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Don't forget the RISC OS on netBook ("Ron") project, either. Although it's not a 1024x768 screen, the Psion netBooks run on StrongARMS, are very rugged, and have insanely long battery life as requested. They support PCMCIA and CF cards. I'm surprised we haven't seen ARMLinux on them yet, or maybe there is...

> So, basically, I want a tough little

> system with a StrongARM CPU, a flash

> disk and grayscale 1024x768 LCD.

> Insofar as I can tell, no one makes

> such a thing.


RiscStation is about to issue an ARM-Powered laptop...

And RiscOS machines support ARMLinux or RiscBSD (even though I 'd advice you to just keep using RiscOS which is far more intuitive and performant on such platforms)...

Anyway, the product is not ready yet but you may hear about it *very* soon.

You might need to take a look to RiscOS which makes it quite easy for the hosted apps to be *tiny* (a complete DTP package supporting plugins weights several hundreds kB)...

RiscOS is around as old as Windows3 but has always been well designed, quick, compact and responsive.

But I understand such tinyness might seem mythical for PC users.

Not all of the Aqua GUI is accelerated with the graphics card - run CPU monitor and watch the sucker shoot to the top when you do live window resizing. These guys have been doing live window resizing and dragging for about 10 years using ARM 2 and ARM 3 CPU's. 10.0.x should be considered as no more than Public Beta 2 - there's still plenty of optimisation to do before I'd call it a fully functional OS, and that's aside from the underlying issues regarding unfinished API's. Today's Apple isn't the Apple of old; they have some direction these days and aside from the overpricing of the Cube, they seem to be making exciting and affordable products available to their markets.

Forgive this flamy title but I just couldn't help as I read to many things in this article that I consider offending to my Geek minority.

Mac OS X combines the best of Mac OS,
Unix, and entirely new ideas to present the
most versatile, usable interface ever.

I don't like superlatives, especially in an article that lacks arguments to justify them.

It even borrows a few coveted Windows
features (such as menu windows that stay open
when you click them), but not many.

Has this guy ever used RiscOS?
Most of the features he describes, including this one, that are supposed to be new to GUIs were already in RiscOS (maybe even in Arthur, RiscOS ancestor).

But at least Acorn guys were honest and didn't claim they invented these, they admitted they studied them at the Xerox'PARC. Steve Jobs is also known for his numerous visits there, during the early days of the LISA

So please, dear journalists colleagues: Don't consider that the computing era started only when GUI appeared, or you might soon have bad surprises... :-(
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I just read the ksh FAQ and I found this :

Q6. Are any further releases of ksh planned?
A6. Yes, we are in the process of planning for a newer version, ksh200X.
We are interested in suggestions for new features.
Again, most of the focus will be on scripting and reusability.


As I believe this poll is also aimed at defining these improvements I was thinking of the following:
Ksh is supposed to make people's life easier and I use it whenever integrating e-payment software on my servers.
I was then wondering whether some feature that I saw in VMS could be implemented in Ksh: directory-specific profiles.
For example, you log on and set your environment (profile) with your .profile. It'd be cool, IMHO to have the possibility (which could be activated or not whenever launching ksh) to set some .profile files in any directory so that by changing directories, one could easily update its configuration to the most relevant settings.
This would not only apply for a user working with the prompt but also whenever launching some specific scripts that are suppose to activate some binaries or whatever else somewhere.
This would then allow some context-sensitive programs to be automatically executed with a minimal knowledge of the environment.
So, I wouldn't have to say to the logged user to set their environement a given way whenever working or not with some apps.
BTW, some similar feature also exists on Acorn RiscOS platforms and really makes one's life easier.
I think this is not incompatible with Unix and may even widen its possibilities (from the user's point of view).

