...and action!
power2people to Support AROS
We did not expect to read about it this this fast. We certainly have not made over power2people.org yet. An update is coming...
power2people was established to support a Project we originally started with Cornell University Graduate Students in 2006 around the EFIKA/Open Client (Genesi BoP Presentation). This merged with an EFIKA Project and an installation was made last summer in Morocco (EFIKA Project #338). Just Enough Computing was presented by Johan Dams at the International Workshop on Ambient Intelligence and Embedded Systems in Vaasa, Finland last September (presentation, paper). We featured Johan's Project in a few blogs and received some support from the OpenSPARC Marketing Team -- Thank You Sun Microsystems. Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department only funded the first phase of the Project. It has not gone further. It was a great Project.
More recently, we wrote a blog that anticipates a synthesis between our experiences and the experience of Mary Lou Jepsen who has left OLPC to form Pixel Qi. Pixel Qi will be working with Genesi on the new 5121e/5123 reference design we are developing with Freescale. Freescale announce the new SoC, reference design and starter kit at the Embedded Systems Conference last week (Freescale PR). We are really looking forward to working with Mary Lou.
We will be refining power2people.org to reflect the support we will be providing the AROS Community. It will all tie together to hopefully give low cost open source based computing another OS alternative. We hope to have this done by the time Bill Evans releases the AROS EFIKA port in May (before the 18th). We also expect that our support for AROS will help the NATAMI Project. AROS support for NATAMI and the Freescale ColdFire platform is also an objective.
The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!
12 comments:
Until AROS gets rid of the childish icon set, it's hard to take the project seriously. I'm sorry, but good first impressions mean everything these days!
You don't need icons on an embedded system :-)
Just one application, running full screen, be it a media player, web browser, etc. or a stripped down GUI is what you would use.
AROS is obsolete. Developers should completely abandon this unfortunate project and switch to more serious alternatives (Linux for example).
@Peter
Linux should be abandoned because it is not a real time micro kernel OS like QNX. ;-)
@BBRV
What will Apple's purchase of PA Semi mean for high end POWER processing?
Freescale doesn't have an e700 SoC yet do they?
IBM will probably still make Power servers. Maybe, PA Semi had a CELL technology license and is looking to make a digital TV game machine or...
Power Developer Forum Discussion
The 8641D and 8610 are the top of the line for Freescale currently (e600).
AROS needs some attention, but it probably has more potential today than Linux had ten years ago.
R&B :-)
And MorphOS needs some attention too :)
MorphOS bounty needs power2PEOPLE
...don't worry, MorphOS will get plenty of attention as soon as 2.0 is released.
Let's hope MorphOS gets all the attention it deserves. But it has to be used in a real product, otherwise, it's no more than any other hobby operating system (which is very respectable in itself, of course).
We really need a bounty system going. What happened to the "official" one, at MorphZone? And where's Dave "Targhan" Crawford, MorphZone's original administrator?
MorphOS needs a lot of impact to recover its user base. After that, perhaps something sound can be achieved. But without more users and, mostly, developers, it just moves at a pace too slow compared to the regular world.
@ Peter L.
There's something I can't understand about linux fans: why they all think the open source movement should oppose to the Microsoft commercial monopoly only with the Linux cultural one? AROS may be obsolete, but it's just the operating system I want to deal with. If the linux folks succeeded in modernising the old and far more obsolete 70s architecture of Unix, I can't understand why the AROS one could not do the same thing with the more recent and elegant AmigaOS one. Regards,
Hi.
Quote"
There's something I can't understand about linux fans: why they all think the open source movement should oppose to the Microsoft commercial monopoly only with the Linux cultural one?"
Because they're Linux fans. BSD fans will tell you different. There's even something else going on: Ubuntu is being used as a term to indicate an operating system. It's not Linux anymore for them, meaning there is a whole subset of Linux fans calling their OS Ubuntu.
And the "opposing Microsoft" is just a small subset of Linux users. Most of them just want to use Linux because it suits them. They don't care who riles the OS world, as long as they have the choice to use whatever suits them best.
"If the linux folks succeeded in modernising the old and far more obsolete 70s architecture of Unix, I can't understand why the AROS one could not do the same thing with the more recent and elegant AmigaOS one."
The Unix architecture never was obsolete. Just like TCP/IP never was obsolete. Unix has kept evolving over time (like, e.g., Solaris, *BSD, etc). Linux is just the more publicly known of the Unix-like operating systems out there. AmigaOS on the other hand did not evolve, it stagnated. It has few modern applications, does not provide memory protection, and is not really what one could call an elegant OS by todays standards. QNX fits that role better.
AROS can play a role in the embedded sector however, but it will require a lot of effort, especially since Linux is taking over in the embedded space, and it's way ahead compared to AROS, not just from a technical perspective, but also from the amount of applications and more importantly, developers available in the market space. This is something often overlooked: no matter how nice AROS is, there are almost no developers for it, nor for applications for the platform. Which vendor or OEM is going to go for an obscure OS and no programmers familiar with it, while they could go for Linux which is not only more known, it has proven itself capable, and has developers for it everywhere.
"Linux is taking over in the embedded space, and it's way ahead compared to AROS, not just from a technical perspective, but also from the amount of applications and more importantly, developers available in the market space."
There are rare and common diseases. Should science stop researching medicines for the rare ones, because there are far more scientist, money, experts and studies already done for the common ones?
The most common alternative to common fuel are electric cars. Should technician and researches stop developing other ways of propelling engines, and turn them all to improve the electric cars?
That's exactly the same perspective I see in operating systems when talking about alternatives. There is a far-evolved one which is Linux, and everyone "should" continue improving Linux, because it's the most improved and well known. Perfect: 95% of people use Windows, so why not just stop begging about alternative open source operating systems, when we can all develop open source applicaions for Windows instead?
"This is something often overlooked: no matter how nice AROS is, there are almost no developers for it, nor for applications for the platform."
And this situation will never change, as long as we listen to "we've got all we need, there's no motivation to look further" people.
Long ago I could do NOTHING with AROS. Now I can listen to my music, read and send my emails, play PlayStation games, compose songs, surf (with some limitations) the world wide web, create the data-base I need and many more right now. Other applications will follow in the future. Regards,
I also feel the icon set is hindering AROS. Along with the furry mascot.
Other than that, it's an okay OS, which needs just more developers. It's one of the curses of the Amiga world, that those few people still interested in the system are even more splittered up in tiny groups.
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