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?

[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.