[HN Gopher] AROS is a lightweight, efficient, and flexible deskt...
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AROS is a lightweight, efficient, and flexible desktop operating
system
Author : doener
Score : 152 points
Date : 2021-02-24 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aros.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aros.org)
| yboris wrote:
| Bit off topic. Anyone remember _LiteStep_? An amazing easy way to
| customize and skin your Windows OS.
|
| http://litestep.net/
| lostgame wrote:
| Heck yes, I remember LiteStep.
|
| There was also the (commercial) WindowBlinds[1] by StarDock,
| and; for 10.3/10.4 OSX versions, ShapeShifter by Unsanity.
|
| I used to be _obsessed_ with desktop customization...
|
| [1]https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/
| [2]https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/unsanity-shapeshifter
| [deleted]
| krylon wrote:
| Before I got into Linux, I spent about half a year customizing
| the crap out of my Win98 PC using LiteStep. I must have tried
| about half a dozen alternative desktop shells for Windows back
| then.
|
| Fun times... Thanks for reminding me!
| kristopolous wrote:
| I met Mr. Aros himself at scale in LA a couple years ago.
|
| Every now and then I meet people who do pretty remarkable things
| that are so humble that it genuinely surprises me.
|
| Aros, VLC and Inkscape devs are the people that come to mind on
| this one.
|
| The debian people are also remarkably sane and modest for the
| levels of responsibility and complexities they have to deal with
|
| Edit: gosh, it was 10 years ago already
| (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale9x/exhibitors/aros.html). I
| think I still have the disc he gave me
| tubbyjr wrote:
| Have you had the pleasure of meeting Terry A. Davis?
| scruffyherder wrote:
| Yeah. It wasn't pleasant.
| [deleted]
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Why does all of these have such tiny and low-res screenshots?
| plun9 wrote:
| Old, but: http://nixon-development.com/guis/aros.html
| Qahlel wrote:
| Why every new OS seems like a bad skin of MacOSX or Windows 95
| UI?
|
| Please innovate...
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| If you have ideas, please share. Otherwise. STFU
| donatj wrote:
| There's no need to innovate on perfection.
|
| That's how you get the current mainstream operating systems
| that have minimalized to the point of uselessness and cleaned
| to the point what is a UI element and what is decoration.
| sidpatil wrote:
| My thoughts exactly.
|
| In my opinion, the mid-1990s to mid-2000s were the pinnacle
| of GUI design, specifically that of stacking window managers,
| in terms of usability.
| madhadron wrote:
| It's a reimplementation of the Amiga OS, which predates both of
| the systems you mention by many years.
| justapassenger wrote:
| AROS is anything but new OS. It started in 1995.
| McMini wrote:
| Funfact; AROS is also the name of a Danish art museum
| http://aros.dk/. AROS means River mouth in old Danish and is the
| old name of the second largest city in Denmark, Aarhus.
| stpe wrote:
| Same with Swedish city Vasteras with original name West Aros.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4ster%C3%A5s
| atomize wrote:
| West Aros. Like... Westeros? Is that where they got that from
| for GoT?
| robin_reala wrote:
| It's all a pastiche. Even the map is just Great Britain on
| top of Ireland: https://brilliantmaps.com/westeros/
| harshitaneja wrote:
| I am in awe of the museum's website. With so much of animations
| I expected it to be a terrible experience but it is implemented
| brilliantly and functions so smooth.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| For a desktop operating system, I was hoping for some more
| (recent) screenshots. While this seems to be under active
| development, the last screenshot is from 2017.
|
| (Obviously, screenshots really don't tell too much...)
| Narishma wrote:
| https://vmwaros.blogspot.com/2020/12/icaros-desktop-23-now-a...
| smm11 wrote:
| Just buy my real Amiga and get it over with.
| medicineman wrote:
| Furries? No thanks.
| y8y387r47r734 wrote:
| you are so stuipid
| snarfy wrote:
| I was hoping there was a rpi port. It seems this is x86 only.
| vidarh wrote:
| Definitively not x86 only.
|
| There are targets for ARM, x86, m68k, PPC.
|
| There is a target specifically for rpi, but I have no idea if
| it is currently functioning.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I presume you didn't get to have a look at
| http://www.aros.org/nightly1.php which contains links for
| multiple versions include rpi.
| snarfy wrote:
| Oh, nice! thanks
| mikece wrote:
| Who is the target audience for this operating system? What use
| cases does it seek to address?
|
| EDIT: is this a current project? References to running in a VM on
| Mac OS 9 with Virtual PC seem awfully dated.
| teddyh wrote:
| "aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level"
| unixhero wrote:
| It is upstream for other OS projects in the far alternative
| side of retro- and exotic- side of computing.
|
| Recent Github commits from this week, so I'd say it is active.
| vidarh wrote:
| The target audience is mostly a subset of former Amiga users,
| and the occasional person curious about retro-computing who is
| more focused on the software than hardware side.
