RISC OS?

[Silent-Hunter]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum but it IS an OS. Will there be any thought given to running RISC OS on this? Perhaps in a KVM?

 

[TrashyMG]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum but it IS an OS. Will there be any thought given to running RISC OS on this? Perhaps in a KVM?

You're thinking about it, why not do it?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

You're thinking about it, why not do it?

I could try! I'll give it a go when I get one. I was looking more at an estimate of how difficult this would be to do.

 

[ingoreis]

Raik is now working on a RISC OS Version for all Things.

It will be a Multiboot Image that will boot on Pandora(Omap3530,DM3530),BeagleBoardRevC3(Omap3530) and the Omap5 Devboard work fine too now.
My Informations come from the German Forum.

He announced Risc OS here to be soon Avaible http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=14863&start=75#p209750

This will be a newer Distro with many many Games/Emulators/Web Browsers/VideoPlayers and other Things

Edit: He fight with little Problems...but the Main Things are working.
Release come next Weeks.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Oh wow nice!

 

[Raik]

There is a OMAP5 port for the IGEPv5, EVM, Titanium and what ever. So I think a Pyra-port is possible.
I'm to stupid to work on it but the "maker" of this port has tell me his interest. If the Pyra is aviable he will work on...

 

[tigerroast]

Could someone educate me a bit? Or at least point me in the right direction

From what I could ascertain from a decent bit of Googling, RISC OS would allow for a single app to take over the hardware, so this could be great for very heavy emulators requiring a decent bit of power, such as pretty much all of the 32-bit 3D consoles and up. I have no idea how it operates as a multi-tasking OS though, or anything much about it for that matter. I don't even know what benefits, as a multi-tasking OS, it would have over Linux besides being super-light. Security isn't a priority, so I doubt I'd use it much outside of playing games. Not that I'm a security nut, but still.

I'd love to see Lakka get ported to the Pyra as well.

 

[levi]

RISC OS is possibly the last single user microcomputer OS. Last time I checked, its best web browser didn't have a working javascript implementation, and it definitely can't run flash, so should be relatively secure. It's an interesting OS to hack around with, being much simper than Linux or Windows, but I doubt many emulators would run that much better on it than they do on Linux.

Its multitasking is definitely old-school, being cooperative rather than preemptive and operating only in the GUI, and not if you drop out to the terminal. Programs have to preiodically relinquish control, and then the OS brings the next app to the foreground and runs that until it yields, and so on. If an app simply never yields, it's got 100% of the CPU time to itself, but it's unlikely to run openGL or get any decent video acceleration, so it won't give you anything the Pandora can't already do in terms of emulation.

 

[_jr_]

RISC OS is possibly the last single user microcomputer OS.

Isn't AROS around any longer? Or isn't it considered single user?

 

[tigerroast]

Last time I checked, its best web browser didn't have a working javascript implementation, and it definitely can't run flash, so should be relatively secure.

What's considered the best web browser for RISC OS? I know for a fact that NetSurf, which is pretty good in its own right, has JavaScript now. And how would one go about getting software for it? Would it be the same process as on Windows (find on the internet, download, run/install)? There's a package manager for it, but only a fraction of RISC apps are available (much like the Chocolatey package manager for Windows).

...I doubt many emulators would run that much better on it than they do on Linux.

Well, yeah. If you're talking about the complexity and quality of the emulators and drivers available, then the emulators should run the same on the same hardware if a different OS is the only variable. In my mind, the 2 things RISC OS would provide over Linux are far less overhead (impressive, considering how light stock Debian ARM is) and control over the hardware. Full CPU time, most (all?) of the RAM, and the game controls. I'm thinking that emulators available for Linux that suffer from controller lag wouldn't have that problem on RISC OS (at least on Pyra), should it be available on both.

I don't know much about it though, so I could be completely wrong.

Its multitasking is definitely old-school, being cooperative rather than preemptive and operating only in the GUI, and not if you drop out to the terminal.

That's complete buns. I can't hack DNC email servers like that!

If an app simply never yields, it's got 100% of the CPU time to itself, but it's unlikely to run openGL or get any decent video acceleration, so it won't give you anything the Pandora can't already do in terms of emulation.

Now that's the part that confuses me. Why wouldn't it get video acceleration/OpenGL? I hope all of the emulators on RISC OS aren't like that.

 

[edgex004]

Now that's the part that confuses me. Why wouldn't it get video acceleration/OpenGL? I hope all of the emulators on RISC OS aren't like that.

Just a guess, but it's probably due to the binary blobs used by the SGX GPU not working in RISC OS unless:

1. imgtec compiles the binaries for RISC OS or
2. RISC OS has some sort of compatibility layer that allows it to use the Linux binaries.

 

[ljones]

Seeing risc os on the pyra would be intresting .... though I wonder how useful it'd really be.

Been using risc os here (only off and on mind you!) since I was at school back in the late 80s. First version I used was a pre-risc OS version called "Arthur". And then after that ROS2.

Unless it is just me there really aren't that many programs written for Risc OS and even fewer drivers. And trying to run old risc os programs on risc os open can sometimes run into the 32/26 bit problem (Risc os 32 bit won't run old 26 bit programs without modification to the 26 bit program -- older ROS3 programs were often 26 bit only; the only other option is emulation which then gets slooooow!). That and there's a *big* lack of programs -- many are propietary and/or old or unavaliable.

