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...