AEROS for Pi - beta available on SD-card

[phoenixkonsole]

The AEROS-distribution for Raspberry Pi is now in beta phase and can be purchased on SD-card. Existing customers and donators, should have got a email with login-data to get the image from http://www.aeros-os.org as well.

AEROS is a Linux-hosted AROS-distribution. This version for Raspberry-Pi works a little bit faster (video) than the last beta. A light version will be made available for free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovapju44ABU

[youtube]Ovapju44ABU[/youtube]

Changes in beta 1:
Moved to debian wheezy
Made AROS autostarting
Changed base application in respect to the Pi's performance

Changes in beta 2:
Fixed "lx - command"
-> launching linux apps is now working properly
deactivated unnecessary services to improve startup and SD-access.

--------
Don't mix this with AROS native. A native Version for the Pi is in the works.
It is a "AROS hosted" distribution.

There is high interest in the Raspi-Image so i ran out of traffic many times.

In the moment i hope to reached everyone who bought a single app or donated in the past. (http://www.ares-shop.de or http://www.aros-broadway.de or http://www.aeros-os.org). If i missed someone please email me.

You can but don't need to buy a sd card here on ebay:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/AEROS-for-Raspberry-PI-beta-on-SD-card-/151061981128?pt=Klassische_Computer&hash=item232bfee7c8

Shipping is included (EU/UK). If you feel it is too much you can make a price offer. You will get a login for aeros-os.org and lifetime upgrades/updates.

Genesi will bring new ARM systems, MESA supports some ARM GPU's (eg A220)  so HostGL as on AROS hosted x86 could become reality.

While the Pi is not the ideal desktop system it is cheap and developers can begin to port apps and games.

The money will be collected and reused for ARM specific bounties.
I use ebay because "you" can see how much are sold which is as transparent as possible.

[nicholas]

Looks good, well done!

Perhaps you could look into the OpenElec Pi distro, it boots on my Pi in about 10-15 seconds.

http://www.openelec.tv

[ChaosLord]

Dear AROS Expert:

I am a gamecoder and I have some questions about 32bits per pixel gfx modes of 1280x1024 or higher resolution on Raspberry Pi.

Is it possible for me to perform Hardware Assisted AlphaBlitting when using AROS?

Or must I do all alphablending using the CPU?

I can do it with the CPU and all that... its just that gfx chips are alleged to blit faster than CPUs.  For that to be true they would have to support AlphaBlitting.

AmigaOS3.x does not have any sort of built-in support for AlphaBlitting.  AFAICT I am required to do all alphablitting with the mighty 68060 CPU.

AmigaOS4.x has built-in AlphaBlitting in the OS with functions that look like normal AmigaOS style blitting functions.

I assume MorphOS has AlphaBlitting but I didn't check.

[bbond007]

Is it possible for me to perform Hardware Assisted AlphaBlitting when using AROS?

Or must I do all alphablending using the CPU?

as long as the OpenMax libraries are installed you should be able to open an 32bit RGBA OpenGL ES or OpenVG in full screen(or window) that exists on an independent plane/layer than the X11 window manager which in this case is Aros.

I do this in a program I wrote for the RPi I track the position and mouse movements of a dummy X11 window and move my hardware OpenVG "window" around accordingly. Most likely X11 is running in 16bpp anyway....

right around there.

https://github.com/bbond007/raspytube/blob/master/kbjs.c#L648

and here:

https://github.com/bbond007/raspytube/blob/master/gfxlib.c#L653

[ChaosLord]

as long as the OpenMax libraries are installed you should be able to open an 32bit RGBA OpenGL ES or OpenVG in full screen(or window) that exists on an independent plane than the X11 window manager which in this case is Aros.

A lot of what you are saying is sailing way over my head. :crazy:

I am a lowly asm coder who needs things explained simply.  I haven't used Unix in a zillion years and was never any sort of unix expert.

I guess what you are saying is "AROS has no built-in AlphaBlitting functions but you can get around that limitation by using an OpenMax library" ?

Is OpenMax.library an AmigaOS style shared library?

Why isn't OpenMax library included with AROS?

I can't have a successful game if I have a giant instruction manual that says NO you CANNOT play my game until you go to 10 different places and download and install 10 different libraries, etc. etc. yada yada yada...  No gamer will bother with that.

[bbond007]

I guess what you are saying is "AROS has no built-in AlphaBlitting functions but you can get around that limitation by using an OpenMax library" ?

Is OpenMax.library an AmigaOS style shared library?

Why isn't OpenMax library included with AROS?

I'm not saying anything about the blitting capabilities of Aros. I'm just saying that I understand that it runs on an X11 server acting as a window manager, and the accelerated capabilities of the X11 server are quite limited and the X11 server (on the RPi) typically runs in 16bpp anyway due to performance reasons.

Much like on the amiga (where you need to access hardware & software API's to program the cooper, blitter, paula, etc.)  on the RPi you'll most likely want to take advantage of the BCM 2835 via the VideoCore API which I was confusing for OpenMax.

http://elinux.org/RPi_VideoCore_APIs

Anyway, who says its not included? I'd assume its probably is... if not i'm sure its one "apt-get" away.

The code I linked to just showed trick method of making a 32BIT RGBA window appear on a 16bit X11 desktop.

[bloodline]

@ChaosLord why not check out the link bbond gave you ( http://elinux.org/RPi_VideoCore_APIs ), spend $20 on a Raspberry Pi and have some low level fun with one... I did and it's really good.

[Hattig]

Dear AROS Expert:

I am a gamecoder and I have some questions about 32bits per pixel gfx modes of 1280x1024 or higher resolution on Raspberry Pi.

Is it possible for me to perform Hardware Assisted AlphaBlitting when using AROS?

Or must I do all alphablending using the CPU?

I can do it with the CPU and all that... its just that gfx chips are alleged to blit faster than CPUs.  For that to be true they would have to support AlphaBlitting.

AmigaOS3.x does not have any sort of built-in support for AlphaBlitting.  AFAICT I am required to do all alphablitting with the mighty 68060 CPU.

AmigaOS4.x has built-in AlphaBlitting in the OS with functions that look like normal AmigaOS style blitting functions.

I assume MorphOS has AlphaBlitting but I didn't check.

Whilst AROS won't have exposed it yet, the Raspberry Pi hardware actually has a really powerful 2D compositing hardware built in, that Wayland will make use of within Linux.

I forget where I read this originally, but elsewhere I read that the hardware can blend one gigapixel per second: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4053

[phoenixkonsole]

There will be backward compatibility to X11 apps. Xwayland. All in all performance is already good. The bigger window in the video shows beta1 where a lot "error banging" was present in the backgound.
 
Beta 2 is way quicker and snappier.