How much will it cost to modernise RISC OS 5? Give it your best guess. Well, yesterday Castle estimated that, for them, it’ll probably cost between eight and ten million quid. And therefore, it’s going to be a very gradual process.
RISC OS 5 modernisation to cost millions
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The Amiga OS is being updated for a small fraction of that. Most of the coders are volunteers working for nothing because they care about the platform. There are only a tiny handful of paid programmers.
This applies to all three forks of the Amiga OS.
It strikes me as the best approach for RISCos too.
Paid or not, updating an OS will take several years.
How sad it is to have code rot away just because of money…
release the code…..gpl…
Just out of interest they have been promising this laptop for over 5 years….. I recall the the conversation after and it was going to be an IBM 760 case but IBM wanted to much money for the parts…
“they refuse to comment on whether or not there’ll be a native, ARM based RISC OS laptop or a ‘budget Iyonix’, teasing us with the usual, “we’d like to engineer a product first, then tell everyone about it.”
what a load of rubbish…
“they have been promising this laptop for over 5 years”.
You are wrong. Castle have never promised a laptop so perhaps you should check your facts before declaring them “a load of rubbish”.
RiscStation, a completely separate company, did try to build a laptop for a few years but gave up in the end because of the problem of casing. They did produce an emulated solution, however.
the difference is the average Amigan is a technical type who can program. The average RISC OS user uses their computer to literally do work. There’re very few active RISC OS programmers today.
my memory could be failing me Ian, I am almost 98% sure it was castle promising a laptop… @ Epsom Race Course… maybe someone else can correct me.. but ((((just remembering the details as I write))) they would not give the name of the manufacture of the case etc all they would say is its a company with four letters after the presentation I was told (((tiny)))… was supplying these cases…
I know RiscStation is another company etc..
by the way for a laptop to get off teh ground they will have to have an entry price point of about £400 -£600… including VAT.
What’s a quid?
£1.00 precisely (GBP).
You serious? It’s £1 sterling.
It’s quite funny they call the upgrade project “Merlin”, because the original name of RISC OS (on Acorn Archimedes) was “Arthur”. (Arthur 0.2 was in EEPROM, it was replaced by RISC OS 1.2 in 1987/1988.) Is RISC OS still co-operative multitasking?
“the difference is the average Amigan is a technical type who can program. The average RISC OS user uses their computer to literally do work. There’re very few active RISC OS programmers today.”
Interesting. Yes, you are right that a large proportion of Amiga users either program or are highly interested in learning. That is why the OS 4 pre-release includes a developer kit. AROS is an entirely user-coded fork of AmigaOS.
So the RISC folk need to make sure the OS is easy to program in. ISTR that way back, BBC BASIC was popular, but the OS is presumably coded in C. Or is it?
hyper: Castle, like pretty much all RISC OS companies, have seriously considered a laptop at one time or another.
Yes, there was a laptop at an Epsom show (I believe, but am not certain, that RiscStation presented that). Castle have never promised a RISC OS laptop.
RISC OS was largely programmed in assembler and BASIC if I remember right. RISC OS programs are often programmed in assembler too.
Making the OS easier to program in wouldn’t attract any new users. Most Linux-using techy types won’t touch RISC OS no matter what’s done to it. You also need to buy a dedicated ARM computer to run it.
Quid is Slang for a British Pound Sterling, thats its full name its refered to under the following names usually:
a pound,
a quid,
a bob,
no one says “oh that will be 1 british pound sterling”
(yeah i know this is off topic)
Sigh. No. RISC OS is mostly written in C and ARM Assembler.
Most new RISC OS applications are C, with some Basic and a few C++. There are very few new application written in assembler, although that was the case many years ago.
And no, you don’t need a dedicated ARM machine – VirtualRiscPC allows an effective RISC OS system on under Windows.
an arm based laptop is a very good idea – i remember the ARM 2 and 3 running at about 1 Watt, unlike pentiums running at over 100 Watts. think about it – bettery life extended by 100. so 4 hours become 400 hours – that’s just over a month! that’s the dream – to recharge your battery once a month, not daily!
and of course NetBSD runs on it!
There are a lot of things in a laptop that use power, battery life isn’t just determined by the CPU. A much more energy efficient CPU would certainly help, but I doubt that it would even double the battery life, let alone multiply it by 100.
