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How Icaros Desktop Brings the Amiga Experience To x86 PCs
angry tapir writes "Icaros Desktop is an effort to build a modern Amiga-compatible operating system to standard x86 hardware. It's a distribution built atop AROS, which is an open source effort to create a system compatible at the API level with the AmigaOS 3.x series. I recently had a chat to the creator of Icaros, Paolo Besser, about the creation of the OS and why Amiga continues to inspire people today."
Hardly. Ten years ago, maybe.
I have to say this project upsets me.
Why? Because if it had been completed fifteen years ago, it'd have been something I'd (and millions of other Amiga enthusiasts) would have been able to jump on, and over time it would have grown. The issues with Exec's lack of MMU support would have been, as time progressed, dealt with in an evolutionary way (I have no idea what the solution would have been, but I'm pretty sure it would have come about.) And so the platform would have lived on.
Unfortunately it wasn't completed then, and the mindshare has moved to GNU/Linux. The problems with AmigaOS back in 1994 are still present in AROS. There's no easy way to fix the issues any more, because the people interested aren't tight knit and large enough to actually agree upon a way forward.
Which is NOT, absolutely NOT, to diss the efforts of the AROS crew. What they've produced is impressive, and anyone who thinks all operating systems should either be POSIX or Windows based should, absolutely should, download this and play with it.
What upsets me is that I can't, any longer, jump on something so wonderful. There's no point.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Hobbyists are more then enough to justify it. If they get a kick out ouf playing with AmigaOS then good for them. Some people play games, some people read, some people waterski, and some people enjoy playing with old tech. Not sure why people get so butthurt over what other people do with their free time.