Netbooks use various types of processors, but most of them are built around Intel's Atom processor and architecture. There are more exotic options, such as the Chinese Longsoon processor, but those are quite rare and hard to come by - and certainly not as powerful. Apparently, another contender is preparing to enter the netbook processor market. Say hello to ARM.
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Member since:2006-01-01
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You'd think so; (I read somewhere that the ARM architecture was designed for, or in parallel with, RiscOS) but it's been brought up in the past on OSNews that RiscOS has no memory protection, preemptive multitasking, or multi-user support... It's basically another AmigaOS 3 or MacOS 7; amazingly capable for its time or even after, but lacking internal features people expect nowadays.
As for size, I've mostly resigned myself that we're not going to see those tiny OSes with megabyte footprints any more, unless we're ok with giving up a lot of features...
Edited 2008-10-23 22:00 UTC
Member since:2007-11-13
Guess what ARM originally stood for? That's right, Acorn RISC Machine. No points for guessing who created the RISC OS...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
Member since:2007-04-23
RISC OS is slightly later than ARM. Acorn originally had plans for a much more ambitious OS for ARM, but they realised that they couldn't finish this in time, so they made a much simpler OS called "Arthur". This was later extended to become RISC OS.
RISC OS certainly as memory protection, and has had this since Arthur. No pre-emptive multi-tasking, but that is not nearly as large a problem as you would think. And for netbooks, I really think multi-user support is redundant.
But I agree that RISC OS no longer offers many features that you can't find in other systems, and it lacks many of the browser-related technologies (Flash etc.). What it does have is a font system that gives readable text at low resolutions and an advanced GUI that runs with little resources (both CPU and memory).
Ten years ago, it would have been an obvious choice, but now it is just one of many plausible choices.
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2006-03-20
The return of RiscOS? WHy not? - instant-on boot from ROM in 2 seconds, fast, lightweight, and GNU toolchain support ... netbooks are the perfect vehicle for RiscOs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS