New web browser

AROS's usability has made a huge leap with the porting of the modern and standards-compliant Odyssey web browser. Based on the WebKit engine, Odyssey includes a JIT Javascript compiler, and supports tabbed browsing, HTML5, CSS, SVG and SSL. It is also highly configurable, with a GUI allowing management of bookmarks, cookies, content blocking, history, passwords and more.

Platforms

Support for the ARM architecture has continued to mature and diversify, with nightly builds for Linux-hosted AROS versions now available. There is particular interest among users in running AROS on the ARM-based Raspberry Pi, albeit in Linux-hosted form for now.

There has been further development on other AROS platforms too. The Windows-hosted version has seen numerous bug-fixes, and is now a lot more stable, while the compatibility of the original Amiga version with legacy software continues to improve.

Networking

Wireless networking support has matured, with the addition of two new WPA-capable drivers: one is for Realtek RTL8187B-based USB devices, and the other is an updated version of the Prism-II driver that first brought wireless networking to AROS in 2005. A GUI utility to dynamically scan for and connect to wireless networks has also been introduced.

Mobile broadband is now much easier to set up, and additional USB devices and phones are also supported. And AROS can now mount SMB share drives, although this capability is currently limited to older versions of Windows, as well as Linux and standalone NAS devices.

Other improvements

Initial printing support has been introduced to AROS. Components of the new framework include a preferences GUI, a PostScript printer driver and several traditional utilities such as PrintFiles and GraphicDump. Output can be directed to USB, parallel or serial ports, or to a file.

Our Intel GMA driver has gained 3D support for certain chip revisions. Although the GMA hardware has more limited 3D capabilities than recent nVidia and AMD cards, many older games (of which many have been ported in recent times) still run well. We also gained an OpenGL driver for Linux-hosted 3D graphics, and an updated nVidia driver.

The selection of audio drivers available for AROS has improved, with new drivers becoming available for ES137x and CMI8738 sound chips. The former is significant in that it provides audio output under VMWare. Our HDAudio driver has also gained wider compatibility in both playback and recording modes.

There have been improvements in accessing disks from AROS. We now have an AHCI driver that provides native SATA support on many modern machines. In addition, standard Windows partitions can now be read using an early version of an NTFS filesystem handler, and write speeds to FAT partitions have been improved. The newly open-sourced version of the Frying Pan CD-writing software is also now a standard AROS component.

Last but not least, our Papercuts initiative led to many small but annoying bugs being fixed throughout AROS.

Wider developments

AROS now has its first distribution for the original (MC680x0) Amiga platform, AROS Vision. As well as AROS itself, AROS Vision includes many freely distributable third-party AmigaOS system components and applications.

Another new AROS distribution is AEROS, which aims to combine the best features of AROS and Linux by integrating them into a seamless environment. There are currently versions for x86 and ARM systems.

AROS 68k and other new platforms

An important new chapter has been opened in AROS's history with the development of a stand-alone AROS port for the original Amiga computers. This should also be of great interest to people using WinUAE to run old Amiga applications. Such is the level of compatibility, the AROS ROM image can even boot original Workbench disks as old as V1.3. This development will hopefully also lead to improved integration of original Amiga software into AROS on x86 platforms and elsewhere.

AROS's platform support has continued to diversify in other directions too. A Linux-hosted ARM port has emerged, and new hosted ports for Mac OS X support three different CPU architectures. And AROS may soon become even more portable with the recent development of new iOS and Android ports.

Graphics

On the PC-compatible/x86 front, a lot has been happening too, particularly in the area of graphics. The Intel GMA graphics driver has been extended to support a wider variety of chipsets, and also now works with laptop LCD displays as well as external monitors. The Nouveau and Gallium based driver for nVidia graphics cards has been improved too: as well as increasing its speed and hardware support, it has also become the first driver with hardware-accelerated alpha-blending operations.

A notable graphics feature from our Amiga heritage has also been introduced to AROS: most native graphics drivers now support screen dragging and scrolling. These include our drivers for nVidia and Intel GMA chipsets, as well as the generic VESA driver.

