I've seen on real Amigas.
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Thanks a bunch. That was a great read! It is a shame that I haven't seen it before. Not sure if there are any "exclusivity agreement" in place with PCLOS magazine that would prevent you from publishing it here in OSNews but I'd love to see it featured here as well and possibly with a follow up with some in-depth review on the utilities available for AROS.
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Thanks for your kind comments, DeadFishMan. Apart from using a C=64 and Amigas at home and UNIX at work, I didn't have any exposure to the "alternate" OSes until I began frequenting OSNews. It was here I first learned about them, back when Eugenia was on the staff. I believe that AtheOS and Bluebottle were the first ones I looked at. Anyway, that search finally led me to Linux, which allowed me to completely do away with MS-DOS/Windows at home. So, I'm very grateful to OSNews for that.
My loyalty lies with PCLinuxOS and their magazine. I've done other articles there on ReactOS, Syllable, Haiku, Menuet, etc. I'm sure that OSNews is free to link to the articles. I can check on whether or not they can be republished here, but I believe they can. However, I haven't heard a peep out of Thom.
You can find an article index at http://pclosmag.com/html/sorted.html
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I'm waiting for the 68k version to be up to snuff, would love to have all the awesomeness that is AROS on my original Amiga hardware to replace the patched up semi-awesomeness that is OS3.9. Too bad you can get a 68k Amiga for an okayish price, but if you want to get an accelerator for it, you're going to be shelling out a boatload.
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