Still Rocking!

There have been some turbulent times lately with AROS. A lot of issues have been discussed on the AROS-dev mailing list, but I'm not going to go into details because it has been discussed enough. Developers are really stepping up to improve the project in my opinion. We seem to have several new developers that are very helpful and active as well. The excitement and activity on the developer list is nice to see. So to sum it up quickly, AROS will be just fine. Now that we have that out of the way, on to the latest and greatest news for the AROS operating system!

Have you been looking for an AROS distribution that would live up to the once heralded AROS-Max? Well, look no further, because it is here! Paolo Besser has just released VmwAROS LIVE! Here is the announcement from Paolo:

"Starting with the new version 0.7, published today, VmwAROS has turned into a complete AROS distribution. From now on, it will be available in two flavours, pre-installed in a virtual machine as usual, and live-CD.

Users of VmwAROS LIVE! will be able to boot their computers straight into a enhanced AROS environment, with DHCP network support and preliminary web browser. A complete list of new features is available at the site vmwaros-beta-07-and-live-07-released.html

VmwAROS VM beta 0.7 can be downloaded from:
VmwAROS VM beta 0.7

VmwAROS LIVE! 0.7 can be downloaded from:
VmwAROS LIVE! 0.7

Please check your hardware for AROS compatibility before trying to install VmwAROS LIVE!"

Heinz-Raphael Reinke has just released a new version of WinAROS. He has added some nice features. Heinz really keeps improving his development environment. It is very handy if you are a developer or want to start developing. Here is the news and screenshot from Heinz:

"A new version of WinAROS is available.
The virtual Harddisk contains two partitions.
A 100MB Partition with Fast File System (FFS), that contains only the Boot Files.
And a 400MB Partition with Smart File System (SFS) that contains a fresh AROS setup.

This WinAros Version comes with a complete C/C++ Compiler Setup and Murks!-IDE.
If you want to Install extras Apps, you can use

WinArosStart

WinAros comes with a Windows typical setup program, that creates shortcuts on the desktop and in the start menu. It also comes with an uninstaller.

WinAros Download

Screenshot"

Nic "Kalamatee" Andrews posted on AROS-Exec about AROS now able to use Grub2. Alain Greppin had a big hand in this too. This is great news!

Speaking of Alain Greppin, he has agreed to do an interview with The AROS Show! It will be coming in the near future. I had mentioned that Alain accepted the DHCP bounty in my last post. I think the very next day he completed it. So now we have DHCP in AROS, whoo hoo!

Daniel Oberhoff has been making some progress on hosting AROS in Mac OS X. He is running into some issues at the moment, but continues to work on it. Keep up the good work Daniel!

To close I wanted to mention the Natami project. I have been following this new project and I am excited about it's potential. The people involved with Natami would like to see AROS be available for it. It seems the best and most logical choice. I would love to see it happen myself. Check a post on AROS-Exec.org from one of the Natami developers.
This involves the Kickstart replacement bounties one and two. The Natami project is really hoping a developer will accept and complete these bounties. I know at one time there was some discussion about a team of developers working on these bounties. They chatted about it on the AROS-dev list, but I don't think they ever formed a team. So hopefully someone with the skill will come forward sometime in the near future.

Still rocking!