AFROS

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The Atari FRee Operating System ( AFROS for short ) is a GPL- licensed, Unix-like operating system that should run on any computer in conjunction with ARAnyM , a combination of emulator and virtual machine . Since Afros is binary compatible with the Atari TOS operating system , Aranym is not required when used on Atari computers.

construction

AFROS consists of the following components:

  • EmuTOS - a clone of the single-tasking system TOS, based on the approved original sources from Digital Research . It is only required to boot FreeMint.
  • FreeMiNT - a multitasking-capable TOS clone
  • fVDI - a clone of the Virtual Device Interface ( device driver )
  • XaAES - a clone of the Application Environment System , the graphical toolkit of the GEM user interface .
  • Tera Desktop - a clone of the Desktop file manager

The minimum requirements for starting the AFROS Live CD are relatively low: An Intel / AMD compatible CPU (Pentium or better), 128 MB RAM, a bootable CD-ROM drive, an SVGA-compatible graphics card, a serial or PS / 2 or IMPS / 2 compatible USB mouse. In connection with Aranym, AFROS can also run on PowerPC processors.

Live CD

The AFROS CD is based on the Slax Live CD and gives an impression of the functionality of the TOS-compatible operating system. AFROS boots its components mentioned above via SLAX. Many Atari programs and new TOS-compatible software run on the visually oriented Tera desktop, which is similar to GEM or Mac OS 8 . The compact, robust and fast system does not write anything to non-TOS drives by itself, but offers drive access embedded in the drive image "D". Reading from these drives is safe. Only those who know what they are doing should write from the TOS-compatible system to drives of other operating systems. Altered data structures can otherwise cause irreparable damage.

Installation on the host system

The full installation of the free operating system requires somewhat advanced knowledge, but offers far more options than the earlier Atari operating system TOS. An installed AFROS can be modified in terms of appearance and use in connection with additional software and other desktops (called “shell” in other systems).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ARAnyM / AFROS Live CD. In: sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on March 11, 2009 ; accessed on March 27, 2009 (English).