AROS Research Operating System (AROS, pronounced "AR-OS") is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

multi media centric implementation of the

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

3.1 application programming interface (

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

) which is designed to be portable and flexible. ,

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

are available for

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s (PCs) based on x86 and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

, in native and hosted ''flavors'', with other architectures in development. In a show of full circle development, AROS has been ported to the Motorola 68000 series (m68k) based Amiga 1200, and there is also an ARM port for the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

series.

Name and identity

AROS originally stood for ''Amiga Research Operating System'', but to avoid any trademark issues with the Amiga name, it was changed to the recursive acronym ''AROS Research Operating System''. The mascot of AROS is an anthropomorphic cat named Kitty, created by Eric Schwartz and officially adopted by the AROS Team in December 2002. Used in the core AROS About and installer tools, it was also adopted by several AROS community sites and early distributions. Other AROS identifiable symbols and logos are based around the cat shape, such as the Icaros logo, which is a stylised cat's eye, or AFA (Aros For Amiga).

Current status

The project, begun in 1995, has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS which, as of May 2017, only lacks a few areas of functionality. This was achieved by the efforts of a small team of developers. It can be installed on most IBM PC compatibles, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce range made by Nvidia. As of May 2007 USB keyboards and mice are also supported. AROS has been ported to the Sam440ep

board and a first test version for the Efika was released in 2009. While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including E-UAE, an emulation program that allows m68k-native AmigaOS applications to run. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

networking support, and has available an experimental version of AMosaic web browser, for test purposes, among other Internet-related applications. The Poseidon USB stack has been ported to AROS. AROS is designed to be source-compatible with

. On m68k Amiga hardware it is also binary-compatible, so binaries already compiled for AmigaOS 3 can be run on AROS. On x86

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called ''i386'') is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the i386, 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarn ...

32-bit platforms Janus-UAE, an enhanced E-UAE, integrates Amiga emulation directly into AROS to run AmigaOS m68k binaries nearly transparent to the user. , original AmigaOS 3 operating system files are needed for the emulation. The aim of AROS is to remain aloof of the legal and political spats that have plagued other AmigaOS implementations by being independent of hardware and of any central control. The de facto motto of AROS, "No schedule and rocking" both lampoons the infamous words "On Schedule and Rockin" from Amiga, Inc. CEO Bill McEwen, and declares a lack of the formal deadlines. A workable AmigaOS Kickstart clone for the Motorola 68000 processor was released on March 31, 2011 as part of a programming bounty. The memory requirement is 2 MB Chip RAM and 1 MB Fast RAM. This software is a complete free open-source alternative to AmigaOS.

Distributions

The main AROS system files can be downloaded in many flavors from the project website. These files are compiled straight from the SVN source tree at night time, and are available as nightly builds. Nightlies also include some third party applications to allow people using the system to perform some very basic tasks. For final/average user, like Linux, there are several distributions available:

Icaros Desktop

Since April 2009, the name VMWAros has been changed into "Icaros Desktop" to avoid ambiguities with any existing copyrighted

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

of any kind. Amiga 68K emulation integration, 3D acceleration for Nvidia cards and latest updates of applications can be found there. The latest version of Icaros Desktop is version 2.3 (released 22 December 2020).

Broadway

Broadway is a distribution of AROS begun late 2009. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use and complete AROS experience. AROS Broadway contains some commercial software such as a media center, a cloud storage service, and an app store. The latest version is 1.0 preview 5, released April 16, 2016.

AspireOS

AspireOS is a distribution, begun in 2011, by Nikos Tomatsidis, which is focused on Dell Latitude D520 and Acer Aspire One 110, 150 computers. Latest version is 2.2, codenamed "Obitus", released November 2018.

AROS Vision

AROS Vision is a native m68k distribution, which can run on both real hardware or in emulators like UAE.

Apollo OS

ApolloOS is an active m68k distribution, crafted specially for the Vampire V4 Standalone FPGA-based system.

Influence on AmigaOS and MorphOS

Haage & Partner used small pieces of the AROS source code for AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9. Large parts of MorphOS (

AmigaDOS AmigaDOS is the disk operating system of the AmigaOS, which includes file systems, file and directory manipulation, the command-line interface, and file Redirection (computing), redirection. In AmigaOS 1.x, AmigaDOS is based on a TRIPOS port by ...

Intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledg ...

and more) have been ported from AROS.

System requirements

x86

* CPU, newer than

Intel 80486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...

(recommended minimum clockspeed of 700 MHz for desktops and 1 GHz for laptops/notebooks/netbooks) * Floating Point Unit (FPU) * 256 MB RAM