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Windows 10 gets worse

Jim Audiomisc said:
Not sure where you get your ideas about RO. It has actually been gaining a lot of users, etc, recently since the appearance of the RPi devices. And is supported both as an Open OS and as a free one by the relevant people. However in general it isn't aimed at the same types of use as Linux. Note also that larger RO hardware than the RPi can do things the RPi doesn't. So don't confuse the OS with the specific version which is hardware dependent for HAL reasons.
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I do intend to better explore RISC OS as I do like the idea of it (from both a historical and maybe still viable in some contexts perspective). I’ve just checked and there is *still* no WiFi support for the Pi version though, which is just bizarre to my mind given the Pi III has been out for years now. It will make it a right PITA to play with as I’ll have to fart about with old cat 5 leads etc. How archaic!

PS I just discovered that the mouse that came with my BBC B-styled Fuse case that my Pi lives in does actually have a third button - I’d not pushed the centre scroll-wheel before, and it seems to click, so I think I’m in business! I’ll get round to it once I’ve fixed my real BBC B!
 
Windows 10 has taken back a lot of control in the name of security, you are really forced to place your own data in /users/myname/.... these days.
What I don't like is the way that updates happen when MS want them, not you - usually in front of a customer, and the snooping that MS have allowed themselves of your browsing and documents
 
Well, I'm pleased to say that Win10 has just let me load and use my ancient ripped off copy of MS Office 97 on my new computer, so I can look at my old spreadsheets.
 
MikeMA said:
Well, I'm pleased to say that Win10 has just let me load and use my ancient ripped off copy of MS Office 97 on my new computer, so I can look at my old spreadsheets.
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I don't think that Outlook will work, though.
 
davidsrsb said:
Windows 10 has taken back a lot of control in the name of security, you are really forced to place your own data in /users/myname/.... these days.
What I don't like is the way that updates happen when MS want them, not you - usually in front of a customer, and the snooping that MS have allowed themselves of your browsing and documents
Click to expand...

Set active hours to let us know when you typically use this device. We won't automatically restart your device during this time.
 
Tony L said:
I do intend to better explore RISC OS as I do like the idea of it (from both a historical and maybe still viable in some contexts perspective). I’ve just checked and there is *still* no WiFi support for the Pi version though, which is just bizarre to my mind given the Pi III has been out for years now. It will make it a right PITA to play with as I’ll have to fart about with old cat 5 leads etc. How archaic!

PS I just discovered that the mouse that came with my BBC B-styled Fuse case that my Pi lives in does actually have a third button - I’d not pushed the centre scroll-wheel before, and it seems to click, so I think I’m in business! I’ll get round to it once I’ve fixed my real BBC B!
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If you want to find out more, or push for additions to the OS, the best place to go is the ROOL forum/website.

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

That's where people discuss/organise what should be developed.

General background, though:

Acorn was bought up by Olivetti. They then flogged it and its IPR off to different people. ARM was spun off as the really successful part. The OS ended up being 'owned' by two different companies. One then went on to become the 'open' version - which is what you'd normally be able to get, free, for the RPis. The other remained commercial and closed. But still with some parts 'owned' by someone else. (The full story is more complex and muddled, but that's the jist.)

During the last year some of that has been resolved and the branches are coming back together. However it remains the situation that it comes in two forms.

ROOL's RO which is free and anyone can port/use it. Usually on RPis or by people who want to make 'boxes' of some kind that use it out of sight for specific tasks.

A 'commercial' version which has features that the open version lacks because added, paid for, developments were done to target specific types of user on specific hardware, then sold as a bundle. Like the ARMX6 I'm typing this on as a general desktop machine. I know of at least three companies who make such machines of their own

That said, all the above people know each other and tend to co-operate as well as compete! :)

There was a marked rise in interest and takeup of RO due to the RPis. But in general it is people who like to program, play with computers to learn, make specific devices, etc. Plus a group like myself who use the machines because we prefer them and the software on them to alternatives for many tasks.

