There is a new status update on aros.org, so check it out! There is a lot of cool stuff going on in AROS. There was a time where AROS happenings were a little slow, but those days are gone.

I have some big news that I should have already posted about, but I'm two days behind on this one. Phase 1 of the Installer bounty had been accepted by Neil Cafferkey! As you can see by the bounty description, this one would really improve AROS. I think after this is completed you will hear many talking about their native installations and what kind of machines they are running AROS on!

Jahc is working on porting his popular Amiga IRC client Wookie Chat over to AROS. He is receiving some errors he doesn't quite understand right now. He needs an AROS Developer to help him. He prefers help while in IRC. I think it is cool that he has decided to port Wookie Chat to AROS. We have the native AROS IRC clients AiRcOS and ARIRC on the way, but other options are always welcome. It gives users more choices and it's always great to have developers wanting to port their applications to AROS.

Last but not least, the AROS wallpaper contest is booming right now! There are many new backgrounds in the gallery at aros-exec.org. There is still plenty of time to get into this contest, so fire up the graphics! We want to see more!

There are a few updates I want to report, plus a few things happening you may not know about.

First, last week I mentioned Robert Norris' code for Frontier: First Encounters. This port is actually pretty far along. Nic "Kalamatee" Andrews has been working on scaling the windows for it. He said he might even add a fullscreen mode. According to Kalamatee it really needs two main things. It has no sound and it cannot load or save a game. We still need someone to give this baby some love. It is even playable right now. Here is a screen shot from Kal. It would be very cool to have this fully working, so contact Robert if you are interested.

The Decorations that have been enabled in the Nightly builds that I reported on a couple days ago are being optimized a bit. Darius has found an issue that is slowing things down a little and he plans to put a fix in very soon. I like that it is implemented and they are able to optimize it and keep it going. Everyone seems to really like it, including me!

Matthias "Mazze" Rustler has contacted Fabien about doing the MAME port for AROS. This would be another nice piece of software to have in AROS. Hopefully Mazze will have it running for us in the near future!

There is a lot of bounty action happening at Team AROS. Kalamatee has donated to start some graphics bounties. Plus, the installer bounty has been split up and I really think it outlines a better plan to greatly improve things for the Installer. We should see improvements quicker too.

I am still putting together some information for my tutorial on customizing the AROS shell prompt. I have also lined up two interviews! One is with the Founder/CEO of the company DiscreetFX. The other is with AROS graphician Damir "d980" Sijakovic. You will not want to miss these two!