Is AROS and AmigaOS 4.1 the samething?

[wawrzon]

Basically the problem is that you have to buy second hand hardware, and then it'll probably work. People tend to assume that because it runs on a PC, that it'll run on a recent PC - but that's usually not the case.

what? im not interested enough in x86 to actually run aros on it, but last time i tried a livecd on my i7 it was working. i really cant imagine, what do you base your claims upon..

Only having the API from an old version of AmigaOS from 1994 is not a good thing though - and in fact AROS has its own API.

of course it extends upon 3.1 api, but you can still stick with it if you want. after all, it wasnt me who stated, aros is just 3.1 compliant.

[spirantho]

what? im not interested enough in x86 to actually run aros on it, but last time i tried a livecd on my i7 it was working. i really cant imagine, what do you base your claims upon..

Experience, and http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/x86_support ...

If you have an i7 system that boots AROS with native accelerated graphics, full sound, full SATA then you were very lucky indeed! Making drivers for AROS is an incredibly difficult process, so there's a latency between release of hardware and drivers emerging; hence most hardware you can get that's new isn't natively supported by AROS.
Luckily you can run it hosted, but that's not ideal.

[zylesea]

Hey guys,

I am wondering if I get an AROS machine would I be getting the same experience as I would be getting with AmigaOS 4.1? Can you say that AROS is AmigaOS 4.1 for x86? Would I get the same Amiga experience as well? The problem I have is I have the latest most modern motherboard and x86 I could imagine as such it is not compatible with AROS in any shape or regard. The other problem I have...is installing AROS natively to the HD. I have always had bad experience with that...that and the fact the AROS cannot support more than 128 GB of HD space so if I get a 1 TB HD I am in big trouble. What do you guys suggest here?

Thanks in advance.

Well, go for it. One of the real big advanatges of AROS is that it is free. Download and play with it. I think AROS has quite some potential, albeit at current development state I much, much, much prefer MorphOS (way more polished, stable and has much more usable software).

[nicholas]

Basically the problem is that you have to buy second hand hardware, and then it'll probably work. People tend to assume that because it runs on a PC, that it'll run on a recent PC - but that's usually not the case.

That's not even close to being true.

If you said "outdated hardware" you might be closer but MorphOS and OS4 only run on even more outdated hardware.

Yet AROS runs on top of the line Intel and AMD CPU's both 32bit and 64bit, also various 680x0 ARM and PPC CPU's, has full hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics on the best hardware money can buy, full USB2.0 support, proper DMA, runs hosted on top of other Operating Systems as varied as Android, BSD, Linux and OSX without depending on emulation, runs natively on genuine real Amiga hardware, I could go on forever.

I love my MorphOS boxes as much as anyone (1 Pegasos, 2 PowerMacs and a PowerBook on its way for my birthday present) and you'll have to prize my real Amigas from my cold dead hands (I even used to run OS4 on a BPPC but it wasn't a pleasant experience but I'd gladly run it on a faster hardware should it ever be ported to something that isn't overpriced junk) but I don't live in cloud cuckoo land, its blatantly obvious that AROS supports far more hardware than the Amiga OS or MorphOS OS4 do combined.

It is also the only realistic future for the platform in the long term due to its Free and Open Source nature. When the MOS Team get bored/die of old age and Hyperion run out of money, the AROS code will still be out there on the interwebs for anyone who wants to put it on new hardware.

[AmigaBruno]

I wonder if someone can help me? I've recently tried and failed to install AROS Icaros Desktop and I haven't even got a copy of Aeros yet, because the server was being rebuilt or something like that. It's now scheduled to download within the next 2 hours.

I prefer the idea of Aeros because my original plan in 1999 was to run Linux to continue the same attitude as the Amiga, but then I found that Linux looked and felt too much like Windows, no matter which distro I used.

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite C660D, with an AMD E-350 CPU (64bit, dual core 1.6Ghz), 2Gb RAM ("1.6Gb usable"?!), and a 320Gb hard drive. It came with Windoze 7 Home Premium. After my first failure to install AROS Icaros Desktop, I installed Ubuntu Linux 12.10, but had to give it only half the drive because it didn't tell me which partition was for Linux!

Whenever I try to install AROS Icaros Desktop, first of all under Windoze I click on a file I think is called called Win32-start.bat, which runs AROS Icaros Desktop under Qemu, but an error comes up in a console (i.e. MS-DOS) window saying that the accelerator program has failed. I clicked on the OWB browser icon, which then took 6 minutes to start up! When I click on the icon to install AROS, it takes over an hour no matter which options I select. I'm not able to select and save a keyboard layout or locale settings, then I just have to click on Cancel to get out of them. I read various messages for most of the time saying that AROS is copying and installing files, after being told that I've already set up AROS partitions. I have no idea where these partitions are. Finally, I get a message saying that AROS is running a post installation script, after a warning that it will seem like the installer has frozen. This never ends, or if it does I don't know how many hours I'm supposed to wait. I then cancel, or close the whole AROS Icaros Desktop Qemu window, then reboot to find that there's no sign of AROS at all!

