Guest post by Icaros Desktop, the distribution for i386 PC of the AROS Research Operating System (an open source revival of classic AmigaOS) reached version 1.2.6 and introduces new improvements and features.
They’re trying to satisfy both the old Amiga users, with features like the iconic screen-dragging on selected video cards (one of the ingredients that actually made the Amiga look so different to any other computer platform in its gold age), and modern ones like support for encrypted wireless networks and the addition of MESA 7.10, Gallium 3D and EGL/OpenVG libraries, which should make porting and building of modern 3D games and applications easier.
This release includes also the Bochs emulator, which allows Icaros to host in a virtual machine other operating systems like FreeDOS, Linux and, with some efforts, even Windows. Emulation is slow but still usable, although the distributor states that “it is more a proof-of-concept, a way to demonstrate that AROS is ready for this kind of jobs, and an open invitation to port other virtualization technologies”.
Since the beginning, Icaros Desktop efforts went in a precise direction: trying to make AROS complete enough for everyday use, with the addition of a wide range of applications and functions (games, emulators, network clients, paint and music programs, programming languages and so on). It’s now possible to connect the AROS machine to any Windows, Linux or MacOS X computer or server running VNC or Remote Desktop, and even vice-versa; i.e., exporting the workbench screen on any other system with a VNC client.
Tasks, windows and resources can be handled with the Scout task manager, that now opens in its own screen using a key combination. Files can be exchanged with other computers over the network using an embedded ftp/http server, or manually moved on a pendrive with the Poseidon USB 1.1/2.0 stack. The whole system can also boot up from USB devices, allowing users to bring their whole installation and projects always with them.
Icaros Desktop 1.2.6 is available in two versions, Light and Live!, targeting single CD or DVD installation media.
I’m going to have to try this out!
My only problem is the developers insistence on using a proprietary compression method on their files.
I just don’t want to install 7-Zip just to de-crypt one file. Complaints to the developers go unheeded.
There’s a reason everyone used ZIP compression. It’s a standard, and widely supported. 7z files aren’t.
The developers of AROS are more interested in forcing their compression program preference on users than providing something that user can use. There really isn’t a reason to compress .iso files anyway.
7z is not proprietary, the specs are documented and 7-zip sources are available under the LGPL.
http://www.7-zip.org/
Free, Flossy, and their tool is a big improvement over winrar on windows…
.zip is also ancient and inefficient (space-wise) compared to newer compression methods such as bz2, 7z, and xz – time to get out of the stone age eh?
I’ve been using 7zip (software) exclusively for all my archiving needs on Windows for years now – it creates ultra-tight .zip files too for those who need compatibility.
Edited 2011-02-04 04:19 UTC
So why didn’t they use it create an ‘Ultra-tight’ standard openable on everything .zip file? Instead of something that requires the user to spend 5-10 minutes finding some obscure often strange program that opens it?
They want people to try this, why add the additional step? to save 4 or 5 MB of a 216.3MB download?
You don’t have 7z on your Linux systems? It’s better than unrar at least. It can decompress most anything, and follows the magic code method to determine which algorithm the file is compressed with, like BSDtar does. It does not have the stupid GNUtar dependence on file extensions.
7z has to follow the magic key method because it analyzes the files to be archived and uses one of multiple algorithms to compress the files. It could be compressed by either LZMA or bzip2.
7-zip is THE BEST lossless data compression program on Windows.
Get with the times.
If they wanted something really esoteric, they would have compressed the file in a PAQ* compression, which would give them awesome compression, but take all your system resources and 4 days to decompress.
Maybe because they’re working on a research OS, so the idea of an “extra step” as tiny as installing 7z isn’t considered a big deal… because it isn’t.
Yeesh.
The nice thing (for users) about .zip files is that Windows can extract those without any additional software.
But what a minor thing to upset about. Just install one of the multi-format compression utilities; you’ll undoubtedly need it more than just this once.
The whole point is NOT to have to install additional cruft on my system to expand ONE file.
No other software requires a proprietary format utility to expand the distributable.
