AROS Vision
Modern and free Amiga-Compatible Experience on Amiga and PC
AROS Vision
Modern and free Amiga-Compatible Experience on Amiga and PC
AROS
The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient, and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level and improve on it in many areas. The source code is available under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon it and join easily. It is available for a number of hardware platforms like X86/AMD64, ARM, PPC and 68k. AROS 68k has the advantage that binaries compiled for 68k can work together with AROS binaries and can be combined. The official page is AROS.ORG with additional informations also including compatiblity pages with supported hardware and additional informations. Currently there is the migration from 32bit to 64bit (AMD64) what brings big improvements. More informations about progress there on the AROSWorld forum. Another interesting development, next to support of RISC-V, support of almost all RPi devices in progress. About this you can also read on forum. On AROS.ORG you also find the link to the nighlies. These are minimalistic AROS distributions only for developers to test the changes made the day before. That means not for end user, in no way polished and software you expect today not included. For end user you have distributions a little like on Linux, on X86/AMD64 you have AROS One and TinyAROS. My own distribution is based on AROS 68k. The big advantage is, you can combine AROS and much of AmigaOS in one platform. All descriptions of this website refer to the 68k branch and my own distribution, but much of it is valid for all supported platforms. Of course not everything is available on every supported platform. AROS today includes ip6 network stack and firewall, graphic card support (RTG), next to 32bit also 64bit, 3D support (MESA/Gallium), SMP, Bluetooth, Wifi support. On 68k there is only 32bit and also no SMP and MESA/Gallium.
The origin of AROS is Amiga
AROS is the oldest of all amiga inspired operating systems running on modern hardware starting mid 90s of last century. Next to AROS there are AmigaOS 4.X and MorphOS. AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS run on custom PPC hardware, MorphOS additionally also in old PPC Macs. AmigaOS is today developed on 68k, latest 3.2.3. More information on amiga sites like eab oder a1k (german). The idea of AROS was to reimplement the whole amigaos on modern PC hardware. If you look at the structure of AROS it is difficult to differentiate from AmigaOS 3.1, at the same time modernizing it. But 3.1 API is the base line for AROS.
Important components
RTG (retargable graphics)
Of course there was no original chipset (OCS, ECS, AGA) available and all designed for graphic cards. Even many years ago amiga already supported graphic cards. There were no official standard from Commodore but 2 from third parties called CybergraphX and P96 (Picasso 96). This was referred as RTG (Retargetable Graphics). Both patched on 68k the original Amiga graphic routines to use the graphic card instead of accessing the chipset hardware. That had the advantage that many programs continues to work with it without needing changes and recompile. All more modern amiga operating systems imtegrate today RTG direct in the system. AROS implements CybergraphX, the same MorphOS, AmigaOS 4 P96. On 68k there is also support for classic chipset integrated so that many old programs work on it. There are lots of informations about Amiga Chipsets including special coprocessors like copper, paula, agnus, denise on web and about concepts like DMA, fastram and chipram and differences between planar (amiga) and chunky (PC). This would be too much here to explain. In screenshot you see the screenmode preferences with original chipset modes (PAL) and RTG modes (UAE).
GUI toolkits
For applications you need graphical user interfaces (GUI). On Linux you have GTK+, Qt, wxWidgets, FLTK, and imgui. On Mac you have Cocoa and SwiftUI. On Windows you have GUI toolkits from Microsoft and third parties. On Amiga you have Intuition and Gadtools from Commodore. When Commodore still developed AmigaOS both Intuition and Gadtools were improved, also later in 3.5 and 3.9 (Haage & Partner). With 3.5 starting Reaction was the official new gui toolkit. In parallel there was MUI (Magic User Interface) developed. The official gui toolkit in AROS is ZUNE. It is based on MUI.
Network stack
Commodore went bankrupt around 1994. At that time there was no internet and most computers not using networks. There are a number of network stacks like Roadshow (commercial), Miami, AmiTCP. AROSTCP is based on AmiTCP but is updated to modern standards (ip6). Also firewall added.
USB stack
USB support on AROS is implemented by using the open source version of Poseidon. Poseidon is a commercial product but author Chris Hodge permitted to make the source codes at a certain time open source. It is used on both AROS and MorphOS. Poseidon itself is commercial on AmigaOS 3.1 but no new versions for a long time. Backport is permitted and recently someone worked on it.
AHI
AHI is the standard on all amiga inspired operating systems running on modern hardware (AmigaOS and MorphOS on PPC and AROS). It of course needs drivers for supported hardware.
Bluetooth
Recently added on AROS. Currently no hardware on AROS 68k
Basic system structure (System:)
AROS is based on AmigaOS 3.1. Most directories and system files you can also find when you have installed AmigaOS 3.1 on a harddisk.
One difference between mainstream operating systems and AROS is the way how software and hardware is installed. This happens by simply copying of files in certain directories, these are automatically used by the OS. In certain cases also text files must be changed too.
directory boot
includes files you need to boot like ROMs
directory C
it includes commands that can be used in shell or during boot defined in startup-sequence. Startup-sequence can be found in "S" directory. Shell, also called CLI. More informations about the commands here. This list is not complete and recently more commands added. On Aros 68k also Amiga commands can be added and used.
directory classes
includes directories for drivers and components needed:
bluetooth
Datatypes
Gadgets
Images
USB
Zune
directory Demos
AROS demos
directory Devs
The DEVS directory on AROS includes hardware drivers (devices and drivers), system configuration files (mountlist), and data descriptors for peripherals like dosdrivers, monitors, printers, and keymaps. This page is about AmigaOS 4 but most of it also valid for AROS.
directory Expansion
Drivers for PCI, not used on 68k
directory Fonts
There bitmap and Truetype Fonts are installed
directory L
Here the handlers are installed. Handlers are background system processes that act as an abstraction layer to manage communication between the operating system, applications, and filesystems or virtual resources. Handlers in AROS: AHI, aux, con, debug, fat, pfs3, pipe, port, ram, sfs, smb, speak
directory Libs
Here are shared libraries copied that are commonly used by different applications but also by the operating system. These are not protected and can easily be overwritten. The effect is that a new installation can easily overwrite a newer library with a older and affect other programs so installing there should always be careful.
List of libraries in AROS:
680x0
amigaguide
aros
asl
asyncio
bluetooth
bz2
camd
codesets
commodities
coolimages
cybergraphx
datatype
decotator
decortheme
diskfont
dos
dos64
egl
expat
fd
freetype2
gadtools
gallium
gl
glu
graphics
icon
identify
iffparse
intuition
jfif
keymap
kms
layers
locale
lowlevel
lzma
several math
mesa3dgl26
muimaster
muiscreen
nonvolatile
nvdisk
oop
openurl
pccard
png
popupmenu
poseidon
posixc
prometheus
reaction
realtime
reqtools
rexxsupport
rexxsyslib
stdc
stdcio
tiff
translator
usergroup
utf8proc
utility
uuid
version
vmm
workbench
z1
zstd
Directory Locale
files with different languages used by applications
Directory Prefs
Here are preferences included:
AHI
Appearance
Asl
Bluetooth
BoingIconBar
Editor
Firewall
Font
IControl
Input
Locale
Network
OpenURL
Palette
Pointer
Printer
PSI
Reqtools
Screenmode
Serial
Time
Trackdisk
Trident
Wanderer
Zune
Additionally important are subdirectories Env-Archive (Env:) where environment variable are saved and Env:Sys (Sys:) where def_ files are stored. They act as global variables stored as files inside the ENV: directory and can be temporarily created or saved permanently in ENV: (Env-Archive) and created automatically when system boots. Def_files are icon files who are used when a file has no accompanied info icon file. More on that later.
Directory Rexxc
includes rx and rxlib files to start rexx files for automatisation
Directory S
includes important batch files. Most important startup-sequence, user-startup, shell-startup
Directory Storage
save place for unused device drivers, monitors, keymaps, and DOS drivers that are not actively loaded into the system
directory System
includes several tools and subdirectories for wanderer desktop and network stack (AROSTCP)
Tools included:
About
CLI
DiskImageGUI
Find
FixFonts
Format
FTManager
Snoopy
SysMon
VMM
Workbook
directory Tools
several tools and commodities. Commodities are small programs that mostly perform system tasks and work in background. Often started in directory WBStartup. In AROS included are: AltKeyQ, ASCIITable, Autopoint, Blanker, ClickToFront, DepthMenu, Exchange, FKey, NoCapsLock, Opaque. There are many additional available.
Tools included:
AHIRecord
BoingIconBar
Calculator
Editor
GraphicDump
HDToolbox
InitPrinter
InjectIcon
InstallAros
KeyShow
PrintFiles
Screengrabber
ShowConfig
SysExplorer
WiMP
directory Utilities
clock
help
installer
more
multiview
directory WBStartup
Files like Commodities are autmatically started when system boots
Additional technologies