RO 5.30 - Wider Media Coverage

Good to see the 5.30 launch covered in other media outlets (apart from Iconbar, Riscository, etc) ie:

Appeared Sunday 28.04.2024 on Distrowatch.com :
https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=12126

Appeared on Thursday 02.05.2024 on OSnews.com :
https://www.osnews.com/story/139527/risc-os-open-5-30-arrives-with-raspberry-pi-wi-fi-support/

Appeared on Thursday on 02.05.2024 on The Register :
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/rool_530_is_here/?td=rt-3a
some encouraging remarks in the comments re giving RO a try etc…

These websites has a rather limited readership than the websites most people visit regularly. Ask anybody you meet, and they’ve never heard of RISC OS which was the first commercial ARM OS, could in theory run on millions of phones but doesn’t.

mmm…. do i feed it ….

Look, we use RISC OS because we like it for various reasons. It has its issues but it is a retro platform. Amazing to have all this positive development happening lately and that is exciting if you like this sort of thing (I do). If one can’t say anything positive, ever, then maybe go and do/use something else…

do i feed it

Probably not a good idea, but this one might leave it wondering about the taste:

Ask anybody you meet, and they’ve never heard of RISC OS

Maybe I did it wrong, but I’ve been asked whether, in my ages of travels¹ I’ve ever come across RISC OS.²
No, they didn’t have a Pi, and had no clue about RPCEmu, until that conversation.

Not that popularity is an accurate measure of greatness. Most people know the adage involving millions of flies.

¹ Oldest and longest serving member of the department.

Sveinung said something…

Verily, I must beseech you to ponder upon the nature of your argument, for while it is conveyed with fervent conviction, it reveals itself to be estranged from the realms of truth and reason, nay, bordering upon the very precipice of delusion. As I undertake the meticulous dissection of your assertions, a profound divergence from the bastions of empirical evidence and logical coherence emerges, casting quite the shadow upon the veracity of your claims.
Indeed, it is as if your discourse has wandered astray into the murky depths of unsubstantiated belief, forsaking the guiding light of rationality. For in the labyrinthine maze of the endless rhetoric, there exists a palpable absence of cogent reasoning, replaced instead by the whims of fanciful conjecture and willful ignorance.
Thus, I implore you to heed the clarion call of intellectual honesty and introspection, for it is incumbent upon you to reconcile your deeply-held convictions with the immutable truths of something that, at the very least, resembles an objective reality.
Only through such a reconciliation may we cultivate the fertile soil from which meaningful dialogue and intellectual integrity may sprout and flourish, casting aside the shadows of delusion in favor of the illuminating radiance of enlightenment.

I applaud the sentiments, but the words themselves are surely framed by ChatGPT? Rick doesn’t generally express himself thus. Can it do them in exotic languages, too?

Rick doesn’t generally express himself thus.

While I know all those words, I’m usually less erudite because it’s much simpler to call a duck a duck.

So, yes, I cheated slightly. ;)

I asked it to refute a generalised argument (followed by some tweaking to get it to understand). I then copied its reply and feed it back asking it to express that in Victorian English, asked it to expand it, asked it for fancier words…
…and finally manually edited out all the thou, thee and thy nonsense. That had pretty much died out by 1800, which was the tail end of the Regency/Georgian Era. Victorian times started in 1837; using thy would be about as comically dumb as “Ye Olde Shoppe” signs.

But, yeah, the ’bot helped.

Maybe I did it wrong, but I’ve been asked whether, in my ages of travels I’ve ever come across RISC OS.

As have I, actually. It was circa 2011, when the Raspberry Pi was coming soon. The topic of the Pi came up, and the other guy said something like “Have you ever used RISC OS? They’re making a version for the Pi.” It transpired that he was ex-Acorn, but I never met him again and I don’t remember his name.

Rick, you don’t need sodding AI to call a twunt a twunt.

Yeah, but doing it the old-fashioned way means that you’re not wasting as much energy or violating copyright, so where’s the fun in that?

Doing it the new fangled way means you can have the additional fun of reading it as though it were a Python sketch. ;)

…bordering upon the very precipice of delusion…

Indeed, but not from the side that one normally thinks of when making such a statement. And climbing a precipice from the bottom is a hell of a lot harder than falling over it from the top.

I’ve not put my toe in the waters of ChatGPT et al yet; very likely never will. I just think/write like this anyway.

And climbing a precipice from the bottom is a hell of a lot harder than falling over it from the top.

Speaking of effort, I note that the contributions to the code in RO5.30 are credited to 27 different people.
We’ve talked of a literal handful of developers previously. When was the last time that sort of number were contributing?

Another media sighting: https://hackaday.com/2024/05/04/risc-os-gets-an-update/

Look, we use RISC OS because we like it for various reasons. It has its issues but it is a retro platform. Amazing to have all this positive development happening lately and that is exciting if you like this sort of thing (I do). If one can’t say anything positive, ever, then maybe go and do/use something else…

I completely agree with this sentiment. Everyone has their reasons for using and enjoying RISC OS as it is.

It’s perfectly fine for it not to be the “Next Linux”. In my experience with other retro OSes that have already been rewritten from the ground up, none have surpassed the popularity of their vintage predecessors.

Consider the Amiga world with AROS and MorphOS:

- AROS runs on multiple platforms (x86, PPC, 68K) and is compatible with the original AmigaOS, same CLI or Desktop and a much better implementation than the original one. However, despite this, hardly anyone knows about it¹. AROS is Open Source, but that didn’t help much for popularity either.
- MorphOS includes a modern browser and can play YouTube videos. It also has strong infrastructure for porting Linux software, yet it remains relatively unknown¹. MorphOS is commercial only (so you can clearly see that commerical only doesn’t give any advantage).

Likewise, Atari TOS was the first to be rewritten and on a Unix kernel (MiNT), but it hasn’t garnered widespread attention¹.

Why? Because things are what they are. The “OS wars” have long passed, and RISC OS wasn’t even on the battlefield. Nowadays, people are accustomed to using Unix-like systems on phones (iOS and Android), Windows for most corporate desktops, macOS in studios and corporations, and Linux/BSD in the cloud. The only area that fluctuates is the Linux Desktop market.

Therefore, it’s irrelevant whether RISC OS is advertised on more popular media or even on YouTube or Twitch. As DownUnderROUser mentioned, it’s a retro OS we all like for our reasons.

There are people working to advance it as much as resources, hardware, and time permit. That’s really nice, IMHO, ‘cause it allows everyone to do more with it than ever before. To have it ready for a large audience, it needs rewrite from the ground up and, after such an endevour, it’s NOT assured at all it would gain any success (regardless if we like RO or not).

¹ Except a small minority of the retro community that still uses those variants for fun.

P.S. And yes I have fed the troll, my fault. I better go to make a coffee and back to my enjoyable activities, sorry everyone.

Rick, you don’t need sodding AI to call a twunt a twunt.

I beg thee parden!

Should that be “I beg of thee, thy pardon!” ? or are we getting into “Don’t thee thou me!” territory? 8-}

Possibly archaic language discussions diverted to Aldershot

You have probably guessed I am a bit of a fan of OSNews so will just leave this here:
https://www.osnews.com/story/139648/obsolete-but-not-gone-the-people-who-wont-give-up-floppy-disks/
more Thom’s sentiments than the follow on linked article…