"RISC OS is said to be used in set top boxes scattered across the world, and a mobile phone developer reportedly bought up a load of RISC OS 5 kit. But some applications of ROS are much closer to home. Martin Hansen reports on the growing use of RISC OS in the timber frame housing industry."
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Member since:2006-12-29
Member since:2006-04-14
Thanks for the personal flame bait, may I suggest that churlish comments might be the reason that your rating is 0.20?
And, shock!, I actually quite like RISC OS, while I'm at it I'm happy to use OS X, Symbian, EPOC, DOS, Unix, Solaris, Haiku (and other BeOS-a-likes).
Ignoring the flame, however, it appears that you too are commenting like many on this article stating something along the lines of "nice to see things keeping RISC OS going" or "nice to see RISC OS still has its uses", fine I agree its a good use of RISC OS, indeed a clever piece of software, but on OS News?
OS News purportedly states to be "Exploring the future of computing", so articles about new software, new usb stacks, nice releases of RISC OS, new hardware that RISC OS runs on (like those cute A9 homes) is great, this (and I did say and still do, in my humble opinion) was not very forward looking... that's all.
You can take or leave my comments, thats what they're for. Have a nice day Babs!
Member since:2005-07-06
Then you are the one who is not aware of what can keep an OS alive.
One of the things I keep running into still today as a computer tech is Xenix. I don't know what the software package is, but it seems to be used by dentists all over Ontario. Every single dentist office I have been sent to (and my calling area runs from Toronto to Belleville) uses it. Someone out there is selling a lot of Xenix software under the radar.
Markets like these can keep an OS alive for decades.
Member since:2005-08-13
Is this it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
I do agree, there are some programs/operating systems that are around simply because people have invested in either learning or putting their data in it, and because it works. I seem to recall a picture of a bus terminal(i think) running on a c64.
Right now there are more legacy systems out there than I think most people know about. At my old bank they bought all these brand new dells running windows, but what were they running? a custom dos app which communicated to some legacy machine(why they needed to clients I'm not sure) The point is however, that there is a glut of old machines where people can't/won't migrate, or because they like the current system and nothing out there does what they want.
I think its good to see someone running RISC OS however, I have always thought that utility of RISC OS is limited since its not x86. Personally, I wish the 6502 had evolved into our current systems(someone created a 32 bit machine a few years ago) however, we have to live with the x86 and that means to get much traction it means the OS should be able to run on them.
One example of this would be Apple migrating to x86. In one move they went from the PPC(which I personally feel is a superior design, in theory at least) to the x86 and instantly the machines gained a lot of utility. Now people who might have a few windows apps they need for work can run them without emulating the processor and thus might buy a mac because they don't have to maintain two different machines for work and personal use.
-Mike
Member since:2005-07-24
Errr, where are these offices getting their copies of Xenix? SCO has not distributed it since 1989.
There may yet be hope for SCO if they can legitimately sue every dentists office in North America.
If they had only known, perhaps they might not have even have bothered with IBM, Autozone, and DaimlerChrysler.
Edited 2007-04-29 18:19
Member since:
2006-04-14
Imagine a Linux/Windows article entitled "Windows/Linux used by two small scale timber frame house manufacturers" ...
hardly big time news imho