So, whats up with AROS? Is it dead?

[amigappc]

Last news published in news section is from 2016?

http://aros.sourceforge.net/news/

I am little off scene, I considered buying MAC PPC to install MorphOS, but price for the license is way to high for hobby machine.
So I though about AROS and now I see that last news in from 2016?

[4pLaY]

No it is not dead but those with access to the aros.org page are not very good at updating the News section.

btw, you can check out www.aros-exec.org for the latest news from the community.

[Retro1234]

I don't know why anyone would bother with MorphOS or OS4 when there's Aros?

But then again I think any Amiga OS has missed the boat there's some really good OSs being developed now.

Then again Amiga OS has an ease of use to perform serious stuff* that Linux Distros never had, some kind of Amiga shell for other operating systems would do for me.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I don't know why anyone would bother with MorphOS or OS4 when there's Aros?

I wonder how much time you've spent using each of these systems? If you've spent considerable time using all three then fair enough.

But then again I think any Amiga OS has missed the boat there's some really good OSs being developed now.

Indeed, I don't know why anyone would bother with Amiga OS or AROS when there's Haiku. And so on...

[Retro1234]

I was thinking more Android Distros, these are brilliant give me a Amiga Shell or maybe a command prompt but not Linux Shell and it would be brilliant.

I've been so wrong about Amiga OS but Android is a big player but Google not really pushing it for desktops and Google are ********

[amigappc]

can Aros natively run on Mac mini PPC 1.5?

[jPV]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I don't know why anyone would bother with MorphOS or OS4 when there's Aros?

Why's that? Only because AROS is free and runs on more common HW? Do you expect that they're exactly the same otherwise (features, maturity, etc)? Why do you think there would be three different OS if there isn't any difference between them but just price? Why anyone would bother to go for a beef in a restaurant when you can do dumpster diving for free food?

I have all those three operating systems installed on my machines, and I know very well why I'm using MorphOS as my daily system. I'd suggest you to try too before making this kind of statements.

[Retro1234]

Yet MorphOS and OS4 guys cry why cant we have a x86 version but it already exists and its free so stop wasting your time on these other OS and focus on one OS.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Yet MorphOS and OS4 guys cry why cant we have a x86 version but it already exists and its free so stop wasting your time on these other OS and focus on one OS.

If you say so then. I personally don't want x86 version, because I like 68k compatibility and I'm happy with PPC.

And again, "x86 version already exists" but x86 version of what? AROS isn't MorphOS or OS4, and they don't exist in x86 versions. They're different beasts as I tried to say. Try them FFS and talk then.

[Tigerskunk]

Morphos seems to be the most developed thing these days. Why‘d you want to use aros if it doesn‘t even cater to your daily needs.

[Samurai_Crow]

MSchultz is resurrecting the RasPi version in big endian mode.

[Gaula92]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

MSchultz is resurrecting the RasPi version in big endian mode.

What does that mean? Native or hosted on GNU/Linux again?

[Samurai_Crow]

Native but using big-endian byte ordering means it can run AmigaOS 3 code with a simple JIT like MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.

[Gaula92]

Holy smokes!!

https://www.patreon.com/michal_schulz/posts

The MAN has it already booting on Raspberry Pi in Big-Endian mode! This is SO promising!

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Then again Amiga OS has an ease of use to perform serious stuff* that Linux Distros never had, some kind of Amiga shell for other operating systems would do for me.

As much as I love the Amiga shell, it's pathetic compared to bash!

[grhmhome]

Originally Posted by Gaula92

Holy smokes!!

https://www.patreon.com/michal_schulz/posts

The MAN has it already booting on Raspberry Pi in Big-Endian mode! This is SO promising!

Please forgive me moderators if this is necro posting.

The guy is now working on USB support for the Raspberry PI.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/time-for-usb-22947623

[saimon69]

I remember kalamatee was working on it (USB support on Raspberry PI) couple years ago but there were some problems; hope Michal will solve it

[MartinW]

I spent the early part of this year trying AOS4, MorphOS and Aros because I wanted to form my own opinion of each. Before I get into Aros, here is a very quick and dirty summary of my opinion:

All of the "NextGen" Amiga OS's suffer badly with hardware issues. AOS4 suffers because you need to sell your first born to be able to buy something to run it on and it takes a very dedicated enthusiast to want to spend that much. Morph suffers because it only (currently) runs on old hardware that is often slow and often dying. And Aros suffers with hardware pretty much for the same reason. x86 (and 64) it may be but it's very, very picky about what it will run on and very little of it is new kit.