|
| Yes, it's a current project - the mailing list is more active
| than it has been for a long time, though the number of
| developers active at any given time is probably in the single
| to low double digits (for a very generous definition of
| "active" - people sometimes pops up for a single patch and then
| disappears for years; this _is_ a niche project).
|
| [I wrote most of the scrollback support for the console handler
| about a decade ago. Haven't done much with it for years.]
| xeromal wrote:
| People who don't use HTTPS apparently. :P
| grahamlee wrote:
| you can build openssl on AROS: there is a port on Aminet of
| OpenSSL 1.1.1i that _will_ build (the maintainers only build
| for AmigaOS 3/m68k and AmigaOS 4/PPC but it'll work on
| MorphOS and AROS too), and of course aminet is available over
| HTTP which is how we avoid the bootstrap problem :).
|
| Aside: pretty much anything that will build on a BSD will
| build on an Amiga/AROS with ixemul.library, but some people
| think that's cheating.
| spijdar wrote:
| I think it's a jab at how AROS's site doesn't offer HTTPS.
| Personally I don't understand why some people are so
| bothered by this, but I guess conversely it's really easy
| to add letsencrypt to about anything nowadays...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Two obvious points where leaving it unencrypted is a
| problem: 1. downloads - which is mostly mitigated by not
| actually having software downloads on their own site,
| although of course now the _links_ are subvertable, and
| 2. they have a paypal donation form on
| http://www.aros.org/download.php - I _assume_ that
| clicking into that sends you to the real paypal page, so
| at least they 're not sending credit card details in the
| clear, but again leaves them open to a nice little tweak
| to change where the money goes.
| fogihujy wrote:
| They cater to what's left of the old Amiga community. It is a
| re-implementation of AmigaOS 3.x, so it's probably not for
| everyone. :)
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's a toy for developers who are building it. No real target
| audience, other than maybe some extreme Amiga geeks, who will
| launch it once every few months.
| squarefoot wrote:
| True, but it has been ported to other platforms, including
| ARM, which makes it interesting as graphical OS for embedded
| systems. I mean control panels showing data, graphs etc.
| rather than desktop applications. To me it would make sense
| to experiment with AROS on small boards where a full fledged
| Linux GUI would require too much beer to be usable, or simply
| to get the most performance from the available
| CPU/RAM/storage.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It could be cool toy for cases like that, but you need to
| do a lot of work yourself to get it to behave like embedded
| system, build custom ui, etc, aka, toy for developers.
|
| It's very dangerous to be used for real production. It's
| AmigaOS at the core, which means that it's fairly complex
| (compared to other embedded systems) and at the same time,
| comes with literally 0 security (shared address space for
| everyone for a start, before you go anywhere deeper with
| what's wrong with security). While it may not be a biggest
| concern for non internet connected devices, it makes it
| inherently unstable system (there are embedded systems
| without memory protection, but they're much simpler).
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love playing with toys like that (was
| involved in a broader Amiga community for a long long
| time), but for modern times, it's just a toy.
| vhodges wrote:
| Given the legal turmoil it's been adopted/forked for use on the
| Vampire series of Amiga accelerators/clones.
|
| See also: reactos (Windows2k) and haiku-os (BeOS)
| ethanpil wrote:
| Anyone interested in this legal turmoil should visit
| https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/
|
| I wonder if anything would have been different if the Amiga
| IP was opened to the public. Perhaps nothing...
| grahamlee wrote:
| To be clear, the legal turmoil in question is over the
| current ownership of the original Amiga brand and IP, not
| AROS itself. AROS is published under a license that is not
| OSI approved but is actually a fork of the MPL with the word
| "Netscape" changed.
| vhodges wrote:
| Ah, sorry for not being clearer. Yes this is what I was
| talking about.
| cmsj wrote:
| I wondered if the parent comment was actually talking about
| the Vampire folks distributing an AmigaOS image with
| programs/games pre-loaded, without having the rights to do
| so?
| grahamlee wrote:
| The ApolloOS distribution of AROS that Apollo ship still
| has plenty of proprietary software on it. In the Discord
| they've discussed that the problem they had with
| CoffinOS/Amiga Coffin was the rights to Amiga OS.
| spijdar wrote:
| One big difference is AROS only aims for essentially source
| compatibility with Amiga, while both ReactOS and Haiku aim
| for binary compatibility[0].
|
| I've only toyed around a little bit with AROS back when I was
| a teen, but my impression is it's something a bit different
| than just a clone of any Amiga OS. It's sort of Amiga-like,
| but does things differently, and targets very different
| hardware. Which I think is pretty cool :)
|
| [0] I believe Haiku intends to drop binary compat with BeOS
| at some point, maybe they already have? It's why Haiku still
| uses (used?) a version of GCC from 2003, for binary compat
| vidarh wrote:
| I think the M68k version does aim for binary compatibility
| where practical, but outside of M68k it doesn't really make
| much sense as AmigaOS4 on PPC deviates quite significantly
| from older AmigaOS, and for the other architectures there
| of course isn't any AmigaOS software.
