Well, what's not so good about AROS?
If you want to install native AROS on a multi-boot PC, you are in for some difficult times. At present AROS Installer does not play nicely with other partitions, hence you will need to use other tools and have a certain amount of real geek mojo to configure AROS in a multi-boot environment. It is possible, but it’s not as easy as pressing a button. This issue will be resolved in the Installer Mark 2, work on which has not yet commenced but is scheduled as one of the main development priorities. In the meantime, you may find instructions on AROS multi-boot installation at the AROS Workshop hosted on the Reziztanzia website.
Browser, anyone? Yes, there is no good, native browser available for AROS. A modern browser is today a must-have – not having one severely reduces usability of the operating system for everyday tasks a regular user would expect to be able to do. Currently, AWeb port is on the cards but let’s face it, we need something modern and technologically up-to-date, with support for cascading style sheets (CSS), Java and various third-party plug-ins such as Flash Player. An AROS-unrelated project named AmiZilla may deliver something useful in the future, and perhaps the browser would be ported to AROS platform. There is also talk about porting Dillo, highly compact but feature packed browser which has been under solid development for some years now. In the meantime this is probably one of the major productivity shortcomings for AROS, but this is also true for other AmigaOS-like platforms. Well, you can still use a couple of browser offerings for ‘classic’ AmigaOS 3.x in UAE emulation.
Good ol’ documentation, both technical and user. By all means, documentation is not skimpy but, rather, the problem is that it is scattered everywhere – on AROS official sites, Wiki (books), some good and very useful information embedded in various discussion forums, some maintained on personal websites – the list is endless. As a consequence, some of it may be outdated or is just abandoned. For a novice and especially a new developer, it may take a considerable effort to find exact information he or she needs. Luckily, the AROS community is very helpful and patient with newbies. I myself have often been pointed by those in the know to a right place. Nevertheless, it would be useful to have all documentation accessible from a single point where information can be easily found and maintained.
At this stage Wanderer/Zune does not support drag-and-drop operations on GUI objects. While not really a show-stopper, it is certainly a nice feature to have, as many other modern operating systems do. Again, this is currently on the development list.
Get Some
So, you want to get your hands dirty, you say? Welcome to AROS then!
There are various ways to obtain, and even build your own AROS installation. If you just want to try it out, probably the easiest way is to download the AROS-Max ISO image and burn a bootable CD, or run the image under QEMU emulator within your host operating system. The most current AROS-Max distribution is version 0.4.8 (at the time of writing this article), which does not to have a download link to on the official AROS-Max website (be careful not to download the old version 0.2.0). It is just one of strange quirks of how we, at the AROS community, function. You can download AROS-Max 0.4.8 torrent or via this direct download link which is from the official site. Work on the next version – 0.5 – is about to commence but there is no date set for a release.
Once you have the AROS-Max distribution CD prepared you can also, in addition to booting directly from the CD, install AROS on your local hard drive. Note however, my previous comments about installations in multi-boot environment. This would be a good opportunity to make use of your old boxen tucked away in a closet – this is what I did. Step-by-step instructions about how to make native install from AROS-Max distribution, including the required partitioning and formatting of your hard drive to Fast File System (FFS) with internationalisation support, can be found at the Mark Carter’s website.
You can also run AROS in a hosted environment – Linux, Windows or FreeBSD. Stable snapshots of these builds can be found at the AROS Download page. These stable snapshots are not released very frequently and if you want the latest and greatest, you may try your luck with nightly builds of the Subversion tree on the same page – they usually do work just fine.
Another option, especially if you want to get really down and dirty developing your own applications for AROS or making various customisations to the OS itself, is to download the AROS source, contributed programs sources, development tools and documentation to build your own. Again, you have an option of going for a stable code base or playing risqué with the nightly’s. I would go for nightly builds. I have so far built twice my own AROS system hosted on Fedora Core 3 (yes, I’m a bit backwards with my Linux distros) from nightly sources and have not encountered any build problems. When the build starts do yourself a favour and grab a cup of coffee as it would probably take a good chunk of an hour (as it did on my 2 GHz Centrino laptop). Once the build is complete, you will need to set and source a few environment variables and paths to make it all working. More information on building AROS is also available from the Compiling AROS page on the official AROS website.
Finally, if you run into any problems, there is always someone willing to help on the most frequented AROS forum on the web, the AROS-Exec.
Make SomeIf you are interested in developing AROS or software for AROS, as I am, then you should consider, in my opinion, the ultimate development package for AROS – the AmiDevCpp. AmiDevCpp is an integrated cross-platform development environment for Microsoft Windows that allows you to develop C/C++ applications for the variety of target Amiga-like platforms with ease. The targets include AmigaOS (m68k), AmigaOS4 (PPC), MorphOS (PPC) and, of course, AROS (x86). If this is your cup of tea, just download the Monster Pack version 0.9.5 and the configuration files from their download page. You have option of installing the AROS-only IDE or multi-target IDE. I went with the IDE for multiple targets and if disk space is not an issue, I would highly recommend this very fine and free software development kit.
You can also conduct software development within AROS hosted environment on Linux. From the perspective of novice developer, I had some difficulties with it. This was not due to the software development kit for AROS on Linux being difficult or bug-ridden, but because of my inexperience with the build process in general and some specifics of the AROS build system. In fact, the AROS build system should provide, to an experienced developer, environment which is much easier to manage. When I, inadvertently, rebuilt a part of my AROS hosted installation and in the process lost a couple of days work on LUA-based application, I have decided to pull the plug on building under AROS and switched to AmiDevCpp. Sorry, I just like to build with a press of a button – you old skool guys can shake your heads as much as you like. If you are new to software development, I would highly recommend that you consider AmiDevCpp – it is so much easier on a newbie.
You can still write your own programs even if C/C++ are too heavy for you. While C is by far the best supported language on AROS, there is a choice of other easier, scripting languages now available. Some of those are listed here.
AmiLua is a port of Lua general-purpose programming language. The port includes a library called Siamiga which is linked with the Lua interpreter. The library supports basic Zune windows, widgets, menus and graphic functions. The whole package allows you to write virtually any program with a professional looking user interface. If you have to develop or prototype something quickly, AmiLua is the way to go. What’s the best is that the port is maintained and is up to the current official version of Lua.
We cannot talk about Amiga without mentioning ARexx, the Rex port. ARexx has been available on Amiga since the time immemorial, so it is on AROS.
PyAROS is a port of Python. Don’t let the release numbers fool you – PyAROS 0.1 is the port of Python 2.2. However, some time went by now since the first PyAROS release and I would assume that, at present, the port is no longer maintained.
sdlBasic is yet another AMOS-inspired port of BASIC for AROS. If you need something even more basic, Bywater BASIC interpreter is available too.
There are many other software tools, of interest to a developer, already available in AROS, such as Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) multimedia library, current work on porting of MesaGL/3D implementation of the OpenGL graphics library, to name just a few. If you are really interested to find out more, the best thing is to get involved on one of the AROS-Exec discussion forums.
Before I leave this space discussing options for a prospective AROS developer, I have to say that you don’t need to be a programmer to contribute. If someone is skilled in writing, the person could make a great contribution towards documentation. AROS documentation is stored, wisely may I add, in reStructuredText (ReST) which is extremely easy to learn and portable text document format. In fact, I have been using ReST to write a user guide for Lunapaint (note: I’m NOT the Lunapaint author), the work yet to be completed. I’m using Docutils.
- "AROS, Page 1/4"
- "AROS, Page 2/4"
- "AROS, Page 3/4"
- "AROS, Page 4/4"