I bought hardware to run Morph and Aros (and used WinUAE for OS4). I liked Morph a lot (and bought a license). It's very polished and most stuff works very well. There is rumour of an x86/64 version in the future. If it sees the light of day and runs on modern hardware (Skylake+) then I very much look forward to it.

OS4 was not a desperately great experience under emulation and while I could buy an X5000 tomorrow I simply cannot justify that kind of money on a play thing (I can't even remotely contemplate using it as a replacement for my daily driver as it can't begin to do everything I need it to do - at least I don't think it can!)

So that brings us to Aros.

I liked Aros. A lot. But it was buggy as hell. I bought a little netbook which is one of the proven machines it will run on. Obviously it's underpowered and old but still I liked it. I signed up to the dev list and started to play. I built my own copies and back ported a Mac keyboard layout from Morph (ironic really since they based their code for that layout on the core Aros code!). I never got round to submitting it because I could not be sure I had done it right even though it worked for me.

Here's the thing that made me stop. At the time development was in crisis. Commits had been pretty quiet for a while but to top it the most active developer, rage quit in the time I was there and I could not see it going anywhere. I'm happy to say that I just checked the repo and it seems to have picked up again so hopefully it will gain some more momentum. Maybe I'll have another look. I'm too busy at the moment though. Also, I cannot for the life of my get my head round the build system that they use and I imagine that is never likely to change so that kind of rules me out anyway since it's like Voodoo to me just getting the thing to build.

But there doesn't seem to be a general joined up direction and effort which is a shame. Point in case is the sheer amount of "things" it supposedly has been ported onto. Jut because you can, doesn't mean you should and unless you are going to support it throughout the entire lifetime of the product, what's the point? I think Morph has the better idea here. Pick some hardware options and stick to them, but stand by it and support them. Obviously preferably make sure you pick stuff everyone wants

Which brings us to the Raspberry PI. Now this news is interesting. Not because a port could be coming for PI, I think they are underpowered pieces of hardware that will be filling up landfill soon enough (I know I will be flamed for that), but because the guy doing it clearly seems to know his stuff and it means general stuff will get fixed along the way so that can only be a good thing but for Aros to become really great it needs more (as in quantity) of highly experienced low level developers. And that's the problem with every project of this type you come across, there simply aren't enough on the planet. There are plenty of developers but not enough that know hardware level coding.

Ultimately, and sadly, I don't see any of these operating systems really going anywhere in a hurry because they have all missed the boat. The main OS's have left them behind in the dust long ago. But hey, that's OK as long as they all accept their lot as a hobby thing and don't think they are suddenly going to be Windows, Linux or MacOS beaters.

All of this is obviously just my opinion. BUT, it's an opinion based on several months of hands on experience earlier this year and not just speculation.

For the record I'm a developer of 28 years but an application developer, not a low level type person.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by MartinW

Which brings us to the Raspberry PI. Now this news is interesting. Not because a port could be coming for PI, I think they are underpowered pieces of hardware that will be filling up landfill soon enough (I know I will be flamed for that)

No flaming here buddy, but what I will say is that they are underpowered only until you have a use for them where they have just the right amount of power!
I have one running DNS, another as a NAS doubling up as a download/torrent box, another running as a retro console station and another performing miscallaneous ad-hoc duties.

The only way I can see them going into landfill is if the operating system software support stops. Even then, that's only a concern for the two of mine that access the internet. Love those little boxes!

[MartinW]

Yeah, they certainly have their uses. I did run a beta of a web based product I was working on on one until a few months ago. But boy was it a pain to get all the recent PHP / Laravel stuff running on it. I guess my comment is based on trying to use them as a "normal" desktop linux which seems to be where they really start to show their limitations.

I was thinking more about this over lunch. I actually changed my mind and think Aros on PI is nothing but a good thing. It is exactly what I advocated should be done. It's a finite system where the SOC and all its other components are fixed and known. So the only question then would be once up and running, just how performant is it? Only time can answer that one. If it performs well enough that decent accelerated graphics is viable then it will be a great thing to move the project forward because it will be something that people either already have or can very easily go and buy without spending much.

I'd still like to see Aros on a modern iSeries architecture (or AMD) with Nvidia, Intel or AMD graphics etc.

Oh, PS: I did try it on top of Linux but I had problems there too. Off hand I don't remember what they were and I would prefer a pure option.