"Selling RISC OS to the general public is always going to be difficult; despite some software developements in the last few years, it still lacks features which have long since been ubiquitous on other platforms - especially what might be termed the big three - Windows (more relevantly, WinXP), Mac OS X and Linux. [RISC OS] clearly has many problems to overcome before it can really gain any wider appeal. But instead of mentioning those in further detail once again, I'd like to cover a topic I hinted at in a earlier article - a ready to go RISC OS demo."
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Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2006-01-22
From: Kroc
You assume that because it is minority, it is therefore hard to use?
I read Bringbackanonposting's comments to be a reference to application availability and format compatibility (or lack thereof) offered by RISC OS, as opposed to "the big three" as termed by the linked weblog entry.
Although, I must say I did enjoy RISC OS and the applications that were included. I had sporadic exposure to it on Acorn boxen during 1994 - 1997 at a high school, and it was used a lot for DTP work (the newsletter, yearbook, and other publications were done, in majority by students, on those systems). Certainly a breath of fresh air against Win 3.11 (and later Win 95) systems in the other lab, and (my view only, of course) in many ways comparable to the experience of Macintosh systems at the time, which was what I was using at home.
(I guess you could say my OS use "heritage" is a little outside the norm, since until just before the turn of the century I had no regular exposure to Windows of any sort...)
But back to the topic at hand, let RISC OS be marketed. It may be an "alternative" OS, but it's a worthy one nonetheless.
Member since:
2005-11-16
I will never buying or run it myself. I am not that much a masochist to torture myself with another minority OS. Linux is still tough enough to get by nowdays. Good luck to them though, no disrespect.