Author: | Krzysztof Smiechowicz |
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Date: | 2016-12-04 |
In October the AROS repository breached the 53,000 commits mark thanks to contributions from multiple developers. Neil Cafferkey continued his work on improving MUI as well as fixing the IntelGMA video driver. Miloslav Martinka contributed further Czech localization as well as a localized WiMP tool. Yannick Erb and Marcus Sackrow contributed fixes to AROS programs and we saw the introduction of a new AROS GUI theme. Lastly, the ARM Linux-hosted version of AROS has been fixed to compile again as part of the ABIv0 refresh by Krzysztof Smiechowicz.
After September's explosion of distributions, October was quiet on that front. Third party developers however continued their work. Yannick Erb released an updated version of the ZuneView tool and Joerg Renkert released a new version of his ModExplorer application for playing online and offline music modules. AROS archives also saw the upload of two interesting Zelda-type games, 'Time to Triumph' and 'Navi's Quest'.
Author: | Krzysztof Smiechowicz |
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Date: | 2016-10-25 |
September was definitely a distro month. First, the AEROS distribution was refreshed by Pascal Papara and brought to version 4.2.1 on all supported platforms (Raspberry Pi 1/2/3 and Odroid XU3/XU4). The changes include integration of EmuLa, installation of the Chrome browser supporting Flash, SDL2 libraries, ScummVM 1.8 and the game 'Amiga Racer'.
Staying on the ARM platform, September also saw the first release of an AROS distribution targetted at the Orange Pi platform. The distribution, called PiAROS, uses the hosted version of AROS, similar to AEROS.
Lastly, Icaros Desktop, the x86 distribution by Paolo Besser, received an update and is now available in version 2.1.3. The new version brings updates to several applications, including Odyssey Web Browser, PortablE, SimpleMail and Mapparium.
In core AROS development we had two activities. While Neil Cafferkey continued making improvements to MUI, Miloslav Martinka added Czech localization to a number of applications as well as implementing localization in Appearance preferences.
Author: | Krzysztof Smiechowicz |
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Date: | 2016-09-12 |
Opening this news summary is the announcement of a public, read-only access for AROS repository. So far such access was only provided via the AROS GIT-mirror but now it is also available on the main repository.
Also last month, a first full developer pack for AROS 68k has been released by Krzysztof Smiechowicz in cooperation with the Apollo/Vampire team. The dev-pack contains a ready-to-use native development environment for 68k as well as scripts that will download and build AROS 68k on a Linux host, delivering system and cross compiler.
In the AROS core there have been a few notable developments. Nick Andrews continued making fixes to AROS to allow compilation under GCC 6.1. Krzysztof Smiechowicz updated the OpenSSL library to version 1.0.1t and started porting the OpenSSH 7.3 package, releasing the first, alpha version. The work on the ssh client was triggered by the results of June's usage survey. Neil Cafferkey continued making fixes and extensions to MUI's List class and finally a number of programs received new or updated Czech localization thanks to Miloslav Martinka.
Outside of the core team, Pascal Papara continued releasing updates to his AROS distributions. In August AEROS 4.0.1 has been released with support for Raspberry Pi 1, 2 and 3, containing updated kernels and an update for the UAE4ARM emulator.
Closing this update, there have been two interesting third party developments in August. SimpleMail 0.42 with SSL support has been released and a new OpenGL-enabled port of the classic 'Elite 2: Frontier' has been made available by David Douglas.
Author: | Krzysztof Smiechowicz |
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Date: | 2016-08-21 |
In July the AROS core received a number of small fixes and updates from various contributors, including Neil Cafferkey, Krzysztof Smiechowicz, Matthias Rustler and Stefan Haubenthal. Notably, this work included fixing the native GCC to correctly search for SDK paths.
Outside of core AROS developments, an interesting offer has been made by the Apollo Team . They offered free Vampire accelerator cards to developers interested in improving AROS 68k. More information can be found in this thread .
We've also seen a good portion of new applications being released for AROS. A number of games have been ported and are now available for download from the Archives . Next, the SimpleMail mail client, has been updated to version 0.41. Finally, a retro gaming center program called EMULA has been made public by its author, Fabio Falcucci. EMULA is free to use and includes additional features based on a subscription model.
Closing July's highlights, Pascal Papara released a new preview build of his AROS x86 distribution called AROS Broadway. More information can be found here .
Author: | Krzysztof Smiechowicz |
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Date: | 2016-07-17 |
This month's highlights start with the results of the AROS 2016 usage survey. The survey was aimed at understanding the ways in which AROS is used and what is needed to make it more useful. In total 50 people took part and you can read the results of the survey in this thread . Thank you to all who participated!
June also saw the release of an update to Icaros Desktop, the leading x86 distribution by Paolo Besser. The update, presented as version 2.1.2, brings a refreshed 68K environment, new cloud service drivers and a few updated applications. Visit www.icarosdesktop.org/ to download the update.
As a final highlight, Krzysztof Smiechowicz began work to refresh the ABI_V0-compatible system files with the latest developments from the AROS trunk. The last refresh was done at the end of 2014, so it is a good time to bring the new functionalities to the AROS community. The refreshed version is expected to be available in Fall 2016.