AROS Research Operating System

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AROS Research Operating System (AROS) is a free software/open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 APIs. Designed to be portable and flexible, ports are currently available for x86 and PowerPC based PCs in native and hosted flavours, with other architectures in development.

AROS Research Operating System
AROS showing its Cyrillic support
AROS showing its Cyrillic support
DeveloperThe AROS Development Team
OS familyAmiga OS-like
Source modelOpen source
Repository
Supported platformsX86-64, x86, PPC
LicenseAROS Public License
Official websitewww.aros.org
AROS family/development tree.

Name

AROS used to mean Amiga Research Operating System, but, because of trademark issues with the Amiga name[1], it was changed to the recursive acronym AROS Research Operating System.[2]

Current status

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 compatibles, 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.

While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including 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.

Some AROS Programs Available

See also

References