OSNews

AROS has a bright future. It is the only currently remaining and realistic hope for the Amiga community. Nearly 10 years in the making and despite all criticism and odds, this open source project has demonstrated how strong the spirit and will of the AROS/Amiga community is.

As to expectations of an official AROS 1.0 release, the question is not really whether we are going to get there, but rather how long it will take. At present, there is no clearly laid-out point-release roadmap. Without question, developers are putting a lot of individual effort and there is a lot of collaboration and support going on behind the scenes. AROS has grown and just, maybe, it is the time to consider orchestrating all this effort. Perhaps the creep of time is best summarised by the AROS motto: “No schedule ‘n’ rocking”.

Nevertheless, an effort to address various ‘gaps’ in AROS has commenced and is coordinated by Team AROS – a grass roots support group. The group acts as a catalyst for AROS, mainly by raising money through donations for focused development. Anyone can donate money to special bounty projects which focus on a particular feature they would like implemented in AROS. These bounties are posted on the Team AROS website. The most topical, at present are the AROS Installer Mark 2 bounty and the bounty for tighter integration of the UAE into the operating system. Donations can now be done via PayPal and the kitty for all bounties is approaching $4,000 (USD) mark (as of time of writing this article).

Some important and outstanding work has been done in the past, utilising the bounties scheme, specifically the implementation of TCP/IP stack, support for various graphic card drivers, and soon to be completed work on USB support and AROS port to 64-bit x86 architecture.

Another way of financially contributing towards AROS development is through the monthly donation subscriptions (in which I too participate). In the spirit of democracy, at the end of each month donors have an opportunity to vote towards which open bounty to direct the pool of monthly donations. This system ensures that there is a continuous income stream directed towards development, regardless of individual contributions. At present, donors have a choice of $5 or $10 (USD) monthly donation through PayPal. The whole bounty and donation system managed by Team AROS is open and transparent to everyone.

Hopefully, these financial incentives will attract more developers who are prepared to give-up some of their spare time and put their talents to a good cause. There is nothing better than a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you completed something important, made a contribution which many people will make use of, as well as having a fair award for your work in the hand.

With an increasing, ever-growing number of people being attracted to AROS, expectations of the users are high. It may sound optimistic and perhaps naïve, quality for which many of Amigans are unfortunately well-known for, but I believe AROS is not that far from becoming the total, long-lasting, ‘Amiga’ solution. If one could only fast-forward couple of years into the future.

I have been following AROS for about 4 years and can say with confidence that this ‘alternative’ operating system has come a long way.

If you are not fortunate enough to own astronomically priced Amiga hardware, both ’classic’ or PPC-based, emulation was the only option until now. Packages such as AmiKit, AmigaSYS, and venerable but now outdated Amiga in a Box (AIAB) may have provided a satisfactory solution. However, a long-term viability of Amiga platform can only be resolved by a new, modern operating system and hardware which is within financial reach of all users. Closed OS and esoteric hardware in hands of a handful of small and struggling commercial ventures is a recipe for failure especially in such niche market, as we have seen over the past many years.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the original goal was to create an operating system which is nearly source-compatible with the AmigaOS 3.1, highly portable and freely available. The goal was not only to re-create the classic AmigaOS, but also to, during the process, improve and build a better OS for the Amiga community. The AROS project, by and large, is on the verge of succeeding in the original aim with only a relatively few building blocks remaining for developers to patch-up. We also got our improvements, many in fact. AROS is today a usable system. Tomorrow – it will rock you.

More Amiga enthusiasts, as well as those who never owned one, are getting involved into AROS by the day. People are starting to develop completely new applications or porting classic Amiga and other open source software to AROS. Some are using it within scope of the available software titles while others may just be toying with it out of curiosity. People are willing to contribute their time and money. This is all good because as long as the community is active, there is will and support which can only nurture future AROS development. Yes, the AROS community is alive and kickin’ – why not join us and make a difference?

The author wishes to acknowledge and thank all people who have taken their time to produce fantastic AROS screenshots, kindly made them available in the AROS-Exec Gallery and allowed their use in this article. Refer to the submitter nickname (in the Gallery) to find who they are. Special thanks to 4pLaY, Allanon, d980, Kalamatee, m0ns00n, olivier, rinnan and many other members of the Team AROS.

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