Coherent is free as of 2015.
https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/index.html

Got a bit distracted with real life for a month, time to post again in here!

gdjacobs wrote:

Coherent is free as of 2015.
https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/index.html

Good to know, thanks.

Do you have any nostalgia for the AmigaOS?
Maybe you even used it this week on real hardware?
Or you got the latest 3.1.4 release for your original m68k Amiga from http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/w … 188-amigaos-314

What if you want to run it natively on your x86 though, well, you can somewhat, with AROS and Icaros Desktop.
Never heard of AROS?
Here's what the website says: The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient, and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas.
http://www.aros.org/

It's open source and its first native version for x86 was in 1999.
It also has native versions for amiga m68k, x86_64 and amd64, Sam440EP and Sam460ex, PowerPC Efika, ARMv6 based Raspberry Pi:
http://www.aros.org/nightly1.php

And hosted versions for Darwin and MacOS X on i386, x86-64 and PPC, Linux/i386 and Linux/x86_64, Microsoft Windows on i386 using mingw32, Android/ARMv6, Linux/ARM and Linux/PowerPC:
http://www.aros.org/snapshots1.php

Some screenshots made in 86box:
earliest version I could find, from 1999:

later version from 2001:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021206062308/ht … ~sheutlin/aros/

Latest version:

Icaros is a live-DVD or live-CD system based on AROS, coming with many applications ready to run.
http://vmwaros.blogspot.com/2009/12/icaros-de … s-complete.html

^^ ArOS/IcarOS looks really good, I've played around with it on VMs a bit but never set up an install on real hardware. Maybe it's time to do so.

I wish they'd get it to boot natively on PowerMacs to give MorphOS and their insanity-sauce "licensing" scheme/DRM idiocy some competition on that platform.

xjas wrote:

^^ ArOS/IcarOS looks really good, I've played around with it on VMs a bit but never set up an install on real hardware. Maybe it's time to do so.

I wish they'd get it to boot natively on PowerMacs to give MorphOS and their insanity-sauce "licensing" scheme/DRM idiocy some competition on that platform.

Unfortunately "insanity" and "Amiga" seem to have always gone hand in hand 😁

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Unfortunately "insanity" and "Amiga" seem to have always gone hand in hand 😁

xjas wrote:

^^ ArOS/IcarOS looks really good, I've played around with it on VMs a bit but never set up an install on real hardware. Maybe it's time to do so.

I wish they'd get it to boot natively on PowerMacs to give MorphOS and their insanity-sauce "licensing" scheme/DRM idiocy some competition on that platform.

I've had IcarOS running on an old p4 laptop for a while but it hadn't been updated for some time and certain things were broken that made it less than useful (particularly the built-in VNC server, which is an absolutely brilliant idea except it was buggy and hogged a tremendous amount of resources), so I dropped something else to play with on it. I'll need to give it another look now that it's just been updated, though.

I feel like I should be surprised MorphOS still exists, but given that they only support a single set of cheap old powermacs they're hardly facing the same trouble that AROS has.

Ircaros is quite impressive, thanks for the insights! 😁
I knew of Aros (aka that-OS-with-the-s*xy-kitten-as-a-mascot) before, but had no idea that it evolved so far.
It's been ten years or so, when I heard about it last time. Back then I totally was into alternate OSes (incl. MenuetOS, Minix, etc)

May I ask if there's any kind of port in progress for any of the popular x86 virtualizers/emulators on Icaros/Aros yet ?
If it is, I could make the switch to that OS on my aged main computer, so I wouldn't have to worry about
installing Linux/WinX/macOS or BSD.. (All I really need are my VMs and working printer/scanner support).

brostenen wrote:

https://media.makeameme.org/created/yessss-join-us.jpg […]
Show full quote

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Unfortunately "insanity" and "Amiga" seem to have always gone hand in hand 😁

The dark side is expensive to join these days.

Update time!
I've been neglected the thread a bit, I'll try to add more new (old) stuff soon, but to start 2019, let's go with a one-man GPL project started in the mid-90s, that eventually got forked in 2002 after development ended on the original project, named AtheOS.
It requires a first gen Pentium and 32MB of RAM, preferably a Matrox (Mill1/Mill2/Mystique/G100/G200/G400), nVidia or S3 Virge graphic card for hardware acceleration, NE2000 PCI/EISA or RealTek RTL8129/8139 for network support.

