- AROS already runs on ???...
AROS is currently available for Amiga/AmigaOS, Linux/i386, Linux/m68k,
FreeBSD/i386 and Amiga/PPC.
The PPC port of AROS will allow to boot the Amiga just like LinuxPPC
does and therefore, it will be independent of the PPC kernel (and the
war between H&P and p5).
Unfortunately, the different ports are not at the same level (the
Amiga/AmigaOS port is very poor, for example)
and there is Native/i386 (AROS which boots off a floppy or HD) :-).
Also not very advanced but exec works.
- What do you think about other Operating Systems, compared to AROS...
The AmigaOS is definitely missing some very important stuff but I also
believe that it is a very strong foundation to build something on it.
One of the main advantages is that it is very simple to understand what is
going on behind the scenes; on other OSs, there is alomst no way to find
out (e.g. Windows is completely obscure) and this makes it harder to write
simple/good software.
We try to stay compatible but only to the outside. Inside, AROS is different
from the AmigaOS, when that makes sense (eg. Dos Handlers have been dropped
as well as BPTRs and such strange things).
QNX is really nice because it is some kind of a revolution: memory protection,
multi-threaded, extreme stability and more...
But it's not AmigaOS and a lot of people prefer a REAL AmigaOS instead
of another OS even if it's a good one. And QNX doesn't have enough applications
to be interesting now. We have more apps on the Amiga.
BeOS is nice but it is not more than a Linux with a GUI and there are not enough apps yet. And it is not to be ported to G3/G4 processors. The AROS port has started.
What other OS can be a solution for us ? PowerOS ? There is nothing about it yet. Do you have any other idea ?