A new version of Icaros Desktop is now available for download. This new release includes a
work-in-progress version of the VMware SGVA driver, an improved version of
EasyRPG Player and many updates to current applications here and there (please see the "new from" section for a full list). As
already explained, the VMware SVGA driver is not activated by default on this release of Icaros Desktop.
VMware users, however, will have the option to enable it after installation onto the hard drive. If you're upgrading Icaros Desktop from an older version to 2.2.7, you can enable VMware SVGA driver by copying VMware related files from Storage/Monitors to Devs/Monitors. You will then need to reboot your system and choose the default "Icaros Desktop" boot option in the initial GRUB menu. If you are not satisfied by the driver, you can revert to the usual VESA driver either removing the VMware files from Devs/Monitors, or - temporarily - by choosing one of the VESA modes in GRUB's "Advanced options for Icaros Desktop" menu. For your pleasure, we added two more resolutions that surely work with VMware: 1366x768 and 1920x1080 pixels. Current VMware SVGA driver is an usable state, but it is still slow in many operations and has some quirks that must still be addressed, like the pointer randomly vanishing and some artifacts being left by screen refresh. It allows screen dragging and changing resolution from Prefs/ScreenMode, though, and it's a mandatory choice if you wish to use Icaros Desktop at highest 2K and 4K resolutions (which are not supported by VESA driver).
Icaros Desktop 2.2.7 allows user to change volume T: position from RAM to system drive. It can be useful if you're running the system from a SSD drive and you wish to save as much RAM as possible for running tasks. Choosing to move T: from RAM: to Sys: won't completely remove T from RAM, because some poorly-addressing programs may still pretend to write something to RAM:T/. Icaros Desktop will delete SYS:T/ contents at every boot and ADD also RAM:T/ to T: assign.
You can select what drive to use for T: in Prefs/Icaros Settings. Default value for this option is, obviously, the RAM drive. Icaros 2.2.7 adds
Digger to games available in the Live! edition and
brings ViewLHA 0.2 to AROS x86. ViewLHA is a little CLI tool written by
Mats Peterson which was originally intended to handle a single image file included in a same-named LHA archive (a quite common habit on unexpanded classic Amiga systems). While compiling it to AROS, I decided to extend its functionality to be more general and more tailored to current Icaros needs. So we can now enter a command like this:
ViewLHA pictures:my_archive.lha
to immediately extract that LHA archive in T: and browse it with ZuneView. A "Browse for images" option as been added as well in Magellan for LHA archives, however, due to a silly mistake I did, it appears for other archive types too. Sorry for that, it will be fixed later: Mats is still working on it (I have currently ported v0.7 to AROS) and I am still following his improvements.
New from Icaros Desktop 2.2.6
- fix: replaced SANAutil from system/netowrk/AROSTCP/C
with the one in Extras/Networking/Utils
- did the same also for NTPSync and SetPrism2Defaults
- removed Extras/Networking/Utils, not needed anymore
- fixed a typo in Create Installation Pendrive script (makedit->makedir)
- Updated TimeKeeper to v1.07 and moved from Prefs to Tools/Commodities
- updated TimeKeeper icon adding 1.07+ tooltypes
- added manual for LodePaint
- updated vmwaresvga.hidd
- added S:testvmware script to detect VMware SVGA and enable its driver
- added PCX datatype
- updated ZXSCR datatype to latest version
- updated MUIRoyale Hollywood Plugin to support ESC-A image embedding
- updated vim to latest release
- added HydraCastle to extras/Games
- updated fpc with a more recent build
- updated EasyRPG-Player to version 0.6.0 (1)
- updated EasyRPG-launcher to reflect new version (removed --window parameter)
- added Digger to extras/Games
- updated Exutil to latest version
- added option to change T: position to prefs/Icaros Settings
- added ViewLHA (built from sources by Mats Peterson) with modified script
+ added "Browse for images" menu option for LHA files
- updated user manual to reflect new additions
NOTES
(1) Save games from former version are not compatible. You may need to restart your games after update.
