Regarding AROS, it's been awhile since I've played with it. I did try MorphOs, and it's very nice, and running classic software was very seamless and fantastic...BUT running on old hardware doesn't really appeal to me because it seems like a dead end, much like the Amiga was hardware wise (towards the end of days).
I've always like where AROS was going, but it was just not "there" yet.
Is it stable enough these days to be fully installed on the HD and run as a daily use desktop machine? I would like to write some code again for the Amiga... just as a hobby, but I am hesitant to dual boot it if there is a chance it's going to destroy my partition table and wipe out osx, windows, etc.
I realize it's not as finished as MorphOs, but it is open source and it runs on modern hardware so I think it has a better longterm outlook.
I periodically set up an AROS system.
For awhile I even kept a system dedicated to it (but have recently sold the 7600GT video card I kept for that purpose).
I am convinced that AROS will indeed "get there" on day.
MorphOS is already there, in fact its the most "there" of any of the NG OS'.
And yes, the hardware is not new.
Frank Mariak (Pega-1) has explored a port for the SAM460, but even though new, this PPC system would be slower than our current systems.
So I'll keep my G4 Macs, wait for G5 MorphOS support, and periodically check out AROS.
AROS has some serious potential (especially with ported OpenGL based programs).