There's no graphical installer for it, so you'll have fun with the shell, and you'll need 3 floppy disks for the install, and a FAT partition, or a lot of patience and many floppies to transfer the .tgz archive on the system before unpacking it.

After finishing unpacking the archive, configuring grub and rebooting, you'll be greated with a login window, and then the desktop:

It comes with a few useful utilities, some for the command line, and a few graphical ones, like this pretty good browser for the time:

Somewhere on the internet you can find a handful of ported games for AtheOS:

The older versions of the system (0.1.3 to 0.2.1) were installable in a FAT filesystem, but they're impossible to find anymore.

Some links:
-the original website: https://web.archive.org/web/20001017191038/ht … //atheos.cx:80/
-the original website hosted after the fork happened: https://web.archive.org/web/20110724001900/ht … .org/index.html
-a working mirror where the latest version (0.3.7) can be downloaded: http://atheos.pyro-os.org/
-repository of software for AtheOS: https://web.archive.org/web/20020925005100/ht … amidake.org:80/

Its fork, Syllable, was in development from 2002 to 2008, and available using the old AtheOS install system (floppies and targzipped archive), install CDs and even LiveCDs.

-Offical website: https://web.archive.org/web/20100621034909/ht … able/index.html
-Download page with working links to the 0.6.6 LiveCD image and the last 0.6.7 install disc :
https://web.archive.org/web/20160416104154/ht … t-Syllable.html
-Archive of all the versions from 0.4.5 to 0.6.7: https://osdn.net/projects/sfnet_syllable/releases/

Yes, Peanut is hard to find. Only ALinux back to 12.x is readily available.

I remember using Monkey Linux back in the day, and it can still be found.

I have no idea how I never noticed ArOS.. I wonder what would be a good hardware configuration to test it on..

appiah4 wrote:

I have no idea how I never noticed ArOS.. I wonder what would be a good hardware configuration to test it on..

A First gen Pentium is the minimum you need, but the more power you give it the better.

Bunch of small projects fitting on a 1.44MB floppy, some are still being developed, some haven't been updated in years, but still worth trying:
-MikeOS, 16-bit system written in assembly, requires a 386 with 1MB of Ram, open source:
http://mikeos.sourceforge.net/

-MichalOS, based on MikeOS running in 32bit mode, it needs a 386 and 128kb to boot:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/michalos/

-TachyonOS, another project based on MikeOS:
https://github.com/zerokelvinkeyboard/tachyonos

-DexOS, a 32-bit system written in assembly, needs a 386 and 4MB to boot in the old v03 version, the v6 needs 64MB on the other hand.
v03 website https://web.archive.org/web/20100526054043/ht … u.com/index.htm
v6 website https://web.archive.org/web/20130521070630/ht … s.com/index.htm

-ZeX/OS, open source, written in C and assembly, needs a 386 and 1MB to run, .iso files are available and you need to built a boot floppy yourself, the one I built is available below for convenience:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100121172833/ht … rg:80/index.php
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zexos/

Years ago I used to run Puppy Linux off a CF card on a passively cooled 800 MHz Pentium 3 machine with 1.5 GB of RAM. I used most of the memory as a RAMdisk.

I wasn't impressed with the speed tho..

Half-Saint wrote:

Years ago I used to run Puppy Linux off a CF card on a passively cooled 800 MHz Pentium 3 machine with 1.5 GB of RAM. I used most of the memory as a RAMdisk.

I wasn't impressed with the speed tho..

No wonder. Puppy Linux is not meant to be installed.

It's one of the few options in town for booting out of DOS to a Linux desktop.

gdjacobs wrote:

It's one of the few options in town for booting out of DOS to a Linux desktop.

tinycore is better for that purpose, in my experience.

Dillo sacrifices compatibility for size. For a while they were using Dillo as a browser. Is that still the case?

As a system management tool, yes, it works well. I use Finnix for the same purpose.

Tinycore still has dillo. I can't quite see how something significantly more compatible could be cramped into such a tiny distro though.

appiah4 wrote:

Tinycore still has dillo. I can't quite see how something significantly more compatible could be cramped into such a tiny distro though.

Agreed, but it's still a significant limitation for a desktop system.