Wandering around AROS...

This is my blog regarding an OS that truly represents the AmigaOS spirit going beyond it.


AROS.ORG

AROS-EXEC

AROS World

 Quick Links
Mensagens anteriores
  • EXEC has a GURU MEDITATION ERROR!
  • The tale of the turtle and the rabbit...
  • AROS is getting more atention...
  • The end is nigh...
  • New GOD on the block!
  • Portuguese support for AROS
  • New update on the AROS MANUALS!
  • AROS is now trully multiplatform...
  • Too busy... Help wanted!
  • AROS readable docs

Arquivos
  • Dezembro 2007
  • Fevereiro 2008
  • Março 2008
  • Junho 2008
  • Julho 2008
  • Outubro 2008
  • Novembro 2008
  • Janeiro 2009
  • Maio 2009

   EXEC has a GURU MEDITATION ERROR!
 
Actually what I meant is that AROS-EXEC is down due to some hacking problems, and the site admin is already taking care of the issue.

In the meantime I encourage you to use http://www.arosworld.org/ instead.
You'll find that this AROS portal/forum also offers a lot of contents specially from the USER's POV.

I'm currently very busy and have no more time to write or do anything relating with AROS, but I hope that will change soon... or not!...

Segunda-feira, 25 de Maio de 2009

   The tale of the turtle and the rabbit...
 
Recently, someone nagged me about the AROS User Manuals and getting the Portuguese Locale translation corrected and up to speed on AROS...

There are two reasons for this:
1. I just don't have the time! Work is more pressing and my personal life is a bit more demanding - first I was sick, then it was my wife, now is my son... So it's pretty obvious that I lack time.

2. Well I've been making a few head notes, but AROS is just getting to many development these days and I'll have to wait for it become more established (not like final or v1.00 or such). And I'm not talking about the browser bounty... Impressive stuff but it might not make into AROS User Manuals in the next version (Networking essentials are more important anyway)...
Native installation, hardware support and USB mass storage is probably the most notable subjects that might spring into mind, but there's one more complicated - the default icons.

If you have read my manual you've noticed that I've tried to capture the feeling of AROS looks onto the manual. Naturally if you change the Icons in AROS I will have to capture more screnshots again and make the design of the manual resemble the AROS default look.

I'm not complaining - if AROS gets Ken Lester iconset good for it! I will have to study the needed changes to AROS USER MANUALS that's all I guess... For now I'll just wait!

And as for the Portuguese Locale tnaslation - I'll be doing on AROS directly soon... ;)

Sexta-feira, 30 de Janeiro de 2009

   AROS is getting more atention...
 
In my last post people may have though that my optimism was misplaced or that I was just ranting... I won't hold it against anyone - it's a common cliche in the Amiga community, so it's easy to transfer onto AROS as well.

But guess what, AROS guys only have reasons to be smiling about...

With the release of VmwAROS 1.0, people got a much better idea of what AROS is able to do.


Features include (and not limit to):
- New, customized system files
- Shutdown Wanderer funcion on supported hardware
- Widescreen graphic modes on selected cards
- Added Ken Lester's iconset
- Added sound in Quake
- Complete development chain with GCC 4.2.2, Python, ecc
- VmwAROS can now compile AROS
- Added new games
- Updated many programs
- Added 68K application support with AmiBridge
- Added automatic extractor for multiple archive files (PoorARC)
- Added PDF document support (PoorPDF)
- Added first-run configuration script
- Installing VmwAROS won't leave volumes without icons anymore
- Fixed typing issue with SimpleMail
- Added many desktop wallpapers from M. De Angelis (JohnSmith)
- Updated VmwUpdate and SwitchMuiMaster
- Added GhostScript
- Fixed many file associations
- Corrected paths and ASSIGNs
- Added VmwAROS services manager in Prefs
- Improved PDF user/reviewer guide
- ...and many, many more!

