[AROS-Announce] Status report

[aros-announce@lists.hepe.com]

For a long time, I didn't sent a status report. Well, I hope the
logs which I post on the web page (http://www.aros.org/) make up
for this :-) So here are some things on a larger scale:

AROS is now 55MB with 38.5MB of contributed software.  These
figures include all changes ever made to AROS, so don't be
surprised when you try to check these figures with a copy of the
source :-)

We have now finished about 75% of all functions in the AmigaOS
and people have begun to write prefs apps (Locale and Fonts), a
lot of demos have been ported to AROS and also a lot of sources
from Aminet. Things begin to fall in the place where they ought
to be and we'll might see a version of AROS which is not only
interesting to developers by the end of this year.  But that
depends of course mostly on how many people participate.

There are now some drivers to drive native PC hardware and AROS
can boot itself from a floppy or from a harddisk.  The latter is
still highly experimental and we don't recommend it except for
the truly desperate or those who can afford a new harddrive ;-)

A lot of applications which are compiled by default for AROS
Linux/i386 are now also compile for Native/i386 and Sebastian
Heutling is keeping a set of floppy disks upto date which you can
use (follow the links in the Links section on our homepage).
These are FFS formatted PC floppy images and there is readme
which explains how things work.

The AROS User mailing list has become less quiet because people
report success and failures. AROS Native/i386 is still in its
infancy, so don't be disappointed if it doesn't work. Just post a
report with some hints why it doesn't work (cards, CPU, mouse,
keyboard, whatever you suspect).

Since there is support for a floppy, AROS doesn't boot into SAD
but tries to find something where it can find more info. There is
even some work going on to provide a floppy animation like you're
being used to on the Amiga :-)

On a sad note, the first versions of AROS will probably not
contain memory protection (rendering it useless for servers) or
an m68k emulator. To fix these, we'll need someone with a deep
knowledge of the AmigaOS, of Unix (where MP works), a lot of
spare time to throw at the problem and he should be a genius.
There are just too many obstacles and hidden traps for designing
something which works for doing that "on the fly". If you think
you can invest 100-200 manhours into these problems, we have
compiled two documents which contain some thoughts to get you
started. Until this, I'll ignore any complains and/or suggestions
in these areas.

As for my company starting a project to make the development of
AROS faster, we still have not enough developers. We need at
least five and we have only 1.5 right now. So if you're
interested, mail me.

And last but not least, I'd like to say some personal words after
six years of AROS development. The first roots were laid in
December 1995. Since then, I have got a lot of support from
the Amiga community. Some things just didn't work out as
expected but most mails I get are encouraging and positive
(even those from Amiga Inc :-). I'd like to thank everyone
who participates for their time, energy and commitment for
this. Being a software developer myself, I know how hard it
is to find some time between my job, life and hobbies to work
on this. A lot of people have sacrificed a lot of their
personal lives to this and we owe them one. I hope that this
project continues for the rest of my life and that we will
a lot more lines of code in the future.

Amiga as Amiga can.

-- 
==============================================
Sowatec AG,       CH-8330 Pfäffikon (ZH)
Witzbergstr. 7,   http://www.sowatec.com
Tel: +41-(0)1-952 55 55
Fax: +41-(0)1-952 55 66
----------------------------------------------
Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla, digulla@sowatec.com
==============================================