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This is an interview with AROS Developer Hogne T. aka m0ns00n. I want to thank Hogne for doing this interview.

Hello Hogne, could you give us a history of how you became interested in Amiga's and then eventually came to be involved with AROS?

Hello! Well, I first got an Amiga computer in 1989. I was 9 years old then, and was impressed with games like Barbarian Palace, Ninja Mission, Stormlord and Giana Sisters (which didn't look anywhere near as good on a c64)!
First my brother got an Amiga 500, but I ended up occupying it so much that my parents got me one to save my brother all the trouble! It was not only games that amazed me, but also DigiPaint and a video digitizer that was available for it. Deluxe Paint of course grabbed my attention.
In the first years my brother taught me a lot. I've since had an Amiga 1200, 2000, and a4000 which I expanded and used until 2001. I then gave up on Amiga, pretty much. All the fanaticism, flame wars, odd business logic.
I've paid attention to AROS for a long while, but I haven't gotten directly involved until recently. My main system is still running a Linux distro(Kubuntu), but I hope that in the near future, AROS can replace it.

How long have you been involved with AROS?

I have been in and out of #aros on freenode for two years or so, but it is only within the range of the last three months that I've actually taken the OS, installed it on a dedicated box and started programming work. I've used the Linux hosted version in the past, just to test the progress. Now it is ready for any user who knows his or her way around computers.

Since you are one of the more recent developers, what were some of the challenges you faced when you started coding for AROS?

Well, good documentation, programming tutorials and so on has been hard to find. Actually installing the system was also a bit of a challenge, I think I used a week to get everything running with SFS (SFS, the fast file system in a world where FFS is the slow filesystem.. =)). Since I'm a developer, few problems arose after that. Driver configuration on AROS is non existant, a nice change from Linux! Software installation is also effortless if you have a CD burner on a second OS/computer. (This is one of the things that makes me believe in AROS in the long term. Linux doesn't stand a chance next to *AmigaOS in user friendliness when it comes to software installation and maintenence.)

Now that you are becoming more familiar with AROS, are you still finding challenges in coding for it?

Well, I find less and less challenges. There aren't 1000 APIs to choose from and dependencies galore. Having used Linux for programming in the past, AROS is a relief in many ways. If I should cite one challenge that other developers coming from a Linux background might face, it is the "low level" API differences, like AROS' usage of Open(), Read() and Write() instead of fopen(), fread() and fwrite()...

Do you have any advice for beginners?

Use the Aros-exec.org forums, and hang on #aros on irc.freenode.net!
Without these channels of information, I wouldn't even be able to start.

What projects are you currently working on for AROS?

Well, at the moment, I dedicate my time to Lunapaint. Other future projects shall remain "secret" until I know they will bear fruits. I am fiddling with CISC's MPEGA library though.

Why did you decide on a paint application for your first project in AROS?

I initially wanted to port and resume on my existing paint app for Linux, but as I discovered that using Zune/Cybergfx was just as easy as using SDL, and had many more benefits, I decided to rewrite the whole app from scratch. That's what I did. Not a single line of code remains from the original, as the change from c++ to c shows.

Could you list the features planned for Luna Paint?

* Animation with timeline controls and onion skin
* Grouped layers with effects
* Projects with subprojects (large animations)
* Working on long movies from disk
* Objects (text areas, paths etc)
* Advanced paint tools
* HDRI support

Also, I'm aiming at Game developers and sceners - Lunapaint is not a Photoshop remake or image processing app! It is inspired from TVPaint and DeluxePaint, and will remain focused in this direction. You will be able to use it for web design, but I am not aiming it at work related to print and press. So if you are after AROS Photoshop, there are open jobs for you in the programming department. =)

What are your future plans for Luna Paint?

In the future I hope that it will be an important tool for graphicians, and a reason to use AROS. Because of this, it needs to support many file formats, and it will need many advanced features. Lunapaint also follows its own path.
Hopefully it will revive the style of paint apps pre Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, and invent some new ideas. If you look at the paint apps being developed presently, they are all inspired from Photoshop and PaintShop pro. I want to go another path.

