Submitted by The aim of ROX has always been to combine the best features of RISC OS with those of traditional Unix desktops, including Linux. Here, Dr Leonard, the creator and visionary behind the ROX desktop, answers questions on ROX, how RISC OS inspired him, what he thinks about the current state of the OS, and what the future holds for his desktop.
ROX Founder: Why I Brought RISC OS to Unix
14 Comments
2007-07-26 11:04 am
2007-07-26 4:57 pm
A very interesting read. I am both a RISC OS and ROX user and think that the development carried out on ROX has been fantastic – I would hate to use another desktop.
I wonder how many readers here have tried (and use) ROX?
I have tried it and to be honest for me it felt very dated, but then so is RISC OS – just my humble opinion.
I tried it a looooong time ago (probably around 1999 or 2000) …
Did any significative change happen ? I’m quite happy with Xfce these days, but I always try those things hehe
I don’t know how it was back then but now, it is very modern.
Rox desktop has one of the best dock available out there. You get a task manager that show running applications and support dnd. If multiple windows are open, you get a popup select menu when you click on the application icon. Instead of getting smaller when it is filled, the dock will slide to accommodate lack of space. Speaking of modern, you now get a devtray applet that will automount removable device just like in gnome.
Of course, Rox filer, which is at the art of the desktop, is fast as hell, nothing to do with nautilus.
Several nice little applications are also available, such as a wallpaper manager, which will change wallpaper at a specified frequencies. You also get an application to set gtk and icon themes… the list goes on, it is very complete.
I think I’m gonna give it a try as soon as I get home from work… read a lot of nice stuff from its home page and your reply.
I use ROX as my desktop on two different boxes (one running Puppy Linux, and one running DSL), and I love it. It reminds me of my OS/2 desktop in many ways, or the classic MacOS Finder I used to use somewhat heavily.
Edited 2007-07-25 17:14
Haven’t tried the full-blow desktop, but (personally) can’t stand the Rox filer. We used it on our first and second generation XTerminal/diskless servers, and after trying to explain to students how to use all the separate windows to manage files, we replaced it with Konqueror and Nautilus.
Haven’t tried the full-blow desktop, but (personally) can’t stand the Rox filer. We used it on our first and second generation XTerminal/diskless servers, and after trying to explain to students how to use all the separate windows to manage files, we replaced it with Konqueror and Nautilus.
That’s exactly how Nautilus acts by default and just like Nautilus you can change that option. I used Rox Filer for years and it is great on a low resource system.
Along with XFCE, ROX is probably my favourite Linux interface. Nice and light on system resources without lacking the features that I actually need. The ROX Filer is particularly nice, and not just because I’m an ex-RISC OS user.
To be honest using it doesn’t give me the same feeling as RISC OS. I think that’s mainly because 95% of the time when I’m interacting with my computer I’m using applications, not the file manager or other desktop environment components. The main thing that made RISC OS special was the consistency and unusual features in its applications. Some of those can be replicated in ROX, drag and drop saving for example, but apps like OpenOffice or Firefox don’t have a look and feel anything like a RISC OS app.
It doesn’t surprise me that people who are still happy with the RISC OS hardware and software available today chose to stick with the platform. Some elements of the OS look very dated today, but the UI still has some clever features that Linux, Windows and Mac OS X lack. In particular I always found the combination of RISC OS window management, where windows are happy to stay in the background even when you access their menus, and pervasive drag and drop between application, worked very well when creating DTP documents. In my opinion for many tasks it’s still very pleasant and productive to use.
In my humble opinion it is plain ugly, because it lokks so, uhm, dated. It’s like ten years ago – and that is old, very old.
It might be fast, but so are others, and I much prefer the look & feel of, say, windowmaker, fvwm, or afterstep.
“In my humble opinion it is plain ugly, because it lokks so, uhm, dated.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
http://users.unet.net.ph/~lars/images/roxshot.png
I don’t know what you’re talking about.