Amiga & AROS Archive

The AROS Show has interviewed Damir 'd980' Sijakovic. The interview itself might not be all that, but there are some screenshots of AROS in the article as well. Be sure to take a look at the last screenshot, if you are into retro and all that.

The AROS team has published a new status update with a list of improvements. Another important step in AROS customization has been done. Darius Brewka and Georg Steger have added a new decor system to Wanderer, allowing user to edit and change themes. Damir Sijakovic's ICE theme has been used as an example and it is now the default theme for AROS nightly builds. In addition, a USB keyboard driver has been committed, among other things.

"Dr Michal Schulz has made an initial commit of the AROS USB stack, enabling the use of USB mice and creating the foundations to add support, subsequently, also for other devices. Please notice this is pre-alpha stage software, this means only USB 1.1 UHCI controllers are supported for now, and maybe it won't work correctly on your motherboard. Next thing to develop will be extensions to USBHID class, allowing to use graphic tablets and USB keyboards with AROS, and OHCI controllers support. We must note that support for USB 2.0 EHCI controllers wasn't defined in bounty Michal is working on."

The AROS Show has interviewed AROS and MorphOS developer Pavel 'Sonic' Fedin. He talks about his work on VESA, parallel.device API and more. When asked about AmigaOS 4, he replies: "Don't know what to tell here, my opinion is split up. At the one hand it's nice to see that someone develops something, and it's just interesting by itself. At the other hand their politics seems very aggressive to me, they tend to 'close up' their community and ditch everyone else."

AROS will be ported to the EFIKA. "Earlier this week John accepted the AROS EFIKA Port Bounty. Said another way, John will port Amiga Research Operating System to the EFIKA." In an email, BBRV also said MorphOS 2.0 is 'coming'. They promised more news on that soon.

A new version of WinAROS has been released. "WinAROS is a preinstalled AROS Environment that runs under Windows, using QEMU. WinAROS is a way to use AROS under Windows and try your programs, made with AmiDevCpp. The new Version comes with Themes and GhostScript installed."

The AROS team has published a new status update with a list of improvements. Wanderer now has initial support for drag and drop, along with stability improvements. Tap interface is available for networking under a hosted linux installation. The main website has been translated into Dutch, and RTL8139 and VIA Rhine network adapters drivers have also been committed. Plus various new and updated apps Lunapaint, Martin's Server Suite, Jhead and Potrace.

The new AROS Developer Robert Norris has been interviewed by the AROS Show. "One of the original goals for AROS was 100% compatibility with AmigaOS 3.1. This is a noble goal, but it's not particularly forward-looking. AmigaOS has moved on since then, and there will be no new m68k hardware, yet many AROS developers are intent on making sure everything they do can be made to work on the older systems. That's their perogative of course, but my concern is that by constantly looking backwards we're missing the opportunities in the future."

The Amiga is alive - sort of, and AmigaOS 4 is finally out. Ars takes AmigaOS 4 out for a spin to see where the once-popular platform stands these days. "The release of AmigaOS 4 proves one thing: you can't keep a good platform down. But is AmigaOS merely a fun hobby OS to play around with, or does it offer real value? My answer is that it is a little of both. As a fan of alternative platforms, you won't find many that are more esoteric than AmigaOS. But beyond being different for the sake of being different, OS4 provides something more interesting: a chance to experience a whole new way of computing."

"Hyperion Entertainment is very pleased to announce the immediate availability (for registered AmigaOne customers) of Amiga OS 4.0, The Final Update. Originally released in May of 2004, Amiga OS 4.0 is the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of compatibility. Amiga OS 4.0, The Final Update is the culmination of 5 years of development and takes the form of a stand-alone ISO image which contains a full installation of all Amiga OS 4.0 components. A list of new features can be found here. Availability of PowerPC hardware suitable for operation with Amiga OS 4.0 will be announced by third parties early 2007." Together with Microsoft selling Linux and Apple switching to Intel, this is the definitive proof that hell is now officially frozen. I sure know I'm taking ice skates with me to the grave.

Aaron Digulla established the Amiga Research Operating System or AROS in 1995. He discusses the early days and the development through the years of AROS.

Amiga Inc, thought to be dead after stopping all communication with the Amiga community, have reappeared. The long spell of silence was broken when they answered 25 questions from the readers at Amiga.org. In the answers, the CEO of Amiga Inc, Bill McEwen revealed some information that once again brought back some hope in the Amiga community. Hyperion Entertainment and their partners have been busy working on Amiga OS4, which has been in available in pre-release form since April 2004. The final release is held back by the lack of suitable PPC motherboards to run OS4 on, but this seems to be finally resolved, and a final release is expected this year. The Amiga.org interview left a lot of questions unanswered, especially with regards to Amiga Inc's plans for OS5. So to get a clearer picture of where they are headed, I asked Bill McEwen to answer some questions."

This Q&A with Amiga Inc's Bill McEwen tells not only the answers to 25 biting questions about Amiga, Inc., but also a history of what Amiga has been doing the past six years. Apparently they've been maintaining development of AmigaDE (AmigaOS 5.0), while developing AmigaOS 4 as a fall-back.

It was 1997 and in these dark ages of the Amiga history, a few brave ones have embarked on a seemingly impossible journey. It is difficult to start from a clean slab, but complete rewrite of the AmigaOS Application Programming Interface (API), in open source domain, was the only option for Amiga community to gain control over destiny of the beloved platform. The Amiga Research Operating System (AROS) was born. Under, at times slow but steadfast progress, the vision is nearly complete. Not only is AROS almost feature-for-feature complete when compared to AmigaOS 3.x, but it has excelled many of the original design specifications.