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ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

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Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#11

Post by JulianMorrison »

kiwijamo wrote: post #4

A shout out to those involved in Acorn, RISC OS, etc around the late 1980s and throughout the 1990's. Around 1992 or so, our family bought our first computer (when I was around 5 years old) which was an Acorn A3000 running (if I recall correctly) RISC OS 2 on ROM. The school I went to also had Acorn computers (including the RISC PC toward the latter half of the 1990’s). Nowadays I consider myself extraordinarily priv…

You can still run it on the Raspberry Pi (up to version 3, the Pi 4 is not yet supported).

It works pretty nicely too, although no doubt it could do with some tender loving care to bring things up to date, as it's somewhat abandonware.

Certainly it makes the Pi hardware feel snappy in a way that desktop Linux decidedly does not.

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#12

Post by m0xte »

jeffrallen wrote: post #8

The whole thing is fine, but this passage is GOLD: > We had a really interesting time with part of that, we had one of the machines that we just could not get this thing to boot reliably. You could boot it, turn it off, reboot it and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. It turned out, it would boot fine if you left it long enough, but if you didn't turn it off for very long then it didn't reset properly…

There's quite a bit of power in that sort of stuff. If you move the steppers on my 3d printer while it's not plugged in it'll light the backlight on the LCD screen very brightly!

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#13

Post by jfb »

twic wrote: post #6
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess because I'm in a bit of a mood thanks to arguing with Linux Desktop evangelists lately, I'd like to point out that Rox Filer implemented exactly this file saving functionality (and many other good ideas RiscOS) on Linux. Then they built Rox Desktop around it. It was great. There were AppDirs, context-menu-only, spacial file management, drag-n-drop to save, etc. Naturally, the project's reward for trying to im…

I've been thinking for a while that the only way to get a decent desktop experience on Linux is going to be to start from scratch. The graphics drivers and Wayland are probably adequate. But absolutely everything from there on up - window mangers, GUI toolkits, applications, configuration tools - needs to be written from scratch by people who know what they are doing and can build all of it as a cohesive whole. This…

I mean, this is what Android did, right? They use a Linux-based kernel but completely reimplemented the display systems. The real problem is that there isn't anybody who is willing to pay for that sort of work, either on the supply side or the demand one.

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#14

Post by pjmlp »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #5
kiwijamo wrote: post #4

A shout out to those involved in Acorn, RISC OS, etc around the late 1980s and throughout the 1990's. Around 1992 or so, our family bought our first computer (when I was around 5 years old) which was an Acorn A3000 running (if I recall correctly) RISC OS 2 on ROM. The school I went to also had Acorn computers (including the RISC PC toward the latter half of the 1990’s). Nowadays I consider myself extraordinarily priv…

I guess because I'm in a bit of a mood thanks to arguing with Linux Desktop evangelists lately, I'd like to point out that Rox Filer implemented exactly this file saving functionality (and many other good ideas RiscOS) on Linux. Then they built Rox Desktop around it. It was great. There were AppDirs, context-menu-only, spacial file management, drag-n-drop to save, etc. Naturally, the project's reward for trying to im…

I also gave up.

With KParts, DBus, Bonomo, GNU/Linux has the pieces in place to have something like Lisp Machines, XDE, Mesa/Cedar, ETHZ, instead replicating a PDP-11 is all that matters.

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#15

Post by pjmlp »

jfb wrote: post #13
twic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking for a while that the only way to get a decent desktop experience on Linux is going to be to start from scratch. The graphics drivers and Wayland are probably adequate. But absolutely everything from there on up - window mangers, GUI toolkits, applications, configuration tools - needs to be written from scratch by people who know what they are doing and can build all of it as a cohesive whole. This…

I mean, this is what Android did, right? They use a Linux-based kernel but completely reimplemented the display systems. The real problem is that there isn't anybody who is willing to pay for that sort of work, either on the supply side or the demand one.

Not only that, Android IPC builds on top of Xerox PARC ideas.

Although it is very underutilized, you can compose Android applications (Activities) as Lego pieces, with each one doing just one thing right.

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#16

Post by lsllc »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #11
kiwijamo wrote: post #4

A shout out to those involved in Acorn, RISC OS, etc around the late 1980s and throughout the 1990's. Around 1992 or so, our family bought our first computer (when I was around 5 years old) which was an Acorn A3000 running (if I recall correctly) RISC OS 2 on ROM. The school I went to also had Acorn computers (including the RISC PC toward the latter half of the 1990’s). Nowadays I consider myself extraordinarily priv…

You can still run it on the Raspberry Pi (up to version 3, the Pi 4 is not yet supported). It works pretty nicely too, although no doubt it could do with some tender loving care to bring things up to date, as it's somewhat abandonware. Certainly it makes the Pi hardware feel snappy in a way that desktop Linux decidedly does not.

RISCOS Open is pretty cool, but it's just not the same experience as the Archimedes!

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#17

Post by rjsw »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess because I'm in a bit of a mood thanks to arguing with Linux Desktop evangelists lately, I'd like to point out that Rox Filer implemented exactly this file saving functionality (and many other good ideas RiscOS) on Linux. Then they built Rox Desktop around it. It was great. There were AppDirs, context-menu-only, spacial file management, drag-n-drop to save, etc. Naturally, the project's reward for trying to im…

I also gave up. With KParts, DBus, Bonomo, GNU/Linux has the pieces in place to have something like Lisp Machines, XDE, Mesa/Cedar, ETHZ, instead replicating a PDP-11 is all that matters.

I make a point of not including any of the components that you mention in packages that I build.

Another comment by the author of the GP one states the problem, everyone who might work on this kind of thing has different preferences.

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#19

Post by jeffrallen »

m0xte wrote: post #12
jeffrallen wrote: post #8

The whole thing is fine, but this passage is GOLD: > We had a really interesting time with part of that, we had one of the machines that we just could not get this thing to boot reliably. You could boot it, turn it off, reboot it and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. It turned out, it would boot fine if you left it long enough, but if you didn't turn it off for very long then it didn't reset properly…

There's quite a bit of power in that sort of stuff. If you move the steppers on my 3d printer while it's not plugged in it'll light the backlight on the LCD screen very brightly!

I double dog dare you to put your tongue on it!

Re: ARX, Arthur and RISC OS (2012)

#20

Post by pjmlp »

rjsw wrote: post #17
pjmlp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also gave up. With KParts, DBus, Bonomo, GNU/Linux has the pieces in place to have something like Lisp Machines, XDE, Mesa/Cedar, ETHZ, instead replicating a PDP-11 is all that matters.

I make a point of not including any of the components that you mention in packages that I build. Another comment by the author of the GP one states the problem, everyone who might work on this kind of thing has different preferences.

Faire, but then don't complain (as in the community) that macOS, Android, Windows and ChromeOS get all the nice desktop toys.
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