The end of the year is a time for reflection and recapitulation. After years of less activity, we can safely say that this year has brought us many positive developments. From month to month we recorded significant progress, which you had the opportunity to follow on our blog. AROS has moved forward with momentum and does not intend to slow down!
System
At the core of the system itself, there was probably the most going on. The major distributions are now based on the 32-bit branch of Deadwood (ABIv0), and that had one major release this year (ABIv0 20220318-1) and two major cumulative updates with fixes.
Deadwood also released a 64-bit version of the system (ABIv11) in a Linux hosted version (ABIv11 20241102-1) and AxRuntime version 41.12, which promises a complete switch to 64-bit in the near future. He has also developed a prototype emulator that will enable 64-bit AROS to run programs written for the 32-bit version of the system.
Deadwood’s launch of initiatives such as ” Irritating Bug of the Month ” brought developers and users closer together and focused on fixing the bugs the community wanted most. It’s been a busy and productive year under his belt.
Although progress is now mostly on Deadwood’s shoulders, it’s worth noting that it wouldn’t have been so rapid without the earlier work put into AROS development by Kalamatee and other developers. We very much look forward to their return to active work on the system!
Distributions
We had two updated distributions for x86 architecture in 2024.
AROS One released by AMIGASYSTEM is the most complete AROS distribution. We got several releases this year, always after a major update of the base system. Everything we could ever need is at hand in AROS One. Lots of programs and games, many ready-made configurations and scripts. The distro is very consistent in terms of design and icons, and has many additional skins and background wallpapers, so we can customize it for ourselves. The latest release is version 2.7.
The second distro is Tiny AROS, whose author is Amiwell79. As the name suggests this distro is designed for minimalists who don’t need everything, but still would prefer not to start with a bare system. It’s best to try each and choose the one that suits us better.
Both distributions currently use Wanderer as the default desktop.
Although Olaf Schönweiß has not released a new version of AROS Vision in 2024, he has been working intensively on the next version of his distribution for the m68k architecture. We can expect the new release in early 2025.
Hardware
The list of recommended hardware for AROS has grown to include two motherboards: ASUS P8Z68-V LX and Gigabyte GA-MA770T UD3/UD3P. In my opinion, the ASUS motherboard is worth a look. At the moment it is the latest and most powerful hardware on the recommended list, inexpensive and widely available on auction sites. If you are planning to buy hardware under AROS it will be the best choice. The recommended boards have long-term support, all new AROS releases will be tested for compatibility with them.
The A600GS has gone on sale. Amibench, which uses a version of AROS m68k, is installed on the hardware.
For developers
Hollywood remains unflaggingly popular among developers of software for Amiga NG. In 2024 on AROS came out Hollywood Designer 7.0 - an overlay to help create presentations, games and applications. Two years have passed since the release of the previous version, and during this time the author has made many improvements. The program requires the Hollywood package version 10.0 to work. Both Hollywood and Hollywood Designer are commercial software.
Thanks to Serk118, we received the GLFW 3.4 and Raylib 5.0 libraries. GLFW enables the development of OpenGL and OpenGL ES applications. It provides a simple platform-independent API for creating windows, contexts and surfaces, reading input, handling events, etc. Raylib, on the other hand, is a simple and easy-to-use library for video game programming using GLFW. This opens up a new field for porting and developing software for AROS.
Deremon has prepared a long-awaited update to Python. We already have version 3.3.7 in the latest distributions and in the AROS Archives.
Farox has ported and released the DUMB (“Dynamic Universal Music Bibliotheque”) music library, which he has used in porting many demoscene productions for AROS.
The GCC compiler has been updated to version 10.5.0. Thanks to the hard work of ThatGuyWithTheKids, we now have an updated version of GCC on the main branch for both x86_64 and m68k.
Software
The 2024 event is sure to be Deadwood’s release of the Odyssey 2.1 browser. The Webkit engine was updated from August 2015 to February 2019. As a result, Youtube, as well as many other modern sites, are again running in the AROS browser. In addition, the media player from the Wayfarer 1.21 browser has been ported, and decoding acceleration based on SSE instructions has been enabled. Also released were 64-bit versions of the Odyssey Web Browser for AROS hosted and AxRuntime offering significantly improved performance thanks to JavaScript acceleration using the JIT compiler.
Another high-profile release was Final Writer 7.1. It is undoubtedly the most powerful and best text editor in our Amiga world. Final Writer is a commercial program, but it is worth every dollar spent on it. You can download a demo version of the program for free from the author’s website.
Steffen Gutman has released BeeBase version 1.1. It is a relational, programmable database system with a graphical user interface.
jPV has released RNOEffects 2.0. It is an image processing program with an emphasis on good batch conversion options, alpha channel based effects and pixel editing. The program was written in Hollywood and at the same time is a great example of how much can be accomplished in it.
The duo of Farox and Deremon have ported for AROS Fast Tracker 2, a legendary demoscene tracker whose main innovation was the introduction of the XM (Extended Module) file format. In addition, this year Franck “hitchhikr” Charlet released several updates to his regularly developed tracker Protrekkr.
The past year also brought us AROS versions of the well-known classic Amiga programs World Construction Set and Bars & Pipes.
Games
The games could not be missing either. Farox has prepared for us a port of wipEout Rewrite. The cult futuristic racing game from PSX has finally arrived on AROS. The game is really solid, and thanks to the high resolution it plays better than the original. Another interesting port from Farox is Magical Broom Extreme. Here we are dealing with a shoot ‘em-up game. In the game we control a witch flying on a broomstick. We are accompanied by nice 3D graphics, and there is really a lot going on on the screen.
Another big title is an update of Doom 3 originally ported by Kalamatee. The game, of course, needs no introduction to anyone. This year, thanks to Deremon, the dhewm3 engine on which the game is based has been updated to version 1.5.3. In addition, Deremon has updated the ScummVM emulators to version 1.9.0-1, ResidualVM to version 0.3.1-1 and GemRB to version 0.8.8-0. Adventure fans have reason to rejoice, because thanks to these updates we have many new games that are playable on AROS.
Dozens of smaller games or updates have appeared, which it is impossible to list them all now. For details, I refer you to previous monthly summaries. Thanks to authors such as Domenico Lattanzi, Giovanni Iacobelli, Juan Carlos Herran Martin and others for their continued support of AROS.
Also, the productions released this year for the classic Amiga, in most cases, we were able to launch on AROS with Janus-UAE without any problems.
Summary
The year 2024 has been exceptionally successful for AROS users. We look to the future with hope, as the coming year promises to be even better. Personally, I wish we had even more active developers, and I hope that this is what will happen. The shift to a 64-bit native system presents a great opportunity to come back and continue development.