Sure, we have AmigaOS and MorphOS, but those cost money and require special hardware. For those of us more interested in running an Amiga-like operating system on regular, x86 hardware, there's AROS. Two AROS distributions, Icaros Desktop and AspireOS both saw new releases recently.
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See it this way : to display HTML5, you just need to port some of the dozens of open-source web browser rendering engines out there, put a simple frontend around it, and you're done. It won't be pretty, but it should do the job well enough to advertise "HTML5 compatibility". Prerequisites do not go much beyond having GUI ready.
To print, now, you need a lot more infrastructure work : not only GUI, but also a printer driver model, printer drivers themselves, code that allows application code to talk to printers, GUI that makes it easy to do, all that knowing that as with any infrastructure work, the silliest mistake will follow you across the OS versions to come due to the need to maintain driver and UX compatibility (whereas with a web browser, you can just ditch the old rendering and replace it with another one and users won't even notice).
The two tasks have a similar "wow, this OS is grown-up now" factor, but printing is an order of magnitude more complex to implement. It is as such logical that it comes second, unless it is a priority to developers.
Edited 2012-03-13 07:49 UTC
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From the summary: Most importantly, there's the first parts of a printing system. Currently, printer.device only support PostScript printers, and only a few programs are ready to use it.
If you would like to summarize that by "It can print" then you have lost all sense of reality (although you are not technically wrong)
Member since:2007-09-24
If you would like to summarize that by "It can print" then you have lost all sense of reality (although you are not technically wrong)
Yes, and it's specified almost everywhere (on the Icaros website I openly talk about initial printer support, ps printers support, ps file printing support, nothing more, nothing less: you just need to read). If I summarize with "it can print" I am technically right: it can print. Something, with just a couple of applications, with selected printers. Or to a ps file anyway. But it CAN print and it can do that in the real world, not in fantasyland. Proper extension of printing system is expected in the next months.
Member since:2011-01-28
paolone,
It wouldn't have hurt to qualify the statement. If someone said an OS supports video acceleration in general terms, but it turns out only to support one type of GPU, that might be a bit misleading even though I understand the logic both ways. But now that it is clarified everything is good in the world!
Member since:2007-09-24
It wouldn't have hurt to qualify the statement. If someone said an OS supports video acceleration in general terms, but it turns out only to support one type of GPU, that might be a bit misleading even though I understand the logic both ways. But now that it is clarified everything is good in the world!
Why are you asking this to me? I didn't write the news. =)
On the Icaros website, however, it should be clearly specified that hardware acceleration is good for most GeForce GPUs and Intel GMA ones. It's stated also on the ReadMe and on the manual... Well, anyway I am happy it's now been made clear.
Member since:2009-06-09
....and that is even what people are now expecting
AmigaOS and its influences were never ancient. It kept on developing despite numerous hardships.
Kudos to AmigaOS and Icaros!
Member since:2005-07-06
"Ancient" basically just denotes time... AROS is, to be sure, by far the most sane of those (directly) AmigaOS-influenced efforts, but that influence is fairly ancient, as far as timeline of home computing goes.
And yeah, about that "kept on developing" ...still no memory protection (hence also, sort of, no proper multitasking, just the not-quite-one that depends on well-behaving apps, where any program can essentially take over).
A decade more till it comes? Two decades? Will by then all of ~Amiga application development be just porting OSS stuff from the ~PC?
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2011-08-13
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That's because you haven't properly configured video settings for your virtual machine. There's a option in VMware to specify max resolution of the screen: there you can put whatever resolution you need. For instance, I myself use 1366x768 this way, and VMware stopped opening AROS aT 2560x1600.
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2009-10-16
Member since:2007-09-24
I just gave a tricky answer to a silly question: since Cannon Fodder runs on completely different hardware than the target one used by Icaros, well, emulation is necessary. The difference, however, is that Icaros is completely auto-sufficient and doesn't need any original Amiga KickStart ROM, since the AROS replacement one does it by itself. And, well, to run Cannon Fodder you just need to click twice on its ADF file icon. The rest is self-explanatory (and reported on the Icaros Manual if further informations are needed).