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...

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...

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

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!...

AROS is now trully multiplatform...

While I've been extremely busy (work/study/family stuff...) I do track the AROS news from afar...

The latest news required me to update my blog. So here's my entry on the latest developments...

SAM440ep shipped with AROS
Ladies and Gentleman, the AROS is now released with hardware! The SAM440ep is being offered at a new price (around 300 Euros) and is being shipped with AROS Live CD (Work of Dr. Michal Schulz).

Of course, if the ACube Systems team wants more it will require to work on a appropriate DISTRO, with custom imagery and the likes to promote it's product for the AmigaOS loving community, a bit like VMWaros...

Too busy... Help wanted!

I'm afraid that my life is taking a turn for the worst and my (very few!) free time has to used for other important tasks.

So what about AROS USER MANUALS?

Well, i won't be able to update them at least until 2009.

As for AROS... Well here's how it's going:
Work on efika and SAM400ppc is still undergoing, and going very well.
A lot of important internal and core elements of the AROS are progressing in normal pace...
AROS is picking up steam with VMWAROS distro, and some hefty press coverage, but there's been a lot of setbacks too...
First UAE integration wasn't finished and no word has heard from it until deadline.
Second the Traveller WEB Browser (based on Webkit) went to a stall, when the programmer started to have some personal issues to solve (I do understand...).

So some of the most visible and prominent projects are at a stand still.

Still there's a lot that AROS has to offer. Let's just keep our fingers crossed, and try to contribute as most as we can for AROS...

Speaking of which, if you have some free time, good knowledge of Amiga and AROS and have some good skills in using M$Word just drop-me an email and help-me in updating the AROS USER MANUALS... (hardwired ( at ) xsairsoft ( dot ) com - SPAM not welcomed!

AROS readable docs

Again my thoughts go to AROS document reading capability...
As I've read the AROS-EXEC thread Port TeX I was reminded a subject present with AROS manuals, the only format that is readable is not supported in AROS (PDF).
A good form of support would be a PDF datatype, but unfortunately that would require to rewrite the all datatype library from scratch (not to mention the datatype itself) - but I'm getting away from the subject.

In fact the manuals themselves are not written in any AROS app - until recently there wasn't even TeX, let alone any Word processing or similar type tool.

I've already dwell ed with AmigaGuide, but although they can offer some form of shell documentation or help online, it's not what I had in mind for the AROS USER MANUALS.

At this stage it might not be very important since most people run AROS in hosted systems. But to be self sufficient the AROS has to encounter some modern days common apps. And not just for the manuals, but in a increasingly manner every technical resource is being made available through PDF type files.

As for AROS manuals - hmmm... I will go on trying other forms.

AROS WEB TRAVEL IN LIGHT SPEED...

Traveling the WEB with AROS is a near soon reality (pun intended) - thanks to ROB. It's latest entry in his blog includes a early demo of the WebKit in action.

So in the network front AROS will soon become a common reality - TCP/IP stack / FTP / IRC / Mail client are already available. One would think that AROS is nearly ready to replace you current Os in your machine. Well... That's a different story!...

I'm afraid some important missing aspects of AROS are still plaguing it, namely:
- the Wanderer is still lacking some features and needs some serious bug-fixing;
- lack of printer device for printing support and postscript support;
- lack of full USB support of disk devices (such as USB pendisks and Cameras...).

Other missing items (not so important include):
- lack of datatypes (animation, modern document file types and so on);
- lack of usb audio support (as well as other common boards).

So while in some fronts the AROS seems to get ahead it's father OS in other simple but important areas is behind. While this is daunting, it poses a serious question to some developpers such as ROB, Michal Schulz, and others supporting the fork option - What priority is to be given to different tasks ahead?

Of course most of the current users will not replace their current OS, but most likely try to accommodate both OS'es (or more). But I believe that one has to think development of an OS should be to turn it as independent as possible from others.
In that field I totally agree with ROB, let's not make a Linux Clone - let's "supplant Linux".
As such the AROS has to be fully I/O capable regarding all common available devices and platforms.

Well that's my lousy opinion and It doesn't count for much as I haven't wrote a single line of AROS code. And like they say: "Opinions are like arses - everyone has one..."

On a diferent front I uploaded the manuals to AROS-Archives: http://archives.aros-exec.org/
The manuals can be downloaded on the Documents/manuals/ category.

Also I've uploaded a small update of the user manual, 0.56 which adds a few appendixes and adds more info on the AROS customization.
I'm hoping to have some time free near to review and update the manuals. Hopefully soon I'll add a more specific network and PPC support...

Aros User Manuals on SHOW...

As I didn't spend much time in updating this blog, I've totally forgotten about AROS-SHOW from Paul J. Beel news about the AROS USER MANUALS. The AROS Show is probably the best advertising and PR site available in the WEB and it's author is actively supporting AROS and it's applications - now the AROS USER MANUALS that I started are the news.
Believe it or not this is one of downsides of AROS - the lack of good documentation. And with new features (and maybe the fork) custom AROS manuals are required - it's just not a matter of using the Amiga ones.

Also newcomer to AROS Vikram Upparpalli is willing to lay his hands on these messy e-books, so we just may start having more updated user documentation. Let's just hope that between me and him things start to shape up.

AROS SHOW site is available at:
http://arosshow.blogspot.com/

Been busy but AROS is moving...

All right so I've been trying to find some time to update the AROS manuals but work seem's to take the best of me.

Right now they're available for download on:
AROS User Manual (50% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?2wyfczygxvt
AROS Shell: Manual (70% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ezgcp2bot9p
AROS Install Manual (25% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ey1mnggbtjt

I've being considering reviving some old Amiga projects of mine, such as AGeo-CAD, but time doesn't seem right - so I'll take a rain check and stick to what time affords me to do.

On AROS front things are moving, but I have to admit that I'm a little concerned about the fork option proposed by ROB. He also has the support of Michal Schulz, so to tell the truth when two of the most prestigious developpers "team up" in such effort it pretty much defines the AROS heading.

I agree with the principle of their intentions - the AROS requires more ambitious and modern guidelines, but I do not see the real need to completely break the 3.1 source-code backwards compatibility.

Anyway, if it remains the Amiga structure, feel and spirit, I'm all in favor of getting AROS the all modern OS features and settings. Amiga and AmigaOS was a revolution in home computer market, just getting AmigaOS 3.1 compatibility alone just won't simply do it anymore.

Of course I still hope to load AROS on my Compaq laptop with 4 gb hard drive and 32 mb ram, and actually be usable, (that's something I would not do with any other modern OS.) as well loading into any Next generation Intel or PPC machine and zoom along.

Also congratulations for Alain G. for finishing it's AROS TEX port - still beta at this stage - hope to have more bounties from you!