RISC OS Select 1st Release Out

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."

Comments

this long?

[garcia]

That many releases went w/o multi-user logins and DHCP?

*the* OS for RISC?

Come on.

Rebranding RISC OS as KDE?

[yerricde]

http://www.riscos.org/

I followed that link to Rebranding RISC OS. Apparently, RISCOS Ltd is moving to a cogwheel for a logo. But isn't the cogwheel taken?

Re:Rebranding RISC OS as KDE?

[Gid1]

From the page you refer to:

Acorn Nut device: As should be clear from the preceding text, I consider this to be one of the very best corporate logos ever seen.

Acorn seemed to be pretty bad at branding, IMHO... the true Acorn Green wasn't in the usual phosphor or LCD gamuts, and so wasn't accurately displayable on *any* of their computers. Even the Archimedes logo's blue wasn't in the gamut and ended up looking washed out.

RISCOS Ltd don't seem much better at good brand design...

I used to develop for RISCOS...

[b.foster]

In fact, I was one of the contributors to the Linux RISCOS emulation package. This package is an excellent way to get your hands dirty developing for an embedded platform, without having to shell out for expensive hardware or proprietary dev tools. I highly recommend that your consider the possible use of RISCOS for your next embedded MP3 player or DiVX ripper appliance.

Some of the more useful software available for RISCOS is online here, in a searchable directory. More information is also up on my friend Dr. Pearson's page.

Re:I used to develop for RISCOS...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to develop for RISCOS...

Oh come on - that's it? You liked the software? Where is the inside scope? Who was sleeping with who? Why did you leave - was it because of a huge flamewar over toolkits?

But oh no - you left and you're still friends with people. You're a disgrace.

Correction

[BigBadaboom]

RISCOS started it's life considerably earlier than 1994. The first official release was 1988 I believe. Back then it was ahead of it's time. Those first versions had anti-aliased fonts and many other user-friendly features that are still missing from other modern GUIs today.

If you look at the screenshots the interface may look a bit primitive by todays standards (Acorn never bothered to hire proper designers to make things look pretty ;), but it is still hanging around today because it is such a nice a GUI to use - for beginner and advanced users alike.

Compete with Windows?

[Kaypro]

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?

Re:Compete with Windows?

[rjw57]

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.

Re:Compete with Windows?

[rainer_d]

Will I be able to purchase a word processor for it?

Actually, yes.
There is TechWriter Pro. I used to use this a lot, but nowadays, the RISC-PC (my Acorn machine) is at my parents house, and I don't get to use it too often.
Theres the ROX-Filer project, but it's no real replacement. There is, till today, no GUI out there that can compete with RISC-OS in

• Speed
• Usability
• Intuitivity

ah-well. Those were the times....
BTW: porting GNU-software over was not easy, last time I looked, because RISC-OS is not a POSIX-system, in no way. Coupled with the fact that is also more or less, CLI/Shell-less, and had a weird directory-separator (. - dot) made it pretty hard to port the usual tool-chain over to it.

Re:Compete with Windows?

[Simon Brooke]

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.

Re:Compete with Windows?

[rainer_d]

That's actually hard to describe, though I even had
a usability-class during my higher education ;-)
Seriously, though, it was
- fast
- consistent
- but not to the point where it becomes insane
(like OS/2)
- more things (like the antialias fonts, that made the desktop and wordprocessor look like a piece of paper - so crisp, so clear.)

I dunno - it's just that I miss it a lot ;-)

Re:Compete with Windows?

[morcheeba]

Yes, you can go into CompUSA and this Arm-powered windows PC. OK, it's a pocket PC, but it's in direct competition with Risc OS. It comes preinstalled/bundled with "Pocket Word", so, no you can't purchase a word processor for it (damn monopoly!).

Here are all the varieties of ARM processors supported under Windows CE and .NET

RISC OS on the GBA?

[yerricde]

From the blurb:

RISC OS Select, *the* OS for ARM powered computers

Has RISC OS been ported to the ARM-powered Game Boy Advance?

Or would it take too much memory? GBA has 288 KiB of RAM and up to 32 MiB of ROM (though the biggest current games are 8 MiB).

Re:RISC OS on the GBA?

[Darren Winsper]

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

Re:RISC OS on the GBA?

[yerricde]

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.

