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Actually the are a couple of projects aiming to put the acornish gui on linux: ROX ROLF

Seems like the old ploy of slapping a respected old brand name on some unrelated kit. There is a company selling Acorn branded equipment in much the same manner:

http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1698.html

I won't consider one of these machines to be a true Commodore until they start to do things like:
Refuse to give the currently running Star Trek series a free machine as a prop forcing paramount to acquire a Mac instead.
Make a cut-down budget machine that is more expensive to manufacture than the regular machine (a600).

When I have some *guarantees* that they are running the business into the ground even though they have massive lead over their competitors, then I'll consider this to be a Commodore. And not before!

When I were a lad we used to have to build our own laptops.

(RiscPC one)
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1255.html

(Amiga A600 one)
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/suzanne.html

The ARM architecture, on the other hand, is still patented.

Those patents should all have expired by now, at least for the original architecture. Patents filed prior to June 8, 1994 have a term of 20 years from filing date or 17 years fro issue date, whichever is greater. ARM1 was in development testing in 1985 and shipped in 1986. Unless some of those patents too more than four years to be issued, they should be in the clear by now. Of course, you'll have to do a search to be completely certain, but....

The thumb instruction set, on the other hand, does have currently active patents, I believe.

A discussion of this issue can be found here.

This is how one person did it in UK: http://www.drobe.co.uk/features/artifact1467.html

The question isn't should it, but why isn't it already?

Castle Technology the owners of RiscOS are the company that were caught violating the GPL by including Linux Kernel source in....wait for it.....RiscOS!

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/2/7/55
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/07/ 2225224&tid=117&tid=106
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact556.html
http://www.iconbar.com/Castle_break_GPL/news295.ht ml

How are they still selling this without having released the source?
Is this a case that proves that the GPL really has no teeth?

It has a decent built-in BASIC with easy access to system calls, which makes building WIMP (GUI) applications extremely straightforward even for total beginners -- or at least that's how I found it as a kid fourteen years ago, and stuck with it until it made more economic sense to build a PC from components.

Since then the rest of the world has accelerated, and RISC OS has been playing catch-up for a long time. It does what it does competently, I found it very intuitive and a great learning tool, but the only appeal for me these days would be nostalgia and to catch up with a few old hands in the community, who still seem to be mainstays judging by the site I just stumbled upon.

All just personal opinion, of course. Consume with salt. :)

http://www.drobe.co.uk/extra/geminuswideboy-huge.j pg

The OP seems to have confused RISC OS Ltd with Castle Technology Ltd, they aren't the same company. It is Castle that are having cash flow problems - there engineering dept. walked out not being paid for some time See http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1461.html

This strikes me as being very cool for a number of reasons. The prototype is tiny (neato). picture Look at the specs closely, however. specs Unless I'm reading it wrong, they claim that the motherboard with serial, both network ports, and video running draws under 2.5 W. That's amazing. Also, it appears to be passively cooled. This is a great set of features for always-on applications.

• it lacks an optical drive;
• the processor is about as powerful as modern-day PDAs;
• it's fucking expensive for what it is;
• less RAM, VRAM, disk space, etc. but on the plus side you do get an RS232 serial port...

Yes, RISC OS browsers certainly aren't the best, but you can get to access most things, and Netsurf (http://netsurf.sourceforge.net/) development is ongoing. There's certainly nice email clients - Messenger Pro for example.

OpenOffice? No thanks. RISC OS users are used to tiny footprint apps with no bloat. Ovation was superceded about 6 years ago by Ovation Pro. Easywriter and Techwriter http://www.iconsupport.demon.co.uk/ are also very good word processors with the ability to save and read MS Word files.

Check out the best RISC OS news site: http://www.drobe.co.uk/

I can't help thinking that PCs (even VIA based/EPIA boards) draw one heck of a lot of power, and solar cells aren't that efficient. So you now have a nice big solar farm needing to be upkept, and also maintenance on the computers (which, tbh I'm *hoping* will not be windows based ;))

There are lower power based solutions that have been specifically designed (and built!) to address the power and maintenance (an OS entirely based in ROM) problems on the computer side of things, and are briefly touched on here, and would probably be more appropriate than a power hungry PC:

http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1160.html

Years of Service: We can usually get 6-7 years out of a Mac. The 5400s in service all have at least 32MB of RAM and G3 upgrade cards.

As far as they have stated, and anyone has been able to prove they are not using GPL software. They don't have to release anything. They are releasing this bit of code so people will see they are not violating the GPL. Your postings usually get modded up to the 4 or 5 range, so I'm a little shocked that you didn't actually read the press release, or if you did you weren't paying attention. The press release pretty much paints the picture for you. It doesn't settle the issue, but it does not say what you think it does.

As linked to from the article on Drobe, you can find the whole press release here

As linked to from the article on Drobe, you can find the whole press release here

As linked to from the article on Drobe, you can find the whole press release here