AROS Research Operating System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:58, 23 January 2008

Revision as of 23:50, 24 January 2008

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The project, started in [[1995]], has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS - with currently (as of March 2006) only a few lacking areas of functionality. This was achieved by the efforts of a small team of developers.

It can currently be installed on most [[IBM PC compatible]]s, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the [[GeForce]] range made by [[NVIDIA]]. As of May 2007 USB keyboards and mice are also supported. AROS is also planned to run on [[PowerPC]] boards Efika and Samantha.

While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including [[Unix Amiga Emulator|E-UAE]], an emulation program that allows 68k-native AmigaOS applications to run in the same way a majority must be run on AmigaOS 4.0. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has [[TCP/IP]] networking support, and it is also available an experimental version of [[AMosaic]] web browser, for test purposes, among other [[Internet]]-related applications.

AROS is designed to be source compatible with AmigaOS, but not binary compatible. Source code that will compile on AmigaOS should compile on AROS, but binaries already compiled for AmigaOS will not run, even if they are compiled for the same family of CPU. This unfortunately means that, unlike [[MorphOS]] or [[AmigaOS 4]], AROS is not capable of running legacy software directly, only applications compiled for AROS. There are plans to integrate the Amiga emulator [[E-UAE]] directly into AROS to run AmigaOS applications, and even a bounty to run MorphOS software on the [[PowerPC]] build of AROS, but so far (January 2007) these objectives remain elusive.

The aim of AROS is to remain aloof of the legal and political spats that have plagued other AmigaOS implementations by being independent both of hardware and of (possibly incompetent) central control. The de-facto motto of AROS, "No schedule and rocking" both lampoons the infamous claim of [[Amiga, Inc.]] CEO Bill McEwen that [[AmigaOS 4]] was "On schedule and rocking" (despite not existing at this time), and declares a lack of the formal deadlines that are traditionally broken by other AmigaOS clones.

== Some AROS Programs Available ==