| spijdar wrote:
| Huh, this is further along and more ambitious than I
| remembered!
| https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support
|
| Looks like it's pretty far along. Shame that old Amiga
| hardware is more and more unavailable nowadays, looks
| like this would be fun to hack on.
| vidarh wrote:
| If I were to get an m68k-ish machine to play with today,
| it'd almost certainly be a Vampire V4 Standalone. It's of
| course not acceptable to those who insists on classic
| hardware, but it feels like a close-enough evolution with
| sufficiently fun improvements.
| vhodges wrote:
| There are a bunch of hardware clones (usually need
| genuine custom chips). I think there are a500 and 1200
| replacement mother boards (and cases!). There is a
| replacement a1000 motherboard (just announced) and a
| Mini-ITX Amiga MB.
|
| There are of course a bunch of FPGA options including the
| Vampire v4sa which I would pick up, but is a bit on the
| costly side (~800CAD)
| vhodges wrote:
| There are two builds of Haiku right now, one using the
| legacy compiler for binary compatibility and a new one that
| updates the compiler at the cost of binary compatibility.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Seems a furry got to decide on the logo or whatever that is on
| the top right. No comments on that yet? I'm disappointed ...
| fctorial wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AROS_Research_Operating_System...
| qvq wrote:
| https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Eric_W._Schwartz
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| So I was right about the furry part it seems. Funny that
| just stating "seems a furry got to decide on whatever that
| on the right is" seems to be against the guidelines. I get
| that it can come across as being snarky, but I'm not a
| native speaker and lacked the word "mascot". Maybe I might
| miss something entirely different though. The rest is just
| stating facts. I stand by that and feel that it's super
| unprofessional to use a mascot like that.
|
| Thanks for the links, much appreciated!
| grahamlee wrote:
| > it's super unprofessional
|
| I don't think anyone is getting paid though.
| fogihujy wrote:
| The artist has a long history within the Amiga community.
| It's a project specifically catering to said community so
| it's quite on point.
|
| They could have some kind of explanation about it on the
| site though...
| Animats wrote:
| Another Amiga OS clone is a cute retro project, but this is not
| forward motion.
|
| Nobody seems to want to clone QNX, which is a better
| architecture. QNX was a great technology lost to bad marketing.
| Blackberry has it now, and it's used industrially and in
| automotive systems. But Blackberry dropped the desktop version
| and the hobbyist version, and you have to cross compile from
| Windows now.
|
| It was open source for a while, and was suddenly made closed
| source when Blackberry bought it. Sadly, no one seems to have
| saved the open source version. I wish I had. I didn't have enough
| disk at the time.
| snvzz wrote:
| Look into Genode, and their dynamic scenario, Sculpt.
|
| Note it is not QNX's architecture. It is a better one.
| vidarh wrote:
| It wasn't meant to be forward motion. It was started shortly
| after Commodore's bankruptcy as a way of providing continuity
|
| In fact there was a split between factions at the time who
| wanted continuity vs. something new. Nothing came of the
| attempts to create something new, but AROS persisted.
|
| It wasn't retro when it started.
|
| (Also this is the difference re: qnx: AROS persisted because of
| the then large, committed Amiga userbase and nostalgia... How
| many people have used QNX knowing they were using QNX?)
| swirepe wrote:
| Is this helpful? There is a folder called "repository" in this
| torrent.
|
| https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=6545894
| bkinman wrote:
| Funny that you mention this. You are actually the reason I know
| QNX. I spent a decent amount of time some years ago pouring
| over code code you wrote for the Overbot. Thanks for donating
| that to UCSC :)
| dmos62 wrote:
| I enjoy how sometimes you'll see people recognizing each
| other on HN despite the use of pseudonyms. Gives a sense of a
| tight-nit community.
| tombert wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what makes QNX a better architecture than
| AmigaOS? I had a Blackberry Playbook back in the day but that's
| the extent of my exposure to it.
| tkinom wrote:
| Used QNX 15+ years ago. The supposed best value is micro-
| kernel. Kernel is very small, all the device drivers, file
| system, TCPIP stack are run in user space outside the kernel.
|
| I have not used AmigaOS and no clue if it has the same micro
| kernel design.
| vidarh wrote:
| Sort of, but AmigaOS didn't have memory protection so the
| distinction doesn't mean much as the distinction between
| supervisor and user mode on a plain m68000 is very minor.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| We have Fuchsia now.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| As great as Fuschsia's architecture (the Zircon kernel)
| may be, I've yet to see any devices that come with it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I seem to recall when Amiga was bought by that PC clone company
| (their ads always featured lots of cows and the founder) they
| had QNX onboard to develop a new AmigaOS.
|
| But then the Amiga curse struck and it all went south like all
| the companies who got involved in the Amiga IP.
|
| He is dead Jim.
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