So, it happened. I went to Pianeta Amiga 2009 and I brought there my Icaros machine and netbook, to show people that yes, AROS works and - you can't believe it! - it may be useful too, since nowadays applications for AmigaOS are often available on AROS too, and Icaros Desktop already provides them. On the table at my left side, there was Steve "ClusterUK" Jones with his iMica system, showing Icaros doing what amigans seem to like best: running old Amiga production applications at full speed under Janus-UAE. Thanks to Enrico Vitali and other well-known people of the italian Amiga community, the event has been amusing and interesting, but... well, I can't hide the mixture of bitter sweet feelings that left me only half happy. The good news, at least for Icaros Desktop, is that every visitor of the fair had the chance to see it in action, and most of them stopped at my table, asking for more informations or to see some demostration. I've also got many congratulations and many thanks for the effort, asking me for keeping up "the good job", but the bad news about all this, is that Pianeta Amiga this year lacked of visitors. Numbers had been fairly low (I've personally counted about 100 visitors) and the exhibitors themeselves were a tiny group that could comfortably stay in less space than the half area of the Palaesposizioni reserved to the event. "In the good old days you could see a crowd of people making long tails in front of the ticket booth - said Enrico while we were taking something to eat at noon - but today...", unluckily today's Pianeta Amiga loosely reflects the situation of the whole Amiga market. A tiny, fragile community which is hardly trying to keep its platform alive, even if the interest decreases a little more every year, and even if the whole IT market has completely forgotten the Amiga. So we have to thanks ACube, VirtualWorks, AmigaKit.com and everyone else that still persists, and spends money every year to organize a event which has just become a symbol, a tradition for the community, but which is practically perceived like a hobby, a nice meeting day with other people who share the same passion, even by people who professionally operate in the Amiga business. If you couldn't get to the event, just look what happened in these nice videos from Seiya (part 1, part 2).


The Icaros Desktop table, with both a desktop solution and a netbook running AROS. Notice the desktop keyboard! It's what's left of a dead A1200, transformed into a USB keyboard thanks to the Keyrah interface.


At Pianeta Amiga there was a "special edition" of Icaros Desktop Live! 1.1.5 available on a 8cm DVD-R (on the left). On the right, Stephen Jones is showing off his iMica machine to AmigaKit's people.




As expected, you could see many SAM and AmigaOne boards system, running the latest builds of AmigaOS 4.1. New features introduced by Hyperion, like system notifications and new icons, were on the show as well.



On the left, Andrea "Guruman" Maniero with two MorphOS system showing swfshow and other MOS applications. On the right, Andrea Palmatè has shown his current build of Gnash. Is flash finally coming to Amiga? We hope to AROS too!

Icaros Desktop will be at the 13rd edition of Pianeta Amiga, the longest running Amiga event in Europe. See you on Saturday, September 26th 2009 at the "Palaesposizioni" of Empoli, near the wonderful town of Florence, Italy. It will be a good place to meet other AROS and Amiga fans, see with your eyes and touch with your hands the power of new iMica systems and other PCs running Icaros Desktop. And, well, there will be also many Amiga-related stuff, so don't miss this appointment!

> Pianeta Amiga's english website (italiano)

A new update for Icaros Desktop is available on the main server. Users of Icaros Desktop 1.1.4 can download and install it straight from AROS using OWB, unpacking it with untgz and installing it with Icaros' LiveUpdater, while others should manually download update discs and bring their version up to 1.1.4 as well. Complete releases of Icaros Desktop Live! and Light will follow in the next hours. This revision updates system files and AROS kernel to September 09th, 2009 nightly build, brings a more complete SDL/MESA library subsystem and fixes some stability issues encountered with former release.

LiveUpdater "Internet" Feature is temporarily disabled
Since updating to version 1.1.3 to 1.1.4 created too much issues, due to a mysterious problem in the ISO unpacking/mounting procedure, I've temporarily disabled the Internet feature until problems are gone. LiveUpdater will continue checking for updates (if set to automatic) and warn you that a new version is available, but you will have to download it manually with OWB and then extract it somewhere with the untgz command. LiveUpdater can then be use to upgrade Icaros Desktop from a ISO file.

DOWNLOAD
> Update CD from version 1.1.4 to 1.1.5 (mirror)

Icaros Desktop Light is a CD-ROM size distribution of the AROS desktop operating system, for computers without a DVD drive. Icaros Desktop Light comes on a bootable live CD-ROM which runs directly on your hardware (it must be already supported by AROS). It can be installed on the hard drive and can coexist with Microsoft Windows XP, in a dedicated partition. A quick reference guide and some AROS PDF manuals are included. This version provides all the most important tools of Icaros Desktop Live!, but without some funny - but heavy - parts (like the Eternal Lands client, the adventures emulated by ScummVM and some other media files). To get them, please choose Icaros Desktop Live! instead.

SUPPORT ICAROS DESKTOP!
After downloading, please consider donating. Every release of Icaros Desktop requires a lot of time and work, for a hobbyst project. Donations will be spent to enhance Icaros Desktop and to contribute to AROS bounties.

Icaros Desktop LIVE! is a complete distribution of the AROS desktop operating system. Icaros Desktop LIVE! comes on a bootable live DVD-ROM which runs directly on your hardware (it must be already supported by AROS). It can be installed on the hard drive and can coexist with Microsoft Windows XP, in a dedicated partition. A quick reference guide and some AROS PDF manuals are included. This version comes also with a Qemu-based virtual machine which allows Windows users to test the distribution in a safer (but slower) environment.

SUPPORT ICAROS DESKTOP!
After downloading, please consider donating. Every release of Icaros Desktop requires a lot of time and work, for a hobbyst project. Donations will be spent to enhance Icaros Desktop and to contribute to AROS bounties.

You shouldn't ever do experiments at night, before going to bed, or you'll risk to rest much, much later than you expected. I was just placing my netbook (an Acer Aspire One) on charge, when I thought: "why don't I try booting Icaros Desktop 1.1.4 using my USB DVD drive?". And so I did. I turned on my computer, pressed F12 at boot to choose the boot device, entered my USB DVD drive and... boot stopped immediately after Grub menu. But I tried again, this time moving the DVD unit from the left side USB port to another one placed on the right side of the machine. I pressed F12 again, entered Grub menu and added the 'enableusb' parameter to grub options and... voilà:






AROS booted fine and I could even see what's connected to USB bus with Trident. So, if you wish to test AROS on your netbook, you only need:

- a USB DVD drive
- Icaros Desktop Live or Light 1.1.4, or a recent AROS nightly build
- some patience

The procedure is simple: just plug your DVD drive in the first USB port (if it doesn't work, change port and reboot), turn on your netbook, choose the DVD drive as boot device (on the Aspire One you should just press F12) and wait for Grub menu. When it appears, press 'E' immediately and add this parameter

enableusb

just right before 'VESA=32bit'. Press Ctrl+X to continue booting and... enjoy! Well, AROS boots fine and runs quite fast, but there is still no sound, no network, no wi-fi and you can only boot in VESA 800x600 mode, but at least USB works and this is a good beginning. Now we have only to hope that some nice developer will help us all with the necessary drivers.