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

It was ahead of its time in UX, but rather behind in the foundations. It&#x27;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.<p>Amusingly, when you invoked the system console -which was at a lower level than the gui system, effectively pausing it - the command line appeared at the bottom of the screen and the frozen gui scrolled up as you entered more commands; until you exit the system console. (It was also possible to get a command line in a window, which could do slightly less - I forget exactly what)

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 still, those devs were doing the work of what another company had a team to do. And in fact this does work, as communication overhead is reduced, but in many cases the increase in productivity loses strategically to the slower time to market.

RISC OS has been limping on thanks to the efforts of some extremely hard-working volunteers, but a roadblock is coming. The Pi 5 drops support for 32-bit ARM code, in which RISC OS written, and since enormous chunks of it are written in assembly, there is no trivial way to port.<p>Even so, it&#x27;s heartwarming that people continue to put efforts into operating systems that aren&#x27;t related to Unix or Windows. I&#x27;m happy to see people use this, and AmigaOS, and BeOS, and others. Computing shouldn&#x27;t be a monoculture.

I kind of went down a rabbit hole last year after the Xerox Star emulator was posted here. It was really cool, but super slow, so I felt like emulating another old system. I ended up writing a GUI calculator for RISC OS in ARM assembly, neither of which I had exposure to before. It was a blast. Very interesting system, it&#x27;s like visiting a country on the other side of the planet.<p>There&#x27;s a pretty good emulator, they&#x27;ve got a bundle fully loaded with all kinds of RISC OS tools.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marutan.net&#x2F;rpcemu&#x2F;easystart.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marutan.net&#x2F;rpcemu&#x2F;easystart.html</a>

That&#x27;s my article -- I posted it here too:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40234430">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40234430</a>

RISC OS was the first graphical OS I ever used - my father ran Sibelius (the very first version I think) on an Acorn computer for engraving music. The three-button mouse approach is totally unique, I&#x27;m glad they explain it in this article!

Press F12 and dust off your Dabs Press BASIC WIMP programming for the Acorn…<p>A machine that you could code up a full GUI application with the BASIC interpreter in ROM, enabling children everywhere to which a C compiler was Unobtainium.

I’ve got fond memories of RISC OS from my school’s room full of Archimedes. I spent a a fair bit of time designing and failing to build a text adventure in Basic, while my teacher tried to get us to learn how to use TechWriter. Best feature was being able to drag a slider to create a RAM disk.<p>Amazingly you can still buy a copy of TechWriter 9.1 for £85! <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mw-software.com&#x2F;software&#x2F;ewtw&#x2F;ewtw.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mw-software.com&#x2F;software&#x2F;ewtw&#x2F;ewtw.html</a>

Anybody know a quick work around for the middle mouse button? Actually it appears I&#x27;m also having trouble with the keyboard too. My wireless keyboard+trackpad worked fine yesterday on raspberry pi os. It is refreshing though to see an OS that is lightweight and quick to install, and doesn&#x27;t give you any surprise errors after you got it all updated about stuff like the web-browser is not supported on your model B+(even if i wasn&#x27;t able to connect to internet and actually test functionality). Life is tough! I&#x27;m spending too much time trying to figure out all this random half-baked tech.

Still remember viewing the Acorn Archimedes with the RISC OS for the first time in 1987, when it was launched. Someone wrote a 10 line demo that rolled down the current screen, using a curl motion using bitmap copy&#x2F;transform, using Basic. Breathtaking performance&#x2F;speed.<p>Never knew why it bombed in the marketplace.

Using RISC OS on an RPI was as close to using a computer for the first time as I&#x27;ve ever gotten again. So many ways of doing things are not bad, but completely alien if you&#x27;ve never done it.<p>It actually gave me an appreciate for how computers must be for those who aren&#x27;t used to them.

RISC OS is an interesting beast, but I’d LOVE to see RISC&#x2F;IX ported to the RPi and other small boards.<p>Has anyone saved the sources anywhere? Would whoever now owns IXI IP help with the desktop part?

Skimmed the article, didn&#x27;t see this important bit mentioned: I&#x27;m pretty sure the OS is available through rpi-imager, meaning it&#x27;s trivial to set up on an RPi and presumably has some notion of official endorsement from RPi org.

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&#x2F;7&#x2F;365 over WiFi.<p>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?

More on official post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40188348">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40188348</a>

Excellent, I&#x27;ve been waiting for Wifi support, it&#x27;s a game changer. Will be mucking around with this at the weekend.

