Announcing Icaros Desktop update 1.2.1

Some months has lasted since Icaros Desktop 1.2 release, and now it's time to announce a nice refresh to Icaros system files. Beware that this update will be different to the others, since it won't introduce all the new programs that have been released for AROS in the meanwhile: they are just too many, and this eventually brought some questions about the direction that Icaros Desktop would take. Adding another 650 MB to the distribution would bring the size of the Live! version to over 2 GB, while the Light version should have been totally rewritten. So, version 1.2.1 will include just YAM, the new 3D hardware accelerated mesa.library and some games that use it, while the rest of the update will be composed by newer system/development files and, obviously, updates for already-included software, like OWB, WookieChat and SabreMSN. Does this mean that all the fabulous software which has been developed so far won't be ever included? No, it will be, just not right now. If you were interested in such programs, you've probably already downloaded and installed them. Gems like MathX, Annotate, Cinnamon Writer and so on will be included in Icaros 1.3, whose development will start really soon, and will be performed while keeping 1.2.x branch updated on a parallel path. Icaros 1.3 will try to be different from the current distribution, and will choose quality over quantity. The days that Icaros used to collect acritically every program that has been written for AROS has come to an end: we don't need to demonstrate anymore that there are 'tons' of little/big programs for our beloved operating system, but it's time to choose instead. Some nice new features will be also added in the interface, and the result will be far more usable and rationale. It will require time and patience, but we have many project bound to Icaros and the future couldn't be brighter and more promising, just follow us and you won't be disappointed. Current users of Icaros 1.2.0, anyway, should really update to 1.2.1 as soon as possible, since the new update adds many new nice features to Icaros like changeable pointer, 3D acceleration with Nvidia GeForce 5-6-7 cards, AGP transfer rate support for Nvidia cards, better support for chipsets and SATA drives, a new TCP preference program and many more. Release date is soon, very soon.