Apart from the graphics drivers, AROS also received some additional graphics libraries: egl.library and openvg.library. The first provides portable GL initialisation and window management interfaces, while the second is a vector graphics library accelerated using Gallium. Our port of the SDL library has become more polished too, with improvements to features such as SDL-to-GL integration, leading to a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Wireless networking

Two significant milestones in network support for laptops have been reached. Firstly, a modern and secure wireless networking stack has been added to AROS. The first driver to use this infrastructure supports many popular cards with Atheros chipsets. Secondly, support has been added for a wide variety of mobile broadband USB devices.

Other improvements

Debugging support and error reporting have been improved. Misuse and mismanagement of memory and other resources by applications is now more easily detected, and error reports now include stack traces showing where the error occurred.

A lot of fine tuning and ease-of-use improvements have been made to various components. The FAT filesystem handler has received a number of important bug fixes. Native graphics drivers are now typically activated automatically for detected graphics cards, and the AC97 and HDAudio sound drivers usually need no manual configuration before use. And at last, AROS is no longer stuck with one unchangeable mouse pointer: the standard pointer to use can be chosen in a new pointer preferences program, and applications can change the pointer to suit different situations. The AROS shell has become more sophisticated, and now has a scrollable output history, as well as support for more modes and some bug fixes. AROS's handling of GUI themes has also become significantly faster. Finally, another piece of the backwards-compatibility jigsaw has been filled following the transformation of Regina into a much more complete ARexx clone.

Wider developments

AROS now has a third distribution available in addition to the regularly updated Icaros Desktop and AROS Broadway. The new AspireOS distribution is aimed mainly at the Acer Aspire One 110 and 150 netbooks, but may also be interesting to users of other PCs looking for a lightweight distribution.

Many applications and games have been added to AROS's software selection in recent months. Some application highlights include AmiFig, Protrekkr and Open Universe. 3D games such as Cube, AssaultCube and Super Tux Kart (with a popular kitty car!) put AROS's 3D graphics enhancements to good use, while many 2D games such as Giana's Return and Mega Mario have also arrived. We have added a number of emulators too to allow even more retro gaming fun to be had.

Latest updates

Many things happened since the latest status update.

Michal Schulz developed the GMA950 hidd, so AROS can now use 2D native functions of the latest GPUs from Intel. This will be really handy for people using Stephen Jones' iMica systems and netbooks like the Acer Aspire One A150.

Krzysztof "Deadwood" Smiechowicz has gone really far with his Gallium3D port to AROS: he has now integrated 2D and 3D accelerated functions in a single driver called Nouveau, which supports 2D acceleration for almost all GeForce GPUs starting from the ancient GeForce 2 cards until the recent GTX 200 series. 3D functions, however, are available only to GeForce FX (5x00), cards and upwards. Some models and GPUs might not be supported yet. Users of Nvidia cards may now regularily use this driver, instead of the old Nvidia one. This will also help Krzysztof fixing it, as it is still work-in-progress. Please refer to this AROS-EXEC topic to help him spotting and fixing bug (and please remember he's not directly responsible for driver quality: he's just adapting and porting to AROS what has been done by Nouveau/Gallium team).

Pavel Fedin is reworking our graphics subsystem, cleaning it up and making it behave like the original Amiga one: the day we won't need anymore to enter driver names in GRUB boot lines is approaching. Some drivers can now be mounted moving them in the Monitors directory (like on AmigaOS), while others not yet. But he's still working on it. Pavel is also fixing linux framebuffer driver and his Win32-hosted version of AROS, which can now move screens like classic Amigas.

Neil Cafferkey has vastly improved our support to FAT partitions, and also made AROS installable on USB pendrives (and bootable from them). This means that regular nightly builds, but also Icaros Destop version 1.2.2 can now be installed on netbooks and other USB-bootable systems using a memory stick instead of a DVD. Paolo Besser has written a complete how-to in PDF format, and placed it on the Icaros website.

Pascal Papara has brought us a brand new distribution called Broadway, which is targeted to attract also people never involved with Amiga computers, and include a stripped down version of the incoming AMC, the first media-center environment based on AmigaOS-like systems. Broadway is not complete yet, but a nice preview version can be downloaded from its website.

Steve "ClusterUK" Jones has announced a new silent version of his iMica line of computers. This Atom-based system will be as performing as the old one, but it will also run completely fanless. We also have to thank Steve for his funding efforts: after paying Davy Wentzler for his useful AHI HDAudio drivers, he also financed the port of the Catweasel MKIV controller drivers and the development of Michal's GMA driver.

