I wasn't trying to FUD, I'm a huge supporter of AROS on both 68k and x86.
I suppose I was a bit too harsh in saying "not remotely binary compatible", but having just a few cli commands is far from loading up a real application. Those haven't even touched the UI yet.
As usual the subtleties of language are generally lost on a web forum
The ABI for the graphics library does use the wrong address register at the moment so in that regard there are binary incompatibilities, but these will be fixed.
It's important not to get the wrong message across, best to stick with the facts as they stand.
There is a lot in AROS that wasn't in OS3.1, for example the HIDD, that are required to be in the ROM. I'm not sure what the plan is, to support HIDD in ROM or have an OS3.1-like hardware banging arrangement, but shrinking it all down to 512k with HIDD seems unlikely.
A bare minimum should be possible with a 1Meg rom...
Toni wants to make a 1.3 and 3.1 ROM for use with WinUAE and old games. Anything that is added will use more ROM space and push it further from 100% compatibility.
That is up to Toni, there are plenty of ways to save ROM space if need be, as you say direct hardware control rather than using the HIDDs. But that is up to whoever is building the ROM
As much as our goals overlap, make no mistake, Toni has stated a free WinUAE ROM as his target which makes sense given his primary project.
As vidarh noted, ABI 1.0 will alleviate several of the problems I indirectly referenced, but we're not there yet. It will take more than just the ROM to get it functional.
I'm just saying that it's still a lot of work from all involved, not just Toni, but I'm extremely confident that he can pull off his part.
I am too.