OTOH for a PDA a low power CPU is more of an advantage, which is why many of them do use ARM CPUs. They don’t have hard disks, large screens, CD-ROM drives, etc. so the CPU accounts for a higher % of the overall power used by the device.
AROS is an entirely user-coded fork of AmigaOS.
No, AROS isn’t a fork, it’s written from scratch.
A bob is actually 5p
It’s a real shame that Acorn neglected RISC OS so much in the 90s. When RISC OS 3 was released in 1991 it was one of the best desktop operating systems available. IMO it was better than Apple’s System 7 in almost every way, stability, multitasking and GUI design were far superior. They even had really great hardware to go with it, the ARM CPU made Acorn computers the fastest available in their price range.
But there wasn’t much development of the OS after that, RISC OS 3.7 in 1996 was a pretty minor upgrade. Flaws like the lack of virtual memory, memory protection or preemptive multitasking weren’t a big deal 10 years ago, but now they make it look quite primitive.
The performance advantage of ARM CPUs has slipped away, so the OS needs to have major advantages if it’s going to attract new users. It’s still one of the nicest OSes to use, IMO it’s still got a GUI advantage over Mac OS X, but that isn’t enough if the rest of the OS is out of date.
Software development is another huge issue, what can anyone do to get developers back to RISC OS? Without new software most people aren’t going to give RISC OS a second look. In particular the lack of a decent web browser is a big problem for the platform. Castle’s Oregano 2 browser is over priced at nearly £100 for a single user license, it isn’t even that good. Unfortunately projects to port an opensource browser don’t seem to be making much progress.
Why all these different OS? I would think that having the openBEOS guys coming up with some sorts of compatability layer, and come up with a Desktop Environment (similar to what Apple did with OSX) built on top of something such as linux, etc. I mean make it perform the same way, make it look the same, and you have a winner, because you’ll get the commercial backing of linux, you’ll get updated drivers, etc, and you won’t have to spend “millions” modernising the OS, when I think for the most part (perhaps I’m over simplifying), what people want/desire in a given OS is an overall behavior/way of doing things, not caring how it’s done behind the scenes.
I realise there are probalby alot of cases/specific things that are done that might be impossible to pull off through this method, but I for one would much rather play with the OpenBEOS linux/X add on, then sit and wait for 5-7 years for them to emulate the system, and not have any *NEW* compatable apps, or drivers etc…
I’m not knocking the guys for trying, I’m just wondering if they are perhaps mis placing their amazing time, dedication and effort for what seems to be a losing cause….
“Unfortunately projects to port an opensource browser don’t seem to be making much progress”
There is also a browser called NetSurf ( http://netsurf.sourceforge.net/ ) written for RISC OS and it is progressing very well.
Castles’ costings probably include support for Java, Flash, Realvideo, USB 2, etc. licenses.
IIRC the Java license is over £300,000 alone.
To JK :
You seen the opensource RISC OS browser – Netsurf recently?
I haven’t paid much attention to Netsurf to be honest, it’s nice to see how far it’s progressed. I’d assumed that a port of Mozilla or another cross platform browser was more likely to succeed than one created from scratch, but maybe I was wrong.
Plans to port Open source browsers to RISC OS are making excellent progress, but thanks for your concern.
From what I have seen, Peter Naulls is making excellent progress with browser ports. I have used some of his browser ports, and I expect he can do the same for a better browser.
Could someone post a list of what a ‘modernised’ RISC OS would have, that ROX (http://rox.sf.net) doesn’t?
ROX is basically RISC OS (DnD saving, filer-centric, app dirs) + Linux (decent multitasking, memory protection, secure multi-user, good networking and hardware support).
Is it just a case of being able to run old ARM binaries? Why not use an emulator in that case?
ROX isn’t RISC OS in the same way that a Mac OS X style DE for Linux wouldn’t be Mac OS X, even if it had a perfect clone of the Dock and Finder. RISC OS has consistent apps a unique menu system, drag and drop between apps, etc. Even a well designed desktop environment like ROX can only provide a small fraction of the user experience of a real RISC OS system IMO.
