Guest post by Icaros Desktop, the popular distribution of the AROS Research Operating System, has recently released its version 1.5, a new milestone since it finally allows to run classic Amiga software and games on full screen or perfectly integrating them into the host AROS desktop.
Icaros’ approach to old applications is fairly different than the one chosen by PPC-based operating systems like AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS 3. Due to the completely different x86 architecture, it needed to choose the road of emulation, providing a complete M68K Amiga virtual machine which runs another session of AROS itself, compiled for the Motorola 68000 processors. Since both host and guest systems are running AROS, they can share user settings for input methods, language, fonts and many other graphic details of the interface, making classic applications appear perfectly integrated in the AROS system. This, at least, in theory: there are still some glitches with right menus in coherency mode, but they can be easily worked around running the emulation layer on its own “screen”, like most Amiga applications did in the past.
Lovers of AmigaOS 3.X, however, can still integrate the original OS into Icaros to gain perfect compatibility with the past, but they will have to provide files by themselves, eventually buying a copy of Cloanto’s Amiga Forever.
Icaros Desktop 1.5 also changes the installation procedure, allowing people to exclude from their hard drives unwanted categories of software. For instance, if they’re running Icaros without a supported 3D graphics card, they can now choose not to install games which need hardware acceleration. Icaros Desktop is now based on a new AROS kernel but, in case of compatibility issues, it also provides a “Legacy Kernel Edition” to use in the meanwhile, until all regressions will be fixed.
Thanks for all the hard work – I’m looking forward to installing it!
Nice little fast OS, nice set of clearly defined goals.
Unfortunately I don’t have any use for it … shame.
What, you don’t install OSes just for fun? Turn in your nerd card. I kid.
Well said! Go Icaros and AROS!
But that is the problem in a nutshell isn’t it? unless you are a serious fanboi of the Amiga and have a major case of nostalgia there really isn’t any point in running Amiga anything anymore.
I mean lets look at the Amiga…what made the Amiga so beloved? Well it could multitask at a time when attempting to do that in Windows was dicey at best, it had fully customized hardware with an OS built around the chips so that it could wring every last drop of performance which made it pretty killer for multimedia, and its UI was frankly several years ahead of its time, when the majority were on Win 2.x and 3.x Amiga looked frankly nicer than Win98 which came much later.
But NONE of that is still relevant, MSFT Google and Apple can ALL multitask as many programs as you’d want to run and if you hate the big 3 OS companies you have BSD and Linux, both of which have MUCH more programs than the Amiga had and both can run AmigaOS in a VM no problem.
Don’t get me wrong, if some devs want to spend their free time building an Amiga clone? No problem, enjoy, I’m simply pointing out that there really isn’t a point in niche OSes that have fallen behind, with the tech world changing so fast and with some many choices in X86 it just doesn’t make much sense to run an OS like Amiga anymore.
There really isn’t any point in running anything else anymore, as all the software is all available on Windows.
I’m simply pointing out that there really isn’t a point in niche OSes that have fallen behind, it just doesn’t make much sense to run any other non-windows OSs anymore.
Edited 2013-01-05 21:49 UTC
You DO realize that little snarky remark made no damned sense, yes? While there is plenty of Windows specific software, especially for business, most of the big stuff like browsers and media players and the like are built for the “big three” Apple, Google/Linux, and MSFT. You are talking about a niche OS whose niche is so tiny you could fit every single user in any HS gym in the USA and still have seats left over.
NO support from ANY of the major software makers, NO software that isn’t old or (badly) ported, it makes no damned sense and comparing running a joke OS to “standing up to the man” just makes you look retarded. if you have a hatred for MSFT there is Apple, Android, ChromeOS, BSD, Solarios, both open and closed and ALL OF THEM have MUCH better software libraries and MUCH better support than this thing made in Bob’s basement will EVER have.
So remember the words of Tropic Thunder and try not to go full retard next time, okay?
You are aware you’re on a website called OSnews? That discusses Operatng Systems? Often the hobby ‘fun’ ones?
[forced analogy]That’s a bit like going onto a music site and saying you don’t need new bands or obscure wierd band you’ve never heard of because we’ve got the Beatles and their better than anything else, even if you’ve never heard it..[/forced analogy]
Actually, forget it. you’ve missed the point of this sort of thing by such a margin there’s very little point in even trying.
But go on, feel free to insult me again.
I wanted to give Icaros a try – downloaded Live – and only the latest menu entry allowed to boot it at all. Choosing first or second one results in complaining of my monitor: “mode not supported (H:90.1 kHz, V:60.1 Hz). Then the machine seems to be hung (had to use hardware reset). Choosing the third one shows some boot messages, but stops loading on “[packet] couldn’t open bsd.handler” message. The last one booted successfully – but it looks awful, of course, in 16 colours.
It doesn’t seem to be prepared to run on somewhat older hardware – most probably it requires rather recent monitors to try it. When switched to rather modern Gateway monitor, I could see boot messages in all available boot modes – still it doesn’t work.
Mobo Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3, Sempron64, ATI HD5450 (Tried also with Nvidia on that second monitor).
