After the first article (https://www.arosworld.org/infusions/articles/articles.php?article_id=3) and the first proposal (https://www.arosworld.org/infusions/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=2063&pid=13971#post_13971) here is the second.

There are several items in the system preferences that can be complicated or difficult to understand for a non-Amiga user.

The suggestion is to rename these options more easily, so the first two are:
AHI -> "Audio Prefs" or "AHI Audio Prefs" or simply "Audio"
Trident -> "USB Prefs" or "Trident USB Prefs" or simply "USB"

Preferences


AHI


Trident

I cast my vote for yes but with a modification:

• AHI Audio
• Trident USB

No need to add the word "Prefs" next to the icons if you have already opened the Prefs drawer. It's redundant.

Once you open this Pandora box, I will add that the same happens with the Aros distros: Abi0, Abi 1, Abi11, Aeros, Tiny Aros, Aros One, Aros portable & Aros portable games, Icaros, Aros64 & 32, Amiberry, Aros riscV...

To be honest: that a mess! This must scare a lot of people which won't understand how to start and what to try. In Amiga groups (the ones that hate AROS) they make jokes about it

[quote name=x-vision post=13990]@x-vision - Once you open this Pandora box, I will add that the same happens with the Aros distros: Abi0, Abi 1, Abi11, Aeros, Tiny Aros, Aros One, Aros portable & Aros portable games, Icaros, Aros64 & 32, Amiberry, Aros riscV...

To be honest: that a mess! This must scare a lot of people which won't understand how to start and what to try. In Amiga groups (the ones that hate AROS) they make jokes about it[/quote]

Is this in terms of prefs layout? It would be rather wierd if AROS was dismissed by users of other Amigaoid systems over this given all of these have essentially the same prefs setup as each other, all reproducing the Amiga's original fomat.

I don't think the prefs are that bamboozling. Compare to Windows 11 - to make my Whiteboard program work on the college computers I had to just shut off Windows grabbing touchscreen clicks and putting up stupid visual effects just to show a press has occured when I already know I've pressed it! This had me hunting through pages of settings to track down some quite well hidden switches. Now that's a mess.

The only prefs which are trickier to set up are network, Trident and Zune, but the nature of the first and the flexibility of the others drive this; I agree some guidance would be useful here (so I'll have a go at writing that soon).

I don't think renaming the prefs is a good idea (it will confuse users comming from and Amigaoid background). However, like MorphOS you could add a 'cover plate' through which to access the prefs programs with more standard names please see attached image from MorphOS.

Cheers,
Nigel.

P.S. MorphOS style widgets in the screen bar (for prefs, wifi status etc.) would be pretty cool too...

It's nice to have a functional toolbar, but I don't like copying other systems. AROS needs to be innovative; I don't want to hear that AROS has copied something—I'd rather hear that AROS is leading the way in innovation!
If AROS is going to be the same as MOS, then I'll just use MOS instead,

What I integrated in my Aros 68k distribution are menu items to easily change icons, theme and background

you just select the menu then a predefined pref file is copied to the right place or in case of icons a set of icons is copied

then user has just to reset the system. No need for the preferences

Is this in terms of prefs layout? It would be rather wierd if AROS was dismissed by users of other Amigaoid systems over this given all of these have essentially the same prefs setup as each other, all reproducing the Amiga's original fomat.

I don't think the prefs are that bamboozling. Compare to Windows 11 - to make my Whiteboard program work on the college computers I had to just shut off Windows grabbing touchscreen clicks and putting up stupid visual effects just to show a press has occured when I already know I've pressed it! This had me hunting through pages of settings to track down some quite well hidden switches. Now that's a mess.

The only prefs which are trickier to set up are network, Trident and Zune, but the nature of the first and the flexibility of the others drive this; I agree some guidance would be useful here (so I'll have a go at writing that soon).

I don't think renaming the prefs is a good idea (it will confuse users comming from and Amigaoid background). However, like MorphOS you could add a 'cover plate' through which to access the prefs programs with more standard names please see attached image from MorphOS.

