Fellow is an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

designed to run

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

written for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

computer platform. Released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, Fellow is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. Fellow was released shortly after the first usable release of the

Unix Amiga Emulator UAE is a computer emulator which emulates the hardware of Commodore International's Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License, UAE is free software. History Bernd Schmidt conceived of an emulator that can run Amiga ...

(UAE). The competition between the two projects proved to be mutually beneficial. Originally, Fellow ran under

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, but was ported to

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

(WinFellow) and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

(XFellow.) Development on WinFellow ceased in 2005, but was revived with a new release in 2010 to improve compatibility with

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

. Development on XFellow has apparently halted after a release in 2003 (based on timestamps inside the archive). According to its author, Petter Schau, one of the main objectives in writing Fellow was to create an Amiga emulator that could run demos from the 1980s Amiga

demoscene The demoscene () is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off computer programmi ...

at full speed. Schau believed that Fellow and UAE belonged to a class of first-generation Amiga emulators, and that more accurate, full-speed emulators would be available in the future. As computing power increased, full-speed performance became achievable. Once more powerful computers were available, UAE became preferable due to its more accurate emulation, whereas Fellow remains popular for older hardware.

References

External links

WinFellowXFellow
Amiga emulators Amiga DOS emulation software Windows emulation software Free video game console emulators {{emulation-stub

See also

References

External links