Ny Webbläsare

AROS användbarhet tog ett stort steg frammåt i.o.m. att den modernare och webbstandard-kompatibla Odyssey Web Browser (OWB) portades till AROS. Baserad på WebKit-motorn, inkluderar Odyssey en JIT Javaskript kompilator och har stöd för surfning via flikar, HTML5, CSS, SVG och SSL. Odyssey erbjuder även med sitt grafiska användar gränssnitt (GUI), hantering av bokmärken, historik, lösenordshantering med mera.

Plattformar

Supporten för ARM-arkitekturen har fortsatt att mogna och variera sig, via nattliga uppdateringar så finns det numera Linux-underbyggda AROS ARM system tillgängliga. Ett speciellt intresse finns i att använda AROS på ARM-baserade Raspberry Pi system, vilket nu börjar bli möjligt då en Linux-understödd AROSvariant har börjat se dagens ljus för just detta system.

Vidare så har arbetet med andra plattformar för AROS fortsatt. Den windows-underbyggda versionen har fått ett antal programfel åtgärdade och är numera betydligt stabilare, samtidigt som kompatibiliteten med original-Amigan har fortsatt att förbättrats.

Nätverk

Trådlös nätverks hantering har mognat i.o.m. två nya WPA-kompatibla drivrutiner. Den ena för Realtek RTL8187B-baserade USB-nätverkskort. Den andra är en uppdaterad version av Prism-II-drivrutinen, som var den första drivrutinen för trådlösa nätverk redan 2005. Ett grafik baserat hjälpmedel för att skanna och ansluta till trådlösa nätverk har också sett dagens ljus under året.

Mobilt bredband är numera betydligt enklare att konfigurera och använda. Fler USB-enheter och telefoner stöds. AROS kan numera hantera delade SMB enheter. Dock begränsas detta till äldre windows och linux versioner samt NAS enheter.

Andra förbättringar

Begynnande skrivarstöd har initierats till AROS. Komponenter till dom nya strukturerna inkluderar ett grafiskt gränssnitt, en postscript-skrivarerutin samt flera traditionella tillbehör som t.ex. en grafisk fildump och en Printfiles-funktion. Utskrifter kan omdirigeras till USB, Parallell eller Serieport eller alternativt till en fil.

Vår Intel GMA drivrutin har fått 3D support för vissa chip-revisioner, dock har GMA hårdvaran begränsade möjligheter jämfört med modernare nVidia och AMD-kort. Många äldre spel (av vilka flera har portats på senare tid) fungerar dock bra. Vi har också fått en OpenGL-drivrutin till Linux-underbyggda 3D-grafik-system och en uppdaterad nVidia drivrutin.

Utbudet av ljud drivrutiner tillgängliga för AROS har förbättrats, bl.a. med drivrutiner till ES137x och CMI8738 ljud-chippen. Den förstnämnda är speciellt intressant då den erbjuder utgående ljud under VMWare. Vår HD Audio drivrutin har också fått en bredare kompatibilitet vad gäller ljudåtergivning och inspelnings lägen.

Förbättringar har gjorts gällande diskåtkomst från AROS. Vi har nu en AHCI-drivrutin som tillhandahåller grundläggande SATA-tjänster på flera moderna maskiner. Tilläggas kan även att standard windows-partitoner nu kan läsas tack vare en tidig version av en NTFS hanterare och skrivhastigheten till FAT-partitoner har förbättrats. Nya open source CD-brännar-programmet Frying Pan är nu en standard komponent i AROS.

Sist men inte minst ledde vårt "papercuts" initiativ till att många mindre men irriterande programfel har rättats till i hela AROS systemet.

Vidare utveckling

AROS har nu fått sin första utgåva för original (MC680x0) Amiga-plattformar, AROS Vision. Såväl som till AROS-systemet självt, AROS Vision inkluderar många fritt distribuerbara 3:e-parts-AmigaOS-systemkomponenter och applikationer.

En annan ny AROS utgåva är AEROS, som riktar sig till att kombinera det bästa från AROS och Linux i en väl samansvetsad miljö. För nuvarande finns versioner för x86 och ARM baserade system.

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.