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

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.

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?

[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: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.

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" ?

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.