IMHO it could be somewhat better tested before making a release, and such “demanding” graphics modes shouldn’t be used for “live”, where I can’t tweak configuration file – since it’s written on DVD-ROM. It just either will work, or not (and this time it isn’t).
Have a look in the guide, chapter 2 IIRC.
You should be able to pass settings to kernel before downloading it, just choose a suitable boot line like
Icaros Desktop (Legacy 800×600 resolution)
and press E. Then have a look into this setting
VESA=800×600@60
and kill the @60 part, maybe this is forcing AROS to a video frequency your monitor does not support. To continue booting, press Ctrl+X.
Thanks, but it seems, that you didn’t read my comment carefully enough.
I wrote, that using third setting my monitor, well, shows the messages, just OS stops boot process at some particular point. And no: removing “@60” didn’t help. As I wrote: I tried Icaros also with the other monitor – which hadn’t problems with the frenquencies – and Icaros didn’t work there neither.
Anyway IMHO the default settings shouldn’t be set to such demanding values, that without reading some manuals it’s not possible to take a look at what Icaros offers. Quite opposite: it should have settings “easy for everyone” (well, for the most, at least…), and when one needs something more sophisticated, in such case – after the lecture of manuals etc. – he can change some command-line parameters, selecting higher frequency this way (or whatever).
Sorry, I thought the problem was the video frequency. Unluckily the new kernel is not as tested as the old one (it’s much younger), so something may have gone wrong.
You can add VESA graphics to the last mode by editing it and adding something like “vesa=1024×768”. Possibly your system needs ATA DMA turned off.
No, it didn’t change anything – but your suggestion made me compare all the boot config lines. Yes, when disabling DMA, I was able to run 3rd “mode” as well – still: the graphics remained as ugly, as in 4th one.
What a pity, that it’s so cumbersome. IMHO it has been released to early (at least as “regular” release, with no “beta” neither “pre”), without being well-tested.
Well, the 1st mode runs the VESA driver and then native ones, looking for a supported card. If none is found, it fallbacks to VESA mode, which should at least run in a 800×600 or 1024×768, 16M colors screen. In some cases it may fall back to VGA mode, with its ugly 640×480, 16 color mode, which is, indeed the last boot line mode.
If you got the VGA mode even with the 3rd line, which does NOT include it, it means you may have a video card which does not support VESA standards (rare), or that you made some mistakes with the VESA= parameter in the boot lines, before continuing boot.
please notice some test cases
VESA=32bit –> tries to choose the best fitting resolution for your screen based in EDID values taken from monitor, with a 16 million color palette.
VESA=1024x768x16 –> opens a 1024×768, 65536 colors screen, independentely from EDID informations
VESA=1024×768@60 —> opens a 1024×768 screen, with as much colors as it can, at a 60Hz frequency. Some monitors may need @70, @75 or @59 to avoid displaying the “unsupported frequency” error (which is Monitor one, nor AROS’).
you can try combinations like VESA=32bit@60 AFAIK. Icaros manual also explains how to see what VESA resolutions your video card actually support, which is doable within GRUB itself.
Well, if I’m correct, Icaros (or AROS) during boot time uses framebuffer for diplaying text boot messages.
I made a third attempt using older hardware – apart of the problems with the framebuffer (still “mode not supported”) it booted just fine, and I could play a bit, when graphics appeared. It was much older mobo ASRock K7-Upgrade600, with Radeon 9600Pro.
The conclusions are:
– at the moment new AROS kernel has poor support for nForce chipset
– it would be much better idea to use – for displaying text boot messages – the modes e.g. “copied” from Linux (say: the ones LILO allows). Never had problems with these. It’s simply not worthy to pack a few letters more into line at a cost of making most monitors unsuitable.
And you and the guy who modded me down obviously can’t seem to follow how a forum or threads work because if you could you would see I was ANSWERING A POSTER when you jumped in, going full retard I might add,by equating using a tiny niche hobbyist OS with sticking it to MSFT which makes no damned sense, okay?
As I pointed out if you wanted to “stick it to the man” you would NOT be running an incredibly niche OS with few drivers, lousy monitor support as another poster wrote, and little to no software, you would use, in no particular order, BSD, Linux, Solaris, hell there is even a flavor of OS/2 called Ecomstation and even THEY have better support!
Again try reading the thread before responding, otherwise you look foolish. I wrote that I saw NO problem in using a niche OS like Amiga for nostalgia, or because you have some favored Amiga software you want to run, hell I kept an old Win9x box for ages just for running old DOS stuff, but do NOT try to equate using an OS made by Bob in his basement to “sticking it to the man” because that is about the most stupid thing anybody could possibly say!
And no crap I know this is OSNews, which is why I listed several choices besides just Apple and MSFT, never before in history have we had so many OSes that actually support most hardware to choose from, heck you have something like 60 variants of Linux that has major support, 4 flavors of BSD, 2 kinds of Solaris, Android, ChromeOS, you got well supported choices up the behind so trying to say its Amiga or MSFT is just retarded.
