Hobbyists should learn about RISC OS for five reasons.
What exactly is RISC OS? Well, it’s not a new Linux. It’s also not Windows, as some might think. In fact, it was released in 1987, making it older than both. However, you might not realize that when you see it.
Its click-based graphical user interface provides a fixed panel for active programs and an icon bar at the bottom. So it looks a bit like Windows 95, and it predates it by 8 years.
This operating system was originally written for the Acorn Archimedes[1]. The Acorn RISC Machines CPU in this machine was new hardware, requiring new software to run on it. It was the first system on the earliest ARM chips, long before anyone thought of Android or Armbian[2].
While the Acorn desktop ultimately disappeared, ARM chips continued to conquer the world. Here, RISC OS has had an advantage — you never really realize it in embedded devices. RISC OS has been a completely proprietary operating system for a long time. However, in recent years, the owners of that operating system have begun releasing the source code to a project called RISC OS Open[3].
1. You can install it on a Raspberry Pi
The official operating system for Raspberry Pi, Raspbian[4], is actually quite great (if you’re not interested in tinkering with different tech novelties, you probably wouldn’t choose Raspberry Pi initially). Since RISC OS is specifically written for ARM, it can run on various small computers, including all models of Raspberry Pi.
2. It’s ultra-lightweight
The RISC system installed on my Raspberry Pi takes up a few hundred megabytes — even after I loaded dozens of programs and games. Most of them are under 1 megabyte most of the time.
If you’re really frugal, RISC OS Pico can fit on a 16MB SD card. If you’re tinkering with something in an embedded system or IoT project, this is perfect. Of course, 16MB is actually much more than the old Archimedes’ ROM compressed to 512KB. But I think after 30 years of memory technology development, we can relax a bit.
3. It’s great for retro gaming
When the Archimedes was at its peak, the speed of the ARM CPU was several times faster than the Motorola 68000 in the Apple Macintosh and Commodore Amiga, and it fully absorbed the new 386 technology. This made it an attractive platform for game developers who wanted to support their products with one of the most powerful desktop computers on the planet.
Many owners of those games have been very generous, allowing hobbyists to download their old works for free. While RISC OS and hardware have evolved, it only takes a little tweaking to get them running.
If you’re interested in exploring this, here’s a guide[5] to get those games running on your Raspberry Pi.
4. It has BBC BASIC
Just like in the past, press F12 to enter the command line and type *BASIC to see a full BBC BASIC interpreter.
For those who didn’t encounter it in the 80s, let me explain: BBC BASIC was the first programming language for many of us back then because it specifically taught kids how to code. There were tons of books and magazine articles teaching us to write our own simple yet highly playable games.
Decades later, for a tech-savvy kid looking to do something during school holidays, writing their own games in BBC BASIC is still a fantastic project. But few kids have a BBC micro at home. So what should they do?
Of course, you can run the interpreter on any home computer, but it won’t be available when someone else needs to use it. So why not use a Raspberry Pi with RISC OS?
5. It’s a simple single-user operating system
RISC OS doesn’t have its own users and superuser access like Linux. It has one user who has full access to the entire machine. Therefore, it may not be the best daily driver for enterprise deployment or even suitable for banking for the elderly. However, if you’re looking for something to modify and tinker with, it’s absolutely fantastic. There are not many barriers between you and the machine, so you can dive right in.
Further reading
If you want to learn more about this operating system, check out RISC OS Open[3], or burn the image to a flash card and start using it.
via: https://opensource.com/article/18/7/gentle-intro-risc-os
Author: James Mawson[7] Topic: lujun9972 Translator: geekpi Proofreader: wxy
This article was originally compiled by LCTT and honorably published by Linux China