Improving public perception of RISC OS community

It has been pointed out to me by several people that we RISC OS folks sometimes do ourselves no favours. This topic was triggered again by the reference in another thread to “Migranesoft”.

We tend to bang on about how wonderful RISC OS is, and go on at length about how rubbishy the alternatives are, often using derogatory terms such as Mickeysoft, Migranesoft, Micro$haft or whatever. To be fair the Apple brigade can be sometimes just as bad – easy to forget MS propping up Apple in the past!

The point is that we (me included) end up sounding like deluded children in the playground. We’re claiming that RISC OS is so much better whilst clearly ignoring the positive contributions that 10+ generations of Windows have made or got right. Remember that MS’ philosophy is generally to iterate endlessly until it gets things (more or less) right (eg. DirectX, many parts of Windows, Azure, Xbox etc), or ditch them completely (Windows phone, Internet Explorer). The reality is that Windows, Mac and Linux all have areas where they excel.

RISC OS is fantastic… for the things it is fantastic at. But we need to be realistic about what those areas are, and not be rude about other systems. Take note Apple fanboys too!

Going forwards, the best thing for RISC OS is to learn from the things that other operating systems do well, and become richer for it. Preserve what makes RISC OS great, but not dismiss other platforms and their communities lightly.

Indeed, Michael (Grunditz – ARMbook work and OWB browser amongst others) has opened my eyes recently to other platforms that I’d completely dismissed, and how they have adapted to challenges and the things we might learn there (eg. MorphOS and others). None of these are perfect, but by not dismissing them, and not being rude about them, we can learn and make ourselves better.

And in doing so, we make our community better and more inclusive and gain credibility. That’s something RISC OS Development is keen to encourage.

We’re claiming that RISC OS is so much better whilst clearly ignoring the positive contributions that 10+ generations of Windows have made or got right.

Who?
Really, we all know that any OS is better than RISC OS.
But it has a special charm/glamor. A 32bit OS made like a 8bit one.

Preserve what makes RISC OS great, but not dismiss other platforms and their communities lightly.

Why should we? I choose RISC OS and have no interest in other platforms.
Let’s call that a choice :)

We tend to bang on about how wonderful RISC OS is, and go on at length about how rubbishy the alternatives are, often using derogatory terms such as Mickeysoft,

Do note that the original comments, from Nemo, were about the level of idiocy some people at MS show and that my comments were about the fact that the underlying OS routine was fine and then someone with an eye for true “shiny, shiny” created a GUI entertainment that calls the real routine at intervals thereby ensuring that the GUI entertainment is actually required to keep people amused while the OS routine gets fed the job in very small chunks.

Rick pointed out that the RO startup splash actually slowed things down.

Remember that MS’ philosophy is generally to iterate endlessly until it gets things (more or less) right (eg. DirectX, many parts of Windows, Azure, Xbox etc), or ditch them completely (Windows phone, Internet Explorer).

While we’re being even handed, you could add a few more large corporations that do a number of iterations and then dump the whole idea – I suspect Google will come high in the list when anyone puts it together.
Oh, and ditching IE has an impact on other aspects of the OS because IE didn’t actually do the HTTP fetch (that was/is WinHTTP) so its a bit of a pain that the new browser uses a totally different engine and third party software using the WinHTTP API may be left high and dry.
Meanwhile RO supports things how far back?

Why should we? I choose RISC OS and have no interest in other platforms.
Let’s call that a choice :)

Apart from banking – and some searching – that’s me too!

Linux for banking, with a bit of parallel Android for cross-checking.

But RO for the main part!

Personally, I don’t have any problems with RISC OS postings, however, I often scan though lots of different forums looking for mentions of RISC OS / ARM, and from this, there certainly seems to be a perception that RISC OS users can be quite critical.

One bugbear I think is when people get corrected on the spelling of ‘RISC/OS’ on their very first post asking for help or introducing themselves.

Back in RISC OS 2 & RISC OS 3 era I certainly laughed in the face of Window users, until I used Windows NT4.0 and loved it’s stability.
Now I just love computers and Operating Systems and don’t really care if developed by Apple/Microsoft/Google or anyone else.

What I want from an Operating System is for it to be Stable, productive and enjoyable to use.

