Risc Os

RISC OS (to give it its "official" capitalization) is the operating system that runs on the Acorn series of desktop computers such as the AcornArchimedes. It has also been used as the base for the Pace set-top box.

It's a feature rich, small (4MB) ROM based windowing or command-line operating system with a built-in scripting language. The scripting language is actually a BASIC (BbcBasic), but it has local variables, procedure and function calls, looping structures, arbitrary length variables, multi-line IF constructs, and CASE statements (equivalent to "switch"), so it doesn't look much like the BASIC you may remember. (Unless you remember, say, QuickBasic or VisualBasic.) It also has direct access to operating system calls.

RISC OS is a cooperative multi-tasking system that also has a light-weight message passing system.

It's an absolute delight to use.

You can now get RiscOs to run virtually on Windows or the Mac. See http://virtualacorn.co.uk.

It is also gaining popularity again as an alternative OS for the Raspberry Pi. See http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.

CategoryOperatingSystem