Icaros Desktop will be somehow present at Amiganoid 2011, a new Amiga-oriented meeting/show in Essen that will be held on September 17th, 2011. We'll not have a stand for ours, but some Icaros pendrives will be available at the very low price of € 3,50. These pendrives will have a 1,5 GB special edition of the distribution (Icaros Desktop 1.3.1 Amiganoid Edition) and 512 MB available on a FAT partition for data exchange with other popular operating systems. "Speaking of Amiganoid, it is not intended to be a fair/exhibition, - organizers say - it is rather a big meeting where you will meet other Amigans. Therefore drinks and buffet will be provided (actually there is a compulsary 6,50€ "all you can drink flatrate"). Main focus will be on AROS, but AmigaOS and MorphOS will also be on the show":

- Broadway Aros distro on x86 hardware
- Aros on ARM hardware (Efika MX)
- Icaros Aros distro and others
- the powerful alternative: MorphOS
- the original is alive: AmigaOS 4.x on new hardware
- AmigaOS 1.0 to 3.9 "Oldschool" on new hardware

AMIGANOID 2011 will be held on 17th of September in Essen:

Start: 11am
Unperfekthaus
Room (Raum) 154
Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 18
45127 Essen-Stadtmitte
Event Website: www.amiga-event.de

First of all, I'd like to apologize. I placed the update pack from Icaros Desktop 1.3 to 1.3.1 in the download section, but I totally forgot to warn users about this:

In order to install the update pack correctly, you must apply patch 01 to Icaros Desktop 1.3, because it makes some important fixes to LiveUpdater itself.

So, the correct procedure to upgrade Icaros from version 1.3 to version 1.3.1 is:

1) download the patch01 and apply it

if your AROS machine is directly connected to the Internet and you can surf the web

2) start LiveUpdater from SYS:Tools/LUPD and choose the "Internet" option
3) wait for the procedure to finish

otherwise, if you can't access the Internet from AROS directly, you can:

2) download the update pack from Icaros 1.3 ro 1.3.1 and move it to your AROS machine
3) start LiveUpdater from SYS:Tools/LUPD and choose the "File" option, then locate your update pack file

In any case, you're not required to unpack the .7z archive, LiveUpdater will do all the work for you!

The other good news is that Kalamatee has successfully ported Ross Vumaca's PCI128 AHI driver, and it's already working very well on VMware. Next Icaros release will have audio on VMware, but maybe we'll add it with a patch, if the testing phase of the driver won't take too long to finish.

A new, amazing release of Icaros Desktop is ready. This update won't include new applications or new features (the game Flare has been added to the Extras:Games drawer, though), but is more focused on enhancing what already existed, making it more reliable, more stable and easier to use. Many games and emulators have been recompiled with updated libraries, the amazing fpc development tool has been updated to its latest version, but the most exciting thing is about a long-awaited feature by former and current Amiga users: an almost-perfect integration between AROS x86 and AmigaOS M68K applications. Integrating Amiga Forever into your Icaros installation works better than before and now allows also using full-HD resolution screens (1080p or 1920x1200 pixel resolutions), making the virtual Amiga machine Janus-UAE available at boot. Oliver Brummer has worked really hard to accomplish this mission. There are still some quirks here and there, but what he has gained in the latest months is really amazing (and future is even brighter, too!): just enter your Amiga Forever CD/DVD, launch the Setup-AmiBridge script, and with a few semi-automatic operations you will be able to run any AmigaOS 3.x program straight from Wanderer, from AmiStart or using dock programs from the Amiga world, sharing the clipboard and the filesystem with Icaros applications. But this is not, obviously, the only news. We have finally placed our hands on the still work-in-progress enhanced Radeon driver from Bearsoft. It won't give you 3D acceleration yet, but it already extends native 2D support to many other Radeon cards (mainly from the X00, X000 and HD2000 series). You will find it in the Storage drawer, along with dozens little/big fixes here and there. But now enjoys some shots of Amiga integration...



New from Icaros Desktop 1.3

- fixed integration of Amiga Forever in coherency mode
- fixed many issues with Janus-UAE GUI
- fixed support for coherency mode at highest resolutions
- enhanced stability of Janus UAE
- enhanced stability of whole AROS system
- AROS system files from August 3, 2011
- Included Bearsoft's ATI drivers in Storage drawer
- Included alternative arosc.library in Storage
- compatible with recent Deadwood's games ports
- updated drivers and libraries
- updated fpc to version 2.5.1
- updated xRick
- updated Atheros 5xxx wireless driver
- updated Intel GMA driver with support for more GPUs
- recompiled many games and emulators with latest SDL
- updated applications to latest versions



AVAILABILITY

Icaros Desktop 1.3.1 is only available in the "Live!" version (it needs a DVD for burning), while an update for current Icaros Desktop 1.3 Light and Live! versions is already on the works and to be released soon. Files are stored as usual in our downloads section.

(what's happening here? ;-)