Cheers,
Nigel.

P.S. MorphOS style widgets in the screen bar (for prefs, wifi status etc.) would be pretty cool too...[/quote]

haha, there seems to be a missunderstanding here: I was just refering to the names of the distros, which IMHO should be more clear to new users (and better if we have some site with centralized and updated info on how to start and what are the options and consequences of every option), it was not about preferences which could improve but essentally they are miles ahead of other OSs

@x-vision

at least there should be a wiki page that explains what distributions exist, for which platforms, if there are 32bit and 64bit versions, what are the basic differences. And links to the different distributions

@x-vision OK I see what you're getting at. I actually covered this ground in my recent contributions to Amiga Addict, although those are now outdated with the arrival of RPi and Risc V versions; I'll put together a summarised version for an artiicle here and maybe for the wiki page of the current state of the AROS 'family tree'.

Saying that, there's something I'm unsure about; ABI1 is the experimental branch, ABI1.1. the stable user branch, but is there any level of compatability in terms of applications between these?

Cheers,
Nigel.

They are fully compatible on source code level but not on binary level. Applications from one cannot run on another - not yet at least.

PS. It's ABIv11 (eleven), not 1.1

I've voted Yes, but I don want to remove names such as AHI, ReqTools, Trident, Zune or ASL. We can simply extend them just like "AHI Audio" and "Zune GUI" and so on.

I think the icons make it clear what they are Though really should be asking people who are new to AROS
I wouldn't object to "Trident USB", "Sound AHI", etc Every OS has its own way of doing things AROS shouldn't lose its way or style

I voted yes, but the thread is circling around a question nobody asked directly: who is AROS for?

Every argument, for and against, comes from someone who already knows what AHI and Trident are. Argo is the only one who said it: ask people who are new to AROS. Right now, people who don't need onboarding are making all onboarding decisions. If the honest answer is "we build AROS for ourselves, as our Amiga from the 90s continued", fine, but then let's say so and stop framing this as being about new users.

Three things got mixed up here: innovation, invention, and user patterns. A preferences panel with human-readable names is not a MorphOS invention. System 7 had it in 1991. It is a pattern every desktop converged on so that people don't have to rediscover the basics on every OS. Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" says the same: the user should never have to stop and wonder what something is. Using that pattern is not copying. AROS can innovate in things that actually make it different. Preferences are the last place where being different matters.

On the concrete options:

"AHI Audio" / "Trident USB": yes, cheap, same pattern as "GNOME Terminal". But it buys very little. The newcomer goes one step further. The complexity is inside the tools, not on the icons.

Olaf's presets: a preset approach that actually fits a volunteer project.

Cover plate: strongest structurally, riskiest in practice. Windows has had Settings on top of Control Panel for ten years, and users still don't know which to open. If someone takes this on, decide up front whether the old layer disappears. A cover plate that covers 60% and stalls is worse than no cover plate.

And the real wall is not Prefs. It's ABIv0 / ABIv11 / Icaros / AROS One / Tiny AROS / AEROS, times 32/64 bit, times x86/68k/RPi/RISC-V, with branches that aren't even binary compatible. A newcomer fails at the download page. I tried and dropped AROS 3 times before finally settling in.

So: yes on naming, yes on presets, careful on the cover plate. And before the next poll, find five people who've never seen an Amiga and watch them install AROS and change the screen resolution. That will tell us more than any vote.

And we could learn quite a lot from Omarchy Linux. So, who wants to be DHH?

"Olaf's presets: a preset approach that actually fits a volunteer project."

I do not really understand what you mean. it sounds a little strange. It IS a volunteer project.

A computer is for me basically a system to do something. People do not boot a system without any intention. They want to do something like checking emails, do something in cloud, write a letter, make administration of your holiday pictures. A system must make that as easy and intuitive as possible. Or just play a online or local installed game. It is a tool. The OS and its configuration should make that possible. The better this is solved the easier it becomes to convince people to use it. It is not that abstract to me. We have several desktops we can use and can be configured with different degrees. That are what we have. We can imagine of course the revolutionare desktop 10 years ahead of anything else but there must be people who develop it in spare time. I keep on what is there and what can I realistic do. There was always much more ideas and talk than people making it reality.

