64-BIT AROS!

Michal Schulz has made the miracle, and a whole new chapter in AROS history begins. Starting from today, you can grab the 64 bit native flavour of AROS from our website. This new version is obviously more advanced than the usual one, and has limited memory protection and loading boot modules. A initial wall for 4 GB of RAM will be removed as soon as proper MMU handling is done. In order to run the 64 bit native version of AROS a 64-bit x86 processor like AMD Athlon 64 or latest Intel Core2 is needed.

VmwAROS

A new AROS distribution has born. VmwAROS is a pre-installed and pre-configured AROS environment for VMware, compatible with Windows and Linux versions of VMware Player, Server and Workstation (v5 or 6). This distribuion is still far from being complete, however a initial beta has been released for everyone daring to download and test it. VmwAROS targets everyday's users and coders, and anyone interested in trying AROS, but don't want to jeopardize the data on their hard drive. Click here for more.

Other news

Aros-Exec's user Fishy_fis has announced a new AROS distribution called Velocity. An initial beta should be released soon. "Velocity will come initially in both a live booting installable CD and a VMWare hard disk image and contains considerably more (and custom configured) software than the nightly build ISOs". Screenshots are included.

Robert Norris is working on an AROS Web-browser based on Webkit, called Traveller. While working on it, he has updated lots of AROS libraries and already ported some useful pieces of code, like libxml2, cURL, OpenSSL, SQLite and more. Some informations in his blog.

Latest news

AROS has gained lots of bugfixes and improvements in the lastest weeks. For istance, Neil Cafferkey has corrected some important bugs in his beloved AROS Installer; Nic Andrews has worked on his RTL8139 network driver; and Robert Norris has fixed file notifications, which previously broke preferences, just to name three.

Robert Norris has added a SDL driver for linux hosted AROS. This lets you build a hosted AROS that doesn't require X (you don't even need it installed to build anymore). In theory this could help with getting hosted running on other platforms (anywhere SDL exists), however it's a little slower than the X driver.

Matthias Rustler has ported ptplay.library to AROS. It renders Protracker modules into sound samples. Additionally he also ported ShellPlayer, a simple example player. They will be in nightly builds, in Extras/MultiMedia/Audio drawer.

Matthias Rustler also made an initial port of Alain Thellier's Wazp3D to AROS. Wazp3D is a library intended to be compatible with the famous Warp3D.library for AmigaOS 68040, and it makes easier to port some 3D Amiga games to AROS. Wazp3D can also work as a software renderer, fooling applications looking for a 3D hardware driver.

Michal Schulz has made some big steps further with his x86-64 port of AROS. The day of 64 bit AROS computing is getting near. In the meanwhile, Michal added also SSE instructions support to AROS.

Petr Novak has translated aros.org in Czech.

Latest news

Breaking News! Neil Cafferkey has commited a brand new installer for AROS, allowing a cleaner and safer installation on hard disks. New features are the following:

• Installation drive and partitions can now be specified.
• Creation of Work partition now works.
• Partition sizes can now be specified and existing partitions can be preserved.
• Windows now added to GRUB boot menu if a likely Windows system partition is found
• Locale can be set during the installation

Please notice, however, that this is still beta software. Here are some warnings from Neil: "The new HD installer is now included on the nightly ISO and is ready for testing. However, there's currently a bug in either Wanderer or FFS that needs to be worked around. After starting the installer, you need to quit Wanderer before continuing (unless you're not going to format any partitions). Be even more careful than usual with this version of the installer, ie. don't expose a machine with unbacked-up valuable data to it. It should preserve all existing partitions if requested, but no one has tested this so far besides me."

If you have a test machine with no important data on it, you'd be very smart downloading 10-01 nightly build (or later) and help us finding bugs. You may use the Bug Tracker or post a message in this AROS-Exec discussion.

Demonstrating AROS

As previously anticipated on this website, AROS has been a guest star of Pianeta Amiga 2007. During the popular Amiga show, Paolo Besser has presented AROS to a niche of interested Amiga fellows. The event has been anticipated by some important IT news sites like TGM Online and HW Upgrade. A report of the show has been published by The AROS Show (read it here). You may also see a nice video on YouTube.

AROS Worldwide

Our website have got some new documentation translations - namely, to Greek (by Ioannis Koniaris), Spanish (by Ariel Gomez) and Czech (by Petr Novak), with usual and necessary help from Neil Cafferkey. Swedish (by Jon Anderson) and Russian (by Softy) translation updates coming soon. Also more updates in more languages are coming (by... you?).