Adding to this pinpoint release, MPlayer has been ported by Krzysztof Smiechowic (based on the MorphOS one by Fabien Coeurjoly) and so you can now watch several Video formats on AROS, and in an impressive fashion I might add. A lot of work regarding low-level drivers has been commited and so more hardware is being supported, as well as many bug-squashing.



As for the browser Stanislaw is working on AROS port of OWB, and has done a fantastic work so far. Everyone was just hoping for a simple, basic and only supporting of the most functional Web features, but the developer is going for the big prize including multi-tab browsing. Finally an Amiga modern WEB browser in almost every respect.


On the same subject I noticed that some Ill-minded subjects regarded Stanislaw work as more than simple copy-paste affair of Jörg Strohmayer AmigaOS 4 port. Jorg work was excelent and Stanislaw has given credit to what he "borrowed" (or looked into) from it:
- "(...) I replaced SDL events with intuition.library events provided by the Zune event handler registered in the custom class. Code from AmigaOS4 OWB port written by Jörg Strohmayer saved me a lot of work in this stage. (...)"
Other than the work on OWB port itself, Stanislaw wrote a new port of SDL for AROS ( the other was old and buggy). Messed with MUI fixing a few bugs and adding a new class to it (the dynamic tab gui) . He also aims to turn the web browser into a zune .mcc resource (a lot of software will benefit from this). And more is still in the works...

From the AmigaOS side (classic 68k) comes Ignition. This spreadsheet application has gone open-source. Right now is being ported by Mazze for AROS and seems to be nearing the end.
I must say that I await anxiously this because it's Amiga dev roots rather the *n*x ones - it should be interesting to have a program so needed that behaves in true AmigaOS fashion.
All that remains missing is printing support (in AROS)... Alas...


As a final note, and this will angry a lot of Amiga fanatics, but believe or not SAM, Pegasos and Efika are not the only so called modern amigas anymore. Why not iMica One - just because it's not PPC? Well this Mini-ITX computer will be bundled with VmwAROS1.0x and the initial profits will be reverted to AROS development. Check the specs yourself...


Ok, jokes aside this sexy mini-PC is a good machine to run AROS. Of course you can install AROS in any X86 machine (preferably above Pentium II 133 mhz), and with SAM440 and EFIKA soon, the truth is just one: AROS is not compromised by the hardware.
And on this subject (hardware availability) is AROS stronghold - let's face it, the other AmigaOS like are hardware compromised - So they better get stuck in good machines!
Well... Do they? While AmigaOS 4 has migrated from AmigaONE (dead PPC hw platform) to SAM440 (not so powerful but still good), MorphOS is still migrating to EFIKA (very low specs in comparison with other PPC hw) and Mac PPC hw (which has ceased production).

I have no crystal ball nor I have a degree in future foretelling, but I can say that this is not definitely the end, and guess what maybe 2009 will be the year of AROS ;) or 2010 or whatever... (just kidding regarding the hype)!

Quinta-feira, 15 de Janeiro de 2009

   The end is nigh...
 
We're nearing the end of the year and one must ask now - was 2008 the year of AROS?

Looking back at some of the remarks ans discussion about AROS , it looked like AROS was near completion (which wasn't) and that a lot of users and developers would join the the AROs effort.

There was two major points which were catalyst for these statements.
For one Amiga Users were becoming increasingly fed up by the MorphOS lack of update and the lack of hardware for AmigaOS 4 / Law suit between Hyperion and Amiga Inc. The official statements done by Amiga were even more painful regarding the vapourware nature of an AMIGAOS5 (or AmigaAnywhere 2) better then MacOS X!...

