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AROS Research Operating System (AROS) is a free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
/open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1
AmigaOS

AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000....
 API
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
s. Designed to be portable and flexible, port
Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable Computer program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed ....
s are currently available for x86-based and PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
-based PC
Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator....
s in native
Native mode

The term native mode is used in computing in two related senses.*to describe something running on a computer natively or in native mode meaning that it is running without any external support as contrasted to running in emulation....
 and hosted flavors, with other architectures in development.

used to mean Amiga Research Operating System, but to avoid any trademark issues with the Amiga
Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer....
 name, it was changed to the recursive acronym
Recursive acronym

A recursive acronym is an abbreviation that recursion in the expression for which it stands. The term was first used in print in April 1986....
 AROS Research Operating System.

project, started in 1995, has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS - with currently (as of October 2008) only a few lacking areas of functionality.






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AROS Research Operating System (AROS) is a free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
/open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1
AmigaOS

AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000....
 API
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
s. Designed to be portable and flexible, port
Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable Computer program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed ....
s are currently available for x86-based and PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
-based PC
Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator....
s in native
Native mode

The term native mode is used in computing in two related senses.*to describe something running on a computer natively or in native mode meaning that it is running without any external support as contrasted to running in emulation....
 and hosted flavors, with other architectures in development.

Name

AROS used to mean Amiga Research Operating System, but to avoid any trademark issues with the Amiga
Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer....
 name, it was changed to the recursive acronym
Recursive acronym

A recursive acronym is an abbreviation that recursion in the expression for which it stands. The term was first used in print in April 1986....
 AROS Research Operating System.

Current status

The project, started in 1995, has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS - with currently (as of October 2008) only a few lacking areas of functionality. This was achieved by the efforts of a small team of developers.

It can currently be installed on most IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible

IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM Personal Computer XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT....
s, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce
GeForce

GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chip designed by Nvidia. The first GeForce products were designed and marketed for the high-margin PC gaming market, but later the product's releases expanded the product line to cover all tiers of the graphics market, from low-end to high-end....
 range made by Nvidia
NVIDIA

Nvidia is a multinational corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processing unit technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and mobile devices....
. As of May 2007 USB keyboards and mice are also supported. AROS has been ported to the PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
 board SAM4404EP from ACube Systems and is also planned to run on Efika
EFIKA

EFIKA is a small single board Power Architecture based computer manufactured by Genesi.It is based on a 400 MHz Freescale PowerPC 5000#MPC52xx System-on-a-Chip and adds 44-pin 2.5" AT Attachment, USB, RS-232, stereo audio in/out, 100 Mbit/s Ethernet, 33/66 MHz Peripheral Component Interconnect port and 128 MB Double data rate RAM...
.

While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including E-UAE
Unix Amiga Emulator

UAE is a computer emulator which emulates the hardware of the Commodore Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License, UAE is free software....
, an emulation program that allows 68k-native AmigaOS applications to run in the same way a majority must be run on AmigaOS 4.0. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has TCP/IP networking support, and has available an experimental version of AMosaic
AMosaic

AMosaic is an Amiga porting of the Mosaic web browser, developed starting from 1993. It was the first non-*NIX port of Mosaic, and the first graphical web browser made available for the Amiga....
 web browser, for test purposes, among other Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
-related applications.

AROS is designed to be source-compatible with AmigaOS, but not binary-compatible. Source code that will compile on AmigaOS should compile on AROS, but binaries already compiled for AmigaOS will not run, even if they are compiled for the same family of CPU. This means that, unlike MorphOS
MorphOS

MorphOS is a computer operating system . It is a mixed proprietary software and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC -processor-based computer, most models of PPC-accelerator-equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi Firmware, including the EFIKA and mobileGT....
 or AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4

AmigaOS 4 is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. "The Final Update" was released in 24 December 2006 after five years of development by the Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment under license from Amiga, Inc....
, AROS is not capable of running legacy software directly, only applications compiled for AROS. There are plans to integrate the Amiga emulator E-UAE directly into AROS to run AmigaOS applications, and even a bounty to run MorphOS software on the PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
 build of AROS, but so far (January 2008) these objectives remain elusive.

The aim of AROS is to remain aloof of the legal and political spats that have plagued other AmigaOS implementations by being independent both of hardware and of any central control. The de-facto motto of AROS, "No schedule and rocking" both lampoons the infamous claim of Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc.

Amiga, Inc. is the company that holds the intellectual property associated with the Amiga personal computer , including the Amiga trademark....
 CEO Bill McEwen that AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4

AmigaOS 4 is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. "The Final Update" was released in 24 December 2006 after five years of development by the Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment under license from Amiga, Inc....
 was "On schedule and rocking" (despite not existing at this time), and declares a lack of the formal deadlines that are traditionally broken by other AmigaOS clones.

Distribution

The main AROS system files can be downloaded in many flavours from the project website. These files are compiled straight from the SVN source tree at night time, and are available as nightly builds. Nightlies also include some third party applications to allow people using the system for very basic tasks. Starting from November 2007, however, there is a new distribution called VmwAROS, which is available for x86 only and can be used both directly as a Live-DVD, and in a pre-configured virtual machine.

Programs


See also



  • Wanderer (AROS)
  • Zune (GUI toolkit)
    Zune (GUI toolkit)

    Zune is an object-oriented widget toolkit which is part of the AROS project and nearly a clone, at both an application programming interface and look and feel level, of Magic User Interface , a well-known Amiga shareware product by Stefan Stuntz....
  • Emulator
    Emulator

    An emulator duplicates the functions of one system using a different system, so that the second system behaves like the first system. This focus on exact reproduction of external behavior is in contrast to some other forms of computer simulation, which can concern an abstract model of the system being simulated....
  • Virtual machine
    Virtual machine

    In computer science, a virtual machine is a software implementation of a machine that executes programs like a real machine.Definitions...
  • Porting
    Porting

    In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable Computer program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed ....
  • Open source software


External links

  • - discussion forum for AROS
  • - Polish translating for AROS
  • - Polish AROS community
  • - News and information about AROS