Of course, I've had a warning that AROS has no guarantee that it won't corrupt data on its own or all partitions on my hard drive. How serious should I take this?

I've seen AmigaOS 4.1 IRL and I'm not very impressed, because most of the time people seem to use it for Internet access instead of for creating something. AmigaOS 4.1 Kickstart starts to boot with a text only screen and then an X shaped pointer appears, meaning there's a Linux/UNIX X Windows server. Of course, the Amiga OS/Workbench/AmigaDOS is descended from UNIX via Tripos, and Commodore announced that they were basing a new Amiga OS around Linux, so there's no reason it shouldn't use X Windows. Unfortunately, it demands specific custom hardware, or upgraded classic hardware in order to run. AFAIK there's no reason it couldn't run on a Power PC Mac, or a Power PC games console (e.g. PS3, XBox 360, or Wii), but UBoot checks for specific hardware to make people buy an expensive computer to run it on.

[OlafS3]

I am more 68k than X86 but perhaps I can give some tips. Qemu is very slow so I would recommend a virtual machine instead (if you do not want to install it native, do not have the hardware or wants to risk it). Download f.e. VMWare and install it. Download Icaros ISO and burn it on DVD. Then put in the ISO and start VMWare and install it in VMWare. That is the safe way to test it (and much faster than QEmu)

[spirantho]

AmigaOS 4.1 Kickstart starts to boot with a text only screen and then an X shaped pointer appears, meaning there's a Linux/UNIX X Windows server.

There's no X in AmigaOS.... I'm not sure what you were seeing but it wasn't X.
AmigaOS 4 is AmigaOS, not a UNIX of any kind (same as AROS)

[nicholas]

You need to burn the Icaros image to a disc or USB drive then boot your laptop from it.

You've been running it in an interpreted PC emulator on top of Windows that's why it was so slow.  If you want to run it on Windows at near native speed you need to install virtual box or buy VMware/Parallels.

[spirantho]

Yes, running it under a virtual box is not representative of AROS. You need to run it native as it's a much nicer experience (and blazingly quick on most x86 CPUs)

[AmigaBruno]

There's no X in AmigaOS.... I'm not sure what you were seeing but it wasn't X.
AmigaOS 4 is AmigaOS, not a UNIX of any kind (same as AROS)

The name of it is AmiCygnix. It's specially created for AmigaOS, but is an X Windows server. Android is based on Linux, but without an X Windows server.

To sum up, the original Amiga idea was UNIX + Atari 8 bit + fun & games + 16/32 bit hardware = Amiga.

[AmigaBruno]

You need to burn the Icaros image to a disc or USB drive then boot your laptop from it.

You've been running it in an interpreted PC emulator on top of Windows that's why it was so slow.  If you want to run it on Windows at near native speed you need to install virtual box or buy VMware/Parallels.

I downloaded it, burnt it onto DVD, then tried to boot from it, but it wouldn't boot. I then booted into Windows and clicked on the DVD icon, but it only wanted to try and burn the image onto another DVD or CD. I found some files under a directory called Live. There was a README file and two BAT files for 32bit and 64bit versions of Windoze. Only clicking on the 32bit BAT files gets the DVD to start up AROS Icaros Desktop.

[OlafS3]

Install a virtual machine, put in DVD and then boot the CD in the virtual machine and install it there

[spirantho]

The name of it is AmiCygnix. It's specially created for AmigaOS, but is an X Windows server. Android is based on Linux, but without an X Windows server.

To sum up, the original Amiga idea was UNIX + Atari 8 bit + fun & games + 16/32 bit hardware = Amiga.

AmiCygnix is just an X server for AmigaOS - in the same way as Cygwin runs under Windows, so AmiCygnix runs under AmigaOS.
You can run AmigaOS perfectly without going anywhere near Unix compatibility - it's just a program written by someone.

[nicholas]

the Amiga OS/Workbench/AmigaDOS is descended from UNIX

No it wasn't.

To sum up, the original Amiga idea was UNIX + Atari 8 bit + fun & games + 16/32 bit hardware = Amiga.

No it wasn't.

[nicholas]

I downloaded it, burnt it onto DVD, then tried to boot from it, but it wouldn't boot.  

Not really giving us much to go on are you?

I suggest you create an account at http://aros-exec.org and make a post with a tad more detail than "it no workee" if you want people to actually be able to help you.

[phoenixkonsole]

AEROS r4 will be available in last quarter of 2013 for ARM, PPC and x86.

AEROS r4 itself comes with no AROS except the 68k Version. LX68k isn't working yet as it should but in "theory" you can run Linux apps from the emulated 68k environment.

AEROS r4 will also come with a boot loader which allows to install "native" AROS distributions, they will be automatically added to the Boot loader.

BIOS->AEROS->Bootloader->AROS/AmigaOS/LINUX.
You can also install some PPC OS on top of it, while in fact using a x86 machine.

Personally i am checking the possibility of an ARES PPC with MOS/AmigaOS and AROS. Based around the SAM460ex.

The ARM version is working on an 13.3 inch MW8550 Notebook available for less than 170€ or less than 80€ if ordered as 1K batch.