As the second point we could trace to the development of three major bounties at that time:
- AROS in SAM440
- Port an Open Source Browser To AROS
- UAE integration (basic/initial)

AROS native in SAM440 was regarded as a major step to make AROS more universal, and a Operating System across platforms. Hitting the PPC architeture was also a proud statement of ARO regarding hardware support. AmigaOS4 being tied to AmigaOne and lack of hardware for MorphOS was a critical point to both closed source OS. So people started to believe that AROS was actually going to make it where others didn't.
Indeed Dr. Michal Schulz ended the project and provided SAM440 with the first AmigaOS inspired OS. But eventually AmigaOS4 made it to the SAM440 also, and MorphOS 2 was released to the efika machines...
Still it was a significant success that changed many people opinion about AROS altogether.


The Open Source Browser work was conducted by Robert Norris, and his past record quickly made the project a huge success in all the forums. Traveler was going to be the name of the AROS App running a port of the Webkit. It reached pretty far with a simple app launching the Webkit work done so far. Then Robert Norris began to feel that the AROS wasn' aiming high enough, and proposed a fork from the main AROS dev tree.
Then alleging personal issues he abandoned the AROS and the Traveller project.
That was a painful time for AROS and it sure hurt all the AROS people who saw the exit of a coding genius with sorrow. The lack of a decent browser also hurted the AROS intended respect in the OS area.
But he left a near complete port of the SQLITE, CAIRO and WEBKIT engine among other important libraries, and that's something that will not doubt have significant impact future development.

E-UAE Integration was also a early bounty, and one that promised a lot since it was Richard Drummond (the E-UAE author). And there was a lot of optimism since early statements from Richard seemed to indicate it to be a relatively easy and almost complete.
But time gone and no word was heard from Richard anywhere. Even E-UAE stopped dead.
So the legions of amiga-fans coming to AROS quickly dispersed onto other projects...

To end all of this Michal Schulz expressed its desire to leave AROS development. A few months later AnubisOS is announced and while it's not a AROS fork it has many AROS dev team - so far no one know how to categorize this. But some hostile reactions have already been noticed in Amiga/AROS forums and blogs although mixed with some more positive remarks...


Reading all of these one would say that it was a pretty bad year. Well far from the truth...
In the mean time a lot of effort was directed to AROS itself and provided validation of the FFS partitions, improvement of the Installation procedure, ata.device, format utility, wanderer features, making AROS really usable. More apps and games were ported, including a MMPORG client Eternal lands.


Krzysztof Smiechowicz undertook a project aimed at reviewing the AmigaOS 3.1 API re-implementation status in AROS to better understand what is needed to achieve goal no 1. of the AROS roadmap, Staff is proposing the major steps towards AROS v1.0 ABI...

VmwAROS reaches version 0.91 and shows what AROS is all about!
Above all AROS is now self compilable - now that's something milestone and thanks to Stanislaw Szymczyk.

So more than hype and simple achievments AROS introduced serious and important core modifications which will make future development a bit more solid (hopefully).


Present status has 6 bounties open and they promise a lot.
- For starters finally the Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase I) has been taken by bheron. No progress status is known so far...
- Port AROS To EFIKA & USB Mass Storage have been taken by Dr. Michal Schulz. More PPC platform development means more universal AROS, and the USB mass storage device will make the native versions independent and really usable.
- Port AROS to run on Windows/Cygwin is underway, and promises to provide the Windows devs more easier system to set up (Amidevcpp is pretty usable and standard for cross platform development).
- Finally we might get a complete all round USB stack system which support multiple devices such as scanners, cameras, pdas, audio devices and much more. The author has proposed it's own terms for the bounty: Poseidon USB

Out of the Bounty arena there's a lot of work going on
Regarding the Open-Source Browser, Stanislaw is already working on the Netsurf port. We might get a decent browser in AROS before 2009 - keep your fingers crossed!

As for the E-UAE integration thanks to Paolone Besser (AmiBridge) and O1i work we might just see it in the near future.



So was 2008 the year of AROS? Not maybe in the hype remarks that so many used, but considering the adversities that it has faced throught all these times I believe it was a pretty damn good year! Well I mean - still is...

Sexta-feira, 28 de Novembro de 2008

   New GOD on the block!
 
