I don't like comparisons between operating systems' boot times. There's something completely odd about them: an operating system should be valued for its stability, its reliability, its user-friendliness, compatibility and price, not for its boot times, which practically don't matter when you use a computer. That's why, when I saw this video, I really couldn't stop myself.



This video is from tuxradar.com, it compares four 64-bit operating system on a not-better-specified "same configuration" booting to the desktop and automatically load their frontpage in a browser. That's great. They also have a sure winner, since Ubuntu 9.10 took only 40 seconds to accomplish this task. And this is great too - no jokes - since my Fedora installation would take much more and Linux in general is not considered a champion about boot times. But, well, I guess if someone would do better, and...



Icaros is the second best operating system all over the world! It takes 16 seconds less than Ubuntu 9.10 to boot to the desktop and load the tuxradar page (considering also network times). Unluckily, we are still behind the Commodore 64, which boots to its... ehm... operating system in less than 3 seconds.

PS: and yes, this is intended as a funny post, not a real comparison.

After a little pause, Stanislaw Szymczyk has come back and updated his port of the Origin Web Browser (OWB), adding some nice missing features like the upper menu and a quite amount of speed in page rendering. Some bugs, which prevented OWB to correctly hande some sites, have also been fixed. Before the official 0.9.9 release, he has published three RC versions. You can get the latest one here, which includes these modifications:

RC1
- Added support for multiple browser windows
- Added support for popup windows
- Added main application menu
- Moved bookmarks menu to main application menu
- Added StartOWB tool displaying splash window while OWB is starting (logo created by mihcaels, thanks man!)
- Replaced text search window with search panel
- Fixed bug #69: Can't login on www.vcast.it. It say that cookies are not active on the browser
- Fixed bug #81: After sending a private message on AROS-Exec, the links on the new pages are not working
- Fixed bug #85: Long bookmarks are cut
- Fixed bug #88: Reloading AROS-Exec causes it to look weird
- Fixed bug #91: Problem with cookies from www.ppa.pl
- Updated OWB source code to revision 1097

RC2
- fixed the cookie jar problem
- fixed one serious bug causing random crashes during exit...
- ...and few minor ones (window title not changing when switching to an empty tab, empty tab title displayed non-translated sometimes)
- updated Polish locales.

RC3

- middle mouse button now opens links in new tab
-failed fontconfig assertion message shouldn't appear on exit anymore (let me know if it does)
-fixed a bug causing browser hangs after clicking on select tag widget when select option list is displayed
-included recent catalogs updates

Unluckily for italian people, locale file for italian language was not available in the 1st and 2nd RC (I don't know what happens for the third, sorry). I have updated it and given a straight compile. It isn't perfect due to some issues with accented letters, but at least it is usable. I have much improved my original translation, modifying some voices and adding all the missing ones. If you need it, you can download the catalog from the following link:

> Download the italian catalog for OWB 0.9.9 RC2

Just save it in extras:Networking/Apps/OWB/Catalogs/Italiano, replacing the original italiano.catalog with this one, and you'll be able to use OWB 0.9.9 RC1 and RC2 in Italian.

The incredible coder Krzysztof "Deadwood" Smiechowicz has released an "alpha demo" of 3D acceleration under AROS, and you can already use it on Icaros Desktop 1.1.5, you just need a GeForce card supported by the nuveau driver (GeForce 4, FX, 6 and 7 series, except probably some cut-down models). Following the link below, you will get an updated version of AROS MESA-demos and, for your delight, a gallium-enabled port of Paolo Martella's GLExcess demo, which runs incredibly well on AROS. I have personally tested it at 1152x864 pixel on a GeForce 7800 card, and it runs amazingly well, at full framerate and without major issues (just some graphic glitch, mainly due to the status of the nuveau driver, still in development). To grab your little great demo of the incoming AROS' 3D capabilities, just follow this discussion on AROS-EXEC, and don't forget to write your feedback or to report any issue you'd encounter.

> Gallium 3D demo released on AROS-EXEC

INSTALLATION PROCEDURES:
1. download the gallium-0.1.zip archive with OWB
2. double click on it to extract it on a hard drive, a directory called Gallium-0.1 will be created.
3. select show -> all files and enter the Gallium-0.1 directory
4. open a shell with rAros+W
5. give these commands
stack 1000000
glexcess-gallium 0 xxxx yyyy
(where xxxx and yyyy are your favourite screen resolution, eg 1280 1024 for 1280x1024 resolution)
6. enjoy!
Please remember you need a GeForce card. AROS must be booted with VESA graphics.

Krzysztof "Deadwood" Smiechowicz's port of Gallium 3D is progressing quite well, at least according to this new video:

What he has done so far is simply amazing. This new video shows GLExcess running on a GeForce 5200 with hardware acceleration. I used that demo-benchmark long ago to test video cards for the magazines I work on and, honestly, I didn't believe I could see it on AROS some day. This doesn't mean, unluckily, that 3D graphics are now available on AROS (the Gallium and Mesa drivers are compiled statically in every demo application, which would crash the system if two of them are started), but a working demo of the technology is ready. Next step will be placing the Gallium3D stuff in a standalone driver and updating MESA to use it. Once done, lucky owners of supported cards will be able to play every MESA app with hardware acceleration. In the meanwhile, please consider funding the Gallium3D port effort with this bounty.

People following the AROS developers mailing list had already noticed some works by Krzysztof "deadwood" Smiechowicz on Gallium3D, but the news is finally official and I can spread it on this site: the heavy task to bring 3D acceleration to AROS has finally started! Gallium3D is an increasingly popular software library which enables hardware and software acceleration on a wide range of video cards and operating systems, and provides a unified API which exposes standard hardware functions, like shader units on modern GPUs. Once ported, it will allow hardware acceleration on MESA apps and games, providing also a backend for GPGPU infrastructures. Krzysztof has also made a little video showing his first results, which shows a lightning-fast rotating cube:

The road to a full port and implementation of Gallium3D in AROS is still long, but this video is amazingly promising. For lovers of technical details, Krzysztof has said on AROS-EXEC that “AROS needs to be started in VESA mode. The the demo application is run and it starts the gallium hardware driver. This means that at the same time there are two drivers talking to the card - one in VESA way, the other one in nVidia way. Lucky they don't crash. In final version the mesa.library will be using the hardware gallium drivers, so each appliation already compiled against current version of mesa.library will in future received hardware acceleration”.

And I am really proud to notice that everything is running on… Icaros Desktop!