Linked by Michael Reed on Thu 7th Dec 2006 12:07 UTC
In common with a lot of people who used to use RISCOS, I don't use it now and that is the focus of this article: Why don't I use it any more and what would it take to make me use it again? Of course, an article of this sort still has worth as there is bound to be some degree of correlation between my feelings, experiences and hopes in relation to the platform and those other people.
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Member since:
2006-01-16
To me the biggest problem with RISC OS as a modern platform is its fragility. The lack of pre-emptive multi-tasking and decent memory protection are big problems. These problems IMHO limit its usefulness as an embedded or PDA OS.
Indeed IMHO RISC OS is probably a worse starting point for a PDA OS than Linux. The GUI is not at all suited to pen-based working, so it would need to be replaced. (PDA pens don't have buttons, so what do you do for menus?) What that leaves you with that is of use is the kernel, Filer, Font Manager, and Draw Module. Whilst the Font Manager used to kick arse, it's now looking quite dated, and the Draw Module was always lacking.
What's sad is that Acorn were developing another OS for the Archimedes. It was called ARX, and was being developed at the Acorn Palo Alto Research Centre. It was to be a modern OS, with memory protection and pre-emptive multi-tasking like Unix, with a GUI similar to Mac OS - the guys working on it were experts in OS design. Unfortunately the project was poorly managed (as most Acorn projects were). Management decided to kill the project because the predicted finish date was long after the launch date for the Archimedes - Arthur was thrown together in a hurry, and the rest is history.
For those that don't know, Arthur was essentially developed by a bunch of BBC Micro games developers who had little experience in OS design. I believe that none of the folks that had been working on ARX worked on Arthur. It was designed to be compatible (to an extent) with the earlier BBC Micro OS - much of the early software on Archimedes machines was ports of BBC Micro apps. It was never really designed to be a serious OS.
IMHO what Acorn should have done was get in some decent management for the ARX project. Had they done that they'd have ended up with a serious computer system and things may have turned out differently. They could potentially have competed in the spaces that Unix and Mac OS were dominating. Unfortunately Arthur meant they were only suited to the education and hobbyist market.