So I've been working on the update of the AROS Manuals, doing some Locale adding in AROS (added a few countries and flags), working on the translation of some catalogs to Portuguese.
Because of alternative OS shows (more specifically a greek request), I've also made a 3 fold leaflet type promo for AROS. You can find it AROS Archives: Document/misc
I was really getting my head into AROS, and learning a few basic things about locale and zune...

When I woke up this morning I found a cryptic post in AROS-EXEC by damocles, which would turn my mind upside down.



There's a new name on the block regarding AmigaOS Family OSes. It's name is Anubis (The ancient Egyptian God of Death - no comments as every is already been made!) and it's main premise is to build an Amiga like OS on top of the linux kernel.
And guess what?! In the developper team there are some pretty top names from the AROS development, such as Ola Jensen, Robert Norris, Alex gappern, Hogne Titlestad, Michal Schulz, Michael Grunditz, Oliver Brunner, Olivier Tigreat, Pavel Fedin, Stanisław Szymczyk...
As it's in planing stage, there's still very few info and detail is scarce at the moment, but if you would like to know more check it's web-site (Still WIP): http://anubis-os.org/

More info also on the #anubis irc channel in freenode.

I can't quite express myself, but let's face it AROS lack of developers, and lack of interest by most of the Amiga Community always plagued it's advance. Still it got where it's reckoned as a wonderful reincarnation of the AmigaOS original API (but a lot better).
However the lack of direction, some technical issues and it's proposed roadmap wasn't helping the advance in future. Everyone always asked, and when AROS reaches 1.0, what then?
It's not new, (check an old entry in this blog) a fork was once proposed by AROS developers and although Rob Norris did not refer to it as the reason as for leaving AROS, it had it's significance no doubt.
Dr. Michal Schulz also sided with Rob on this subject at the time, and he had already expressed it's wish to leave AROS, so it should be no surprise his involvement (although I admit it was a bit shocking for me at first glance).

A next generation OS which aims to be hardware independent requires hardware drivers. Linux kernel has them in plenty... That combined with a more pragmatical attitude regarding other technical issues which plague the development of AROS and AmigaOS in general.
So the move towards Anubis (arix in sourceforge) is not entirely surprising, and makes general sense.


Does this means the end for AROS? Not according to the people behind Anubis - they're entirely diferent projects which have their own space. AROS might shape to be the best AmigaOS encarnation in any and all platform available. Anubis is aiming a bit higher and not compromising with AmigaOS altogether.

I just would like to say: GOOD LUCK ANUBIS-TEAM!

Don't worry... I'm still wandering around AROS. But who knows, maybe I'll wander in Anubis too...

Segunda-feira, 10 de Novembro de 2008

   Portuguese support for AROS
 

Like AmigaOS, AROS allways had locale in it's core, offering international support for different languages. But while spanish, italian and even russian languages are fairly supported, there was no Portuguese locale support...

While it was never in my plans, I'm playing with AROS source code a bit, and naturally just for fun I started creating the various catalog files in Portuguese. Well and I got to a point that almost everything was roughly translated, so I guessed I should commit the changes to AROS SVN tree.

After a few problems with the encoding of filename and text - many thanks to MArkus Weiss for helping me with these - here it is!

AROS EXEC Image Album

Quarta-feira, 8 de Outubro de 2008

   New update on the AROS MANUALS!
 
We got a new guy in town - Peter Hutchison - and he's the responsible for the updated versions of the AROS Shell and Install Manuals.

While the Shell manual has just some minor revisions, the Install manual nears completion, adding important info such as installing AROS alongside Windows and similar OS'es.

He's still getting the hangs of it, but I believe that in my absence he will keep the manuals going.

Maybe with the help of Michal Schulz it could be added some important issues on the specificness of SAM440 AROS and the install and use of it... Maybe minor but important additions, never the less!...

Segunda-feira, 28 de Julho de 2008