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Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

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Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#51

Post by dajtxx »

ajb wrote: post #7

It was ahead of its time in UX, but rather behind in the foundations. It's a single user system with no real security, and there was no system of shared libraries - to share code between applications, it was usual to put the shared code in a kernel module and call the kernel. Even the standard C library worked this way. Amusingly, when you invoked the system console -which was at a lower level than the gui system, ef…

Home computers didn't need multi-user capability or much in the way of security (other than anti-virus) back then. I'd argue they still don't. I don't think these two things were the problem.

I can take or leave shared libraries. They seem to cause a lot of trouble, but so do statics, so I'm on the fence there. But in the context of when this was released it's a non-issue.

I'll give you the CLI thing though. If the CLI couldn't be full-featured in a window that was an oversight.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#52

Post by dajtxx »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #49
hedora wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The march toward systemd-electron continues.

This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. As I understand Apple once built its entire GUI system around a flavour of PostScript which was designed for documents typesetting. Now the world just is doing a similar thing with HTML.

Because I'm old and I'm sick to death of everything being a web app. Because I hate web app programming so it limits my employment options :-)

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#53

Post by qwerty456127 »

dajtxx wrote: post #52
qwerty456127 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. As I understand Apple once built its entire GUI system around a flavour of PostScript which was designed for documents typesetting. Now the world just is doing a similar thing with HTML.

Because I'm old and I'm sick to death of everything being a web app. Because I hate web app programming so it limits my employment options :-)

I feel the same.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#54

Post by BizarreByte »

Using RISC OS on an RPI was as close to using a computer for the first time as I've ever gotten again. So many ways of doing things are not bad, but completely alien if you've never done it.

It actually gave me an appreciate for how computers must be for those who aren't used to them.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#55

Post by [deleted] »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #13
ajb wrote: post #12

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98)…

From personal experience it's amazing how much more productive I am on solo projects vs working with other people. When you're solo you can just go, but in a team everything needs to be discussed or at least communicated.

[deleted]

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#56

Post by sillywalk »

lproven wrote: post #23

That's my article -- I posted it here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40234430

Link to HN discussion of another of your articles with more RiscOS history.

Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS? 111 points by lproven on Oct 10, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 53 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735766

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#57

Post by eddd-ddde »

mikepurvis wrote: post #50
qwerty456127 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather behind in the foundations. It's a single user system with no real security I believe multi-user systems are actually an ancient, outdated rather than a "modern" concept. It made sense when computers were huge, expensive and many users shared one even at work, let alone at home. Nowadays computers are almost never shared. Even when people used to have just one home PC per family (during pre-Win7 days) they mo…

Modern multi-user paradigms also have very weird ideas of what’s shared. Like, installing or updating software is the same permission tier as accessing another user’s documents, wtf?

_Technically_ it doesn't have to be.

Super user is super user. It can always access anyone's files. Allowing unrestricted access to super user essentially destroys any sense of security.

You can very much allow only access to certain commands under super user, e.g. only allow users to run pacman. Of course now you are trusting that said commands won't leak the permissions.

I agree that it's a mess.

My personal and biggest issue is not even across user boundaries, but inside a single user.

What do you mean my Firefox client can read my .ssh files???

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#58

Post by sillywalk »

dheera wrote: post #14

That UI looks like something out of the late 80s / early 90s. I can smell the VCR head cleaner and scratch-n-sniff stickers and hear the dial-up internet bee-bee-bee-bee-gurglegugrle-dong-ding-dong-ding-whooooooooosh-wheeeeeeeesh-bling! bling whooooo. Can we at least upgrade the fonts, colors, and negative space to make it look more 2020s?

There's been the Desktop Modernization Engine / Project

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/portfolio/risc-os-desktop-m...

discussion here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/17696

Development seems to have stalled / slowed down.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#59

Post by sillywalk »

_akhe wrote: post #42

Raspberry Pi is amazing. Everything from the size and simplicity of hardware to that of Raspbian. Super moddable, modular, surprisingly performant. As a lot of others do, I use one for most of my sites and apps as a home server. 15+ apps, sites, and APIs running on this thing 24/7/365 over WiFi. What would be the benefit of using RISC OS over Raspbian, or even Ubuntu Server? Is it pure nostalgia like running Windows…

> What would be the benefit of using RISC OS over Raspbian, or even Ubuntu Server? Is it pure nostalgia like running Windows XP on a Pi?

It's small - apps are hundreds of KB to a few MBs and it's fast/responsive. The question is what do you want to use it for? There are apps for most things, but as it's not Unix or Windows it doesn't have a lot of ports of bigger open source apps.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#60

Post by ajb »

gedy wrote: post #37
ajb wrote: post #12

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98)…

> but in many cases the increase in productivity loses strategically to the slower time to market. I disagree that it always means slower time to market - if the individual is empowered and minimum process (no PMs, "grooming", estimates, etc) a sharp individual can run circles around a full team.

Well, "many cases" isn't "always". A bigger team will get there faster if the development is larger than a certain size, if it's smaller then an individual can win.
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