Many people asked me how to set up Icaros Desktop on Mac computers. Unluckily, I don't own any of these machines (little lie: to be honest, I have a very old G3 500 iBook at home, but it's not really suitable anymore for Icaros purposes...), but there is always the virtualization option that will surely work. If you own a Intel-based Macintosh, you can download VMware Fusion and install Icaros Desktop on a virtual machine. Our friend Ikir at amiganews.it explains how to do that, in Italian. I am translating it into English.

1. Download Icaros Desktop and create a new Fusion virtual machine using the + key.


2. Drag and drop Icaros' ISO image or choose it. When Fusion will ask what operating system is, answer Other and select BIOS Legacy.

3. Choose "Customize Settings" (the actual name of this button might be different, sorry: I have only seen this in italian screenshots) and save the virtual machine:


4. Before starting the VM, edit settings and modify RAM and CPU, using a single core and at least 2 GB of RAM (1 GB would be enough anyway...). Add an IDE hard disk and set its size (please make it 8 GB or bigger). Leave for now the CD Drive, which will be mandatory for the installation task.

5. Start the virtual machine, run Icaros Desktop Live! and install it onto the IDE hard drive.

6. Once the installation has completed, turn off the virtual machine. Turn back to settings from the main menu bar (Virtual Machines, Settings. Or Cmd-E) and remove the ISO image from the CD drive.

To release mouse pointer from the virtual machine, press ctrl+cmd.

A new update to Icaros Desktop is now available for download. It includes many updates to 3rd party applications and the new picture datatypes (mostly vector and old-age bitmap formats) which were missing on AROS. We have fixed many bugs in hosted mode and polished the distribution here and there. As usual, the updated version will be available to patrons only for a while, then it will be publicly released. Scroll down the page to find what's new in this release.


New from Icaros Desktop 2.2.2

- fixed AHI preferences, removing a unwanted default ahi.prefs in envarc:
- updated Annotate to a more recent build
- updated lame to v3.100 final
- added AmiCast Player to Multimedia programs
- added DClock to Misc programs
- added HyperRogue to games
- updated zlib to development libraries
- added webptools to MediaEditors and development libraries
- updated RapaGUI plugin to latest version
- added polybios to Hollywood plugins
- fixed Wanderer crash when opening Host: volume on Linux hosted
- fixed AROS crash when using ALSA driver on a x64 system without i386 libs
- fixed permission bug which prevented HostBridge to correctly run on Linux
- updated AmiCloud to v2.0-RC9
- updated GrafX2 to v2.5
- added xpdftools to Media Editors
- updated YAM to version 2.9p1
- added koala paint datatype (popular C=64 graphics format)
- added ZXSCR datatype (Sinclair Spectrum screen format)
- added xbm and xpm datatypes
- added SVG and FIG datatypes (vector graphics formats)
- updated Giana's Return - Giana Sisters clone
- updated Sqrxz 2, 3 and 4 executables for AROS
- added hermes to Extras/Games
- updated asl.library with Neil's fixes
- fixed an old small bug showing a wrong icon in AmiStart full mode

I've been informed on AROS-EXEC that with current Icaros releases, Hostbridge doesn't work as expected on Linux. Adding a host program ends up in this Lua error:

lua:amilua: S:Replacer.lua:161: attempt to index global 'filehdl' (a nil value) stack traceback:
             S:Replacer.lua:161: in main chunk
             [C]:  in ?

This is not, obviously, the expected behavior. After some tests with Linux, Windows and older releases, I finally discovered that the root cause of the problem was wrong grants on the SYS:System/Hosted drawer (and files) from the Linux side. In practice, when the Linux-hosted install script of Icaros Desktop copies Hostbridge files from the installation media, it preserves their read-only nature and does not add the correct +RW flags to them. I've fixed the issue adding proper chmod commands to the install script and, while I were at it, I've also added some missing redirections to >NIL: which caused scripts to show unwanted AROS shell outputs, during first-time configuration of hosted Icaros.

Hotsbridge now works correctly on Linux

If you've already installed Icaros Desktop 2.2.2 onto your Linux system, you can fix the issue by opening a shell, and changing directory to your IcarosDesktop drawer

cd /your/path/to/IcarosDesktop

and then running this command:

chmod -R +rw System/Hosted

Another permissions issue I've been informed about, although completely unrelated, is crashing hosted Icaros on Linux, when using Wanderer. AROS' default file manager does not seem to be able to show the HOST: drive (mapped to Linux root '/' directory) and crashes hard, forcing the user to kill the AROSBootstrap process from the Linux side:

[KRN] Trap signal 11, SysBase 985d01e0, KernelBase 985d0f20
    SP=9905595c  FP=990559f8  PC=00363ba7
    R0=00000000  R1=98693130  R2=ffffffc8  R3=986961d0
    R4=99a87350  R5=000000d4

The workaround for this is starting Icaros launch script with the sudo command, although I totally discourage it. Please notice that sudoing Icaros Desktop would grant root access to the whole system, so any badly-written command or script ran by Hostbridge might harm it considerably. For the time being, I suggest to use Magellan instead (as by default on Icaros Desktop).