Re:RISC OS on the GBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:RISC OS on the GBA?

[-douggy]

It also had the most friendly GUI for a good 5-6 years. Yes there were macs but I had a 3 button gui wtih ANTIALIASED fonts in 1990 on an 8mhz Arm based risc machine (archi 420/1) took windows 5 years to get a start bar. Linux 10 years to get the fonts right. I am not trolling but riscos was an amazing os with a commoand line support structure as well.
The sound facilities were also really cool Sibelius started on the acorn machines....

Lots of Articles

[Alien54]

Lots of articles for those hackerish of mind:

http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/artcls

No problem...

[Teutates]

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.

RISCOS was released 1988

[joshsnow]

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.

Lets itself down

[Rev. Rudolf]

I'm a bit of a fan of the Acorn/ARM lineage - it's what I cut my teeth on. After unsuccessful forays at Z80 and 6502 coding, ARM was a dream to code for. When the machines first came out in 1988 (ish), they were talked about as being fast - which of course, they were (compared to the old BBC model B).

Alas, the first version of the OS, "Arthur", was a dreadful letdown, IMHO - considering that, just a year or two later, on the same hardware, RISC OS 2 was released, with proper GUI and multitasking etc. So anyway, then I used RISC OS 2, and then RISC OS 3 when *it* was released. Life was great.

My old A440 machine still sits here beside me, and when I fire it up every so often, there's one thing above all others which strikes me about it - it's so dependent upon the mouse. Typically most of the functions of any RISC OS application were accessed via a menu (keyboard shortcuts were only sparingly provided), and there was no way to invoke/operate the menu without the mouse. Nor switch applications. Nor all sorts of other stuff.

Does anybody know if, now we're at RISC OS 4 (and more), that particular shortcoming has been addressed?

P.S. looking at the screenshot, can I submit a bug report for the typo in "SysLog workspce" ?

Re:Lets itself down

[mirko]

I personally use the device made by Stewart Tyrell on my RiscPC.
http://www.stdevel.demon.co.uk/
I can then plug an optical logitech mouse...

Re:What a shitty UGLY OS

[jmcarey]

Well for people who like their OS to look like something similar to those pretty mobiles that you stare at as kids then fair enough. I mean that's what an OS is for isn't it, to look nice but to be about as functional as a rat's arse.

One can of course "prettify" RISC OS if you wish but with little or no impact on the functionality of the OS and the software running on it.

http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~esvmd/screen1.jpg
htt p://www.warwick.ac.uk/~esvmd/screen2.jpg

The above links being just examples.

Re:It looks cool, but....

[jmcarey]

I don't think Office is anything to cheer about but then I have a high IQ.

If it's just word/document processing you are doing then EasiWriter or TechWriter are almost certainly the software that you could only dream about. http://www.iconsupport.demon.co.uk/

RiscOS is great for client-side apps

[horza]

It certainly has the most intuitive and productive GUI in existance, and has done since 1989. Certainly better than Windows or Mac. It had the foresight to use co-operative multi-tasking instead of pre-emptive which leads to blazing speeds. The apps were well thought out. Its innovative use of drag and drop makes a mockery of the 'Finder' type widget you have to use *every* time you save. It would make an excellent model for KDE to aspire to. In fact a copy of the RiscOS Filer is available for Linux called ROX which has been raved about in many Linux circles. It would also be nice to copy the way every app is self-contained within its own directory. Uninstall app? Simply delete directory - no dependency hell. RiscOS front-end with Linux underneath? Mmmmmm

Phillip.

Re:RiscOS is great for client-side apps

[Ed Avis]

The co-operative multitasking wasn't really a design choice; it was just that the Arthur operating system was hacked together in a hurry and didn't have multitasking (in many ways it was like a port of the BBC Micro operating system to 32-bit hardware). Then RISC OS 2, based on Arthur, used co-operative multitasking with a polling loop *probably* because this was the easiest thing to do without starting from scratch and building a new OS. It did give good performance though - provided apps didn't hang. There was some memory protection so it wasn't a completely braindead system - but still, I believe later RISC OS versions (4.x?) added true multitasking.