Everyone can talk about imagined desktops of 2050 but here I thought it was about how can it be more attractive what we have. BTW on long run I think desktops will disappear anyway and replaced by systems controlled by voice. Only for certain tasks something like written text still might be used. But we are here now and in 2026.

Do you remember what exactly made you drop AROS each of the 3 times and what made you settle in the 4th time?

for a beginner:

I think regarding preferences nobody likes them. On Windows people only search for preferences when they have a problem. So people have to know what and where to change to solve the problem. That are typical perhaps adapt time and date, setup of network and wireless, change screen resolution. Then if all works change background, theme, perhaps icon set. There should be some sort of beginner distribution which includes a minimal set of applications including expecially a browser, so people can start with it. This distribution should be well documented both local (PDF) and Online.

Installation should be as easy as possible and special problems depending on platform should be documented.

Different distributions normally share the preferences so this part would be valid for all platforms. For the rest every distribution needs a special documentation. But there should be a standard distribution beginners could easy start with. If somebody is getting more interested it is still possible to test other distributions too. I think one issue always disputed about Aros was there are lots of different distributions with different configurations and software but no standard environment like on MorphOS or AmigaOS.

"And the real wall is not Prefs. It's ABIv0 / ABIv11 / Icaros / AROS One / Tiny AROS / AEROS, times 32/64 bit, times x86/68k/RPi/RISC-V, with branches that aren't even binary compatible. A newcomer fails at the download page. I tried and dropped AROS 3 times before finally settling in."

Yes this is indeed confusing for someone not knowing about it. It is also hard to explain. There should be a WIKI page or similar only targetting end users and only with links to (active) end user aros distributions. Perhaps with short explanations about the idea behind the distribution. And Links to 32bit and 64bit if available. The nightly page should not be linked because it is only irritating and always the danger people download something not compatible like downloading 64bit nightly and 32bit contrib and then wondering it not works

I don't remember them chronologically, but it was a mixture of:
- not understanding how I should treat AROS: as AmigaOS3.x on x86 or a modern take on the future of Amiga.
- if it's the AmigaOS3.x on PC - it lacked the software I was used to; if modern Amiga - it lacked software I'd consider using. My memory may be failing me, but at that time there was no OWB
- looks - not my alley in general, but also the fact that basically looks were/are not uniform between apps
- missing the understanding of what I can do with the system, what I can change
- where to look for the software - no starting point in the system (I actually started writing a package manager; is there already one?)

What made me come back? Ability to write software and contribute, and the recent interview with Mike from Amiga/Cloanto and AmigaBill. I still have a soft spot for the Amiga, but I don't want to just reminisce about the games I played in 1995. I loved pieces of that interview, but I have reservations about it as a whole. My personal take is that PPC is a dead end; 68k is actually more interesting, but too much preservation is going on there* despite, imho, very promising things like PiStorm. So, for me, AROS is the most approachable Amiga I can contribute to, and I feel like I am working in a relatively modern environment. E.g., having SDL3 and Rust means I can basically tell any of my colleagues to look at the platform, and there's a chance they will take it seriously, even if they have never had an Amiga

*) I have a different look at this from a hobby perspective

Thanks. In those prior instances, were you trying our a nightly build from www.aros.org or a distribution (Icaros?)? Your comments on lack of uniformity and software are suggesting nighly build.

With regards to package manager - there is AADT tool in contrib package. It's a front end for downloading from AROS Archives. It's not a package manager in sense of linux etc.

I tried:
- AROS in AmigaForever
- Icaros
- AROS from Nightly

AROS One was actually the best for me (but then I figured that for dev work it's actually better to use the main line

I will check out AADT - sounds like exactly the same thing I started working on - a frontend to search and install software from AROS Archives. Which, btw, says something about me or the system: how do I know that if I am new to the platform?