Most developers trade a small savings in size for ubiquity. ZIP files can be expanded in Windows, MacOS and Linux without need to install a special program.
The replies in this thread are EXACTLY the user unfriendly replies I’m talking about.
“WAAAAAAA!!!”
Shaddap, whiner.
He did not seem unfriendly to me at all.
1. The Live! version come in a auto-extracting archive, so you won’t have to install anything to extract it. If you don’t use Windows but Linux, you are supposed to rename the file cutting the ‘.exe’ and leaving just the final ‘.7z’ extension, and there are 90% chances that your distribution’s file and package managers will be able to handle it. If you’re using MacOS, than you’ll probably have to spend 5 minutes of your time to download 7zip.
2. As other said, 7zip is open, free, and produces smaller archives than classic zip. Smaller archives means also minor download time, minor spent energy, and also minor bandwidth used to transfer the file. A difference of a few dozens megabytes over a 700 MB file might seems small for a single user downloading it, but when downloads are some thousands, they turn into many gigabytes or even a terabyte off. I think you can easily figure the economic and ecologic gain of it.
3. I can’t exactly understand why a person that makes downloading of a single program a problem, should download and install a whole new operating system that will bring him the necessity of learning everything from scratch. You have issues downloading and installing a little, simple, tiny file decompressor… what will you do when you’ll not find your ‘explorer’, your ‘firefox’ or your ‘opera’ anymore?
4. Your trolling about the 7zip issue had success: nobody actually talked about the distribution, about AROS progresses, about all the efforts we put into this, but you succeeded turning this thread into a compilation of obvious answers. All this with a pathetic rant about a compression format. Applause.
You want to download and use en entirely new experimental operating system, yet complain about having to install 7-zip?
Fail.
Ha! exactly.
Hater’s gonna hate
7-zip is a modern open compression format.
ZIP was proprietary, but 7-zip is free and opensource.
BTW everyone around me has 7-zip installed.
Maybe it is a time to leave the ancient cage you’re in?
Edited 2011-02-04 11:30 UTC
Woah, 1 comment about AROS, 14 about 7-zip so far.
If I had a computer with GMA900 graphics I’d probably be running Icaros now. I’m a huge Amiga fan and I have played with AROS every now and then since the 90s. It’s amazing how far it has come in just the last year considering how little user-visible progress there were the last 15 years.
AROS also supports a lot of nVidia cards and some ATI ones. VESA modes work well in most cases too.
Whoever would complain about Bochs’ emulation speed would be missing the whole point of this piece of software, in my opinion.
Bochs is about fine-tuned, highly accurate x86(_64) emulation. You can emulate a wide range of processors and processor capabilities with it, and it has some pedantic obstination in closely mimicking the behavior of some real-world BIOSes, CPUs, buses, etc, save for some tricks like the zeroed-out RAM and the e9 port hack.
This makes it a perfect fit for OS development. But when you want to emulate a stable OS for testing purposes, you generally don’t want all this stuff, just something which runs as fast as possible, which is noticeable implying an emulated machine which is as close to the hardware you run it on as possible (to reduce the emulation overhead). The design decisions of software suited for this purpose, like VirtualBox, reflect that.
Edited 2011-02-04 18:16 UTC
I am still getting “No bootable media” when I install Aros on my computer. I have tried almost everything but no luck. See this forum post for all the gory details.
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5497&foru…
I have tried ATA=nodma, ATA=32bit, tried passing root=/dev/sda12 to the kernel line but no dice.
I really would like to try it out..
@neolander
No one is complaining about bochs speed. That’s just a warn to everyone accustomed to Vbox/VMware expecting the same speed. It’s a great satisfaction having Bochs running inside AROS, but for many reasons I’d love to see some different virtualization solutions being ported too. If somebody would try…
@gyressh
Maybe your computer has too much partitions, and AROS grub2 isn’t able to handle them correctly? A brighter future will come, thanks to the fact that next AROS GRUB2 will be the normal GRUB2 every other operating system already know, but for now I’d suggest to install AROS on a USB pendrive and try booting straight from it.