A few random links: Riscose, kind of the equivalent of Wine, except it isn't nearly as finished (it does include an ARM CPU emulator though). Riscose ties in somehow with the 'RISC OS emulator' package somebody mentioned at the top of this article's comments. Although I very much doubt that such a system is ready for any real work, even as a testbed for embedded code. RISC OS included an interpreter for the BBC Basic language (again essentially a port from the BBC Micro with some improvements), and Brandy is a free interpreter for that language. Finally, Arcem is an emulator (a la Bochs) of the original Archimedes hardware. It will run RISC OS 2.0 and 3.x well enough, if you can get hold of the ROM images. On a 1GHz machine, arcem should be just about fast enough to emulate the original 8MHz Archimedes in real time.

Re:RiscOS is great for client-side apps

[Sentry21]

It would also be nice to copy the way every app is self-contained within its own directory. Uninstall app? Simply delete directory - no dependency hell.

Yeah, it would sure be nice if someone had thought of that before - if they'd had that kind of ingenuity back in 1984, who knows what the world would be like now! We might even have a choice of operating systems with these features!

And I hate to disappoint you, but cooperative multitasking, while providing 'blazing speeds' when you're only doing one thing at once, it's right up there with unprotected memory as soon as you want to do more than one thing at once (like burn a CD and browse the web), and most people don't want to buy a separate computer just for CD burning.

--Dan

Open Source

[Grip3n]

Lets make this open source

Blazing speed.....right into a brick wall.

[dmaxwell]

The problem with co-operative multitasking is that if an app hangs and doesn't hand control back to the kernel or the next app in line then the whole system freezes. Windows 3.x was badly affected by it to an obnoxious degree. And it could bite Win9x systems running 16-bit code. And its still a problem with MacOS 10.x. The woes of co-operative multitasking were my second biggest bitch with the old style MacOSen (lack of protected memory was the first). I'll gladly trade some speed for the ability to kill offending apps.

Now it may be that those Acorns had a higher code quality in general to mitigate that problem but it can still be a problem. For that matter, higher priority processes can be reniced on most pre-emptive systems to make the processes that matter snappy.

There is only one way a co-operative system can be tolerable. If the number of apps is restricted to a limited set that is highly polished and bug free then it might be okay. But forget just chucking any ole program into that environment unless you like looking at hourglasses, busy bees and ticking watches.

Re:Blazing speed.....right into a brick wall.

[robbieduncan]

Mac OS X does not have cooperative multi tasking. The only section where this might be a problem is if you are running multiple apps under Classic, as this is still OS 9.

Re:Blazing speed.....right into a brick wall.

[dmaxwell]

I meant to say (less than) OS X. I think I just got bit by the so-called lameness filter. Sucker wacked off that "less than" looking character.

I miss...

[MattBurke]

being able to knock up a full gui application in just a couple of lines of basic...

basic too slow? simply code the bits that need speed in arm code :) piss easy :)

Re:I miss...

[Peter Harris]

I don't. I thought I would, but no.

If I had to go back to BBC Basic now after using Python, I'd vomit. Likewise if I had to go back to 11-character filenames, a toy CLI and cooperative multitasking.

The consistent use of the 3-button mouse was good, and some of the clever stuff to do with xxx$PATH variables. And OK, the anti-aliased fonts. That's about it. The rest is just nostalgia.

The ARM has a beautiful instruction set, though. If I ever do any more embedded work that's what I'd like to use.

Any more comments from a technical perspective?

[runnyhunny]

Folks,

(first ever post, so please be kind!)

I'm a sort-of RISC OS user. I have a 1994 Acorn Risc PC (with a 1996 processor upgrade - a StrongARM running at 200 MHz!) with RISC OS 4 (not 'Select') that I use from time to time.

I'd like to hear what you all think about RISC OS from a technical perspective. Does it sound like a good OS? What interests you? What makes you puke?!

Also, what do you make of the currently available (and 'soon to be available') RISC OS hardware? Now that Acorn are no more (effectively bought up by Pace and Broadcom) it's all down to a bunch of small companies to provide for us. What are your thoughts on reading the product descriptions from the following URLs:

http://www.riscos.com
http://www.castle.uk.co (not a typo!)
http://www.riscstation.co.uk
http://www.microdigital.co.uk

???

For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems. No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago. :-(

Ah well. At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime.

Re:Any more comments from a technical perspective?

[horza]

"For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems."

