AROS Research Operating System

Infobox OS
name = AROS Research Operating System



caption = AROS showing its Cyrillic support
developer = The AROS Development Team
family = Amiga OS-like
source_model = Open source
latest_release_version =
latest_release_date = April 2, 2007
kernel_type =
supported_platforms = X86-64, x86, PPC
license = [http://aros.sourceforge.net/license.html AROS Public License]
working_state =
website = http://www.aros.org

AROS Research Operating System (AROS) is a free software/open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 APIs. Designed to be portable and flexible, ports are currently available for x86 and PowerPC based PCs in native and hosted "flavors", with other architectures in development.

Name

AROS used to mean Amiga Research Operating System, but to avoid any trademark issues with the Amiga name [ [http://amigann.com/?id=3309 AmigaNN :: Amiga News Network ] ] , it was changed to the recursive acronym AROS Research Operating System. [www.aros.org]

Current status

The project, started in 1995, has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS - with currently (as of March 2006) only a few lacking areas of functionality. This was achieved by the efforts of a small team of developers.

It can currently be installed on most IBM PC compatibles, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce range made by NVIDIA. As of May 2007 USB keyboards and mice are also supported. AROS is also planned to run on PowerPC boards Efika and Samantha.

While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including E-UAE, an emulation program that allows 68k-native AmigaOS applications to run in the same way a majority must be run on AmigaOS 4.0. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has TCP/IP networking support, and has available an experimental version of AMosaic web browser, for test purposes, among other Internet-related applications.

AROS is designed to be source-compatible with AmigaOS, but not binary compatible. Source code that will compile on AmigaOS should compile on AROS, but binaries already compiled for AmigaOS will not run, even if they are compiled for the same family of CPU. This unfortunately means that, unlike MorphOS or AmigaOS 4, AROS is not capable of running legacy software directly, only applications compiled for AROS. There are plans to integrate the Amiga emulator E-UAE directly into AROS to run AmigaOS applications, and even a bounty to run MorphOS software on the PowerPC build of AROS, but so far (January 2008) these objectives remain elusive.

The aim of AROS is to remain aloof of the legal and political spats that have plagued other AmigaOS implementations by being independent both of hardware and of any central control. The de-facto motto of AROS, "No schedule and rocking" both lampoons the infamous claim of Amiga, Inc. CEO Bill McEwen that AmigaOS 4 was "On schedule and rocking" (despite not existing at this time), and declares a lack of the formal deadlines that are traditionally broken by other AmigaOS clones.

Programs

See also

* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/User/Docs AROS User Documentation]
* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Developer/Docs AROS Developer Documentation]

* Wanderer (AROS)
* Zune (GUI toolkit)
* Emulator
* Virtual machine
* Porting
* Binary compatibility
* Open source software

References

External links

* [http://www.aros.org/ AROS: AROS Research Operating System]
* [http://www.aros-exec.org AROS-Exec] - discussion forum for AROS
* [http://www.aros.bbs.pl "AROS Polish Team"] - Polish translating for AROS
* [http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros2/ Bounties]
* [http://www.aros.ppa.pl AROS-PL] - Polish AROS community
* [http://archives.aros-exec.org AROS Archives: AROS software repository similar to Aminet]
* [http://aros.aminet.net AROS section of Aminet]
* [http://www.arosworld.org AROSWorld Community]
* [http://members.shaw.ca/guis/aros.html AROS Bootable CD screenshots]
* [http://arosshow.blogspot.com The AROS Show] - News and information about AROS