“RISC OS has consistent apps”
So does ROX. And for less than 10mil, I bet you could find someone to iron out any wrinkles and/or port existing RISC OS apps.
“a unique menu system”
It uses button-2 instead of button-3 to make the menus pop up. You can just run ‘xmodmap’ under ROX to switch the buttons if you want the RISC OS ordering, though.
“drag and drop between apps”
Does this not work somewhere? On ROX, I just typed some text into Edit, then dragged from the savebox onto the Archive application on the iconbar, dragged the compressed file from Archive’s savebox onto Archive again, and dragged the resulting uncompressed file back into Edit. Worked perfectly.
“Even a well designed desktop environment like ROX can only provide a small fraction of the user experience of a real RISC OS system IMO.”
Some examples of places where RISC OS is better would be useful…
“So does ROX.”
ROX runs the applications that are available for Linux. As Linux uses multiple toolkits without a consistent set of user interface guidelines it has a mix of inconsistent apps. That’s one of the main reason why I don’t use Linux and probably never will.
“It uses button-2 instead of button-3 to make the menus pop up. You can just run ‘xmodmap’ under ROX to switch the buttons if you want the RISC OS ordering, though.”
You’ve obviously never used RISC OS or you’d know that there’s a lot more to it’s menu system than the mouse button used.
“Does this not work somewhere?”
Try dragging and droping an image from GIMP into OpenOffice. Even copy and paste of non plain text doesn’t work between a lot of apps, another problem caused by the different toolkits and lack of standards in the UI.
“Some examples of places where RISC OS is better would be useful…”
Try it for yourself. IMO it’s far more user friendly, polished and pleasant to use than Linux is ever likely to be.
“ROX runs the applications that are available for Linux. As Linux uses multiple toolkits without a consistent set of user interface guidelines it has a mix of inconsistent apps. That’s one of the main reason why I don’t use Linux and probably never will.”
So, if these apps were ported to RISC OS, you’d refuse to use that too?
“You’ve obviously never used RISC OS or you’d know that there’s a lot more to it’s menu system than the mouse button used.”
Like what? I click the right (middle with modmap) button over a file in a filer window and a menu pops up. It has a list of items (Display>, File ‘Foo’>, Select>, Options…, New>, Window>, Help>). What’s so great about the RISC OS version?
“Try dragging and droping an image from GIMP into OpenOffice.”
Try it in RISC OS. Doesn’t work there either. However, dragging an image from a filer window in ROX to Gimp on the iconbar does work in ROX. Doesn’t work in RISC OS (at least last time I tried; Gimp wouldn’t run at all then).
“Try it for yourself. IMO it’s far more user friendly, polished and pleasant to use than Linux is ever likely to be.”
All your examples are things that don’t work on RISC OS either. The mere ability to run Windows-style apps like OpenOffice on a particular platform can’t be used as an argument against it, any more than the existance of the PC emulator on RISC OS means that the RISC OS UI is inconsistant (because it can run Word, which doesn’t do DnD saving).
why GPL when you can MIT it?
lets not talk about licenses.
… It will not cost millions if you have experienced, dedicated, wonderful, hardworking employees that know how to do this.. Yes, some people can do alot of work to operating systems and some can create entire installers for a system like the guy who’s working with me for HawkinsOS
Going to licence that Hawkins in HawkinsOS?
okay you go to bookies and say 10 bob on [horse name here] and you give them 50p they’ll tell u they want £10
License what the installer or the Name? Can’t trademark this name 😉 The installer will be ransomware if its BSD’d. 😉
No, Youlle, 1 bob is a shilling. A shilling was worth 5p at decimalisation ergo 10 bob is 50p.
Have a look at:
http://www.wardell.org/jotd/british_money.htm
ROX is still an add-on to Linux. It is not integrated within it, I mean, you can’t manage your entire system from within ROX, as you still need YaST and the like for certain things.
RISC OS, on the other hand, is a complete, integrated system. That’s a big difference.
“No, Youlle, 1 bob is a shilling. A shilling was worth 5p at decimalisation ergo 10 bob is 50p.