I couldn’t give a damn about major proprietary software vendors. I still very much like Amiga OS and it’s workings. It’s fun.
And again I covered that if you would bother reading the post you are responding to instead of going full retard all over the thread. i said if you have a case of nostalgia or have software that was Amiga specific you want to run? Go right ahead, knock thyself out. But trying to equate a hobby OS with “sticking it to the man” just makes you look either completely clueless as to the wealth of choices out there or a flag waving fanboi, so which is it?
Because I seriously doubt you will find a single sentence on the developer’s website that says a damned word about “sticking it to the man” as nobody else would be making such an asinine statement, you can avoid MSFT completely with one of dozens of fully supported OSes with more software released in a month than Amiga had in a lifetime, so your statement makes no damned sense.
it just doesn’t make much sense to run an OS like Amiga anymore.
This is really not true.
I have a couple of 1+GHz ARM Cortex-A9 systems. Ubuntu is very slow on it, totally below usability. AROS is already working on Raspberry PI and is perfect choice for these systems.
Edited 2013-01-06 14:26 UTC
The wonders of the Amiga was the OS + Hardware combo, the OS alone is just nostalgia.
Now almost everything has blitter and 3D engine.
And every hardware could be used creatively.
The problem is the stupid secrecy halo around mobile graphics chips. Well, this area is a huge patent-minefield, so at least they have reasons to be secretive.
You are forgetting the hardware part.
For me what made Amiga special, besides the Workbench, was the ability to use the special sound and graphics processors.
Nowadays any PC combo beats Amiga hardware hands down.
It was a wonderful machine, but its time is passé.
Doesn’t that make the hardware just nostalgia too?
I needed a small portable machine to provide me with SSH, Web Browser, and Jabber Client. So I needed something simple. Picked up a used old PPC Mac Mini (for about nothing) and put a Amiga OS clone (MorphOS) on it. It serves my needs and boots up in 5 seconds or less, and shutdown is instant. I don’t have to worry about virus for the most part since I doubt anyone wants to target this OS. I even setup the machine to boot Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux. Mac OS X and Ubuntu feel very slow on this machine compared to MorphOS. I have been very happy using MorphOS Amiga clone for a cheap machine with limited needs. I would suspect you could get a old PC for about nothing and put AROS on it, and it would run faster then Windows or Linux due to its lower overhead.
So some people do have reasons to use an AmigaOS clone even in today’s times. Too bad AmigaOS didn’t target mobile devices early on, would have been a good area it could have done well in.
It would also crash faster
Really, very powerful PCs can be had for almost nothing – so, use the economies of scale the PC brought (that’s what killed Amiga, its tightly coupled hardware and software couldn’t keep up). Also more portable – like a laptop or netbook.
And, under PC OS, you will have better SSH, web browser, or Jabber clients…
Icaros’ goal is not to be useful. Icaros’ goal is to be fun.
Is there any way I can boot Icaros 1.5 from ISO on a memory stick, using it as a loopback device in Grub 2?
I got to the aros splash image after the kernel loading text, but from there it would not go anywhere. Resetting through the keyboard would restart the splash screen again.
Would be nice to add it to my USB stick which I have several distros on, booting from ISO.
Thanks!
No, it can’t be booted from an ISO image, but it can boot from USB if it’s given a native partition. This is most easily done by booting the ISO in a VM, and then using the InstallAROS utility found on the desktop to install to a USB stick attached to the VM. Extra tip: disable USB 2.0 if using VirtualBox.
Am I the only one who’s unable to even open the .7z archive on a Mac? All I’m getting from 7zX is “Can not open file as archive”.
Why did they choose this strange format, and did nobody think of testing it? It does not make a good first impression.
Extracted without a problem.
I assume you did read this before downloading:
Edited 2013-01-06 16:16 UTC
.7z is now a well known and popular format, and it works even on niche OSes like MorphOS and AROS itself. I can’t believe you can’t extract it on a Mac. Have you – at least – renamed the Live! distribution file from .7z.exe to .7z alone?
Guess this is to be expected with a hobby OS like this, but I was disappointed to see how, shall we say, “nerdy,” the distro of this seems to be. The instructions for creating a disk or USB stick of it are pretty vague. I did DL the distro, unarchived it, created a burned DVD of it in Toast, but it wouldn’t boot under Mac or Windows hardware. I always loved the Amiga and would have enjoyed taking this for a ride, but the admission fee is a level of knowledge that will leave out a lot of potential enthiasts.
I was able to boot from the ISO image in VirtualBox, install it there and managed to visit this site.
The screen is too big for my iMac, but when I told it to use a lower resolution graphics became corrupted or went missing. There is also some sort of dock, but it was hidden behind the main window. Maybe there is a “stay on top” setting somewhere.
It needs some work, but it does have a nice Amiga feeling.
So it brings both nice and bad things WRT Amiga feeling…
While the manual gives detailed steps to deal with edge cases, in most cases you just need to run the InstallAROS utility found on the desktop and keep clicking (and follow some simple on-screen instructions). It’s surely easier to install than early Linux distros.