The RELEASE set of media have been finalized and are available on GitHub along with complete and extensive documentation for A2osX. This includes a User Guide, Command Guide and Shell Developers Guide. You can download the media directly through one of these links:
- RELEASE.140.po – An 140K 5.25″ disk image containing ProDOS FX as well as the main BOOT and support files for running A2osX
- RELEASE.800.po – An 800K 3.5″ disk image containing ProDOS 2.03tc the main BOOT and support files for running A2osX
- RELEASE.32MB.po – A formatted ProDOS FX 32MB HD disk image, suitable for use with emulators such as AppleWin
With the 0.93 release, A2osX now includes:
A complete bash-like shell with full scripting to create advanced applets using internal and external commands, variables, user-defined functions, redirection and piping. Internal commands include the basic: cd, popd, pushd, echo, read, set, etc.; logic control: if-then-else, while-loop, switch-case, and for-next; and special such as pause and sleep. External commands include cat, cmp, cp, ls, md5, more, ps and many more.
ProDOS FX and ProDOS 2.03tc as the base operating system included on the A2osX media. ProDOS 2.03tc is an 8 byte patch to ProDOS 2.03 to update the year table to support years through 2023. ProDOS FX, a Faster and eXtended version, adds many new features including lower case file, directory and volume name support as well as faster booting. The A2osX team provided a document covering these and other publicly available versions of ProDOS and their use with A2osX.
Extensive networking including ping (to test network functionality), telnet (popular for connecting to vintage BBSes), httpget (retrieve web pages or with IFTTT post tweets and send email) and telnetd (a telnet server daemons other users can connect to your Apple!). A2osX includes drivers for LanCES, Uthernet and UtherNet II interface cards.
Totally rewritten editor with new save options, updated status bar, faster and more stable.
Several new utilities were added in the release that demonstrate the power of piping command output in A2osX. These include cut (to select fields or columns), grep (to select rows), and wc (wordcount). You can now do ls -l -r / | grep afilename | cut -m 28 -n 35
All new programs including term: a VT-100 terminal emulator for use with SSC’s and modems; pak and unpak: for making compressed archives of multiple files, great for backups and software installs; httpget for retrieving and posting web pages; and cmp: for comparing two files and optionally listing their differences.
A new user based identity system. Processes and sessions are tied to users, which can be managed with the new commands useradd and userdel. If a user database exists (./etc/passwd) then a new login command is invoked to validate the user, create their session, and automatically run a user modifiable profile script.
A UNIX like init (./etc/init) system has been implemented whereby you can load drivers (i.e. Ethernet or Super Serial Card); start processes (networking and services) and run custom commands (i.e. empty the ./tmp folder).
More information on A2osX can be found on the GitHub Repository for A2osX.
