Let Me See Your Desktop!

So there is a Sub Reddit titled r/unixporn where users show off their beautiful desktops, sigh, its enough to make anyone jealous..
ANYWAYS, I’d love to see your desktops as well! Any OS will do, but bonus points for RiscOS of course ;)

It’s kind of mundane, and seven years more clutter than is pictured, but okay…

PS: I do not like bright lights.

@Rick Murray, are you still running Windows XP?

Windows XP is rather whizzy on new-ish hardware. Still use XP for my main development VM, so much faster than the modern tat.

Aren’t there security risks running XP in 2020?

are you still running Windows XP?

Yes. It’s either an EeePC 901 or a 2.4GHz P4 box. Neither can be classed as whizzy. ;-)

Aren’t there security risks running XP in 2020?

Yup. My main use is WinSCP to update my website. There’s a password and a secret key. The setup only works with WinSCP. Fails reliably on Linux asking for the key password (it doesn’t have one) so I gave up and stuck with XP.
I run Firefox, as you can see. It’s a strict disallow-everything policy with a very small whitelist. To be honest, it’s mostly used for LAN stuff these days, as my phone can easily outpace either PC, and not suck loads of power in the process.
I do email on my phone/tablet, Java and Flash are forbidden. As is going to weird domains. If I don’t recognise and trust a link, I don’t go. Not on the PC.

It’s not foolproof, but it is possible to use XP in 2020. ;-)

That said, it’s possibly been weeks since I turned the PC on. And that was to pamphlet print a user guide (A5 pages) onto sheets of A4. It’s little things like that that mobile apps still don’t offer. And Samsung’s laser printer helper app? So close…it’ll print 2 up…yet so far…it prints one page after the other, so it won’t be a pamphlet…

The Icon Bar did this back in April…

Cool, I’m new here.

I do email on my phone/tablet, Java and Flash are forbidden.

Support for Flash plug-in on all major browsers ends in a few months – good riddance to insecure frippery.

Very slightly changed since 2017 when I took this shot, but not a lot:

http://clive.semmens.org.uk/RISCOS/Desk2017.html

Cool, I’m new here.

I just thought you might be interested in some of the pictures, since they answered your request, but no matter.

Bah, those desks are far too tidy to be used for any real work. The place should be littered with laptops and Raspberry Pi’s like here but its even messier now with another Raspberry Pi running RISC OS Direct / RC16. I’d post another picture if I could be bothered to work out how.

those desks are far to tidy to be used for any real work.

Like I said, that picture is seven years old. I now have a pile of clutter containing at least half a dozen USB leads, none of which are the right one…

Yeah. Maybe I should update my deskshot too…

My desk,
as usual a mix of modern/latest RISC OS devices and old/nostalgia ones all together :)

The picture is missing my ARMbook, but that is because it’s always in my bag, so not really part of the desk and my A3020 which I am still expanding/modding (so it’s on a bench where I do some electronic reworking when I have time).
The A3010 now has HD, MIDI Ports, Sound Sampler and User and Analog Ports on the back (yeah awesome awesomeness!!!)

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/04/18/risc-os-the-risc-station-and-the-acorn-tower/

those desks are far to tidy to be used for any real work.

Right lol but let’s keep some decency ;) …truth to be told, right now mine has a pile of books on a side and a new small keyboard below the A3010 to control some new boards added and being used for embedded coding. Apart from that it does still look like on the picture (but that just because I code for a living, so the mess is mostly on the HDDs loool) :D

Very slightly changed since 2017 when I took this shot, but not a lot.

I like the very clean set up, I noticed you mention that RiscOS can run in 4K, however my Pi 3b+ won’t go above 2560 × 1440

My desk,
as usual a mix of modern/latest RISC OS devices and old/nostalgia ones all together :) bq.

Your desk is a thing of beauty. I am envious of your set up. I’m not sure how to upload pics, but I’ve got an Intel Nuc i7 8th gen tall running GhostBSD, with a Steelseries gaming headset, a Glorios PC Gaming Race matte black mouse, a Hyper X black keyboard, red rgb, cherry blue mx switches all connected to an LG 4K monitor. I have a Gaming PC tower also connected to it (thus all the gaming equipment), and of course the Pi 3b+ in a Flirc Case (want to switch it out with an Arogon One case and psu. I’m trying to use RiscOS more and more.

