This will probably be more of a blog than a post...
im trying to do a long story short, please bear with me.
My first computer was the C64 in 1985, and in 1987 i got my first "girlfriend" and i was hooked. The A500 stayed with me for a decade. followed up by an A2000 in 1997. however me being a noob at that time with hardware fried both the 500 and 2k motherboards in an attempt to install an icd addide.
Later that summer swapped a car subwoofer (pioneer TSWX 100) for an A1200 with a disk box and a 1942 monitor (the one in my signature). i was back in the game again.
during the 90s my friends moved away from the amiga platform, and i did to eventually in 1999. an amd K6 400 running W98se.
i started liking another os. as time went on i got used to the new platform and started enjoying playing games on it.
Ive never been a programmer, never had the interest to do so. I'm a gamer. thats it.
Still as time went by i moved on to W2K, XP, and now W7.
For me the windows platform always was a platform where I installed the os, the drivers and tweeked some few settings. like backdrop (or wallpaper as it is called nowdays). Installed the DX suite and just enjoyed playing games. as simple as that.
Linux was not an option, like stated earlier I'm not a programmer.
Mac was out of the question to, due to a very limited budget for computing.
A few years ago i wanted to go back to the "early" days of pc gaming. i wanted to play diablo the first game i ever played on a pc and enjoyed. even before i got my first pc. still have the play discs.
As i never got W7 to run diablo stable. a friend of mine suggested virtualization in stead. so i did. VMware. and W98se.
Now a few days ago i wanted to go back to that game again. I retried the VMware suite. but i never got it to run. and a friend suggested virtualbox from oracle. and its free.
I got a running machine with W2K this time. installed diablo and jamella to reset the character i had from before. and i found myself back in my still favorite game continuing from LVL 30 where i left off some years ago.
But the ease of use of the VB suite got me wondering. what else can it do?
Linux, ubuntu 14.04 X64. running like a charm. and actually quite crispy.
then i remembered i tinkered with another virtualization suite. qnx amiga. which i never got to run.
/me not being a programmer...
But i started looking again. i have already used MorphOs on my efika. end enjoyed it. but wanted more "umph" from the computers side.
I remembered reading about aros here on the forum before. so i looked it up.
found a downloader. and instructions on google how to install aros/icaros (the website says so, i have no idea what it really is...)
After a few days of intense tryouts i finally had aros on my virtualbox.
The os itself looked and felt quite nice. and changing the gui layout to look like os 3.1 i felt like home.
this i could enjoy.
HOWEVER:
that feeling of beeing home and enjoyment went out the window the instant i tried configuring it.
have me excused if i step on someones toes. or if i am a complete ignorant noob. i am still not a programmer.
I was trying to change the screen resolution. normally done from prefs. but, no. not at all.
finding tutorials and hints on google i tried looking up the grub.cfg file to maually edit the resolution. but no.
and that anoying grub boot screen... i mean WTH?
after a lot of cursing and some loss of hair on my head. (and i am bald form before.)
i resided that it was best to leave it at that. it looks like the grub bootloader is pretty predeterment on what resolutions i can select and use.
Then i wanted to change the hideous backdrop, sorry... splashy wallpaper..
again. no avail. looking at google. finding some tricks to change the wallpaper. the wanderer is pretty sure it has changed it. but i see only the default but ugly splashy wallpaper on the desktop....
Then i found dopus.
my world is saved. I thought... but... having OCD i wanted my custom setup in dopus. in left pane i need to have SYS: and in the right pane i need to have RAM:. this is just how i need it to be. (dont ask) saving the config. restarting dopus. nope... try again, saving config, restarting dopus. nope. restaring the computer.. nope none of the changes done is stored in any aspect of the prefs of the os.
my verdict:
im not sure what to say. it looks really nice. it runs crispy, even in a virtaluzed enviroment (dont know if that has any significance).
But the inability to configure it from the prefs... no sorry... that is just a nice try. this is sad. it looks so good....
I will not spend time installing the aros/icaros platform on a real hardware machine. that is for sure.
