New Beta Release of Amiga-inspired Icaros OS

Icaros is a distribution of AROS, which is API-compatible with Amiga OS.

A brand new beta release of Icaros — a distribution of AROS (an open source operating system that is API-compatible with Amiga) — has just been released.

And it looks… rather fantastic!

The Icaros project describes itself thusly:

Icaros Desktop is an Amiga-like operating system for the PC platform, with a full desktop environment, distributed on a bootable media. It's based on AROS, a lightweight, efficient and flexible open-source operating system, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3 at the API level, while improving on it in many areas. Icaros Desktop runs native AROS applications but also the original Amiga ones under emulation, transparently integrating them onto its desktop.

I absolutely love the community-driven, open source imaginings of these classic systems. AROS / Icaros for Amiga OS. Haiku for BeOS. They make me smile.

A cool tidbit: Icaros (and AROS) can use GRUB as a boot loader (just like Linux):

Do any of you use Icaros or AROS on a regular basis? I am intrigued by this system and would love to hear your experiences!