UPDATE!

Neil Cafferkey has fixed this issue. You can find the necessary files here:
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=108366#forumpost108366

Running Icaros as root, or with the sudo command, lets Wanderer show Host: contents, but we heavily discourage this.

Both corrections will be added to Icaros Desktop 2.2.3.

Icaros Desktop 2.2.2 has been releasead! It took a long time, but a new milestone has been reached. This version includes a preliminary version of Janus-UAE2, Oliver's port of WinUAE to AROS, compiled for ABIv0. There are many features still missing, including support to some ROMs and all the coherency stuff, but fans of emulation should be really curious about this new Amiga emulator, which is being brought to AROS. In the (far, but hopefully not so far) future, Janus-UAE2 will replace Janus-UAE in AmiBridge, so please test it and report to Oliver bugs and suggestions. Janus-UAE2 is currently available in the Live! edition only, and it is placed in Extras:Emu drawer.

Look in the centre and say welcome to Janus-UAE2 user interface!

That's not, obviously, the only news here. As anticipated, we've polished Icaros' user interface and added some useful new actions to Magellan buttons, using the middle mouse button. In particular, it is now possible to calculate and show size for directories and to add files to TAR archives, other than LHA and ZIP as usual. Thanks to Yannick Erb, both ZunePaint and ZuneView can now save images to ILBM formats, which were very popular in the age of classic Amiga. This will hopefully make adding new buttons to Magellan easier! ;-)

New from Icaros Desktop 2.2.1

- updated ZuneView and ZunePaint to latest releases
  + now they can save images to various ILBM formats
- updated AmiCloud client
- added DigiClock to system utilities
  + a clock is now integrated on menu bar's top right corner
- added Janus-UAE2 (WinUAE port) to Emulators
- added RemoteAROSShell
  + you can access to Icaros via Telnet from another host
- added FolderSync2
- added Appbuilder to demo programs
- added Gilbert to Games
- added GLColumns to OpenGL Games
- added MUI examples to Development
- added metaDiary to Applications
- added RTF-Riddle to Applications
- added BackupCopy to Filesystems
- updated Hollywood plugins to latest version
- updated AROS libraries
- updated AROS system files
- added mod2wav to CLI commands
- added PDF to PNG option in Magellan GUI
- added MOD to wave option in Magellan GUI
- updated redit (68K) to version 2
- added GPmark to Benchmarks
- added b4sdl and HGui to develoment languages/tools
- added clipo to management tools
- added LuxCC to development tools
- added VMT to misc
- added VAMP to Multimedia players
- added AmiTimeKeeper to Networking
- updated cloud handlers for Gdrive and Dropbox
- AmiBridge can now be optional to save space on system partition
- fixed a bug in hosted installation script
- fixed a bug in HostBridge

Availability

Icaros Desktop 2.2.2 has now been publicly released, files can be retireved from our download page. Please consider patronising Icaros Destkop: costs are raising and your donations are getting more and more important to keep this dream alive.

> Download Icaros Desktop 2.2.2 from Patreon

Adding a new function to Icaros Desktop's GUI can be straightforward. In this short lesson Mr. Besser will teach you how to add an useful "Browse with ZuneView" context-menu option for your drawers, to let you do exactly what the name of this new option suggests. First of all, be sure you're running Magellan as main GUI, otherwise this tutorial wouldn't be of any use to you. Left-click on an empty spot of your workbench and press the keys rAROS + 5 to open Magellan's editor for file-types


Select "Icaros Drawers" on the left menu, then click on the "Edit" button to the right. The action editor will appear:


Click on the Add button under the "Icon Menu..." field. The "Icaros Drawers : Icon Menu" window will appear.


Now please follow me and pay attention. First of all, move the pointer the the Label field (1) and enter a name for the new option we're adding, in this case "Browse with ZuneView".  Press Enter. Click on the Add button (2) and the "Command" text will appear above. Click on the Command  button (3) and select the AmigaDOS option. Then try to find ZuneView executable using the file browser (4). We suggest to start with the system volume using SYS:, which is device-agnostic. Click on the {} button on the right (5) and select the first available option, {f}. Move to the Flags field (6) and activate the Run asynchronously option. Then click on the Use button on the bottom-left corner.

Click on the Use button on the bottom-left corner of the "Icaros Drawers" window and on the Save button of the File Types one. Now just right click on a folder name in list-view mode et voilà, the new option will show in the context menu. Happy browsing!

MiniMount is a little utility, for AROS and Windows, that helps mounting the right disk image file into your The C64 Mini through a USB pendrive. The AROS version should be compatibile also with other Amiga and Amiga-like operating systems.

MiniMount now has it's own page. Get it here!