Have a look at:
http://www.wardell.org/jotd/british_money.htm“
remember different generations and inflation, in the 70’s you could get a house for £1000, now in UK ur lucky to get a house for less than £100,000
i was born in 1986 long time after decimalisation, so i’ve never had to figure out that 240 pennies = 1 pound, but where im from when some says a bob they mean a pound, its all about dialects remember, people can say the same thing and mean things different, i say football, everywhere in the world but America you think FootBall as in Soccer, kicking a ball with players like Raul, figo, kahn, in America they’d think about running with the ball. its all a case of dialect and local
“an arm based laptop is a very good idea – i remember the ARM 2 and 3 running at about 1 Watt, unlike pentiums running at over 100 Watts. think about it – bettery life extended by 100. so 4 hours become 400 hours – that’s just over a month! that’s the dream – to recharge your battery once a month, not daily! ”
I can’t believe how wrong this statement…
– mobile Pentium do not go over 100 watt
– pentium is a lot faster, u can’t compare them directly
– 100 times better cpu power comsumption does not equal 100 times better overall consumption; a notebook is NOT merely a cpu!
– most of the power consumption of a notebook is in fact not from CPU.
– there are other better solutions like Transmeta Efficion and Via C5J which go around <5w at 1GHz.
Well, for a real world example, consider the Psion Teklogix NetbookPro.
It has an 800×600 LCD screen, CF sockets, and 128MB of memory, with a PXA255 XScale processor. It claims 8 hours battery life.
What will not suprise you is that the Netbook has no harddrive (big use of power), and putting a wireless card in will significantly reduce that time.
everywhere in the world but America you think FootBall as in Soccer
In Australia and New Zealand, football doesn’t refer to soccer. It refers to Aussie Rules or rugby (whether it’s league or union, I don’t know… I come from deep within Aussie Rules territory).
‘Football’ just refers to the dominant form of football in the area…
ROX is still an add-on to Linux. It is not integrated within it, I mean, you can’t manage your entire system from within ROX, as you still need YaST and the like for certain things.
RISC OS, on the other hand, is a complete, integrated system. That’s a big difference.
Yeah, but wouldn’t it cost less to finish ROX then to upgrade RISC OS? No-one working on ROX would complain if it was suddenly finished. (On the other hand, it might be that ownership of the code is worth more than 10 million quid to their shareholders…)
Now here is the ironic thing. If you used just KDE and GNOME apps, you wouldn’t notice any difference in terms of user interface consistancy and polish. Indeed, KDE and GNOME apps are usually more consistant amongst themselves than apps on any commercial platform, because they are largely released by the same project. Now you say, “but that’s limiting myself to a subset of the available apps.” Yes, that’s true. However, is that subset more expansive or less expansive than what is available on RiscOS?
This multiple toolkits argument is getting stale. Those people who run Linux on a daily basis, and care about asthetics, do not mix-and-match all sorts of apps. They run mostly apps from their chosen desktop environment. Occasionally, they will have to run a particular app from outside their environment, but that’s no different than running the occasional weird-looking app on a commercial platform. People use Visio every day without bitching that it’s widget set looks like a Keramik-reject.
“but where im from when some says a bob they mean a pound”
And where is this? “Bob” meant shilling before decimalisation. So are we talking about some kind of slang from generations born after decimalisation (who’ve reused the word) or just people who never knew what they were talking about in the first place? “That’ll be seven bob, sir!” “Seven quid, sir? And keep the change? Why, thank you very much, sir!” 🙂
“ROX is still an add-on to Linux. It is not integrated within it, I mean, you can’t manage your entire system from within ROX, as you still need YaST and the like for certain things.
RISC OS, on the other hand, is a complete, integrated system. That’s a big difference.”
I’m not sure what you mean here. Say I want to reformat a hard disc in ROX. I click on the YaST icon in my Configure directory (shown using ROX-Filer) and a window pops up. I click on System and run the partitioning tool. There are lots of buttons and things to click on, all running right inside my ROX desktop.
Now, on RISC OS (and this was a while ago; maybe it’s different now), I’d click on HForm, and the desktop would disappear, to be replaced by an 80×32 text mode command interface.
So, RISC OS may be integrated in the sense that it was all made by the same company (back then), but ROX gives the more integrated appearance to the user. It’s not like you have to quit ROX and enter KDE just to run the setup tool or anything…
A Bob is a young man-servant who is really a woman in disguise. 🙂