The AROS team has updated their web site with new information about their operating system, plus a number of new screenshots. The team is also looking for active developers to help out the project.
AROS Updates and New Screenshots
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I looks very interesting, whats the status of it so far? the hardware support? I would love to run a Amiga like OS on a PC if possible to bring back found memories of the Amiga 500. ahh, the good old days 😉
So, this is to the Amiga what Linux is to Unix?
Man, this could be even better than Amithlon. I know they are currently doing OS3.1 API compliance. I wonder what the plan is to update all the way to OS3.9?
Great going guys!
I get sad each time I see an Amiga screenshot .. it brings back sutch happy memories for those of us who where lucky to use them back in the days.
I used to Work for a TV station in the very early 90’s .. we used Amigas 3K and 4K’s to do graphics, the weather, etc … what a machine
I’ve been waiting for this for awhile, they’re web site was somewhat poorly orginized and just looked ugly. Anyways, good luck guys.
Hi, there
Wath about a PPC port. We have now the hardware (AOne or Pegasos). I would love to see aros running on these hardware. I think AOs on x86 is not such a good idea (Aros or Amithlon ) as there’s nowadays to much competitors (Window$, Linux, BeOs, QNX ….). We have now the PPC boards …
How fast is it? What is the booting time?
Matthew Gardiner:
AROS is about 75% “complete” now. It runs both hosted in linux and natively on ia32 (x86) hardware. Currently, there is vga and vesa support on the graphics side. Unfortunately there is no sound, network or USB support yet. But we’re getting there. We also have support for the pc floppy controller (with media change detection(!), just as on the original Amiga), iso9660 CDROM and IDE hard drives.
TheMamboMan:
Yeah, you can say that AROS is to Amiga what Linux is to Unix. It’s a free, open-source implementation. The original aim was for OS3.1 API compatibility (because OS3.1 was the latest version when the project started), but we have also implemented several features from the 3.5 and the 3.9 versions, plus some neat AROS-only features
Link46and2:
Well, we’ve been working on this for a while too now. Hope you all like the new site.
PPC man:
If someone feels like making a PPC port, there will be one. I know that some people are experimenting with at least a linux hosted PPC version, but I have no idea about the status at the moment.
Bullseye:
It’s quite fast. The VGA and VESA drivers are some of the fastest I’ve experienced. The booting time depends entirely on what media you’re running AROS from. Of course, it takes a while to boot from floppy, but from CDROM or hdd it’s a matter of 10-20 seconds IIRC.
> but from CDROM or hdd it’s a matter of 10-20 seconds IIRC.
Of ciourse it depends on the speed of the media, however on modern HDDs the booting time, after the BIOS is up and running, amounts to 3-4 seconds, if not less.
However, it must be mentioned that AROS can be rebooted without having to go trough the BIOS initialization phase again, provising for a reboot time which is in the order of 1-2 secs.
Thanks for correcting me, Fabio. On *my* hardware, AROS takes 10-20 seconds to boot – including the BIOS startup (and RAID initialization).
it’s fast from i saw, really interesting for embeded purpose as of now. Might only get better.
I also love the Eric Swartz mascot!! Easily the collest official mascot ever (is unofficial “survivor” was a bit better).
http://aros.sourceforge.net/documentation/users/faq.php#will-aros-h…
> There are plans to integrate a variant
> of MP (memory protection) into AROS
“Plans”? Oh great. Other hobby OSes have that f*cking feature. If I wanted a buggy OS without mem protection, I’d use Win95.
> Also, is it really a problem if your machine crashes?
Uh, yes. What kind of attitude is that? No suprise that only 6 people work on AROS. The other people with this attitude work for Microsoft on Win9x/ME. Maybe once MS stops support of WinME, these people get fired and AROS gets more developers.
AROS could be an option, but without mem procetion and stuff it’s not.
KAMiKAZOW, STFU.
“If I wanted a buggy OS without mem protection, I’d use Win95.”
Memory protection is a desirable design feature for a desktop OS, but absence of a feature is not the same thing as a bug.
An OS can be completely bug free and not have MP, or it can have MP and be buggy. The purpose of MP is to protect the OS from buggy _programs_. If the programs are not buggy (which is possible on a well tested embedded system), then MP isn’t needed.
When this project began a few years ago, my first reaction was laughing. Why would this project be needed? How could they possibly believe, they would get anywhere?
With multiple variants of AmigaOS already in existance, yet another clone seemed pointless.
