AROS Research Operating System
Developer | The AROS Development Team |
---|---|
OS family | Amiga |
Source model | Open source |
Repository | |
Platforms | x86, PPC |
License | AROS Public License |
Official website | www.aros.org |

AROS Research Operating System (AROS) is a free software/open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 APIs. Designed to be portable and flexible, ports are currently available for x86 and PowerPC based PCs in native and hosted flavours, with other architectures in development.
Current status
The project, started in 1997, has over the years become an almost "feature complete" implementation of AmigaOS - with currently (as of March 2006) only a few lacking areas of functionality. This was achieved by the efforts of a small team of developers.
It can currently be installed on most IBM PC compatibles, and features native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce range made by NVIDIA.
While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, including E-UAE, an emulation program that allows 68k-native AmigaOS applications to run in the same way a majority must be run on AmigaOS 4.0. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has TCP/IP networking support, and the AMosaic web browser available, among other Internet-related applications.
Some AROS Programs Available
See also
- MorphOS
- AmigaOS
- Amiga
- Emulator
- Virtual machine
- Porting
- Binary compatibility
- Source-compatibility
- Open source software