I'm not going to ask for permission to offer my opinion about AROS.
And anyone that has used it (or tried to use it) knows its not ready for prime time.
Don't get me wrong, but Iggy was absolutely right. I also told Leo Nigro that while I was very excited at the idea of a Commodore branded product coming with Icaros Desktop (yes...), I also felt quite uncomfortable with the FACTS that 1) there were no more software than the one in the distro, and 2) even that software didn't behave exactly well, with 3) AROS having a bad attitude to crash. In a nutshell, selling 1000s or 100,000s computer that crashed 2 or 3 times a day wouldn't be a wise move for Commodore USA. Sad but true, time for bundling AROS with Commodore products should have been delayed to a wiser date, when all bugs were fixed, ABIv1 would be a reality, and most applications were ported to it.
Commodore should have behaved like an italian
mecenate: if intentions were serious, it should have contributed to bounties and helped development of the operating system. Unluckily, at this point in time someone in Hyperion wrote (here or on AW.net, I don't remember) that a Commodore Amiga branded PC with AROS would have been a violation of the agreements with Amiga Inc, so Commodore USA had to choose wether paying money for development of a OS that couldn't even be used for the sake of others, and dropped its interest into AROS, in favour of a customized Linux distro. People can tell what they want here, but CUSA decision was the better (and the only) they could take, sad but true. Someone may argue everything is possible, even an agreement with Hyperion to port AmigaOS on x86... but please be serious, how many of the people in the ordinary world, accustomed to what Windows, Linux and MacOS X can do, would jump back on the 20-years-or-so-old wagon of AmigaOS 4? If there were many, they would have been using AROS today. Are they using AROS? I don't think so.
The situation has dramatically changed in the meanwhile, but legal issues are still here and after all Commodore USA is not here to please us, but just to make money. I wish their luck after all, because I still love the idea of Commodore computers being still around, even if they aren't the ones I loved in the teen age. On my side, I would really be happy if Icaros worked fine on their PCs.
Uh, just that we are here I can give a side news: next Icaros is almost ready. It will change some rules, and I can't tell you more today. Stay tuned.