I’m glad I was wrong, now that Amithlon is no more. It was it’s nearest competitor, being a way of running AmigaOS programs on an x86 without the need of a visible OS below.
In a way, having AmigaOS on x86 is a bad idea as it would loose its potential as a special OS, possibly suffering the same fate as BeOS, however technically impressive it may be. Windows will most likely always be on that platform and that will hinder every other OS’ progress except for Linux and the various BSDs.
Having AmigaOS stay on PPC hardware will make it special, because the market for PPC hardware currently is so small. Moving it to x86 will kill it instantly, because it’s money-driven and closed source. This is why AmigaOne exists.
AROS is a different beast, though. Given its open source nature and non-financial motivation for developing it, it will have a better chance of survival on x86, and may even break the barrier from a simple curiosity to a usable desktop OS that rivals what BeOS did. From the current position to barely usable desktop, we still need a tcp/ip stack and a web browser (hint hint, Fabio. :-). From then on, hopefully things will speed up. Maybe some day, we can install AROS and do things that BeOS couldn’t do, yet remain source compatible with AmigaOS3 or even 4.
In the Amiga scene, AROS is one of the projects making most progress out in the open, which is why this is one of the least criticized projects. It’s also the only project that Amiga Inc. haven’t had any legal pains about (correct me if I’m wrong), because they haven’t tried to reverse engineer the original AmigaOS code, as another AmigaOS clone (MorphOS) has been accused of, leading to endless quarrels and a hurting split in the Amiga community.
The AROS team have built everything from scratch. Closed projects aren’t too favoured right now in the Amiga community, because many of them have turned out to be vapour. Scepticism is very high.
So far, the AROS team has had the best laugh. It remains to be seen whether it will be the last laugh also.
Henrik Mikael Kristensen
AWeb Development Team
“I’m glad I was wrong, now that Amithlon is no more. It was it’s nearest competitor, being a way of running AmigaOS programs on an x86 without the need of a visible OS below.”
Or at least, a way of running programs in an Amiga-like environment. Existing Amiga programs would not run unless thay can be recompiled, which in general is not possible (coders no longer interested, source lost etc).
I hope it will not be stocked up entirely with ports from Linux. If AROS gets some good programs of its own, I think it will attract a following. When it is fully working and debugged (in a few years), it could be good for embedded uses – for example, for a pocket games console similar to the GB Advance SP.
I read the site it says it installs off the cd……does it run from the cd too?
AROS is the future, open source all the way. The Amiga died because of its propeiratory ways.
Let’s hope this project can get a momentum going. There needs to be a campaign for the release of old Amiga applications so run can be re-compiled. Also x86 emulation would be nice, to put it on par with MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.
“AROS is the future, open source all the way.”
In a way, yes. However, it’s fairly lucky that this is the only attempt, since open source tends to fork and branch and copy other projects endlessly. It makes AROS much more significant, when there aren’t 10 other AmigaOS clones running on x86 pushing to get attention. Similar confusion would be seen as with the way-too-many Linux distributions along with the mish-mash of window managers and desktops that are less than compatible with eachother.
Choice is nice, but don’t let it confuse people. The last thing we need is more AmigaOS clones.
“The Amiga died because of its propeiratory ways.”
So true… if only the 1991 Acutiator designs had been approved instead of stupidly discarded by Commodore, we would have had modular Amiga systems with PCI expansion slots by 1994. 🙁
“x86 emulation would be nice, to put it on par with MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.”
Do you mean 68k emulation? (AROS is x86…) If so, that would probably get in there when time and energy allows it.
…any skin you want as long as it’s bland
Don’t these guys have any color sense? Why not lighten things up a bit?
68K would bring the people to the platform. Certainly to take the OS from being for the curious, to mainstream use.
On another note, Dave Haiyne (of AAA of chipset fame), said he would consider working on a x86 open source Amiga OS, if one existed. Time to knock on some people’s door!
……does it run from the cd too?
Just downloaded and burned the image, and it does run from CD, it has the grub-bootloader with even an option to boot with VM-ware.
However, things went very slow and buggy with VM-ware; specially gui-redrawing. It just runs superb when you just boot from CD, the installer is also there, but haven’t tried that one (yet).
But it looks really amazing and promosing.
“Don’t these guys have any color sense? Why not lighten things up a bit?”
