Wow. More than 400 views and just 3 answers, one to critizice the OP and just 2 for some kind of support which 1 coming from someone who's already one of the best supporters. In a forum suposedly about supporters of aros. hahaha
I didn't expect much because I already know a bit who's still around, but: not even 1 word (Let alone making a contribution or whatever else)?
Amazing how the human mind can cheat yourself into making some twisted acts.
You have only begun to know the meaning of the twisted acts that AROS is subject to. The reason I've demoted myself from participant to lurker on AROS Exec is that the few team members that remain have very different goals and ways to achieve them than I do. Suffice it to say I have creative differences with most if not all of them.
First off, ABI v0 is full of placeholder code that should have been discarded long ago. Second, ABI v1 only supports AROS SMP on x64 but I'm not going to install it on the only x64 system I have that will run it because I need to use it for my everyday coding. Third, without SMP on a hobby architecture like AArch64, the means to start out newbie developers to become experienced developers on AROS is missing the boat. Finally, the means to getting cross platform binaries to work on third party OS development involves getting WebAssembly to work on the architecture so that new binaries will work on it out of the box.
On the plus side, there's Deadwood's fine Mesa port from years ago giving some measure of accelerated graphics. Other than that, AROS basically doesn't have much of a future. While my previous preferred languages for Amiga are equally ready for the trash as C, AROS is written in C. There's no hope of AmigaE support due to 32-bit dependencies of that language. There's no hope of AmiBlitz becuase it's strictly 68k as is AmosPro.
What would it take to have a future for any OS? Wasmer's WebAssembly support outside the browser depends on POSIX subset compliance that no Amiga-like can easily match. Wasmer is written in Rust whose advantage is tight SMP integration and easy multithreading without race conditions or memory leaks.
What can help in the future? Build hosted on a new kernel like RedoxOS written in Rust or Haiku, an OS written in C++ with SMP from the ground up support. Even Google Fuchsia is looking more hopeful than being hosted on Linux as it is binary compatible with some Linux code but doesn't use the huge kernel like Linux uses. There are many examples of operating systems that have more of a future than AROS at the moment. It's sad but true. AROS is behind the times so far it has no future.
Sorry to have to rain on your parade but I'll go back to lurking now. I like my Amigas but have no allusions that AROS other than 68k ABI v1 has any hope whatsoever becuase of the backing of the Vampire team and OlafS. It's just spread too thin and too far behind.
Everybody has his own oppinions. Good for you. Just some appreciations:
- Deadwood didn't port Mesa, Kalamatee did.
- You can install Aros64 in a virtualbox, don't need to mess with you main OS or boot config
- There are many good OSs out there, better than Aros and better than windows, but they lack history, charisma and loyal userbase (well, kind of). We don't need that Aros become the best OS in the world, just that it can be used on modern hardware with some ease and devices support, and if it allows to run Windows or Limux apps transparently, then it can become my main (and probably only) OS. It won't have support for many specialized and/or advanced features (networks, servers, industrial or technologic environments, etc...) but i don't need them anyway.
- All those subjects can't distract the fact that is sad, silly and selfish to not support (even with mere crumbs) the ones doing the real work that you all have been enjoying for years. Shame on you all.
