Afros Live

If you enjoy alternative operating systems, then you might have some fun playing with Afros, which is an ARAnyM (Atari Running on Any Machine)  Emulator  system configured to boot on top of Slax  Linux. You can also simply install ARAnyM from the ubuntu repos, otherwise download the live CD. I like where this project is headed even if it is a a slightly older demo, and hoping my posting will encourage future development, one can only dream, but who knows, the project might just manage to develop into its own installable distro, if only so that people can brag about using an Atari?

As yet there appears to be no way of installing Afros, which is simply a live CD which you can either boot, or run as a VM in virtualbox. First person to do so, wins the 1990 retro computer of the year award.

Compared to my earlier attempts at running ARAnyM, this LIVE version is supreme, reason being,  the TERA desktop and inclusion of software like the QED wordprocessor and aniplayer. Remarkably fast, it could lend itself to the kind of thing happening in Haiku OS which is an attempt to create an open-source version of Be-OS. If only Atari would realise the benefits of open-source and stop being so protective over their brand, which at one point was up there with Apple.

Surely a parallel universe in which Atari and Acorn prevailed over the Macintosh?

[caption id="attachment_2734" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Afros running in Virtualbox showing 2010 Highwire browser for Atari"][/caption]

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is a SLAX-based bootable CD with a small collection of GNU/Linux software, the ARAnyM and the AFROS. It boots and runs completely from CD, does not write anything to the harddrive on its own (but you can write to harddrive from inside the AFROS using the drive D: so be careful!) and so it is relatively safe to try out. It is meant as a demo version of ARAnyM/AFROS. It is not the dreamed Installation CD of ARAnyM yet (although it could be modified to work so)."

"The underlying Linux kernel and related software provide the CD autoboot, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, networking and USB devices and other peripherals. ARAnyM plus AFROS provide our familiar and friendly TOS/FreeMiNT/GEM operating environment. It's all integrated seamlessly and after PowerOn boots straight to the Teradesk (GEM desktop)."

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is distributed in the form of a CD ISO image which is the usual way of distributing CDs electronically. The ISO image file can be burnt on a CD-R/RW and so you'll get an exact copy of the AFROS Live CD I created on my machine. You can get it in our SourceForge.net download area.