Finally, here's my question: Do you want to restrict Ksh to fit a stereotypic Posix environment look'n feel or are you working to make it a real enhancement of such systems, especially in ergonomy?
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1. a resources check during which the screen background color change.
   It is really quick and hence, not disturbing.
   In case there is an hardware error here, just remember the last color you saw and check with the manual if it was due to the mainboard, the ram, the sound/video chip (VIDC) or the cpu.
2. some information are then displayed (proc, RAM, extensions.). This step is also quite short (2-3sec)
3. then the Wimp (aka RiscOS' GUI) appears.
4. A complete startup on a clean machine can be as short as 5 secondes.
5. 
   So my question is : Do we need machines that are nice to contemplate while one's waiting for them to finish booting or do we need machines with a quick, informative and efficient boot sequence ?

I am sorry not to agree with you.
I have designed dozen of websites and targetted my hand-made code to my test browser.
I actually saw many differences according to the visitor's web browser except in one case : Fresco is a web browser aimed at RiscOS platforms.
Whenever optimizing my code too look properly on it, it usually looked the same on all the popular browsers.
Bottom lines : neither java nor javascript, nor SSL but in this case you can still choose another popular RiscOS browser such as Webster
Maybe there is a need for web developpers to learn to code in standard HTML, especially when I see the crap generated by most HTML-generators (yuk :-( ), which is only aimed at *one* browser (e.g. MSIE for Frontpage, NS for NS-editor, etc.).
Finally, Fresco was developped for Oracle's Network Computer, which first prototypes were developped by Acorn.
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Six years, is that all? Acorn's Risc OS system was doing it in 1988. (IIRC its predecessor Arthur was also doing it in 1987.)

> But can you still buy it?

http://www.riscos.com/index1.htm
http://www.riscos.com/risc_os_4/order.pdf

> Or even get hardware to run it on?

http://www.atomwide.co.uk/products/riscpc.htm
http://www.riscstation.co.uk/html/products.html

... not to mention the recently released Microdigital Omega [picture] (at RISC OS 2000), a truly excellent machine. The death of Acorn was not the death of RISC OS, no sireee.

There's even a Slashdot style site for RISC OS at http://www.iconbar.com/

Stuii!

> But can you still buy it?

http://www.riscos.com/index1.htm
http://www.riscos.com/risc_os_4/order.pdf

> Or even get hardware to run it on?

http://www.atomwide.co.uk/products/riscpc.htm
http://www.riscstation.co.uk/html/products.html

... not to mention the recently released Microdigital Omega [picture] (at RISC OS 2000), a truly excellent machine. The death of Acorn was not the death of RISC OS, no sireee.

There's even a Slashdot style site for RISC OS at http://www.iconbar.com/

Stuii!

VMS was quite an outstanding OS.
OK, not really user friendly, but once mastered it really kicked ass and I have never seen a VAX hang nor being halted for any reason.
If VMS now evokes WNT (do a right-rot1 and you'll see) that inherited its kernel architecture, there is, IMHO, a system that obviously inherited its shell grammar from VMS : RiscOS.
As The StrongARM also inherited from the Alpha chip, it is obvious that Acorn Workstations were influenced by Digital (of course, this exageration is purely IMHO).
This is a good thing for them as Acorns are usually renowned for their ease of use.
At least one company understood Digital's radically new (in these times) technical approach and extended it to home computing.
BTW, a Unix freak with whom I worked on a VAX4000 had completely customized his shell to look like Unix's /bin/sh. It was credible.
Long live, Digital, you'll stay in my heart.
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I don't really like Netscape nor Explorer as these are obese pieces of software that carry in themselves all the patches required to overcome any operating system lacunas.

Whenever a system is well done and integrated an application developper should only focus on features more than these disguised OS patches.
For example, on RiscOS, JPEG decompression is handled by the system and performed during the display refresh so that the memory needs are even lower. Most system routines are stored in software modules that can be accessed from whichever program, even BASIC script.

Concerning Mozilla, it is a shame that a Free Software Team is working on such a big thing instead of choosing to re-design it a more clever way.

BTW, here in Europe downloading dozens of Megabytes is a bit expensive, you know?
So, let's keep things small.
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Does anyone know the Acorn Archimedes? In its own time (around the 286) it was way ahead of its time, it did things which just became possible when the PC architecture reached 386+ and the 486. Now I ask you; before reading this article did the name "Archimedes" ring a bell?