Some of the desktop software remains commercial, and is still developed, and users pay for the upgrades. One nice thing about this is that the developers tend to run things like user email lists so we can discuss things like what new features we'd like, etc. You get to talk to the programmer/boss, not a 'help desk'. 8-]

BTW My experience is that it is common for a 'wheel' mouse to let you click with the wheel as the 'middle' button. Works here on RO for the mouse I have - with RPCEmu on Linux as well as my ARMX6.

BTW2 if someone wants to taste RO without buying an RPi, look for RPCEmu. It emulates the old 'RiscPC' that Acorn made, but can run some of the newer versions of the OS as well as the versions Acorn issued. You can experiment with the choice of 'cpu' as well as OS. I sometimes find it handy for running old '26 bit' software that uses - now 'illegal' - tricks with the CPU. Free emulator and free OS for anyone interested.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
If you want to find out more, or push for additions to the OS, the best place to go is the ROOL forum/website.

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

That's where people discuss/organise what should be developed.
Click to expand...

I’ve just spent a few hours this morning playing with RISC OS on the Pi 3. There is a lot to like; it is small footprint and lighting fast, plus got a fair bit right on installation (e.g. it detected the correct resolution for my Sony HD TV via HDMI). There is however a lot that irritates the crap out of me too, just stuff that isn’t thought through. As an example I launched the rather wonderfully titled !PacMan (a package manager) which told me the list hadn’t been updated for over 1500 days despite this being a fresh Pi SD image downloaded today (abandonware accusation proven!). I let it grab the fresh list via the grubby old Cat 5 lead hanging out the back (as stated it can’t do WiFi). It then told me I could update some existing apps, so I let it do that, and it unzipped the packages and claimed to install stuff. Now on clicking !PacMan I just get some obscure run-time error saying its incomplete, i.e. it has killed itself. I couldn’t google up any help as PacMan is a little yellow pill and ghost scoffing sprite as far as the Internets are concerned (I should obviously insert the arcade Pacman dying sound here).

I just flattened the SD on my Mac and started off again with a fresh one, so the first thing I did as a new user effectively required a total reformat and reinstall! This time I’m obviously afraid to allow it to do any online updates, though I did let !PacMan update its package list. I next tried to install a free FTP app just to get used to the system. !PacMan claims to have downloaded it, unpacked it and installed it, but where it has put it I have not even the slightest idea! Not in the apps folder, nowhere to be seen in any of the system areas, not on the desktop, and not the slightest hint given as to where one would be expected to find it!

I’ll obviously spend more time with it as I love the speed and agility and it seems to be far more suited to the Pi than the inevitability more bulky Linux. It feels like a proper fast computer and I don’t have an issue with the retro almost Amiga look to things (which I prefer to the endless W95 clones of Linux). I’ve certainly got on badly with !PacMan so far, but that is but one app/feature out of many.
 
FWIW Most long-term Ro users haven't used a 'package manager' or 'packages'. The approach hasn't been like that of, say, Linux. Instead, people download a zip from the site of the person who wrote the application they want. You also don't need in general to install an application in a specific place. However this tends to mean you can need to know 'how things work'. Which can be a 'chicken and egg' snag for newcomers, I'd agree. Best solved by asking on the ROOL forum.

Example:

http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/DrawGen/dgen.html

is a webpage from which you can get a zip of !DrawGen and an example application that uses it called !StarCatMapper whic can be used to generate things like the PDF I give a URL for at the end of this posting.

Each application is in a directory that starts with a '!' which tells the OS it's a runnable application. It also contains a !Help file you probably need to read to know what to do next. (Although of course, I like everyone else ignores than and only gives in and reads the damned !Help when they fail. 8-] )

You need to have 'run' !DrawGen before !StarCatMapper can work. You also need to have set up a RAM disc if you haven't already got one. The !Help files tell you this and how to check things. You can put both apps in whatever pathed location you like on the main 'hard disc' provided they have been 'seen' (booted) and can then be run.

