Just a little post to mention a nice web page (in Italian!) for anyone interested in a VirtualBox machine with Icaros Desktop.

> Leggi qui la versione italiana.

I also provide a robo-translation for international readers

> Click here for english robo-translation.

A big thank you to our friends from oscene.net.

Necessary premise: since anyone enough skilled will be able to create a Icaros stick from a regular release of the distribution, I have no plan to create a proper ISO or something similar. But I am thinking about a "final product" that people can buy already pre-formatted and pre-configured. Prices will be honest and will cover the cost of the USB sticks, plus a little extra that will be spent to contribute to other AROS bounties. I need to understand how many people would be interested, and how they would like the product to be. Here's the question:

What do you expect from a Icaros USB stick?

Please remember that AROS can boot only from SFS partitions and other operating systems like Windows and Linux generally use FAT partitions on USB sticks for data exchange, while they can't usually access SFS ones.

a) I'd prefer a 1 GB or 2 GB usb stick totally dedicated to Icaros Desktop, with a full-features AROS installation with dozens of games, applications and development tools. No matter if Windows can't read it

b) I'd prefer a 1 GB usb stick with a little AROS boot partition, with the really useful programs inside and a couple of good quality games, and a 512 MB FAT partition for data exchange.

c) I'd prefer a 2 GB usb stick with a moderate AROS boot partition, with useful programs inside and a selection of good quality games, and 1 GB FAT partition for data exchange.

d) I'd prefer a bigger and more expensive 4 or 8 GB usb stick with enough space for an AROS boot partition, an AROS SFS Work partition and half the space dedicated to a FAT data exchange partition.

Feel free to answer here!

People having issues reaching this site and/or clicking on right side links, shouldn't have them anymore. I've accidentally let icarosdesktop.org domain expire, but now I have renewed it for many years. People still having problems should refresh their browser's cache or just wait for some hours. Thank you for your kind patience.

Some people might have experienced graphic issues with the latest release of Icaros Desktop. To fix them, please look in your sys:Libs directory. You'll find a "Softmesa" drawer which contains the traditional, software-only rendering library which always managed OpenGL calls on AROS. Just overwrite the mesa.library file included in sys:Libs with this one, and your issues will be fixed. However, this will also disable 3D acceleration at all. I have also noticed that sometimes 3D acceleration may work with some resolutions and not others. The only thing I can suggest is just keep trying.

We have also to apologize for the sudden death of some links on the right column of this site. Direct links to Icaros VE, Live and Light seem to be broken, but this is probably due to problems with redirection.net, the service which normally transform things like "vmwaros.blogspot.com/date/vlahvlah" into better URLs like "live.icarosdesktop.org". We'll see in the next hours if it will be fixed. There aren't many doubts they will, anyway.

In the end, just let me be really, really happy and thankful to the AROS crew, because AROS can finally be installed on USB pendrives and boot from them. Icaros Desktop on a Stick was something definitely planned long ago, but placed on hold until coders added the necessary efforts into this. And now, Neil Cafferkey made this possible. Expect big news in the next weeks, since I already have got my first working protoype ready.

As promised, the first update for Icaros Desktop 1.2 has been released. This update CD includes the most updated system files (up to march 6, 2010 nightly build) and some interesting new features like (still work in progress) 3D hardware acceleration on GeForce 5, 6 and 7 cards (both AGP and PCI Express versions supported), changeable pointers, .backdrop file support for placing icons on the desktop and many, many others. Please notice that this release won't include new 3rd party software (with the only exception of YAM and some games to test hardware 3D), but will only bring the current ones to their latest versions. So you will enjoy OWB 1.0 RC2, SabreMSN 0.67 and the latest beta of WookieChat. Developers will also find the latest version of AROS development files. This release should fix also some annoying bugs like the Theme prefs wrongly handled on 1.2, while system stability and hardware compatibility has noticeably improved.

What's new since version 1.2
- updated system files
- .backdrop support
- user-customizable pointer (both busy and normal images)
- improved 68K apps integration with Janus-UAE 0.6
- added 3D hardware support for GeForce 5, 6 and 7 cards
- updated OWB to version 1.0 rc2
- updated WookieChat to latest beta
- updated SabreMSN to v0.67
- fixed theme prefs handling
- added YAM 2.6
- added support for HDAudio chipsets
- added support for Envy24T audio boards
- better network support on iMica and compatible systems
- many bugs fixed, improved stability

INSTALLATION
To install this update, you should download the .tgz package from the Icaros Download Center, open it with ZuneARC (or any other compatible unpacker on other platforms) and extract the ISO file inside. Then you can either copy the ISO file somewhere on your AROS partition or burn it to a CD-RW. You will be able to update the system using the LiveUpdater utility included in your Icaros Desktop installation (look inside sys:Tools/LUPD or in the My Software > System menu of AmiStart).

NOTE
In order to install Icaros Desktop 1.2.1, you will need Icaros Desktop 1.2 already installed on your system.

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.

Just a little update about a topic most Amiga fellow are interested in: Oliver's Janus-UAE is progressing very well, and this will help me enhancing AmiBridge. Just a screen of current work in progress...

(click on the thumbnail for a larger size)