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RISC OS Select 1st Release Out

Posted by timothy on from the be-the-first-on-your-block dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "RISC OS Select, *the* OS for ARM powered computers has seen its first release. RISC OS started back in 1994, by Acorn computers, but when they went down, RISC OS Ltd purchased the rights, and released RISC OS 4 in 1999. In 2000 the Select program was started, and a rolling program of OS updates was initiated. Now, the first real release (after several pre-releases) is there: ROS Select 4.29 It features multi-user logon, DHCP, SVG graphics support, over 100 enhancements over the old ROS 4 more info at http://select.riscos.com and http://www.riscos.org."

9 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Compete with Windows? by Kaypro · · Score: 4, Informative

    Taken from rscos.org frontpage:

    If you're wondering what RISC OS is, you've come to the right place. This site is one of many such sites dedicated to sharing information, news and tutorials on using RISC OS.

    RISC OS is a windows and mouse based operating system to compete with Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux in an increasingly computer-orientated world. The beauty of RISC OS though, is its sheer productivity and intuitiveness - making it rise above the alternatives.

    Beginners and experts alike can immediately start to use RISC OS, even with little or no previous experience of computers. Soon users are finding out what all the excitement and enthusiasm is about. RISC OS is not just hype. It's the productive future of desktop computing.

    Once you've used RISC OS for a few weeks you'll never want to go back to using alternative systems. Why not make a little effort to find out more? You'll be impressed.

    How can an OS like this compete with OS's designed for a different architecture? Will I be able to walk into CompUSA and buy a PC with an ARM CPU in it? Will I be able to purchase a word processor for it? Or are we gonna have to start porting over our GNU GPL'd software over?

    I'm being genuine, do they have some sort of game plan for this?

    --

    Eddy.WriteLinux.Com

    1. Re:Compete with Windows? by rjw57 · · Score: 3, Informative
      Will I be able to walk into CompUSA and buy a PC with an ARM CPU in it?

      Probably not but ARM based computers have been available in the UK for as long as the ARM existed (the lamented Acorn Computers invented it after all). You can still get Risc PCs and even older Acorn machines on eBay and you will be able to get The Omega soon. These machines have a small but fanatical following here in the UK, mostly due to their large presence in educational institutions.

      --
      Rich
    2. Re:Compete with Windows? by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 5, Informative
      Acorn, the people who designed the ARM chip (ARM originally stood for 'Acorn RISC Machine', were the company which had previously built the BBC Micro, and were by a long way the best of the British micro computer makers. In 1988 or 89 they brought out their first RISC powered machines, the Acorn Archimedes, initially with an operating system called Arthur. In about 1990 RISC-OS was launched. It had co-operative rather than pre-emptive multi-tasking, but was extremely lightweight and high-performancs - font anti-aliasing was a standard feature from day one, and the user interface design was cleaner and more intuitive even than the Macintosh.

      These were extremely high performance machines for their day - when I bought my first Archimedes, it could outperform every computer that the University where I then worked owned, and could run MS-DOS in a window under software emulation faster than many contemporary PCs. The architecture was entirely proprietary, with non PC compatible bus and expansion cards. The machines were moderately successful in the UK and Europe during the nineties - expensive, but you got a lot of bang for your buck. Towards the end, the 'RISC PC' was introduced which had PC-style components and had both Pentium and ARM processors.

      Ultimately Acorn found they could no longer compete with the Microsoft hegemony and gave up manufacturing general purpose computers. A number of smaller UK companies are still manucaturing clones.

      So, quick answers:

      • No, you can't walk into CompUSA and buy a machine that will run this stuff - and you probably never will be able to.
      • Sadly, the ARM as a mass market personal computer is now probably history.
      • The RISC-OS GUI was one of the best ever, certainly more intuitive that anything from Apple and than any X Window Manager; a project called ROX to build a RISC-OS like window manager is out there.
      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  2. Re:RISC OS on the GBA? by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 3, Informative

    RISC OS 2 could run in 512K with a fair bit to spare, but it would be a push to fit it in 288K.

  3. Re:RISC OS on the GBA? by yerricde · · Score: 3, Informative

    RISC OS 2 could run in 512K with a fair bit to spare, but it would be a push to fit it in 288K.

    How much of that 512 KiB was .text (code and const data), and how much was .data, .bss, heap, and stack? On the GBA, .text is placed in ROM on the program cartridge.

    However, all discussions of memory use must take into account that GBA has no rotating-media storage ergo no swapping to virtual memory.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  4. No problem... by Teutates · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, the KDE logo is the gear with the K in it. If KDE wanted to brand their name with the gear only they wouldn't have the K in it.

    I can take the smiley face of the MacOS and instead of the standard square look and the split face (the nose) I can put a cirlce around it or something...Apple can't sue me for that.

    RiscOS can use the gear as long as they don't utilize the K and continue not getting away without getting in trouble.

  5. Re:RISC OS on the GBA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, RISC OS has some of the micest DTP, word processing, and repro software around.

    It used to have quite a niche in video editing too.

  6. "Linux-like" == GNU by yerricde · · Score: 1, Informative

    "Linux-like commands" ... erm, shouldn't that really be UNIX-like commands? Since that's where Linux pretty much gets them...

    I take "Linux-like commands" to mean the standard POSIX command set (available in all UNIX systems) plus the GNU extensions.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  7. RISCOS was released 1988 by joshsnow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Riscos started well before 1994. I remember the launch of the original Acorn Archimedes back in 1987. It launched with an OS called Arthur. RISCOS was released in 1988/89 and brought multi-tasking, Anti-Aliased fonts to the platform. The coolest feature was being able to reallocate the amount of memory allocated to applications as those applications were executing. Another highlight was the release of Elite in 1992 - by far the best version of Elite I've seen on any platform. Acorn was ahead of it's time and ahead of the game. The only problem was that the Arc was marketed as a computer for schools meaning that it was never taken seriously. Competitors at the time were; Atari 1040ST, Commodore Amiga, 286 PC-ATs.