Guest post by A new “point release” of Icaros Desktop, distribution of the AROS Research Operating system (an effort to re-create the original AmigaOS in a open source fashion, that may be ported on any platform), has been released today. The new version includes new software and games, but also enhances and extends some of the goods already included in the former releases.
Screen dragging, one of the most iconic abilities of the classic Amiga from Commodore, has been reproduced and extended to VESA modes, and Icaros’ AmiBridge scripts have been reworked to take advantage of Janus-UAE coherency mode. In practice, users can now run AmigaOS applications straight from Wanderer (AROS replacement for the Amiga Workbench) in their own windows, more or less like in VirtualBox integration mode (a copy of AmigaOS 3.x and original ROM files is still required).
Newer Nouveau driver introduce 3D acceleration in 2D alpha blended operations (WritePixelArrayAlpha) and text rendering, with a huge speed up for GeForce cards owners. Latest MESA libraries and Gallium3D subsystem have been included as well.
As usual, Icaros Desktop provides a full development chain for people interested in coding, with a interesting collection of languages, tools and libraries. Further informations, a PDF press release, screenshots and download links can be found on the Icaros Desktop website.
Nice work guys. The 12 or so of us that have Icaros will be updating when we get home
. All kidding aside, I appreciate the hard work. Screen dragging is awesome and I’ve missed it.
I was following the AROS/ICAROS news long time ago but I have never installed and played with it in a proper way. So, I think it is time to do it… Good work guys!
… is the fact, that the AROS team is even working on an m68k port which will run natively on real Amigas. It even includes an open source kickstart replacement.
The just recently released version of WinUAE ships with the open source kickstart and therefore allows to run a lot of Amiga software without having to pirate the original kickstart ROMs
.
http://www.winuae.net/
Adrian
W00t! w00t! w00t!
I just wish every Amiga fan would get on board with AROS. Open source and commodity hardware is the way to go.
What is the difference between Broadway and Icaros?
Broadway specifically targets the ARES 1 computer, while Icaros is a generic distro suitable for many different x86 computers. There’s also a few minor differences in what is bundled and how it’s arranged, but that’s the main difference.
Concerning Aros and developing, has there been any progress on memory protection?
Alternatively is there some way to atleast do the actual development in a safe (sandboxed) way so that faulty code can’t bring down the system? I remember all those ‘Guru Meditations’ from way back in the day when I developed on the Amiga, and not too fondly
Use of a hypervisor will somewhat solve the problem. If you do something that would bring down the system, it will only bring down your VM not your whole system. With that siad, despite its “perpetual alpha/beta/whatever” status, many of the programs (as well as the kernel itself) for AROS are pretty stable. In my limited testing, it hasn’t guru-ed very much at all.
Yes naturally I realize that I could run it in a vm but that still means I have to reboot the ‘virtual’ os, also while I have no doubt that finished programs are not bringing down the system at a regular basis, there’s quite a difference when you are developing programs. If my system would risk going down whenever I’ve had a segfault then I would have had to do alot of rebooting during my years as a programmer
Hence I was wondering if there was any way of making it safer during the actual developing phase, like some sort of development sandboxing.
At least on the bright side, the boot time on Aros (especially under a VM) is really fast!
Once they get the m68k in a more bootable state, I’ll have to give it a shot on my A4000. Who knows, maybe it’ll be just a bit more compatible with some older software than 3.1 is. I mean I can’t get Mega lo Mania to work with WHDLoad, what’s up with that???
Few others I haven’t been able to get to work, like Magic Pockets.
Actually I think the m68k AROS Kickstart is meant more for the newer Amigas. Namely the Natami. I really really want to get one of those when they come out..
I recently acquired an Amiga 1200 with a game filled CF card and it included Mega-lo-Mania which was loaded using WHDLoad. I completed the first level, so I assume it works.
My A4000 has a Mediator, Radeon and Network card in it. But I am running OS3.9, so I wonder if that’s why it isn’t working.
That was resolved in Amiga 4, but even in the early days there was a 3rd party error handling program that could catch many Guru Meditation errors before they halted the system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation#Commercially_available…
Ah, thanks for the info! Yes I seem to recall GOMF, but I believe I was never really impressed since it didn’t prevent the need for a reboot and just offered you a chance to save stuff before rebooting (or am I not remembering correctly? this was many many moons ago). Devpac and Deluxe Paint, I wonder how many hours I spent in them…
There are also Linux-, Mac- and Windows-hosted versions of AROS. These versions store their files in the host FS, so you can easily edit and compile your programs outside AROS, and only use AROS to run/crash them.