AROS Research Operating System (AROS, pronounced "AR-OS") is a free and open-source multi media centric implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 application programming interface ( API). Designed to be portable and flexible. , ports are available for

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...

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– IBM ...

, 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 association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

series.

Name and identity

AROS originally stood for Amiga Replacement OS, but to avoid any trademark issues with the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

name, it was changed to the

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hof ...

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 compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...

s, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce range made by

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

. 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 networking support, and has available an experimental version of

AMosaic AMosaic was a port to the Amiga of the Mosaic web browser, developed beginning in 1993, and was the first graphical web browser for the Amiga. AMosaic was based on NCSA's Mosaic, but was not distributed by the University of Illinois or NCSA. It ...

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 Source-code compatibility (source-compatible) means that a program can run on computers (or operating systems), independently of binary-code compatibility and that the source code is needed for portability. The source code must be compiled befor ...

with AmigaOS. On m68k

hardware it is also

binary-compatible Binary-code compatibility (binary compatible or object-code-compatible) is a property of a computer system, meaning that it can run the same executable code, typically machine code for a general-purpose computer CPU, that another computer sys ...

, so binaries already compiled for AmigaOS 3 can be run on AROS. On x86 IA-32 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. Amiga, Inc. is a company that used to hold some trademarks and other assets associated with the Amiga personal computer (originally developed by Amiga Corporation). Early years In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari, Inc. staff ...

CEO Bill McEwen, and declares a lack of the formal deadlines. A workable AmigaOS Kickstart clone for the

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sect ...

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/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized har ...

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 has been to provide a simple and complete introduction to what AROS has to offer. Also added was commercial software like a media center, a cloud storage service, and an appstore. Last 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 A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term ''Field-programmability, field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specifi ...

-based system.

Influence on AmigaOS and MorphOS

Haage & Partner Haage & Partner is a German company established in 1995. The company distributes software products where they usually are the exclusive distributor. Products are aimed at Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, and has been aimed at AmigaOS in the past. ...

used little parts of AROS source code for AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9. Large parts of MorphOS ( AmigaDOS,

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

and more) have been ported from AROS.

System requirements

x86

* CPU, newer than Intel 80486 (recommended minimum clockspeed of 700 MHz for desktops and 1 GHz for laptops/notebooks/netbooks) * Floating Point Unit (FPU) * 256 MB RAM