I voted it to be true, but actually this is not really the case. And i mean that in both ways

I use the icaros distro for almost a year now on a daily base and it suits me atm. I foremost use it to edit/compile sources (and ofcourse test my code) and surf the web once in a while. I have Icaros running on a dedicated machine and AROS (nb) in Virtual Box for tinkering.

So for me it is enough atm. and it was never a toy OS for me to begin with (To be honest it was when aros booted off floppy for the first time, but that is a loooooong time ago). So the "say what?" option should have been more appropiate i guess

On the other hand, i do realize the usage i have is not always enough for everyone. I perfectly understand a music artist, graphics artist or an editor for that matter to find shortcomings in AROS. I guess for a regular user it just lacks some software and/or support for specific hardware to be really and/or fully enjoyable. Some of those lacking features really are basic things for endusers (such as copying accross devices).

That being said, AROS still is alpha software and for that, it is very usable and things will only become better.

Personally, i'm very interrested to see other programming languages come to AROS, so that the software base can grow faster. Hence my (little) involvement with freepascal. For me it's already pretty easy to take an original amiga source from aminet and convert it in such a way to let it run on AROS.

And let's not forget those who put all efforts in to port software and games to AROS. imo it really shows the real power of the AROS operating system in what it can establish (playing e.g. quake is astonishing to see). Although i have to admit that playing those games under AROS is a different feeling then playing them on my miggy. I still haven't figured out for me what exactly causes this to be so.

No doubt that when the userbase of AROS grows, these kind of things like rewriting/porting/creating new programs and games will happen more often and faster.

In that regards, i am very impatient to see what AROS can do for Natami and what Natami can do for AROS I think this is more a trail-by-fire for AROS just like running aros on original 68k machines.

Following AROS the last couple fo years, i get more of a feeling that things finally seems to come together, like networking, printing, ui and soforth. If you watch it on a daily base it perhaps is going painstakingly slow for some, but we can see the results more and more in new updates of the distributions AROS has. I'm also eager to see what the 68k distro of AROS will bring us.

It's just a matter of time before AROS is taking over the world \o/\o/

just 2 cents,

Hey I`m Naomi, Nigel`s daughter and I`m only 10 so my comments won`t be as compex cuz I don`t do any programing well not without dad telling me what to do! LOL! Ok back too the point well I think that AROS isn`t a toy because I mean toys are considered as things that when you turn it on or get it out of it`s box your constantly playing games with it and you become addicted to it although when dad gets a new gadet he seems to be constantly be playing games with it to get it to work!

Ok back to the point again-I`m easly distracted as you can probably tell! I mean I confess I do use AROS for gaming too but I do use it for serious reasons aswell! I mean I use it for writing my own little stories, which Dad said he would publish on one of those publishing sites (who knows when that`s gonna happen)! I also use AROS for looking things up on the internet for general school or school prodjects and stuff!

Ok so that`s why I think AROS is NOT a toy! Ok I`m Naomi Nigel`s daughter and please reply if you want to! !

****

Back to me... Naomi said she'd like to upload a post and I thought it might be worthwhile showing that it's not just us old 'uns who remember the Amiga back in its heyday that are getting use out of AROS.

Cheers,
Nigel & Naomi.

Ive never considered it a "toy" os - though I like to toy about on/with it. For this reason I havent voted =/

It has changed considerably over the lasts 7 years, with every year bringing new exciting improvements - I just hope it keeps improving and evolving in the same fashion into the future ...

Many features of AROS doesn't work right yet. But it is getting close. But because basic functions are still buggy, I would still call AROS a toy OS.

Some things needs to be done before it can be called a serious end-user OS:

1. Fix Zune (it's very broken)
2. Fix Wanderer or replace it with something complete (Wanderer coughs if there are a couple of hundred files in a folder).
3. Fix public screen management
4. Fix intuition, so we don't need hacky "decor" type patches to make it pretty

Basically, just make it complete for the end user. Core devs could know that there were lots of libs not finished etc, but make it complete in use..

DOS didn't require much to be a complete OS, but AROS promises a bit more. Once it has stabilized and at least implemented the four above, I think it is time to move out of the alpha/toy state.

ABI v1 is a little hinder.. But perceivably it is easily overcome, as long as the distributions move along with it and devs update / recompile their software.

It's never been a toy!
I would put it this way:
'As of now AROS is no longer a hobby OS'

I will not troll.

Not a toy no. But perhaps Aros needs more "toys" for the users to play with.
Small but useful utilities like
File shredder, Keymap editor, Internet and network tools up to todays "standard"
Picture file converters, Movie format converters and such.
And I belive aros needs a few of each to meet the crowd out there.

Aros is way more stabile than the old amiga ever was. But still give the good old feeling of an amiga os. I use Aros quite a lot on a dayly base and only use my pc for things not yet avaiable for aros. And for every new "software toy" I tend to use aros more and more.

Half of the fun is to se Aros developing step by step and to interact with the people around Aros.