Mind you it is still weird to be able to drop to a command line, type *BASIC and then MODE 7 and have a screen very similar to an early 80s 8-bit BBC Micro - !

ljones

 

[levi]

What's considered the best web browser for RISC OS? I know for a fact that NetSurf, which is pretty good in its own right, has JavaScript now. And how would one go about getting software for it? Would it be the same process as on Windows (find on the internet, download, run/install)? There's a package manager for it, but only a fraction of RISC apps are available (much like the Chocolatey package manager for Windows).

Yeah, I was thinking of Netsurf. Good to hear the JS engine has moved on since I last tried building it.

Getting software outside of the package manager used to be a matter of googling for things, or following the newsgroups (I think most new software is still announced on comp.sys.acorn.announce). The ROOL forums are also quite active. There generally isn't an installer for RISCOS stuff, because of the way software lives in pling folders (folders whose name begins with a '!' character). If you double click on a pling-folder, it actually runs the file '!Run' from inside it. If an app has dynamic dependencies, they're in that folder too, but as a user you don't normally see inside pling-folders (you have to double click with shift held to get into them)

In my mind, the 2 things RISC OS would provide over Linux are far less overhead (impressive, considering how light stock Debian ARM is) and control over the hardware. Full CPU time, most (all?) of the RAM, and the game controls. I'm thinking that emulators available for Linux that suffer from controller lag wouldn't have that problem on RISC OS (at least on Pyra), should it be available on both.

There's still a kernel which has some RAM scratch space, but it's tiny in comparison to the Linux kernel, and there are relocatable modules handling things like sprites and down. On a machine with a RISC-OS ROM a lot of those are in ROM with only a tiny RAM scratch space, but presumably on systems where the OS loads from an SD card, they're all in RAM, as is there kernel code. I wouldn't worry too much about it though - the latest ROM builds are still only 2.5MB in size (that's presumably a zip compressed file, but it shouldn't compress too much), and that's enough to get you into a RISC OS desktop. The full distribution is less than 100MB (compressed), but most of that can remain on the SD card until you use it.

That's complete buns. I can't hack DNC email servers like that!

Well, you can run a taskwindow and get the terminal in a window, but you can always just hit F-12 and the terminal prompt will appear on at the bottom of the screen. On old ARM hardware a taskwindow does feel slightly laggier than a F-12 prompt, but on newer hardware it's probably less noticeable.

 

[Plume]

Where does this believe come from that OS = bloat ?
OSs are great. They provide abstraction and exactly prevent you from having to deal with the hardware directly.

 

[levi]

Probably from Windows with its heirarchy of libs and pointless services. And maybe OSX, where you need a fancy graphics card to run all the graphical wizardry, although I usually consider 'bloat' to be about disc space used, rather than the fancy hardware or CPU cycles it needs to work. Certainly vanilla ubuntu on any metric.

 

[_jr_]

Where does this believe come from that OS = bloat ?
OSs are great. They provide abstraction and exactly prevent you from having to deal with the hardware directly.

Well an OS can be implemented in a way making it use more resources than needed for a given use case. E.g. the spyware in some popular OSs is probably not a core requirement of most users, but it still uses resources that could be spent elsewhere. IMO that qualifies as bloat. Abstraction layers can be designed badly, too (and often are, because they really are very difficult to get right).

edit: ninjaed by levi

 

[slimeycat]

i would love to see RiSCOS on the Pyra. It would bring back the memories of playing games like Chocks Away, Fervor etc.

 

[RubisDrake]

Sounds like a fun project. RISC OS Open is such a niche OS, though.

Yeah, I said "Open". Why would anyone bother using the non-open one?

 

[levi]

I don't think rejecting something for being too niche really works in a niche community like this one!

As far as I know, the non-open branch of RISC OS is viewed as something rather old-fashioned amongst most current users of RISC OS. It was briefly more advanced than the branch that turned into the open source one, but since the open one got a small community around it, I'm sure that's ahead now. They certainly seem to be better at announcing new features than the closed source company is.

 

[RubisDrake]

Well, the one reason that keeps me coming back to Pyra is that it actually has a good developer community. They understand the users. They're not the typical people out to make a quick buck out of consumers. And there's a lot of bad examples. Another good example is VoCore. They have real community support. The others don't have forums, they don't have a live community like ours who cares about supporting their hardware for a 10+ year span. Not Google, not Apple, and not Microsoft will support anything they make for that long. They don't listen to individual consumers. There's actually a cause that this project is supporting. One reason why I'd support Purism over System76 and Dell for example. I want a laptop that respects my freedom and privacy, I don't care if it just runs Linux with tweaks. I just want my rights and choice as a consumer of tools that I use every single day (even for entertainment and gaming). Hopefully that makes some sense.

It's also a good reason why people would want to use the 4G Pyra version as a phone, because it will be supported for many years, unlike anything with Android OS that gets shoved out on the market, unsure if you'll get full support for all your hardware/software problems over the years.

Buying a Prya for me, won't just be like buying a device, it'll be like joining a a great place full of creative individuals. I never get that feeling when I buy any other computer, except a PC, since a PC is modular, and lots of people build their own, but yes.