Point taken, Andrew. It was me who called it Migrainesoft. I should mention that I’ve dumped Microsoft completely now, and mostly use a Mac. The last Microsoft software I used was MicrosoftICE, and even that I don’t use any longer (Hugin generally does the job just as well, and on the rare occasions it messes up Panorama Stitcher Mini steps in) so the Windows machine is completely idle now. I’m no fan of Apple, either – many things about it annoy the hell out of me, but not half as much as Microsoft does. Of course I recognize that RISCOS can’t do lots of the things I take for granted; I love it for the things it does well enough that it’s worth having it alongside the Mac (see http://clive.semmens.org.uk/RISCOS/AppsQ.html ) but I use the Mac far more. I don’t love the Mac though; it’s a very useful tool, but I wish it was a lot better than it is, and know it could be. But the thing I wish it was doesn’t exist; the Mac, pathetic as it is, will have to do.

Ah. I tell a lie: I don’t use a Windows machine any more, nor do I use any Microsoft software running on any of my own machines – but I do make occasional use of Microsoft Word running on a remote server. LibreOffice on the Mac does me very well for most purposes, and once any work is exported as PDF, compatibility isn’t a problem. But there are a few purposes for which I want to give someone a .doc or .docx file, and while LibreOffice produces these, they’re not always renderered exactly the same by LibreOffice and Microsoft Word – in particular, page breaks can be different – so I use Word online to check or adjust them.

As I said, it wouldn’t normally bother me, but over the summer it (or something similar) has come up on two separate occasions from different people. We’ve been trying to talk to new or recent RISC OS people to learn more about what we need to build on to grow the userbase. In both cases this kind of thing was brought up as a negative part of what they saw here.

It’s worth saying that it wasn’t a case of “oh, you guys are horrible” or anything like that, just that tonally, they found it a barrier to them feeling completely at home/ease within our community. Obviously I encouraged them to come to the shows to get to know us all a bit better, but I figured it was worth passing on what had been said.

It’s worth saying that it wasn’t a case of “oh, you guys are horrible” or anything like that, just that tonally, they found it a barrier to them feeling completely at home/ease within our community.

I think that tends to be the case all over – ever had a lengthy conversation with a devoted Mac fan, or one of those strange beasts that queue up at local “Apple shop” premises when a new model comes out?

Since I was the GUI expert I got the job of sorting out problems on the Apple Mac the orthopaedics bods had. I lost track of the number of times I started cursing the stupid, stupid, stupid single button mouse and the context menu that was always at the top of the screen. I nearly got RSI in my elbow
They learned and produced increasingly better GUI versions.
Of course at the time their view was that I simply didn’t “appreciate the elegance of a GUI”
Insular? Yep, RO users don’t have a monopoly though and are actually more welcoming than some.

Moving camps – MS Windows 2.0 was awful, they learned and produced better. Regular users don’t understand why you would dream of using anything else (with a regular implication of “inferior”
Linux, learning and getting better. Users – “we are not geeks”

Have any of them put in a left-click vs. right-click difference in things like scrollbars?
Sometimes it’s the stuff that’s taken for granted that matters.

Having dealt with other systems, regularly, for years I’d say the RO community is more open.
Like any community, or family, there are disagreements and sometimes the content is taken to extremes¹ but if you can stop all those then world peace should be a doddle.

¹ ROL-Castle, I wonder if any of us will ever know the full truth. Or do we really not want to know? I think I’m inclined to go with the latter.

has come up on two separate occasions from different people

Perhaps, yes, but from who? I suspect one (perhaps two) RISC OS troll to be the only responsible of this.
Troll who love flaming other communities on Internet.
But this guy is not here any more. So what can we do?

We tend to bang on about how wonderful RISC OS is, and go on at length about how rubbishy the alternatives are

The problem is that, like Brexit, we’re trading on past glories. Yes, we were the first desktop 32 bit system. Yes, our BASIC did run faster than machine code on other machines. Yes, we were what kickstarted the ubiqitous ARM processor, yes etc etc.

The thing is, RISC OS has had two huge game-changing increments. When it was born from Arthur, and progressing from RISC OS 2 to RISC OS 3.
Since then, not so much. 3.5 for the RiscPC was more or less a coat of shiny new gloss paint on the old metal. 3.6 fixed what they didn’t get right in 3.5 (and put the Apps back), 3.7 worked around some issues, but really there’s been no Big Change since 3 appeared.
And no, I don’t count 32 bit as a big change. Like 3.5 adapted to support the new hardware, 5.x did likewise. A bigger adaption, certainly, but inside it’s still the same RISC OS.

This is perhaps also responsible for the demise of Phoebe, and ultimately Acorn. I tear it apart on my blog, and point out the differences between Phoebe and contemporary 1999 hardware. Then, the really make the point, I describe the basic Iyonix spec, that machine being born in 2002. Which could be as little as two years after the Phoebe went to market (of course, Acorn if they continued would cling to the 26 bit world for a little while longer, and thus the Iyonix would never have been born).

Why am I writing all of this? Boredom.

No, seriously, it’s to make the point that the rest of the world has moved on. A lot.
We… pretty much haven’t. Sure, RISC OS kicks ass on the Pi and other contemporary hardware, but that is not just because it’s a massive wodge of assembler. It’s also because it is a much simpler system, with a greatly reduced feature set compared to other systems. How’s WiFi getting on? Bluetooth? IPv6? Utilising multiple cores? GPU video processing? AirPrint/IPPEverywhere support?
Iknow some of these are being worked on, which is great, but it is worth pointing out the danger of throwing pebbles in a crystal cave.

I don’t tend to mock other systems much these days (unless, like the infamous time estimations, it is begging for being roasted). It isn’t because I’ve grown up (me? never!), it is because I am approaching the point where I no longer really care what operating system something runs.

Seriously, the only reason I use Windows these days is my blog. The graphics editor PhotoImpact5 (bundled on a cover mounted CD, Computer Shopper?) is really nice and simple to use, in a way PhotoDesk never quite managed. And, of course, WinSCP. Because my host uses a password and an encryption key. Never got that to work on Ubuntu.

RISC OS, I use for fun. Because I’m a geek. Frankly, I have a manga app on my phone that suffices, but I thought it might be interesting to write something like that for RISC OS. So I did.

Most of what I do these days, I do on a phone or tablet. I’m writing this on the tablet, using Firefox, and a Bluetooth keyboard. I’ve used both Apple and Android, and my preference is for Android because I can access a lot of the underlying filesystem and I can install Apps from external sources. I also find that the Android ecosystem is generally richer (I have four different browsers – Stock, Chrome, Opera, Firefox) with three/four different rendering engines. They all have quirks, but generally something that screws up on one will work fine on another. Flightradar24 is bookmarked on Chrome as it works best there. I tend to use Firefox for most stuff due to aggressive blocking policy. On Apple, their control freakery meant that any browser that was supplied (like Dolphin) had to use Apple’s rendering. So stuff that would take down Safari would take down Dolphin in exactly the same way. That’s just dumb.
But don’t think I have any specific allegiance for Google over Apple. Both are shit-flingers who wouldn’t think twice about pillaging user data. One just charges a premium for the service.

These days, it’s less a question of what OS something is running and more a question of can I…

• Watch videos on it?
  • Streaming service (NetFlix, Prime, etc)?
• Listen to streaming radio
• Use Google Docs (via app or website)
• Google Drive
• A reasonably fast browser with good script blocking options (Firefox by preference)
  • That is competent to deal with the sort of sites that I visit
• Bluetooth keyboard support (if there’s no physical keyboard)
• Take photos and videos
  • And be able to edit them
• Email – MIME and encryption essential
• View and print PDFs
• Work seamlessly with WiFi (for RISC OS, I cheat)
• Access my bank accounts, electricity billing, etc

For a while, my iPad Mini did a lot of that, but then Google decided to remotely disable Docs so I mostly let mom use the iPad from that point on. A shame, because it’s the only mobile device I’ve ever owned that supported decent in-line message quoting.
My tablet sort of does it. It’s a little slow with a quad core GHz processor (but shows what a Pi2/Pi3 ought to be capable of, as the specs aren’t that different – I’m using Firefox on it right now). Taking photo/video sucks as the camera is rubbish, but it’s okay for playback and a joy to use Docs with a 10" screen.
My phone (S9) does all I want, has a lovely display, but is much smaller. Obviously. The downside of Android? Bluetooth keyboard support is lousy. Show me how to get a grave accent while using a British layout (" over 2). That said, Apple had it’s own issues there, @ over 2 and " and ’ together in the UK layout. Bzzzt! Not seen that sort of thing since the BBC Micro!

These days, it’s all about what it can do, not what it runs. To be brutally honest, I don’t think the platform is really going to be that relevant in the future. If it has a decent ecosystem and does what people want and moves with the times, it’s a contender.
Additionally, I believe that in the coming years, desktop machines and their accoutrements will be seen as quaint and old-fashioned. They will be a “service” computer, like a server or something sat by the desk of an employee. But for our own personal needs? Mobile. I can, already, sit in the middle of a muddy field in the pouring rain and stream Silent Hill. Why be constrained to a desk? To wires? To watching stuff to somebody else’s schedule?