That was needed to obtain the amazing speed at the time. Now hardware speed has outstripped software requirements on the desktop you can rewrite it on Intel or PPC if you wanted to. It's the look and feel, the way the 3 mouse buttons are used, the consistent context menus everywhere, drag-and-drop paradigm, etc. If you gave me RiscOS I could install on my PC...

"No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago. :-("

Wasn't that eliminated in RiscOS 4?

"At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime."

She is also on the board of Eidos. Acorns could do full-screen FMV when PCs had trouble running a postage-stamp size AVI. This is why (correct me if I'm wrong) all the Eidos games such as Tomb Raider ran the video inserts in Replay format.

Phillip.

missing point...

[mirko]

I have been using RiscOS from 1995.
People who commented it here actually posted either their disgust for the UI look or their reluctancy to use an OS which only happenned to get DHCP/multi-user.
There's however a point that shouldreally be taken into account :
RiscOS is modular.
Totally modular.
This means whatever you don't like, including the filer access modes, the RiscOS core or whatever can be replaced without even rebooting the machine.
I saw many patched RiscOS which looked like other OSses, like NeXTstep, AmigaOS, or even some Mondrian-on-crack GUI.
I also saw friends patching their OS to get pre-emptive multi-tasking or background printing.
Some even coded a DHCP module yars ago but got threatened by major RiscOS investor not to release these publicly because of some legal issue.
What actually killed Acorn was its investors who wanted to turn this closed but financially perfomant market into some raw R&D company.
Most of you benefit from whatever came from around Acorn during the 80's and the 90's : The ATM network protocol that is Internet essence (originally the Cambridge Ring, used by the BBC Micro computers), the ARM processor (the most successful processor ever, with much more units sold every year than Intel could dream of), TopModel, the best 3D modelling program ever that is used by Nintendo's designers to create their games...
Now, here's my point :
RiscOS is a Geek's dream.
Denying this fact is just proving one's laziness.
There nothing that can't be done easilly with this system.
Despite the lack of Math Copro or OpenGL facilities of RiscOS-aware hardware, I saw some unique stuff on these, like the only MP3 player that can run on a 20MHz-copro-less ARM processor (http://www.eqrd.net/english/riscos.html)... A Quake1 port that run in 25fps minimum on a 200MHz machine (still no copro), some pseudo GL programs rendering fractal landscape in real time(Iron Dignity)...
Coding for RiscOS is not only a dream but is also a step closer to developping for embedded ARM devices.
Developping podules (hardware) for RiscOS is also as pleasant.
Back in 1997, there was as much free software for RiscOS than for Linux, it was simply ported than 10-100 less people.
You may want to check riscos level of activity by visiting comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups.
So, yes, RiscOS still rules, it is not as widespread as Linux or any other commercial OS but I can bet most of the RiscOS coders I know will keep their machines until they are dead.
It's simply a matter of opportunity : either you choose a widespread shit which software suite are either obfuscated, unoptimal or expensive... or you choose to prototype efficient solutions on such simple machines...
I think Leo Brodie had a similar argument in his "Thinking Forth" book : get to learn to do it simply...

Re:missing point...

[horza]

"People who commented it here actually posted either their disgust for the UI look or their reluctancy to use an OS which only happenned to get DHCP/multi-user."

They don't realise that you have to allocate limited resources to where they are needed. Until recently the only reason for DHCP is to plug a machine into a LAN. I don't know of any LAN that doesn't split its 192 block into static and dynamic range. DHCP really isn't needed, you just ask the admin for a static IP. It's only the advent of broadband which allocates via DHCP which pushed the DHCP module into being developed.

"Developping podules (hardware) for RiscOS is also as pleasant."

Podules have the drivers built into the hardware, making all RiscOS peripherals truly plug-and-play instead of plug-and-pray. Truly a godsend.

Phillip.

Re:What a shitty UGLY OS

[karmawarrior]

Nice AOS4 screenshots. No, honestly. They had a whole range of looks, and it's pretty clear what you can customise. And to my eyes at least, they've done a good job - they've gone in the opposite direction to the trend at present, which is a good thing, because the current trend is to disguise buttons as background and hide critical user interface functionality in order to "prettify" it.

The Hyperion people seem to have gone for colour and textures instead, as subtle or unsubtle as the user wishes. So the GUI stays user friendly.

If only they'd port AOS to the PC...