Similarly, I and many others who've written simple RO apps have just put a zip on their website.

That said, the packaging system RO has adopted should work. But I can't help with that as I get the 'packaged' app and then pull out the app and use it without doing the package install. 8-]

The followong shows a PDF version of the kind of star map the program generates.

http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/temp/StarMap4k.pdf (360kb)
 
BTW if you can't find something that may have been installed, the 'show' command may help.

Press <control>+F12 to open a taskwindow (terminal)

That should open a window with a * prompt.

Type in

show FTP*

and press return and if the FTP app has been 'seen' and listed to be booted it will give you the location.

show *

will list all the os variable set by applications, etc.
 
BTW a distinction is that when you install a Linux distro the package manager(s) tend to have been updated, but will update during the install if you're connected. Whereas you may find that !PacMan is simply the software to run the manager. So may need to 'update' just to get the full data. Beyond that I dunno as I avoid using it. :) But someone on the ROOL forum can probably explain/help more than me anyway when it comes to the RPi versions of RO because I use the 'commercial' version for other machines. (And in the spirit of earlier comments. Yes, I can and do both talk to the man who runs the firm that makes these machines via an email list he runs *and* talk to him on the phone about developments, requests, bug fixing, etc. I doubt many normal users can do that with Mr Gates. 8-] )
 
Thanks Jim, I’ll have another play later.

What is your main RO machine? I’m curious as to what Acorn RISC hardware is still available (assuming that is what you are running).
 
Tony L said:
Thanks Jim, I’ll have another play later.

What is your main RO machine? I’m curious as to what Acorn RISC hardware is still available (assuming that is what you are running).
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I'm not sure that there is a photo on the web! However these are a couple of pages put up by the makers.

http://www.armini.co.uk/details.shtml
http://www.armini.co.uk/

Note that - as often for RO webpages - they are a bit out of date and some things have been added/improved since.

I'm currently running OS version 5.23 issued 18 Feb 2018 by R-Comp. On an ARMX6.
 
Be careful BTW when it comes to 'comparing' figures like clock rates, disc size, etc, with Windows/Linux. The OS desktop is relatively fast and light on resources and most applications are small. e.g. most applications only need a small amount of RAM. !TechWriter the main document processor used to be sold on one floppy disc and currently is using less than 2MB of RAM on this machine. You need to try things to get a real idea of performance comparisons. Clock speeds, etc, may mislead.
 
Thanks Jim, so actually something pretty closely related to the 1.2gHz quad-core Arm Cortex A53 in the Pi 3 I have, but I assume with more memory (Pi has 1GB) and better IO. In the little play I had earlier I certainly got the impression that the RISC OS is *very* happy on this hardware spec, far more so than I ever felt Linux was. The version I downloaded today, which IIRC dated from mid last year, was 5.24. Speed-wise it feels like running Windows 3 on an i7 or something, i.e. loads and shuts down real fast, window manager is instant. I’ve not done anything to seriously push it yet. My next task is to get it to run Quake, obviously...
 
Just to complicate things the OS numberings used by ROOL don't always tie in with those used by R-Comp for the 'commericial' version!

The performance will depend a lot on the hardware and HAL as well as the specifics of the software you're trying to run. For example, often RO programs won't use the available FP hardware because traditionally the RO ARM machines didn't have an FP section. So they have to either use the fixed-point ops to synth it, or try to use things like an available mill intended for, say, FFT video. Not always ideal, and depends on the nouse of the programmer.

For speed, single tasking tends to be faster. That lets a RO box behave like a fast 'BBC B' would because it halts the actual desktop polling of other tasks and gives you the entire machine all the time (save for interrupts, etc, for the video or hardware). But a lot of the OS and GUI code is compact, fast, and cleverly assembled for the ARM hardware.

And you can start a taskwindow and type in "BASIC"...
:)
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Just to complicate things the OS numberings used by ROOL don't always tie in with those used by R-Comp for the 'commericial' version!
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I don’t quite understand what you mean there, as I understand it I’m running the ROOL version, it was downloaded from the riscopen.org site.