Things are changing. And while RISC OS does do some things in good ways, with a nice clean easy to use but powerful UI, that doesn’t make it “best”. Indeed, there probably is no such thing as “best” as everybody’s use cases will differ. So I would say what is “best” is when stuff works the way it is expected to, and the OS does not interfere with getting stuff done. The “best” of all? When you don’t even know what the underlying OS is, nor do you have reason to care. One day, that’ll be true.

there’s been no Big Change since 3 appeared.

RO5 is a 32b version of 3.8 with a lot of new platform support, so don’t expect big visible changes.

RO4 has additional API and functionality (and oh so many rearranged deckchairs) so does have some big superficial changes.

But comparing RO with Win or Mac misses the elephant stealing their lunch. Android is the OS now. Where’s BlueStacks for RISC OS? ;-)

Can I have Android on a decent size (at least 32", preferably more) 4K screen, with a proper keyboard, and a touchpad instead of a touchscreen? If so, perhaps I should investigate…tiny screens, hopeless keyboard equivalents, & hopeless touchpad/mouse equivalents? No thanks.

Can I have Android on a decent size (at least 32", preferably more) 4K screen, with a proper keyboard, and a touchpad instead of a touchscreen?

Possibly. Some of the higher end phones can “dock” to switch to a sort of desktop mode with a proper monitor (not sure about 32"!) and keyboard.

The problem is that so far Android has mostly been seen as a mobile OS with a user paradigm that involves prodding a screen. Had anybody actually made a desktop Android PC? Usually it’s some incarnation of Linux that takes that role…

That said, what I think memo was suggesting was agreeing with what I said earlier – mobile devices are where it’s at these days. Not big desktop machines and oversized monitors. :-p

Of course, I understand that. If I’m making webpages I ought to make sure I’m providing service for such users – give me time, I’ll get there! – but it doesn’t mean I have to tie myself to mobile devices; I like my big monitor, proper keyboard, and decent sized touchpad. Obviously the size of the CPU itself is of no consequence to me (as long as it’s not fridge-sized…

Of course I’d like a laptop for when I’m not at home – but I want a bigger screen than most, I don’t want a Windows machine, and Mac don’t do anything bigger than 15". I borrow my wife’s MacAir, but the screen is irritatingly tiny (~12").

The problem is that so far Android has mostly been seen as a mobile OS with a user paradigm that involves prodding a screen. Had anybody actually made a desktop Android PC? Usually it’s some incarnation of Linux that takes that role…

I have one of those rare Toshiba AC100 netbooks aka “Dynabook AZ” (since 2011 I think) – based on NVidia Tegra 250 with Android 2.x (initially 2.1, later updated to I think 2.3, all without access to Google’s AppStore). It is very nice hardware, but Android is nearly unusable without a touch screen. I think the Motorola Atrix Lapdock had the same problem.

It would have been a great mobile RISC OS platform, but it even took ages to get Ubuntu running on it. And only two buttons accompanying the touchpad of course.

I bought a very cheap tablet (a Portfolio) some years ago, out of curiosity. I find the UI infuriatingly unusable. It is practically impossible to avoid unintended input, and practically impossible to retrieve the situation afterwards. If only there were a button that could be depressed to signal that all other inputs should be ignored. To cap it all, this model appears to be impossible to jailbreak.

Saw this, thought of this thread.

One of my development ARMbooks came with Android 6 pre-loaded instead of the usual KDE Neon. It is “interesting” without the touchscreen. It actually isn’t bad as a “on your knee” browser with keyboard, but all that “swipe up to…” nonsense is a right hassle on the pad. It is a fun alternative to Linux, though, if you don’t get on with that. Makes RISC OS + Android an option for the ARMbook if you’re more familiar with phones than I am.

Also, Clive, I think that if you were even more discerning with your TV choice, you could find one which is not only big and 4k and pi-friendly, but also Android-powered. I think Sony, Hisense and Philips all use Android if memory serves, although there may be more too. Or just use an nvidia shield media player (ie. something half-decent) with your existing one.

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if my Philips TV is Android powered, but I’ve never thought about using it as anything other than a monitor for the Mac and the Pi. I’m pretty sure it’s not a touch screen though, so “all that “swipe up to…” nonsense is a right hassle on the pad” would presumably hit me in the back of the neck too…?

When Android was first released it required hardware buttons and a trackerball – it was the the touchscreen that was optional. I liked my G1: