AROS One x86 v1.7 and MorphOS 3.17 PPC Released

Mike Bouma writes: Version 1.7 of AROS One for x86 has just been released and it's a distro of the "AROS Research Operating System," originally "Amiga Research Operating System." It's a standalone, free and open-source multi-media centric operating system that's designed to be portable, flexible, efficient and lightweight and can be seen dual booting with Windows 10 on an Acer laptop here. The most popular AROS specific community portal is AROS Exec.

Parts of AROS were used to create the commercial PowerPC based Amiga-like operating system MorphOS, which has recently seen a new release as well, version 3.17. The most popular MorphOS specific community portal is MorphZone.

I have a 2010 imac

[BrookSmith]

I have a 2010 imac which I might give this a go on

supported hardware?

[drinkypoo]

see subject. supported hardware is a mystery?

Re:

[OrangeTide]

For MorphOS? See hardware compatibility [morphos-team.net]

AmigaOne 500
AmigaOne X5000
Apple eMac
Apple iBook G4
Apple Mac Mini G4
Apple PowerBook G4
Apple PowerMac Cube
Apple PowerMac G4
Apple PowerMac G5
Genesi Efika Open Client
Genesi Open Desktop Workstation

For AROS there is general support for x86 systems. With some coverage of specific laptops and mainboards [aros.org]. The short answer is that it is difficult to find a board where both graphics acceleration and SATA work ideally. But it's not hard to get bits and pieces of AROS to work on just about any system.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I see they don't support my dome imac, I guess I will just chuck it out instead of trying to get it working. looks like hdd failure. I just chucked out all my old little hdds anyway. Downsizing again.

Are there...

[CRB9000]

So, an OS from 30 years ago, are there any modern apps being developed? Anything useful that can't be done better on Linux, Windows, or Mac? From the looks of it, this is like striving to get Windows 3.1 to load on a 64-bit system and then struggling to remember how to get things going, but not being able to much of anything useful except getting "Hello, World!" to scroll in QBasic.

Re:Are there...

[jythie]

Well, if nothing else, it appears to have a modern web browser. In the PPC world this is a pretty useful thing since, for instance, none of the main browsers support PPC anymore. I might actually give this a try since I was just trying to repurpose my old G4 mac and really slammed into the browser problem.

But mostly, the Amiga space was always filled with tinkerers trying to see what they could get hardware to do and push its limits. Crow, there is even a group that built their own 68k CPU in order to push that just a bit more. Amiga people have to be among the most batshit crazy retro computer communities and I respect that.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I used to have a very powerful Amiga 4000, 68060 CPU, loads of RAM, Picasso IV graphics AND a PCI Voodoo 3, fast IBM SCSI hard drive...

I just got fed up with it, the endless promises and false starts. Kinda regret selling it now, but also my interest in the platform is mostly about the stock A500 and A1200 now. Rather than just throwing more power at the problem, what can you do with those systems by cleverly optimizing the code or finding ways to make the hardware do things that the designers never imagine

Re:

[jythie]

Well now you can even throw more power at the problem. A 3rd party developed a '68080' board.

But I think the big thing is, they are not really being thrown at problems anymore, but are just being tinkered with for fun... kinda like how car people will spend weeks trying to get a little more out of their classic muscle car even though perfectly functional modern sedans are safer and more efficient.