Is AROS The Future of Amiga?

AROS is an open source continuation of the classic Amiga operating system, that today runs on all kinds of devices from Raspberry Pi's, FPGA machines, classic Amigas and standard PCs. But how well does AROS run in 2022, and is it a worthy successor? I try out the Icaros Desktop distribution.

▬ Contents of this video ▬

00:00 - The Modern Amiga Landscape and History
04:08 - Introduction to AROS
05:29 - Icaros Desktop AROS Distro
06:45 - Installation
07:54 - Squarespace Sponsor Slot
08:52 - Setup & Config
11:18 - Tour of Icaros Desktop
18:32 - Web Browsing & Network Tools
20:33 - Bundled Applications & Games
24:13 - Running 68K Classic Amiga Applications with AmiBridge
29:28 - Conclusion

Sources used in this video (with permission or under fair use):

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #Amiga #AROS #operatingsystem

[paolobesser]

Hello, I am the mantainer of Icaros Desktop and I would like to thank you for your video. It's always great to see proofs of appreciation of all the astounding work AROS and 3rd party apps developers have done. I am just trying to mix them all together in a way they can inter-operate to get the best possible modern Amiga-like experience.

[mshular]

With AROS, I wish we still had Fred Fish around. He rallied a lot of the community to open source and helped us get the tools needed to bring the platform forward without Commodore. AROS is the future, but getting a group of Amiga developers to agree on anything needs a respected early leader behind it. If only Carl Sassenrath or someone of the like would step up

[MGG]

Many years ago I hacked together AROS to run on a modified XBOX, had soldered 128MB ram also to be more useable, great fun, still have that machine kicking around somewhere :)
Maybe it's time to revisit it again.

[Vorper]

Pretty incredible that this level of OS is done by a small developer. YouTube what it takes to make a modern OS, the resources required are massive

[vurpo]

There's a little thing I'd like to note: RAM disks are also a built in feature used by default on Linux - your /tmp directory is a RAM disk and you can create other ones anywhere in your filesystem by creating an empty directory and mounting the tmpfs filesystem inside them!

[samshort]

I have installed AROS two or three times over the years and I was pleasently surprised, although I could not consider it stable enough for regular use. Recently, I unearthed a complete UAE system I created 20 years ago and archived onto a dvd ram disc. I had set up the emulation to boot into Scalos and I must admit that in the early 2000s it looked really cool. In fact, I would have liked to have owned an A4000 in the day, but they were far too expensive for me buy. Following the demise of Commodore emulation became the only way of having a decent experience of this platform, so I dedicated a machine to it. The Internet was not as sophisticated as it is today and any browser could provide connectivity. However, my concern about the Amiga/ AROS/Morphos platform today is that it will remain an oddity for nostalgia and only of interest to a few. In its current form it could not replace a productive environment like Windows, Linux, Mac Os or even BSD. I also reserve this sentiment for Haiku, React and Risc Os. In fact, I tried to install Haiku onto hardware two weeks ago and it didn't work. This is unfortunate as, at one time, I used BeOS 5 Professional as my main system, before moving to Linux after the Zeta fiasco. Today I have a dedicated Raspberry pi for RiscOs 5 and I love it, but I still need to access a PC for printing and YouTube. My point is that whilst people like Paolo Besser and other developers are doing a fantastic job at keeping these environments alive, I often wish the diversity had never died. The Amiga would have evolved into a wonderful modern platform in its own right. Given the enormous resources required to create and maintain an OS I think AROS and the like should be ported to unix/Linux as a layer just like Mac OS is over Darwin or Android is over Linux.

[Kalamatee]

Great video, Dan. Always nice to see some appreciation of the massive amount of work people have contributed to developing AROS, just a shame more with the ability/knowledge don't get involved.

[RevisionYK]

To get around the lack of USB boot, I bet this would work with Ventoy, which is a tool that lets you launch ISO files from a USB drive. This would probably be the best option currently until they get a native USB installer option working.

[somesalmon]

I would really love to see these os' being ported to the new upcoming risc-v architecture :) this would be a really fun potentially smaller code-base to learn more about os development, especially with an open architecture with more and freely available documentation

[bilbobaggings]

Absolutely brilliant look at AROS from you. Used this many years ago and even then, i found that it was very good.

[aresaurelian]

A basic modular program perhaps that can:
1. Be a working rigid and stable word processor,
2. data editors/transformators (music/sound/images/video), and
3. coding IDE with streamlined, minimalistic design, with option for additions. (VScode style?)
Once the coding option is working we can allow the community to work through it to mass produce other solutions.
Because it is Amiga and the rigid old systems it should be a low level language as its base, but provide optional extensions for the higher level programming languages if possible. Just an idea.

[ricky]

It would be cool if Hyperion ported Amiga OS 4.1 to ARM. The same can be said for Morph OS.

[jamesmattson]

Dan, I believe you mentioned you might do a video on AROS ONE !AROS ONE Ver 2.0 was just released and looks awesome, Hope you decide to take a look at it soon and better yet decide to do a video on it!You put out some awesome and very informative videos!

[espenskog]

Thanks for this nice review. I liked seeing how the seamless emu mode works. Could you do the same review but with MOS ? Would be nice to hear your conclusion/thought on these two on such a side-by-side comparison.

[Bleats_Sinodai]

I am both surprised and not surprised about seeing Eric W. Schwartz artwork accompanying such a project.

[pkf]

Great video Dan,
With ICAROS Morphos and Amithlon we have it covered. how ever it would be some much better if everyone just played from the same song sheet, then we could have something really great.

[HoldandModify]

Well now I don’t need to make this video for my channel. Mine would’ve been terrible anyways. Lol. Great video Dan!!!

[desreb]

Loving the preview and commentary.. when came to audio, we need to hear ((hopefully ASIO will be a good implementation. Thnx

[RJLightning]

Been considering running AROS as a way to playing classic Amiga games and software.

Might run it on my own retro PC's

[DennieSparkman]

I love this. I'm downloading it now to install on one of my older laptops.
I'll put all my old Amiga games and test as many Amiga apps as I can on it to see what happens.
This will be fun. "Never give up, Never Surrender" :P
Thank you for posting this video.