Good news for ACube's SAM440EP users too: since April 14th, AROS nightlies are available also for this nice PPC platform, which is still actively mantained. Michal Shulz has also recently brought a EFIKA version of AROS too.

Nick "Kalamatee" Andrews has slightly improved Wanderer and some long- running bugs have been fixed. AROS won't nest directories recursively anymore, when a drawer is placed into its own window by mistake, and AROS desktop can now be populated using the leave out/put away options, which are now finally enabled. He is also working on icon and list view: files can now be listed by details and sorted as you prefer.

There are also many small and big enhancements ongoing "under the hood" and coming from third party software developers, but they are simply too much to be mentioned here. We apologize with them, but we'd also like to say a big "thank you!" to anyone helping us in any way, porting applications, creating new ones, writing documentation and/or just evangelizing AROS inside and outside the Amiga community.

Latest updates

It's been a long time since the latest status update, however many things happened in the meanwhile.

First of all, Chris "platon42" Hodges has opened the sources of his Poseidon USB stack under the terms of the APL, and ported it to AROS: after some weeks of tweaking, adapting and bugfixing, AROS can now handle USB 1.1 and 2.0 controllers. Any USB device should be correctly detected by the operating system, while mice, keyboards and other input devices should be correctly handled as well. Most USB pendrives and storage devices work, while others don't yet, due to some fat.handler issues we're investigating about. Other devices will be supported in future, when someone will write the necessary drivers.

Thanks to Poseidon, AROS can now boot from USB CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. This allows installing AROS on a wide range of notebooks and netbooks like the Acer Aspire One A150. This netbook is now a fair good hardware platform for AROS: Steve Jones and Davy Wenzler wrote a HD Audio driver for the iMica computer which covers also this one and a wide range of Intel-compatible mainboards, and the Icaros Desktop distribution introduced a way to get correct 1024x600 resolution on the GMA9x0 video chip.

Przemyslaw "Qus" Szczygielski's TCPPrefs utility has been fixed and added to the AROS prefs utilities: pokeing with script and configuration text files is not required anymore to connect to the Internet. Matthias Rustler has ported Scout to AROS, so closing offending windows and crashed applications should be easier than before. Kernel stability has improved a lot thanks to many fixes from Neil Cafferkey and Pavel Fedin.

Neil Cafferkey vastly improved our ata.device, which now supports many SATA controllers. Any SATA enabled computer which can be turned to work as 'IDE' in the BIOS settings, however, should work with AROS.

Stanislaw Szymczyk continued to update OWB, fixing bugs and problems, and adding new features like bookmarks, application menu, splash screen, the ability to open HTML files and so on, and he's now heading to release version 1.0 of his modern, CSS and JavaScript enabled web browser. OWB is a quite flexible tool, since allows AROS to run most web-enabled applications.

Yannick "Yannickescu" Erb has ported to AROS some interesting games like Open Tyrian, Super Methane Brothers and SDL Ball, and wrote ZuneARC, a standard and customizable Zune frontend for command-line archivers already available for AROS. You can find these and other interesting stuff on his website. Some nice games have been ported also by AROS_EXEC.org user Fishy_fis. Don't miss his DOSBox port to AROS!

Simone "samo" Bevilacqua ported his Amiga game BOH to AROS, and it behaves nicely! BOH is the first commercial game available for the new Amiga platforms.

Krzysztof "Deadwood" Smiechowicz ported version 7.5 of MESA to AROS, and is adding hardware 3D acceleration capabilities to AROS with his ongoing port of Gallium3D. For now, he has just released an alpha demo of this technology running on GeForce FX, 6 and 7 series video cards. A nice video showing the GLExcess demo running on AROS is here.

Paolo Besser has released version 1.2 of the Icaros Desktop distribution. The new version includes the ability to run old Amiga games straight from their ADF files, thanks to some new AmiBridge scripts and a old version of E-UAE. In the meanwhile, Oliver Brunner has improved Janus-UAE integration, allowing AROS to run AmigaOS 3.x applications inside AROS windows. To do both things, however, users must provide a working installation of AmigaOS 3.x and original kickstart, maybe using Cloanto's Amiga Forever.

Behind the scene Staf Verhaegen is still working on a new standardized ABI for AROS. Hopefully the moon and the sun will be right one day this year and the ABI can see the light of day.