Amiga & AROS Archive

The first "point release" of the AROS distribution VmwAROS has been published, and it's available on its website. This version introduces a lot of changes and many new features that make it visually different from regular AROS build. Ken Lester's double state icons, for instance, make VmwAROS look more Amiga-like, and former Amiga users can also continue using their applications thanks to AmiBridge, a poweful scripting system which allows launching AmigaOS programs straight from AROS. A big effort has been made to enhance VmwAROS useability and user-friendlyness.

Saturday November 8, I received an email from someone, inquiring if I would be interested in "doing a first interview/introduction into a new operating system". We get these emails and news submissions all the time, and most of the time, "new operating system" means Ubuntu-with-a-black-theme, so we don't bother. I figured this time things wouldn't be different, but after a bit of digging around, there's a little more to it this time.

AmigaOS 4.1, which recently finally got a whole lot more accessible, has been reviewed by Ars Technica's Jeremy Reimer. "Long after most people had given it up for dead, companies such as Hyperion Entertainment Inc. are hard at work improving and enhancing the operating system. I had a change to look at a preview copy of the latest release, AmigaOS 4.1, and it is an impressive piece of work." Hardware 3D compositing, memory protection, virtual memory, a modern browser, and performance improvements are among the new features of AmigaOS 4.1. As a sidenote, OSNews will review AmigaOS 4.1 on the Sam440ep in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

"Hyperion Entertainment VOF and ACube Systems SRL are pleased to announce that they have entered into an OEM license agreement which will allow ACube to offer its customers an OEM version of Hyperion's AmigaOS 4.1 operating system for their SAM440 range of motherboards. Prospective customers wishing to beta-test the near final OEM version of AmigaOS 4.1 for the SAM 440ep will be afforded the opportunity to do so and will subsequently receive the full version. Orders can be placed as of now with ACube. A first public demonstration of AmigaOS 4.1 for SAM440ep is scheduled for the upcoming exhibition Pianeta Amiga in Empoli, Italy on September 27-28, 2008." Update by TH: Due to all the massive cheering and excitement going on in the OSNews Boardroom and our company yacht, we actually forgot to link to the official announcements here and here.

It's not exactly bliss and angels in the Amiga world. AmigaOS 4.0, while done, released, and updated, is hard to come by because you either need a supported classic Amiga, or one of the three Amiga Ones ever sold. With a lawsuit underway nobody really understands, and no interest whatsoever from any hardware vendor, the future looks rather grim. On the MorphOS side the grass isn't exactly a whole lot greener. MorphOS 2.0 has been released, but again, nobody is producing any decent hardware for the operating system to run on. Genesi sells the Efika-based OpenClient, but this device lacks the graphical chipset to power the new 3D features of MorphOS 2.0. In addition, MorphOS 2.0 has a hefty price tag of EUR 150. There is a third option, which has been making steady progress for years now: AROS.

Last week, Hyperion Entertainment announced that Amiga OS 4.1 has gone into final testing and is scheduled for release mid-Q3/2008. Full announcement here.

Cloanto has released Amiga Forever 2008, the latest version of their emulation package. Amiga Forever allows you to launch various instances of different AmigaOS versions, as well as various old Amiga games. The operating systems' ROM files are provided on the disk.

Ars Technica's Jeremy Reimer has published the 7th instalment in their series on the history of the Amiga platform. Part 7 deals solely with gaming on the Amiga, detailing various classic Amiga games that in one way or the other pushed the envelope. "The Amiga started out its life as a dedicated games machine, and even though it grew into a full computer very quickly, it never lost its gaming side. The machine's 4096-color palette, stereo sampled sound, and graphics acceleration chips made it a perfect gaming platform, and it didn't take long for game companies to start taking advantage of this power."

VmwAROS started in november 2007, as a pre-installed AROS environment for VMware, but starting with the new version 0.7, published today, it has turned into a complete distribution called VmwAROS LIVE!. From now on, it will be available in two flavours: pre-installed in a virtual machine, and as a live-CD. New users will be able to boot their computers straight into a enhanced AROS environment, with DHCP network support and preliminary web browser. A complete list of new features is available at this site. VmwAROS VM beta 0.7 can be downloaded from here. VmwAROS LIVE! 0.7 can be downloaded from here.

A few days ago the AROS team published quite an extensive update on AROS' status. Progress has been made on porting AROS to the sam440 board, Traveller (Webkit-based browser for AROS) has made some strides, and work has begun on a load of manuals for AROS, among other things.

"A new version of WinAROS is available. The virtual Harddisk is contains two partitions. A 20MB Partition with Fast File System (FFS), that contains only the Boot Files. And a 480MB Partition with Smart File System (SFS) that contains a fresh AROS setup. WinAros comes with a Windows typical setup program, that creates shortcuts on the desktop and in the start menu. It also comes with an uninstaller." WinAROS is a virtualised AROS installation executable which you can install and run on Windows.

"There are two major players in the Amiga emulation arena, UAE and E-UAE and two major players in the pre-configured Workbench arena, AIAB and AmiSYS. If I was to give a preference as to which two of those four one should use I would need to be honest and say E-UAE and AmiSYS make for a better Amiga/Workbench experience. That said, all four could very easily be interchanged." More here.

"AmigaOS 5 made a covert appearance at an event outside the CES, turning up in the guise of a version of Space Invaders running on a Windows Mobile 6-based phone. Amiga - the company - was ostensibly showing AmigaAnywhere 2, the new version of its virtual machine technology. But taking Amiga President Bill McEwen aside for a moment, we discovered that AmigaAnywhere 2 is AmigaOS 5."

The Pegasos book is a free multilanguage ebook dedicated to the Pegasos computer from Genesi/bplan. It is a 223 pages PDF document, splitted in 4 volumes, which contains information about the Pegasos I and II PowerPC computer and all its main supported operating systems. The latest version (V2.3) can now be freely downloaded both in English or in French. Partial older versions are also available in Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian language. Elsewhere, VmwAROS is a pre-configured AROS environment for VMware. New beta 0.5 improves reliability, networking, development and gaming, with more software and bugfixes.