Funny you should mention this, particularly in this thread. Acorn binned their workstation division two or three years ago, and it looked like the Acorn line was finally hitting the same wall that Amiga hit so many years earlier - a small computer firm with an enthusiastic user and programming community suddenly decides that all that good will in the grass roots can go hang.

At this point, I assumed that that was the end. Finito. Kaputt. Amazingly, and in rather less time than the Amiga people, several firms have stepped into the breach and produced new machines, such as continuations of the original RiscPC designs, the RiscStation, the Imago, RISC OS Ltd has produced a new, faster, leaner OS and things are looking more hopeful for the fan base. So even a small computer platform can maintain itself outside the Mac/Windows hegemony, and it doesn't hurt the mainstream to have something different at the edges. Besides, the Open Source movement has facilitated the development and porting of numerous tools to these platforms, extending the minority platforms usefulness further. And Linux ports exist for those who need some more mainstream OS stuff from time to time.

And to those of you who keep pontificating that we don't need another platform, one of the things I like about Linux is that it provides me with choice. One of the things I like about lots of platform is that it gives me choice.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Although the Apple taskbar clearly grew out of NeXTStep, the Windows '9x taskbar seems to have more in common with that used in Acorn's RISC OS (see screenshot).

Read this if you know nothing about this RISC OS thing like finding out about old operating systems...

RISC OS is about the only OS to `get' this drag-and-drop thing. It didn't have a clipboard from day one or those ghastly save/open boxes which infest every other OS. You have a Filer (the RISC OS filesystem explorer) and when you want to save a file, you open the application's save dialogue, which is a small window with a filename and a document icon. You then drag the icon onto the Filer to save it, or onto the Printer icon to print it. I'm sure this could be grafted onto GTK somehow, if only someone would write a filer as functional as the RISC OS one.

The other thing RISC OS got really really right was its application encapsulation. That is, you have a directory which contains the main program binary, an initialisation script, any other program-specific resources, plus an icon for the Filer to display. This directory could then be zipped up and copied elsewhere which is why pretty much no RISC OS application ever had, or needed, any mucky or unreliable install wizards. This also meant that for many people the Filer served as your application launcher too-- a concept completely alien to most desktops these days.

Hmm... it sortof went wrong in the shared library department, though. The only `standard' way of doing shared libraries in RISC OS was through kernel modules providing extra system calls. Yup, in the ARM's supervisor mode and everything. So they have to be pretty perfect otherwise bugs crash the machine.

But its fate is pretty much sealed, sadly: last year Acorn cancelled its new hardware project, laid off half its staff and eventually disappeared. By this time nearly all the talent who had once programmed for the machine had left for greener pastures (with some exceptions who continue to amaze me :-) ) and the OS has been taken over essentially by two enthusiastic hackers and lots of well-wishers trying to extract a salary out of it. Check this page out for the list of new and exciting features that you get for £120. There's also a somewhat suspect conflict of interest created by the fact that the people who have taken it over are those people who want to sell software for it.

Bah; I could go on but ultimately I left because the thing was too slow for me to play games on, the SDK increasingly dated and the application support had long since dried up. I hope somebody someday gives it the shot in the arm it needs, but for now ROX is quite a good simulation :-)

[...] XFree4 has so many new features to debug:

* SilkenMouse

What's that?

* Multihead __&__ Xinerama

Will this work with dual-head cards like the Matrox G400?

* DRI/DRM - 3D

Direct Rendering Interface, right? Woohoo! No more running Q3A as root! :-)

* XAA and DGA completly rewritten

What advantage does this give us?

* New modular server.. everything is dynamic load

Again, why? What will we need loaded dynamically?

* Integration of new X sample implementation code

What's this?
Will there [ever] be support for font anti-aliasing or hinting? Is it even possible with backward compatibility? I really miss the anti-aliased fonts from Acorn's RISC OS machines, they made low resolutions usable and high resolutions a joy. (Note: don't equate this with Windows' "Font Smoothing" - basically a gaussian blur - because Acorn's system included hints and skeletons in the font file format in order to add information to the display, not take it away.)