Single user issues aside, this looks better than every version of Linux I’ve seen in the past decade.

Wow, the article itself brings me down memory lane. The one thing that will not bring me into this platform: cooperative multitasking. (Shudder) I’m sure it feels <i>fast</i> though!

RISC architecture is gonna change everything

It gives me strong Amiga-vibes and it seems it&#x27;s open-source now... I like it and will definitely try it out!

The most impressive thing to me was the inbuilt BBC Basic, and the availability of <i>every</i> system function to basic with SWI calls.<p>This contrasts with languages like GW Basic or even commercial QuickBasic (QBX) or Visual Basic: second class citizens when it came to accessing system calls under Windows (or dos).<p>In fact, I wrote simple basic code to access the undocumented random number generator within the BCM2835 chip - it worked perfectly under RiscOS and even a dedicated BBC Basic emulutor for the Pico.<p>This is what the code looks like for those that are interested:<p>REM MAP MEMORY<p>SYS &quot;OS_Memory&quot;,13,&amp;20104000,32 TO ,,,RNG_CTRL%<p>SYS &quot;OS_Memory&quot;,13,&amp;20104004,32 TO ,,,RNG_STATUS%<p>SYS &quot;OS_Memory&quot;,13,&amp;20104008,32 TO ,,,RNG_DATA%<p>SYS &quot;OS_Memory&quot;,13,&amp;2010400C,32 TO ,,,RNG_FF_THRES%<p>SYS &quot;OS_Memory&quot;,13,&amp;20104010,32 TO ,,,RNG_INT_MASK%<p>REM CHECK WHERE THE REGISTERS ARE MAPPED<p>PRINT “RNG_CTRL MAPPED AT &amp;”;STR$~(RNG_CTRL%)<p>PRINT “RNG_STATUS MAPPED AT &amp;”;STR$~(RNG_STATUS%)<p>PRINT “RNG_DATA MAPPED AT &amp;”;STR$~(RNG_DATA%)<p>PRINT “RNG_FF_THRES MAPPED AT &amp;”;STR$~(RNG_FF_THRES%)<p>PRINT “RNG_INT_MASK MAPPED AT &amp;”;STR$~(RNG_INT_MASK%)<p>REM THESE INTS BECOME REGISTERS R0-R7 RESPECTIVELY<p>A%=1<p>B%=RNG_DATA%<p>C%=RNG_INT_MASK%<p>D%=RNG_STATUS%<p>E%=RNG_CTRL%<p>F%=&amp;1<p>G%=&amp;4000000<p>REM GET A RANDOM NUMBER FROM THE RNG<p>DIM RNG% 30<p>P% = RNG%<p>[ OPT 1<p>SWI “OS_EnterOS”<p>LDR R0,[R1]<p>SWI “OS_LeaveOS”<p>MOV PC,R14<p>ALIGN<p>]<p>REM INIT THE RNG<p>DIM INIT% 30<p>P% = INIT%<p>[ OPT 1<p>SWI “OS_EnterOS”<p>STR R5,[R4]<p>STR R6,[R3]<p>SWI “OS_LeaveOS”<p>MOV PC,R14<p>ALIGN<p>]<p>REM LETS INIT…<p>CALL INIT%<p>A%=0<p>X%=0<p>FIRST%=0<p>REM KEEP READING RANDOM NUMBERS UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY BECOME RANDOM<p>REPEAT<p><pre><code> X%=A% A% = USR (RNG%) PRINT “WARMING UP &amp;”;STR$~(A%) IF FIRST%&lt;50 THEN X%=A%:FIRST%=FIRST%+1 </code></pre> UNTIL X%&lt;&gt;A%<p>REM DISPLAY RANDOM NUMBERS (RETURNED FROM R0)<p>REPEAT<p><pre><code> A%=USR (RNG%) PRINT “&amp;”;STR$~(A%);&quot; &quot;; </code></pre> UNTIL 1=0

“ significant chunks of it were hand-coded in Arm assembly code” as all modern OS should be at the kernel level

&gt; RISC OS gives applications access to much of the memory map, and so if a program accidentally scribbles over the wrong parts of that address space, the whole computer can freeze up – which in testing our Pi 400 did several times.<p>Enough said.

That UI looks like something out of the late 80s &#x2F; 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.<p>Can we at least upgrade the fonts, colors, and negative space to make it look more 2020s?