Improvements in 2013
| Author: | Matthias Rustler, Staf Verhaegen, Neil Cafferkey |
|---|---|
| Date: | 2014-01-12 |
2013 was mainly a year of internal improvements and fixes to AROS, so there were fewer new bells and whistles added to it than in previous years. However, there were still a few notable components introduced that should be mentioned.
New C libraries
After a long journey a cleaned up and split C library was committed to the ABIv1 branch. Next to a clean up and some improved documentation, the main part of the patch is a split of the ANSI standard part from the POSIX part. This allows using standard C functions everywhere in AROS without having a POSIX emulation overhead added.
Raspberry Pi
In 2012 we reported that AROS was running on the Raspberry Pi, but hosted on top of Linux. In 2013 a native version of AROS for this compact and ubiquitous platform emerged, with support for USB, SD card and graphics (at least with the aid of the proprietary binary blob that Linux also relies upon).
Scalos ported
The Wanderer/Workbench replacement Scalos has been ported to AROS. Currently it is only available in nightly builds of ABIv1 of the i386 platform. Scalos can either be started like an application from Extras:Scalos or it can replace Wanderer by exchanging Wanderer:Wanderer by Scalos:Scalos EMU in S:Startup-Sequence.
Sound drivers
Three new drivers were added for VIA audio controllers, namely some of their Envy24, Envy24HT and AC97 chipsets. Compatibility of our HD Audio driver was also increased, and it now supports a wider range of controllers and codecs.
Miscellaneous
Lots of smaller improvements were also made, including bug fixes and refactoring to components such as ATA and SATA drivers, filesystems and partitioning, EFI support, and system shutdown. User interfaces received some attention too, with the Zune GUI system gradually becoming more complete, and new preferences utilities for GRUB and theming options.