PS !PackMan is indeed broken on the the install image (forum link). The thing I find incomprehensible is no one has bothered to fix the image in the past 6 months given this is the main shop-front for the RISC OS project (Pi users will inevitably be the main new audience) and running that app is the very first thing new users will do after figuring out how the mouse buttons work!
 
The version of the OS I'm using on the ARMX6 is *not* the same as the one ROOL provide. Its a commercial version that has some extras and is specifically targetted at the hardware in the ARMX6. However both ROOL and R-Comp (who make the ARMX6) use RO version numbers.

I'd need to check, but there also have been more than one parallel version for the RPi from ROOL. I'm not an RPi user so don't pay much attention to that. But I think the one on the 'NOOBS' (?) image isn't the same as a different ROOL image.

There are only a few programmers working on the ROOL OS and many do it part-time or unpaid. Its like Linux in some ways, but on a *much* smaller scale. The commercial work does actually feed back into them to an extent, though. But again, its all orders of magnitude smaller than Linux.

I can raise the things you've pointed out on the ROOL forum, but I suspect the above will be the core of the response and the limited supply of 'round tuits'.

BTW I have occasionally donated to ROOL as this helps them to pay for some work *and* for kit to work on.

My own take on packaging is that for RO it isn't actually needed. But I do realise that newcomers won't think that way and expect it, quite understandably. TBH I think that was one of the main reasons the method of 'package management' was introduced. It never appeared during the first decades of RO as things simply were done more directly and trying to get RO users to all work the same way was viewed as 'herding cats'! :)
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
I'd need to check, but there also have been more than one parallel version for the RPi from ROOL. I'm not an RPi user so don't pay much attention to that. But I think the one on the 'NOOBS' (?) image isn't the same as a different ROOL image.
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I’m not using the NOOBS thing, I created an SD card image from this link on the RISCOSOpen site. I’ve since tried to google up a beta version as it is clear from reading the forum and various other pages that 5.24 is broken, that they know it is broken, and despite it being over a year since the discovered it was broken there is apparently a fixed pre-release candidate of 5.27. I just can’t find it in a downloadable installable form. As such I’ve actually stuck my Pi back on the shelf for a while and will revisit RISC OS once there is a stable complete build for the Pi. I like the idea of it being a lightweight, low resource fast and agile OS that actually has the potential to turn the Pi into a very usable ultra-budget computer, but I really haven’t the time to bug-fix etc. I’m just an onlooker!

PS If you know of a built Pi image of a later fixed version please link to it and I’ll give it a look. All I found was a source-code repository, and I’m not going anywhere near that! I just want a functionally complete build to play with as I’m unfamiliar with the system and can’t be doing with the situation I had yesterday where I was blaming myself for not understanding behaviour that actually turned out to be bugs and build issues.
 
Just had a quick look at the thread on ROOL. This was spotted a short time ago. Probably get fixed soon, but a way round it is also shown.

A point to bear in mind about RO is that it doesn't have the kind of user/admin distinction other OS's employ. *YOU* are the user and you are therefore GOD. Traditionally, people just get the software they want and install in wherever suits them, creating new directiories as suit. All in 'user space'. This means knowing some basics of how not to screw up the system, but you're GOD so its your job to see you avoid major 'ooops!'.

The package approach was introduced so new users who expect it can install/use/remove things without needing to decide where things go or how to make them callable. But it is relatively new to RO. And once you know how RO works, you don't need it.

R-Comp who make and sell the ARMX6 run something similar they call PlingStore (!Store), which offers commercial programs you pay for as well as free ones. This is kept more reliably working because it gets commercial focus... But I don't bother with it. :)

Bottom line. The RO experience is a different one to most other systems.

BTW Audio on RO is also a very different system to something like Linux. And again the 'open' version and the RPi differ from the commercial machines.
 
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