Do you plan to write anything else for AROS after Luna Paint is finished?

Yes of course! Games! =) And who knows what else. I've come to enjoy using Zune.

Where can we find more information about your projects?

http://www.sub-ether.org

Since AROS cannot compile within it's self, what Linux environment do you prefer when developing for AROS?

Actually AROS Native gives me no troubles with compiling anything. I use it for the whole development process. I do not even run Linux Hosted at the moment. AROS Native with SFS has some problems with unix ported apps, and I have to compile in RAM:, but other than that, I use Native without any problems.

What were some of your favorite things to do on a classic Amiga?

I was an avid TVPaint user, and used to make website graphics. Occasionally I used ArtEffect, but TVPaint was my favorite. I also made a few songs in OctaMed. Programming wise, I used AMOS Pro for different projects. I made a game in AmosPro in 1997 which is still found on Aminet.

Do you currently own any Amiga's?

I gave away my last Amiga a couple of years ago.

Do you use Amiga OS4 or MorphOS at all?

I did get a Pegasos 1 to develop on from Genesi, but it was buggy and didn't work. I don't have any PPC hardware to run either system on, so that prevents me from using them. Hopefully the systems will one day show up on x86 so that they will be available to the world. In the mean time, their exotic nature is quite prohibiting. It never made sense to me, why escape from a dying and expensive hardware platform on Amiga to a new dying and expensive hardware platform with PPC?

What features and applications do you think AROS really needs right now?

At the moment, I think AROS needs user apps. Why? Well, AROS also needs normal operating system development, but to spark interest in other developers, there must also be users and user related apps(developers are users too!).
Right now, AROS is usable to any or most developers for development tasks. Pure users have little to play with. The way things are now, a user can play with UAE, or a sega emulator, or perhaps even MAME - if they even get AROS to install. But they would be cut off from the world, with no Internet apps to speak of, no productivity apps, only play. AROS needs communication software and software that enables users to have fun and stay around until the OS is mature enough to take on a broader public.
It goes without saying that AROS itself needs a lot of work, but you have those who are system developers and those who are application developers. We need more of both!

If you could have another skilled developer implement some features or applications for you in AROS, what would you like to see implemented?

I would like to see a full, stable TCP/IP stack, with a GUI and an easy way to open and close ports. Then I'd like to have a set of apps to use with the stack, like a simple web browser, an FTP app for backing up data over the network. Finally, I'd like a fully usable file system which doesn't have problems with ported unix applications.

How do you think the development of AROS is going now?

AROS is taking off! We're getting more and more people on #aros, and we're getting a thriving community on aros-exec.org. We're getting developers from outside the Amiga community (which is kind of special) and a lot of enthusiasm at long last. I think a lot of people will notice that AROS is starting to break out of it's shell.

Where do you see AROS two years from now?

I hope AROS will be like Linux is now, only not necessarily aimed at the same uses, looking like Linux or behaving like Linux, but spreading, improving, opening markets and making communities. Perhaps there will be distributions aimed at different niches. In two years time, if things go like they are going now, we'll have a web browser, email software, chat software and so on, and we'll have a community making apps, making graphics, perhaps starting companies. Also, the Amiga philosophy is not strictly Open Source oriented, so it's more open to developers who want to develop closed source software or drivers. Linux is often avoided because of it's hostility to closed source developers.
I'm an optimist! An AmigaOS inspired system is so much more friendly to users than most other systems. There are fewer moving parts, less to get confused with. And it's not multi user! People usually don't need that. It's not just one time I've heard people complain about having this login interface that they never even need. Never even remembering their passwords. AROS will suit them just fine. (Just don't ever tell them what AROS stands for!) Multi user functionality can be implemented on an application level if people really need it, it shouldn't in my opinion infiltrate the whole OS!

Is there anything at all you would like to add?

If you are interested in developing for a user oriented operating system that does not aim at the server market, know that AROS is for you! And ex/current Amiga users, now there's an alternative available which is not tied to an uncertain hardware platform. It is open source and free, so it will never cease to exist if the maintainers disappear.

Thank you very much for your time Hogne!

No problem!