RO5 New User

the 3QD thing is stupid and doesn’t help anything, holding source code hostage is ridiculous, The RiscPC had some amazing hardware add-ons which sadly didn’t make it into RO5, and i know most people would be happy to see the RiscPC die, but there is a whole other community that still use them and wont move to RO5 because it lacks what 4 and 6 had, so this 17 year old problem needs to find a way to be resolved. Otherwise sadly like many of my Acorn friends Risc OS wont have much of a Modern future, because history has fractured peoples trust.

the 3QD thing is stupid and doesn’t help anything

Really? There’s been so much water under that bridge that the bridge has corroded, collapsed, and washed away.

Let’s just not go there, okay? Things are less acrimonious than they were thanks to the passage of time, but getting that stuff on this OS isn’t going to happen any time soon unless somebody is up for a little wheel reinventing.

The RiscPC had some amazing hardware add-ons which sadly didn’t make it into RO

That’s how it goes. The BBC Micro had some amazing stuff that never made it to the Archimedes (though, I was – back in the day – pleasantly surprised that the massive I/O podule and 65Host were, together, capable of running my EPROM programmer using software on a Beeb ROM).

Risc OS wont have much of a Modern future

🤷🏻‍♀️ RISC OS was supposed to have died in 1998 when Acorn threw in the towel. Then it was supposed to have died when ROLtd stopped making new versions. Or maybe when they had to give up making the Iyonix because red tape. Or…
I think reports of RISC OS’ death have been greatly exaggerated.

because it lacks what 4 and 6 had

What exactly do you wish RO5 could do or do better?
Bearing in mind that the 4/6 versions never had a complete 32 bit incarnation so simply won’t be capable of running on contemporary hardware with modern storage solutions, fast ethernet, WiFi, USB storage, SD cards, etc etc etc. I say this to point out that while this version of the OS may lack the bells and whistles of the other branch, it has gone it’s own way and adapted to modern hardware.

Swings and roundabouts, if you will.

As for the RiscPC versus the Pi, well, I can run a Pi (and a small LCD panel) for most of a summer afternoon (upwards of 7 hours) off a 14000mAh battery. The power consumption is so small the older Pi2 is always on as the server and backup machine, and I don’t tend to turn the 3B+ off so it’s always ready and waiting for me the moment I turn the monitor on.
Things that, these days, would have had a definite impact on my electricity bill if it were RiscPCs.

Plus I like the fact that it’s a dinky little box at the back corner of the desk, with a monitor beside it. No more taking huge amounts of desk space for a computer.

Oh, and it’s stupidly fast compared to a RiscPC.

Yes, I get that the other branch had more “features”, but unless there’s some sort of killer app that never got ported to 32 bit, I really don’t understand the desire to use vastly more power and take vastly longer to do anything “because pretty”.

Otherwise sadly like many of my Acorn friends Risc OS wont have much of a Modern future

That sounds…vaguely threatening. ;)

Its not threatening, its factual, i don’t have anything more to add. i said all i needed to say. You can all stay in your bubble. and continue not to listen to what outsiders that daily drive the OS are saying.

And if ROD doesn’t in fact own all the IPA to Risc OS it should change its position on its websites and not state RISC OS is an Open Source operating system owned by RISC OS Developments Ltd and licensed primarily under the Apache 2.0 license. and rename that to RO5 Only

Earlier you said about us:

not welcoming new users to the fold

Now you’re saying:

You can all stay in your bubble

And you’d wonder why we oldies might get a little uptight? Try, you know, being nice?

i don’t have anything more to add

So you missed the part where I asked you a direct question? Or are you just here to troll us?

And if ROD doesn’t in fact own all the IPA to Risc OS it should change its position on its websites and not state RISC OS is an Open Source operating system owned by RISC OS Developments Ltd and licensed primarily under the Apache 2.0 license. and rename that to RO5 Only

ROL developed RiscOS 4/6 under a licence from Element14, RiscOS 5 is developed from the code base that element14 retained that then ended up being owned and developed by Pace before Castle.

The code produced under licence at ROL is its own “branch” of the RiscOS code base, but the ownership of RiscOS was transferred to castle via pace who acquired it from Element14.

But that doesn’t mean that any subsequent owners have a right to the ROL code if it wasn’t stated within the original licence agreement.

The code produced under licence at ROL is its own “branch” of the RiscOS code base, but the ownership of RiscOS was transferred to castle via pace who acquired it from Element14.

But that doesn’t mean that any subsequent owners have a right to the ROL code if it wasn’t stated within the original licence agreement.

The stellar, radioactively hot, nub of the ROL / Castle fun fest seemed to revolve around a claim that ROL were in breach of the requirement to feed code changes back to the rights owners.
How many years ago? What’s the half-life on the decay of this one?

I suspect that the same sort of thing would happen if two systems tried to adapt to limited bandwidth.

It doesn’t. It demonstrably works very well. It’s used by billions of people every day. Teams, Google Chat, Zoom, all use WebRTC (with one video stream per participant, each separately adapting to available bandwidth based on the visible size on your screen), and iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix all use adaptive streaming (written in JavaScript) using the MSE APIs.

Many houses have multiple TVs or a TV and iPad, and stream concurrently. Many people do conference calls in cafes over dodgy 4G or wifi. The quality automatically adapts to match the available bandwidth. There’s no way TV streaming would be successful if it didn’t work as well as it does.

I have noticed on Stardot that someone has fitted 512Mb ram to a RPC + Video ram.

Rev 3 board.

512Mb on emulators :-)

Also he is thinking about producing a 4Mb Vram card.

RO5 driver for Vpod / Viewfinder – would be nice if time was available for the coding. Someone had a go at producing a driver for Viewfinder for RO 6.

there is a whole other community that still use them and wont move to RO5 because it lacks what 4 and 6 had, so this 17 year old problem needs to find a way to be resolved.

While I appreciate the sentiment, you’ll have to forgive the people who’ve been around this loop a hundred times over the past 20+ years for having a less positive outlook on the whole “let’s merge all that good stuff from RISC OS 4 and 6 into RISC OS 5” concept. This isn’t because we’re miserable stick-in-the-muds; it’s because we understand that it’s unlikely to be possible to progress this any further.

RISC OS 5 has evolved and developed hugely since the initial Shared Source initiative, and even more since it became true Open Source Software. We’ve also organised bounties to (clean room) reimplement various desirable features that are inspired by some of the things in the 4/6 fork. I personally don’t believe there’s anything existentially important in the 4/6 fork that RISC OS 5 is lacking – if we’re questioning the long-term future of RISC OS, there are much bigger fish to fry.

Could I also remind people to keep the conversations welcoming and civil here? Much obliged.