I thought the colour scheme in the screenshots was fine, but obviously it can be changed to suit the user. I would guess a lot of people would like something darker and more moody. There’s too much brushed alloy and powder blue around right now.
> > There are plans to integrate a variant
> > of MP (memory protection) into AROS
>
> “Plans”? Oh great. Other hobby OSes have that f*cking
> feature. If I wanted a buggy OS without mem protection,
> I’d use Win95.
Well, it all comes down to AROS being an AmigaOS clone: AmigaOS doesn’t have memory protection, and retrofitting it is not possible. It could be implemented, but apps should be explicitely aware of it.
> I read the site it says it installs off the cd……does it
> run from the cd too?
Yes, of course.
> Don’t these guys have any color sense? Why not lighten
> things up a bit?
What exactly are you referring to?
> Well, it all comes down to AROS being an AmigaOS clone:
> AmigaOS doesn’t have memory protection, and
> retrofitting it is not possible. It could be
> implemented, but apps should be explicitely aware of it.
AROS’ main plattform is x86, not 68k. There is no binary compatibility to keep – it can be achieved with UAE.
> AROS’ main plattform is x86, not 68k.
True, but it’s not limited to x86. However, that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
> There is no binary compatibility to keep – it can be
> achieved with UAE.
Binary compatibility is not the issue, _source_ compatibility is the issue. The AmigaOS API just cannot work with MP.
You have my blessing for continued efforts to bring this project’s fruits into the homes of the Amiga conscious and Amiga enlightened around the world.
Now, Go forth and multiply.
If I were to buy an Amiga computer from an eBay seller… what model should I shoot for? Amiga 1200? I’m kind of a classic computing collector (when I can afford to be) and I never had an Amiga, though I wanted one and I know all about where MOD music modules come from (I love that format).
Anyone else having problems unzipping the floppy tar file? I am using Win 2000 and WinZip.
> Anyone else having problems unzipping the floppy tar file? I
> am using Win 2000 and WinZip.
To my knowledge WinZip doesn’t handle files compressed with bzip2. Dunno if there’s any GUI program which understands it.
Recent Winrar version handles almost every win and unix compression formats, including: tar, rar, bz2,…
Eveything with a GUI…
>Binary compatibility is not the issue, _source_ >compatibility is the issue. The AmigaOS API just cannot >work with MP.
Not as such, limited protection would be possible though source might need modified to ensure MEMF_SHARED was used where appropriate. MP is less of a problem than implementing true virtual memory as that would imply seperate address spaces, something that would really clash with the AmigaOS API.
“If I were to buy an Amiga computer from an eBay seller… what model should I shoot for? Amiga 1200? I’m kind of a classic computing collector (when I can afford to be) and I never had an Amiga, though I wanted one and I know all about where MOD music modules come from (I love that format).”
If you want one as an antique, go for the A1000 as it is the first model. However, it is very limited as a practical computer.
The A500 was the biggest selling model. If you want to play lots of classic floppy-based games, that would be the model to get.
An A1200 is more suitable if you want a computer that can actually be upgraded and used as a real computer for Internet, DTP, etc. Most owners have by now moved the motherboard into a tower case, with graphics card, sound card, ethernet, etc.
Don’t forget that an Amiga without a graphics card will need a suitable monitor. Some models can use a TV set, but the picture is not so good.
If you want a current model, wait for AmigaOS 4 to be finished (some time in the Summer, I guess) and get an AmigaOne. Expect Mac-like prices.
I tried everything: winzip, total commanders unzip, winrar and winace. The bootiso tar file ‘Nightly builds’ can’t be unzipped in Windows. A shame really.
> Not as such, limited protection would be possible though
> source might need modified to ensure MEMF_SHARED was used
> where appropriate.
As said, no source compatibility is possible.
> MP is less of a problem than implementing
> true virtual memory as that would imply seperate address
> spaces, something that would really clash with the AmigaOS
> API.
True virtual memory has nothing to do with separate address spaces: both VM and MP can be implemented in a flat memory model. Nemesis ( http://nemesis.sourceforge.net/ ) does it, for example.
> I tried everything: winzip, total commanders unzip, winrar
> and winace. The bootiso tar file ‘Nightly builds’ can’t be
> unzipped in Windows. A shame really.
You can find a win32 version of bzip2 here:
http://uiarchive.uiuc.edu/content/PC/Compression/
After uncompressing the file with bzip2, you can unarchive it with WinZip.
I tried a more recent version (3.10) of winrar and it worked…
Sorry