Ambient is a MUI-based

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

for

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed Proprietary software, proprietary and Open-source software, open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amig ...

. Its development was started in 2001 by David Gerber. Its main goals were that it should be fully asynchronous, simple and fast. Ambient remotely resembles

Workbench A workbench is a sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewellers benches to the huge benches used by ...

and

Directory Opus Directory Opus (or "DOpus" as its users tend to call it) is a File manager, file manager program, originally written for the Amiga computer system in the early to mid-1990s. Commercial development on the version for the Amiga ceased in 1997. Direct ...

Magellan trying to mix the best of both worlds.

Features

Ambient does not strictly follow the Amiga Workbench interface paradigm but there are still many similarities: while programs are called tools, program attributes are called tooltypes, data files are projects and directories are drawers. * support for

ARexx ARexx is an implementation of the Rexx language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities. Like most REXX implementations, ARexx is an interpreted language. Program ...

scripting language * default

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...

library for hundreds of fileformats * fully asynchronous,

multi-threaded In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. The implementation of threads and processes dif ...

design * fast asynchronous file I/O functions and file notifications * support for PNG and other

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by 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 significantly improved graphi ...

icon formats * built-in icon, workbench and wbstart libraries * built-in applications like

disk formatting Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk, memory card or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new fil ...

and commodities manager * panels which are used as program launchers Ambient is localized for various languages and while it is part of MorphOS, it is also available separately. There are various visual effects in Ambient which are taking an advantage of hardware accelerated visual effects in MorphOS.

Desktop icons

The native icon format in Ambient is a PNG icon but there is built-in support for other Amiga icon formats. Ambient introduced special icon format called DataType Icons where the icon is simply any image file renamed to include ''.info'' extension. Those icons are read using Amiga DataType system.

Development status

In 2005, David Gerber released Ambient source code under

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

and it is now developed by the Ambient development team.

References

External links

* *
CVS snapshots
{{MorphOS Amiga software Free desktop environments Free software programmed in C MorphOS

Features

Desktop icons

Development status

See also

References

External links