Submitted by Drobe.co.uk has photos of the upcoming RISC OS 6/Select 4 in action, as well as an outline description of the operating system’s new features, along with more details of the announcement. “The key features of RISC OS 6 include a highly modularised operating system to aid portability, stability and maintenance of the OS; legacy support components; and updated graphics, toolbox, programming library, networking, and desktop components.”
I always wondered how they make money on RiscOS. Is there a market for it, maybe in embedded space? Can anyone clarify?
In Britain, RISC OS still has a strong following. That’s their main market.
I wouldn’t overstate that market, though. I suspect more people in Britain now run Linux on the desktop than RiscOS. Unfortunately.
The desktop market for RISC OS is probably now in the few thousands.
But we have survived!
ARM, who play Intel to Castle and RiscOS Ltd, are big in the embedded market, and it sounds as if RiscOS from ROL is used in a lot of ARM-based devices. That’s probably why while Castle were into open-sourcing RiscOS 5 (which runs only on their PC-class hardware), ROL were against open-sourcing ROL{4,6} (which runs on old Acorn RiscPC’s, A7000s, AdvantageSix A9home small-form-factor desktop PCs), and embedded.
Don’t forget that Castle’s machine has an Intel Xscale CPU…
Gone are the days of the intel outside stickers!
hardware to run it. By the way there are a lot of ARM SBCs.
Funny how the splash of RISC OS6 mentions ARM – a lot of RISCOS Ltds sales go to an emulator that runs on Windows & Macs too now.
How “powered by ARM” is that if you’ve got an x86 under the hood?
Actually it would be interesting to know which flavour of RISC OS (RO4 or RO5) has had the better penetration into the embedded market.
The desktop market for RISC OS is probably now in the few thousands
Really? I’m surprised there are still so many users. Most of them must be enthusiasts, I guess.
I (showing my age) remember owning an Arcimedes back in 1991. Was a great machine with a great OS back then.
Has the OS changed much since 1994? It still looks the same as it did back then, but it must be able to handle USB etc now.
“Most of them must be enthusiasts”
As is the case with most of the minority OSes.
USB is as forked as the OS!