I'm really, really happy to announce that another very exciting, important piece of the puzzle has been placed: thanks to the efforts of Stephen Jones, who paid for it, and Davy Wentzler, who actually coded it, AROS is getting an AHI driver for Intel's HD Audio. This basically means that many systems using compatible chipsets should get sound too. The driver is still in development, so you won't be able to download it yet, but soon it will be available on ClusterUK's website. It won't be free, though, because Stephen wishes to recoup the money he spent in the development (and, frankly, he has all the rights and the motivation to do so). The good news, anyway, is that sound already works on Steve's iMica systems and on Acer Aspire One A150s, and it should do the same on many other nettops and netbooks out there. The hdaudio AHI driver will be included in iMicas, but it will also be available for download to anyone else for £10.

PS: Davy Wentzler is a professional programmer and he is working on many projects for different vendors. But he also works on the multi-track audio and MIDI recording software Audio Evolution. Wouldn't it be a wonderful audio editing solution for AROS?

One of the most welcomed features of Icaros Desktop 1.2 is the ability to launch Amiga games and demos straight from their ADF files. I noticed that on Amiga forums this has got even more popular than 3D Acceleration, so I'd like to do something to every retro-gamer out there. Unluckily, when the Amiga was a very popular gaming platform, I didn't really like it for the gaming side, but I preferred playing with workbench applications, which I found always more interesting than their MS/DOS counterparts. However, I recognize that for many people the Amiga has been just "something more" than a powerful console, and for most Amigans its games were the best available at the time. Anyway, I don't think about myself as an Amiga hardcore gamer, even if I worked and still work for the most known videogame magazine in Italy. So my default settings for Icaros' Amiga emulation might not be the best ones, and I'd need the help of someone really fond in Amiga emulation who could help me tweaking them the best way, to gain more compatibility and speed with Amiga games and demos. I have explained how in a post to Amigaworld.net. I'd really love if interested people would be so kind to help me about this. Thank you and regards...

> Go to the post on Amigaworld.net

It's been a long time since our latest "point release" (v1.1), and now I am proud to announce the immediate availability of the new one. Version 1.2 introduces lots of new programs, features and graphic enhancements, leveraging Icaros Desktop to a new level of realiability and user experience and so on (please insert any attractive marketing stuff you like here, I'm just too tired to do so). Seriously, there's really much to discover in this new release. Retro-gamers will surely love AmiBridge's brand new ADF support, which allows playing old Amiga games and demos straight from their ADF files. Just double click on them, answer to a pair of simple questions, and you'll be ready to play again your favourite classics! But AmiBridge has introduced also some enhancements for workbench applications: from now on, AROS and AmigaOS pointers will be syncronized under Janus-UAE (thanks to Oliver!), and brave people can even discover its latest steps toward full integration (beware: it might be still unstable). GeForce card users may like to test their hardware with GLExcess and some other MESA (OpenGL) demos running with Gallium 3D, an accelerated graphic framework currently being ported to AROS. Again: it's w.i.p.-state code only, it will work under some precise conditions and only with GeForce 3, 4, FX, 6 and 7 cards, not with models that are just too old or too recent. Compatibility will be extended in a (hopefully near) future to other cards, but not for now: take it as a demo only, and in the Live! version only (there was no space for it on Light, sorry). Thanks to ZuneARC, AROS (and Icaros) finally got a proper way to handle archive files: so you'll be able to manage zip, tar, bz2, lha, rar and other archives with a single, powerful GUI. And, obviously, Icaros Desktop includes also new games and applications. There's even a demo of the first commercial game for AROS, BOH. Moreover, if you have a netbook and a external DVD-ROM unit, there are good news for you: you'll be able to install Icaros Desktop on your little laptop, making it a fairly good Amiga-like computer. You won't get wi-fi and sound for now, but there are really good chances that everything else will be supported. Last but not least, Damir has created some really nice decoration themes for Icaros, and your distribution now includes also a new collection of desktop wallpapers. Enjoy!





New from Icaros 1.1.5

- new official Icaros Desktop themes and theme manager
- Updated SDL, MESA and many other libraries
- Grub2 hack to use netbook resolutions on Intel GMA900 GPUs
- Poseidon now available as kernel module
- Improved 68K apps integration in AmiBridge
. no double pointer anymore using workbench applications
. added more uaegfx resolutions in full integration mode
. Added Amiga games/demos ADF support with sound
- added ZuneARC to manage zip, lha, rar, tgz and other archives
- updated PortablE
- updated development chain with newer include files
- updated wookiechat to latest beta
- added support for audio CDs (PlayCDDA)
- added desktop wallpapers from artist Wilhelm Steiner
- added desktop wallpapers from abraXXious
- added many new games and emulators
- updated DosBox to latest revision
- added BOH demo from Simone Bevilacqua
- updated NoWinED to latest version
- added first Gallium3D demos for GeForce cards
- updated OWB to release 0.9.9
- added SDLBasic 1.0.2
- system files updated to December 2nd, 2009

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.

Icaros Desktop VE (Virtual Environment) was a complete AROS desktop environment running on VMware and VirtualBox.

Icaros Desktop VE has been retired and is not available anymore. People interested in using Icaros Desktop should look for the Live! or the Light version, and install one of them in a virtual machine like if it was on a physical computer. Installation procedure is quite easy and well explained in the Icaros Desktop manual and, thanks to ISO files, much faster than on real hardware. Please refer to the documentation also to learn about the size and specs for your virtual machine. Icaros Desktop is known to work on VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels and Qemu virtual machines. Other untested virtualization/emulation technologies may work too. The Live! version even provides a Qemu setup for Windows, to easily try the distribution (at a fraction of the possible speed, though).

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.