| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |
| New Icaros Desktop supports old Amiga M68K applications |
| By special contributor paolone on 2012-07-20 19:21:46 |
| The AROS distribution Icaros Desktop has made its next step towards compatibility with legacy Amiga workbench applications, including an entire AROS enviroment compiled for the classic Amiga platform, which is almost binary compatible with the original Amiga OS 3.1 (and its extensions). When the user needs an old program, he or she only has to fire up the AROS M68K environment and run the application. The Amiga virtual machine can optionally be set to run at startup like a system service. |
|
| RE[4]: Comment by Minuous |
| By moondevil on 2012-07-22 07:38:18 |
|
> Mmm... I don't think so. Mac always was the 2nd platform of Amiga users. The use of PowerPC isn't casual. Only for Amiga users with deep pockets that did not play games or program. In Europe the Mac was bloody expensive. Usually costing twice as much as the PCs. Plus I never saw a Mac at a Demoscene party, nor in one of the demomags I used to read. The first time I saw a Mac live, it was a Macintosh LC in my first university year back in 1994, as there were a few models available for the students. On the IT department only a few teachers had them, the students were using PCs with UNIX, Linux and MS-DOS/Windows 3.x/Windows 95. Edited 2012-07-22 07:38 UTC |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Comment by Minuous |
| By Minuous on 2012-07-22 09:06:38 |
| Obviously you haven't looked at Aminet if you think there is no ReAction software available... |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By Zobeid on 2012-07-22 13:35:30 |
|
Of course nostalgia is part of it... The Amiga was probably the most widespread and popular computing platform to ever suffer total commercial failure (thanks to Commodore's mismanagement), so obviously there are a lot of people who don't want to let it go. (The inclusion of software like AMOS Pro and Hurrican says something about this too.) But, more than that... It's an alternative. Rational or not, some of us are attracted to the different, the offbeat. We don't think it should be the destiny of every OS to someday grow up and become a Unix or Linux spinoff. That applies not only to AROS and Icaros Desktop, but also Haiku, Syllable, etc. Also, it's small. Linux (at least in the mainstream distros) has followed the path of Windows and Mac OS X, and bloated out into a multi-gigabyte monster. It's really too much of a good thing. I feel like if an OS can't fit on a CD-R, it tells me something has gone way, way off track. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By djohnston on 2012-07-22 21:10:37 |
|
> Also, it's small. Linux (at least in the mainstream distros) has followed the path of Windows and Mac OS X, and bloated out into a multi-gigabyte monster. It's really too much of a good thing. I feel like if an OS can't fit on a CD-R, it tells me something has gone way, way off track. Hate to rain on your parade. I am an enthusiastic Icaros user and a longtime Linux user. But, the Icaros 1.4.5 iso is 2.5GBs in size. That will hardly fit on a CD-R. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By Zobeid on 2012-07-23 00:20:01 |
|
Well, it's an 800 MB download.... I guess they must have a lot of compression going on there! I have to really wonder what's taking up all that space. This is supposed to be a near-clone of Amiga OS, right? I remember when Amiga OS came on six 880K floppy disks (not counting the Kickstart ROM!). I know AROS has got a lot of additional stuff: dev kit (it was available separately for Amiga OS), a TCP/IP stack, email, web browser... not to mention AMOS Pro, Hurrican and various other apps... and drivers... but still. How did it get this big? |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By ferrels on 2012-07-23 02:44:33 |
|
Just like MorphOS, the point is that you can have an Amiga-like system on modern hardware. AROS includes 3D hardware acceleration via GAllium 3D with all the eye-candy we've come to expect from late generation nVidia hardware as well as all the other niceties that we've come to enjoy from low-cost, modern hardware. As I said in an earlier post, that's the whole point of AROS. AROS wasn't designed to re-live the glory days of 68K Amigas. If you want to do that, go and buy a classic 68K Amiga system or use one of the UAE variants under Windows or Linux. But until AROS gets broader software support, especially office apps, then 68K emulation will just have to be a stop-gap until that support improves. We need native x86 AROS native versions of Ignition (spreadsheet), and a few other tools before AROS is ready for everyday use. Edited 2012-07-23 02:45 UTC |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By moondevil on 2012-07-23 05:42:38 |
|
For me the whole point of the Amiga was its hardware. What we were able to do with clever 68000 Assembly coding coupled with the Paula, Denise and Agnus chipsets. No emulator is going repeat this type of experience. For those of us that used to do this, the operating system was just a mean to get to the hardware. Nowadays time is better spend doing clever tricks with GPGPU/Shader and audio DSP programming. On the other hand, we really need more operating system models besides the Windows/UNIX duality that we get on the desktop. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by Minuous |
| By paolone on 2012-07-23 07:41:47 |
|
> AROS is still missing large chunks of functionality. Eg. the standard GUI since 1999 is ReAction, this is not supported at all by AROS, neither are OS3.5/3.9 API calls. Standard, de facto GUI for Amiga OSes has ever been MUI. The ReAction path has been followed and endorsed by Hyperion, but most applications - even "NG" ones - use MUI and can be supported by AROS' Zune MUI clone. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By paolone on 2012-07-23 08:08:16 |
|
> i'm just trying to understand what the appeal is here. I mean I get maybe firing up a VM once in a while just to relive memories, but what is the point of completely rebuilding a long dead OS like this? AmigaOS made some real magic when hardware resources were scarce. At the times of first Pentium and Athlon processors I often asked myself how a low-footprint OS like AmigaOS would have performed on such CPUs, since it performed so well on a <10 MHz processor. I embraced the AROS project short after its birth because I felt it could give me an answer. And that's my motivation. I perfectly know the world has changed so much in the meanwhile. We've now multi core processors, multi CPU motherboards, hybrid architectures like APUs and all the power a GPU can give, not only with graphics. So now my new curiosity is about how Amiga can deal with all this, and once again AROS can give me the answers (although current stable branch supports just 1 CPU and has no OpenCL support yet, multicore stuff is in the works). Moreover, I grew up with the Amiga in the first 90s and loved its OS: there are many little habits I couldn't simply find in "mainstream OSes", so if I can have a way to continue with them, performing about the same tasks I can do with other alternatives, why shouldn't I? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: AMOS Pro is included? |
| By paolone on 2012-07-23 08:14:16 |
|
> I am an enthusiastic Icaros user and a longtime Linux user. But, the Icaros 1.4.5 iso is 2.5GBs in size. That will hardly fit on a CD-R. Icaros Desktop Live! is more than a operating system, it's a distribution. A full desktop environment. The OS itself is some MBs big and may fit on a 3.5" CD-R, while Icaros' Light version, which is "the OS + mandatory programs" (like a browser, a media player, the janus emulator and a little more), barely fits into a 700 MB CD. |
| - Score: 1 |
| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |