Icaros Desktop 1.2.6 has been released

[paolone]

The latest update to the popular AROS distribution Icaros Desktop is now available for download. The new version introduce video cards autodetection for native drivers, screen scrolling and dragging on Intel GMA driver (which can now use also embedded display of laptops and netbooks), some new games and applications and, obviously, many bug fixes and feature enhancements, two of them being the ability to associate thumbnails to image files in Wanderer windows and to run other operating systems on a Bochs virtual machine.

New from Icaros Desktop 1.2.5

- updated AROS system files to january 26th, 2011 build
- pressing lAros+Esc will now call Scout in its own screen
- Icaros now chooses the best graphics driver when possible
- added MESA 7.10, EGL and OpenVG libraries from Deadwood
- added Bochs PC emulator with DLX Linux and FreeDos images
- added ThumbNailGun and dt2thumb to "iconify" images with thumbnails
- added latest release of GMA driver with screen dragging
- added Dega, a Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator
- added WaetherForecast, a Google weather client
- added Txt2Pdf, a text-to-adobe PDF conversion tool
- added dgen, a Genesis/Megadrive emulator
- added Hatari, an Atari ST emulator with free OS
- updated Janus-UAE to version 0.8
- added ability to setup amiga environment to AmiBridge
- updated standard config files for old amiga models in AmiBridge
- updated SimpleMail to v0.36 and made it default mail client
- updated Lunapaint
- updated NASM
- updated PortablE
- updated MAME
- updated FUSE Spectrum emulator
- updated AmiStart configuration files
- updated Nouveau driver
- updated Regina.library
- updated DirectoryOpus configuration
- updated AmiStart configuration files
- added Giana's Return (experimental)
- fixed a issue with drive informations
- fixed icons in Wanderer detailed file view
- fixed bugs from previous version
- incorporated Icaros 1.2.5 patch 01 Zune theme and fixes

for further informations, downloads and screenshots, please go to the project's website, http://www.icarosdesktop.org

[paolone]

The only down side is that some games like DOOM will play, and others...
...well others still get the gray screen issue I mentioned elsewhere in these forums.

Oh, and I seem to be stuck in 640x480 mode.

What is your exact model of video card? and what GRUB option are you using at boot?

[paolone]

sweet, installed fresh, locks up just as much as 125 did. aros has some serious bugs somewhere under virtualbox.

What version of VirtualBox?

[paolone]

virtualbox 4.0.2 on an intel quad 64bit 8gb ram, using intel VT-x and VT-d for iommu etc

Icaros 1.2.5 didn't work at all with VirtualBox 4 due to the way VBox 4 handles the emulated ATA device. AROS developers had to modify something to accomodate Oracle product choices and I just hope this didn't lead to other problems that didn't exist before. Anyway, I suggest to run Icaros in a VirtualBox 3.xx installation (I am running Icaros on VBox 3 without issues), unless you haven't any serious reason to use VBox 4 with other operating systems. When AROS doesn't work it's not always an AROS bug.

[paolone]

Video Chipset: Intel 845G

Urgh. One of the worst Intel products ever. IIRC, it's even unable to handle VESA standards correctly. =(

Anyway, from time to time people suggest "that wonderful cheap nice and enough powerful piece of hardware that would be perfect for an AROS machine", but I have to repeat the same answer: AROS developers create drivers for the hardware they own, or for the hardware they are given if they have will or time, or then they may accept money and bounties to work on other hardware. Just suggesting ideal products is not enough, sorry. - but you can always consider coding the driver by yourself if you can, and help everyone else this way...

[paolone]

the problem with this is that microsoft, linux, freebsd, solaris, haiku didnt need to modify anything. Suggests AROS is doing something odd/out of spec with the ATA device...

Well. You can easily look into Haiku's, Linux' and AROS' sources to find what's wrong.