Your desk is a thing of beauty.

Thanks a lot Braillynn :)

I am envious of your set up.

No envy please, to me RISC OS is about having fun, just shared for people to enjoy or get inspiration if they like that type of desk etc… plus I had 30+ years to collect all the pieces lol

however my Pi 3b+ won’t go above 2560 × 1440

You have to configure quite a bit to make the Pi emit 4K. Disable EDID, force a 4K@30Hz mode (or sometimes 24Hz, depending on your Pi and your screen), extend the framebuffer parameters.

See here for my solution (ignore the German text and focus on the monospaced stuff :-)) for 4K@24Hz for RISC OS on Pi 3B+:
http://riscosblog.huber-net.de/2018/03/raspberry-pi-3-b-4k-und-risc-os/

@Steffen Oh man, idk if I want to go down frames, I may keep it at 1440P to keep that smooth 60 fps.
Side Rant: I really wish “4K” was referred to as 2160P, just my opinion. We do it with all the other resolutions..

@Steffen Oh man, idk if I want to go down frames, I may keep it at 1440P to keep that smooth 60 fps.

24Hz is good enough for cinemas, so it is smooth enough for me :-)

Seriously, I am using RISC OS on my Pis, and frame rate is not part of any worry I have. Everything I do on RISC OS is equally smooth on 24Hz as on 60Hz.

Back in CRT times of course, it was completely different. My Risc PC – before being upgraded with a ViewFinder – maxed out at 56Hz at 1600×1200, and it flickered like hell on my 19" Nokia Trinitron.

24Hz is good enough for cinemas, so it is smooth enough for me :-)

This, absolutely. 3840×2160 @ 24Hz is perfectly fine, or any of a dozen lower resolutions all scaled to that on the fly. http://clive.semmens.org.uk/RISCOS/Desk2017.html

24Hz is perfectly fine

24Hz would be abysmal. But the difference today is that the video signal refreshes at 24Hz. The display, however, is probably buffering the input to run the panel at 60Hz and switch it frame by frame as received.
This is very different to cathode ray technology that would be actually drawing the screen at that 24Hz rate. Instant headache and eye melt time.

24Hz is good enough for cinemas

Cinema 24Hz is an economic compromise. In the days of silent films, producers wanted to run film through the camera at the slowest speed possible (more speed equals more film equals more cost) so films were usually shot at 16 or 18 frames per second. When sound came along, it was discovered that linear magnetic sound tracks were awful at those speeds, and studios finally agreed to run film at 24fps, which was still bad but given it meant an increase of about a third in raw film stock, everybody just accepted it as the best they were going to get.
All these years later, with digital 4K video, we’re still saddled with this nonsense.

Cinemas do not project at 24fps. Most people’s eyes are sensitive enough to see that, and even if they can’t say exactly what’s wrong, the resultant headaches would be enough to tell them that something is definitely wrong.
Projectors use a multi bladed shutter so that as the film runs through the projector at 24 frames a second, the shutter double or triple exposes it, so what ends up on the screen is a 48 or 72 Hz “refresh”, in this way the film appears to be a lot smoother and the eye is tricked into perceiving full motion film, and it’s going by fast enough that you don’t see that each individual frame is shown multiple times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#Shutter

[note: my dream job, when I was young, was “cinema projectionist”, but it never came to be…]

Anyway the Pi4 can do 4K@60Hz.

Anyway the Pi4 can do 4K@60Hz.

Ahh, I don’t own a Pi 4. Does everything scale well at 4K? Because that is the nightmare of some Linux distro’s that even now in 2020, they don’t scale up properly with 4K (except for those running the latest version of the Gnome DE). So I’ve honestly considered selling my 4K monitor and just going the 1080p 144hz way for when I compute, play pc games, and of course use the Pi. Though RiscOS Direct when scaled up to 1440P does actually scale well on my 4K screen. So go RiscOS, that’s another win for you.

Does everything scale well at 4K?

Beautifully, yes, on my 43" 4K monitor. I’ve got a dozen alternative resolutions, all at least 1920×1080, and all of them look perfect (and I have 20:20 vision still). If it’s relevant, this is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V1.2.