Latest news

Michal Schulz is working on x86-64 version's low-level parts of exec.library - the scheduler and interrupt handlers. The bootstrap code has changed a lot and he has managed to compile several libraries (thanks to the gigantic effort of Henning Kiel, who fixed sources for 64-bit compatibility) into separate modules. In other words, the 64-bit kernel is about to boot, multitask and start the autoinit route of exec.library soon.

If you have installed an ageing nightly build of AROS, please go to the download section and grab a new one. There had been lots of important bugfixes, and also some nice cosmetic enhancements. After our competition, we have got two "official" wallpapers installed by default: "AROS rose" by d980 for the desktop, and "AROS" by Wesper for windows.

If you plan to spend some days in Tuscany (Italy) on september 22nd and 23rd, don't forget to visit Empoli. On saturday 22nd at 16.00h AROS will be presented at Pianeta Amiga 2007 show.

Some other nice applications had been ported on AROS. We've recently got MUIbase, a relational database and Hively Tracker, an AHX format mod editor. You may find both in the Archives as usual.

Latest news

AROS globalization continues! Ioannis Koniaris has translated AROS.org in Greek.

In the last weeks we got some technical issues with our build machine, so we apologize if you couldn't download an updated nightly. However the problem has been resolved with a brand new build machine, set up by Robert Norris.

Three new interesting bounties had been recently opened on TeamAROS: please have a look to AROS on SAM440, disk validator and creation of a new AROS distro.

We'd really like to thank everyone involved in AROS artistry: in the last weeks we got lots of new wallpaper for our competition and also some new banners. If you're running a website, or actively participating to a forum, you may help AROS diffusion by using and linking them to (your language translation of) Aros.org.

New name, new site

Welcome the the new AROS.org website! AROS has a new official name and a new face on the Internet. From now on, AROS simply means "AROS Research Operating System". If you're running a fan site, a mailing list or so about AROS, please update them to the new denomination.

During this first half of 2007, AROS has greatly increased its features, and though it isn't ready yet for a "1.0" release, it is far more useable today than it was a year ago. We made decisions and improvements over the original project, that gave AROS its own identity. In the meanwhile, recent events that involved Amiga Inc suggested us it was a good time for a name change.

In a few words: AROS is stronger now, because even if the goals of the project remain the same, we can concentrate more efforts on itself.

Latest news

Michal Schulz has completed UHCI and OHCI USB supports, this means AROS should now support USB almost on every computer. At this stage, only mice and keyboards are supported, but other devices are on the works.

Thanks to Nic Andrews, Wanderer has now option to show files by icons instead of showing all files by default. He also added scalable wallpapers to the desktop and keyboard navigation in windows.

Robert Norris added write support to FAT filesystem in AROS. Mounting Windows partitions is still little tricky, but it works almost as expected. Please don't try it yet on important data.

AROS on the web

Paul J. Beel has published lots of interesting interviews about AROS and other lovely subjects. Please don't miss Nic Andrews and DiscreetFX Bill Panagouleas ones on The AROS Show

Please look also at Amigamia's new community portal AROSWorld and, if you like, you may buy one of those lovely shirts, mugs and gadget with Kitty. Part of your money will be spent to help development.

New site design or AROS.org has been made by Tom Richards.

Skinnable Wanderer

Another important step in AROS customization has been done. Darius Brewka and Georg Steger have added a new decor system to Wanderer, allowing user to edit and change themes. Damir Sijakovic's ICE theme has been used as an example and it is now the default theme for AROS nightly builds. Please look at this screenshot (full version):

Isn't it nice? Anyway, we're trying to make AROS more stylish and nice to see. So any kind of artistry contribution (themes, icons, wallpapers, gadgets and so on) is very well accepted. Please look at AROS-Exec for further informations.

Incredible news

Michal Schulz is working on a keyboard driver for his USB stack. He has commited an initial version that should work almost well (should handle keys correctly, but LEDs won't work). Please remember that AROS is still only compatible to UHCI USB controllers at this stage.

SFS filesystem now builds automatically. This allow users to mount and use SFS partitions in a safer and easier way. Pavel Fedin has updated format command to handle different filesystems. In order to format a SFS partition, you should create it with HDToolBox, change its type to SFS and give this shell command:

FORMAT DRIVE=DH1: NAME=MyVolume

Please notice that GRUB can't boot AROS from SFS yet. So you have to create a little FFS (or EXT3, or FAT) partition to put kernel and boot files and let GRUB make its job.

Pavel is also working on a new CD filesystem called CDVDFS, which currently supports CD and DVD with Joliet extensions. It will be put into nightlies as soon as some bugs are fixed.

Matthias Rustler has updated AROS LUA to version 5.1.2. Here is a list of fixed bugs. Matthias has also created a new DepthMenu commodity. When the user right-clicks on the depth gadget (window`s right-edge gadget), it opens a popup menu with all open windows, allowing a faster selection.

Staf Verhaegen has improved support for ARexx/Regina scripts. There is a new rx command in AROS, waiting in CLI to execute all your ARexx scripts.

Thanks to Bernd Roesch, ZUNE can now use MUI4 images (.mim files). Pavel Fedin has fixed crash in pendisplay class when there's no free pens on the screen. Some new Gorilla Icons had been added by Paolo Besser.

USB initial support

Dr Michal Schulz has made an initial commit of the AROS USB stack, enabling the use of USB mice and creating the foundations to add support, subsequently, also for other devices. Please notice this is pre-alpha stage software, this means only USB 1.1 UHCI controllers are supported for now, and maybe it won't work correctly on your motherboard. Next thing to develop will be extensions to USBHID class, allowing to use graphic tablets and USB keyboards with AROS, and OHCI controllers support. We must note that support for USB 2.0 EHCI controllers wasn`t defined in bounty Michal is working on. In order to improve functionality and compatibility, huge beta testing is required. So we'd encourage everyone brave enough to help us, to download next days' nightly builds and report any encountered problem. In order to activate the whole stack on UHCI machines, the command is:

C:Loadresource DRIVERS:uhci.hidd

Other news

Nic Andrews has slightly improved AROSTCP, giving us a better (more compatible) network stack. Working VIA Rhine driver (fixed) and test RTL8139 one have been added as well.

Pavel Fedin is still working on improved VESA modes: "Cleaned up VESA mode switch code. Static palette removed, it's not necessary. Mousepointer colors on 256- and 16-color screens are fixed". Also initialising of some old cards with buggy BIOS`es was fixed. He also merged back from MorphOS Trackdisk device. A brand new Trackdisk pref program allow 'no-click' mode of the floppy disk drive without adding arguments to the kernel command line in GRUB.

Habemus DOSpackets!

Robert Norris has made the initial commit of the AROS packet system in our repository, with a read only FAT filesystem handler too. Here's what he said:

"packet.handler is a "proxy" AROS-style filesystem that is primarily responsible for taking FSA/IOFileSys, converting them to DosPackets and sending them on to the packet-based handler.

The important thing to note about packet.handler is that its been designed to mimic the AmigaOS handler environment as closely as possible, to minimise the amount of work necessary to port a filesystem.

fat.handler is a FAT12/16/32 handler. Read-only, and still has a few bugs, but it proves the concept. There's still plenty of work to be done before I consider the bounty finished. Comments are very welcome."

DOSPackets and FAT read-only support should be available in the next nightly builds.

Other news

Pavel Fedin has added VESA v1.2 support, allowing more (old) video boards to be compatible with AROS. He as also added VESA mode switching to the bootstrap, making the hidd less dependent from custom GRUB.

Neil Cafferkey has fixed 64-bit disk support. Boot partition can now be beyond 4GB.

Hogne Titlestad has released version 0.3.2 of his stunning paint program Lunapaint, with a working text tool. You may find a new screenshot here.

Tomasz Pawlak's KGB Archiver has been ported to AROS by FOrest. You'll find it in the Archives. Please note that it hasn`t been tested much yet.

News from the Archives

Latest uploads on the Archives include:

• Lunapaint gets better and better! Version 0.3.1 is now available, with some new nice tools and features.
• Martin's Server Suite, a port for AROS and other operating systems of Snug HTTP server and Yet Another FTP Server. You may find a screenshot of them working on an AROS installation.
• Jhead is a command line driven program for manipulating the non-image parts of Exif flavour JPEG files that most digital cameras produce.
• Potrace is a utility for tracing a bitmap, which means transforming a bitmap into a smooth, scalable vector image.