Initially of most interest to a new user would probably be the Prefs (preferences) drawer. This is the place where you can customise the look and feel of Wanderer and Zune GUI, set your preferred language (yes, there is internationalisation support), time zone and preferences relating to screen resolution and depth, input and peripheral devices. The Prefs options provide user with capability to customise the desktop and behaviour of AROS much beyond what one may think is possible for a hobbyist system.
The next interesting drawer is Tools. In Tools, there is a bunch of neat little helper gadgets stored in the Commodities drawer. There is also a fully-featured text editor – when it opens, don't let its simple, plain window fool you, remember, right-click for the application menu in the context bar. Calculator is very much a must-have and there is also a Screen Grabber tool which has a few options making your screen capture a breeze. In terms of accessing your hardware, PCI Tool will list information about your installed cards – think of it as what the Device Manager is for Microsoft Windows.
I have to mention one more tool called the Window Manipulation Program (WiMP) since this is something I haven't seen yet on any mainstream OS. In a nutshell, WiMP gives you a detail information about all of your open windows and allows you to manipulate them in many ways from a single place, rather than having to attend to each window individually. One of the neat features is that you can hide any window (not to be confused with minimising a window). Unless you look-up in WiMP, one would never know a hidden window exists. The remaining couple of tools in the Tools drawer are the HD Tool Box utility for managing your data storage devices that, among other things, allows you to configure and format disk partitions. I would not recommend using the Install AROS tool. At the time of writing this article, this particular tool is known to be buggy, and the whole AROS installation process and tools are being re-examined as part of the work on the AROS Installer Mark 2.
The Utility drawer contains a simple analogue clock and a couple of programs - More and Multi View for viewing files with various datatypes. You may also find the Installer program here - you have been warned.
Other than a number of system drawers, I have covered most, but not all, features directly related to the operating system itself.
Well, I have saved the best for last. If you really want to find out what AROS can do right now, you will need to venture into the Extras drawer. It contains a treasure-trove of software. I have to stress, however, this is not everything, but only software that was contributed and managed in the AROS Subversion tree. While I will talk more about certain outstanding applications and development software later in the article, to see how AROS scores in the graphics department see one of over 15 demos, in the System:Extras/Demos drawer. They are all great but my personal favourites are Firework, Metaballs, NewVox and Tunnel. Then we have games - real, playable games. Be sure to check out the Bomber and Ibrekout2. CXHextris is a Tetris clone using hexagon-shaped elements. If you fancy an old-look vector-based graphic game, XInvaders3D might just please you. Then there are Doom and Quake ports (these may not work well in a hosted environment).
A couple of very good games, not in the Games drawer, are stored in the System:/Extras/aminet drawer. These are a solitaire game named Soliton and it has a much more polished look than any Solitaire or FreeCell Microsoft bloated their Windows with. Everyone should know AmiChess, another popular game of chess where you can put your brain at work against the computer. The reason why these two games are in the aminet drawer is because their sources came from the Aminet archive. This drawer has a ton of useful programs and games which, honestly, I did not have a chance to have a good look at yet. A few things worth mention are, as we consider usability of the system, a number of programs to handle a variety of compressed and archived files, a terminal client and what appears to be a media player.
Finally, for those with interest in development, a peek at many examples (and sources) provided in Demos and Tests drawers may prove useful. The latter also has a number of benchmark tools. Perhaps, one day I'll be reporting to you how AROS performs against some other system?
Getting ProductiveThe focus to date has been very much on the operating system per se. Having AROS to a stage where it is usable, with many of the original OS features implemented, the past year or so has seen activity in porting and developing of native applications. The threshold of usability and variety of development tools has been reached and many of those skilled enthusiasts who were perhaps looking over the fence are coming on-board AROS development train. Some examples, distinguished for their professional look and feel, are:
- AiRcOS Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
- Digital Almanac III astronomy software for Amiga
- DOpus (as in the famous Directory Opus) file management utility (and more)
- Lunapaint for painting and animation (inspired by classic DeluxePaint and TVPaint for Amiga)
- MisticView slideshow/presentation software by Neoscientists
- Simple Data Base (SDB) is, as name suggests, a database engine (implemented in AmiLua) and post of SQLlite
and more.
A word processor, a ‘serious’ AROSAmp MP3 player and a number of other interesting applications are currently in the works.
There are already first attempts with commercial software for AROS, with Airsoft Softwair making their Hollywood 2 release, for creating multimedia applications and games, available on AROS, in addition to their offerings for other Amiga-based operating systems. Another small software workshop, The Blue Suns, has released the Frying Pan, which is a CD/DVD burning and mastering software, also running on AROS.
What about the classic software, you may ask? Not a problem with the port of E-UAE you will have access to a large library of ‘classic’ titles, both games and productivity software. There is also a port of the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) virtual machine to run classic graphic adventures, such as Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Beneath a Steel Sky. In addition, recent port of the VICE emulator for 8-bit Commodore computers will let you enjoy all that games from the ‘other side’ of the Commodore family, or shall we say the Amiga’s poor cousins.
A repository of freely available software for AROS is available from the AROS Archives website but note that it does not contain all of the currently available AROS software. It is the intention that AROS Archives will grow into the definitive distribution hub for all AROS applications. There is also a fair collection of software written for AROS on the Aminet archive, the Internet’s oldest software repository.
- "AROS, Page 1/4"
- "AROS, Page 2/4"
- "AROS, Page 3/4"
- "AROS, Page 4/4"
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