RISC OS Beginners FAQ (Rev #7)

If you are new to RISC OS you should first read Introduction to RISC OS.

Here you will find some of the most frequently asked questions and the respective answers.

TIP: Use CTRL+F to search this page.

Network, Internet and Email

Q: How can I change the network setup?
A: Open !Configure from the PinBoard (Desktop). Look for the ‘Network’ settings and click them once with the left mouse button. You are now presented three options (AUN, Access and Internet). Click ‘Internet’. Here you can set up the TCP/IP networking and enable/disable it.

!NetSurf the RISC OS web browser

Q: How do I browse the web?
A: Start up !NetSurf, RISC OS’s default browser by double clicking on its icon on the PinBoard (Desktop) or in the Apps drawer. If it was launched you will have the blue NetSurf icon in the IconBar at the bottom right of your screen. Click it to open a new window.

Q: How do erase the current URL in a NetSurf window?
A: Click into the URL bar. Press CTRL+U to erase the current URL. – CTRL+U works in many text boxes, not just the URL bar.

Q: How do I change the settings of !NetSurf? I can’t find a menu?!
A: NetSurf, as many RISC OS Apps, does not have a menu. It has a context menu that you can open by pressing the middle mouse button on any page or the toolbar of a window. To modify the NetSurf settings middle click on the NetSurf icon in the IconBar and select ‘Choices…’.

Q: Which protocols does NetSurf support?
A: Currently HTTP and HTTPS are supported.

Q: The website XYZ does not work in NetSurf.
A: NetSurf currently has limited CSS3 and JavaScript support. Flash is completely unsupported. If website XZY uses one of these technologies it is very likely it won’t display correctly in NetSurf.

Email on RISC OS

Q: How do I send email from RISC OS?
A1: The easiest way is to use the web interface of your email provider (GMail, GMX, …) and NetSurf. Be aware that NetSurf does not completely support JavaScript, so some web mailers won’t display / work correctly.
A2: There is a commercial email program called !Messenger which allows sending and receiving POP3/IMAP Email from within RISC OS.
A3: Another option for accessing POP3 mailboxes is !TapirMail, which is free of charge for the basic version to enable reading of mail. The program does support sending of mail via SMTP if a small payment is made and an authorisation key obtained, but recent attmpts to contact the author to obtain this information have not been successful.

File Sharing / Remote Access

Q: How do I connect to my [Windows/MAC/Linux] computer?
A1: For command line access, !Nettle (available from the !Packman package manager) allows SSH or telnet connectivity. OpenSSH is also available.
A2: For file sharing, !Omni will connect to a Samba share to allow access to remote filesystems. Note: You will have to set the Windows machine to use unencrypted passwords.
A3: To connect to an NFS Server (Linux) you can use !Sunfish which is available from the !Packman package manager.
A4: For FTP access there is an ftp client called !FTPc. See the FTPc homepage.

Look and Feel

Q: How do I change the Screen Resolution?
A1: Look for the Display icon in the IconBar at the bottom right of the screen. Click it once with the left mouse button. Now select your desired resolution. See A2 if it is not contained in this menu.
A2: Open !Configure from the PinBoard (Desktop). Look for the ‘Screen’ settings and click them once with the left mouse button. From there select your monitor type, color depth and resolution and press Set. You will be given a 15 second delay to confirm your settings, or they will be reset to the previous values.

Q: How do I set up a screen saver?
A2: Open !Configure from the PinBoard (Desktop). Look for the ‘Screen’ settings and click them once with the left mouse button. From there select your desired screen saver and press Set or Try to try it first.

Q: How do I change the desktop wallpaper?
A: Open !Configure from the PinBoard (Desktop). Search for the ‘PinBoard’ icon and click it once. If you want a texture or a single color background you can set this right now. If you want some other background image (JPWG) then open the folder that contains that image and drop it into the box right to ‘Custom Image’. You will see your new wallpaper (backdrop) there.

Q: How do I change the Icon theme?

Q: How do I change the window theme?

Q: How do I change / disable the window textures?
A: To disable the window textures, open !Configure from the PinBoard (Desktop). Search for the ‘Windows’ icon and click it once. Un-tick the option ‘Textured window backgrounds’. There are some more handy options you can play with.

Q: Can I change the mouse cursor?

Hardware support

Q: Which file systems does RISC OS support
A: RISC OS supports FAT16 and FAT32 as well as its own (FileCore) file system.

Q: How do I remove my thumb drive safely?
A: Click MENU (middle mouse button) on the drive icon and select ‘Dismount’. If the drive was FAT32 you will notice that its name changes from ‘FAT32_0’ to ‘:0’. Now it is save to unplug it.

Q: How can I format my thumb drive, so that RISC OS is able to read it from within RISC OS?
A: RISC OS currently only formats drives with its own (FileCore) format. If you plan exchanging data you should go for FAT32 on Windows/Linux/MacOS. To use the RISC OS file system see: Using !HFormat?.

Q: I have a spare USB hard disk. How do I use this on the RISC OS box?
A: You an use it with FAT32 or the RISC OS native file system (FileCore). See Using !HFormat?.

Q: Can I cache filesystems in RAM?
A1: Yes. !Memphis is a RAM based file system that auto-sizes to provide a cache for commonly used files. An option is available to automatically cache the !Scrap directories, which can lead to an improvement in performance for applications like !NetSurf which make a lot of use of this area.
A2: RISC OS provides RAMFS, which can be controlled from the !Configure utility.

General Questions

Q: How do I compress something?
A: You can use “!Squash” to compress a single file, InfoZIP or the commercial version of “!SparkFS”.

Q: What is SparkFS?
A: SparkFS can open a variety of archive files (ZIP,ARJ,CAB,LZH,McStuffit,PackdDir,Spark,TAR,ZOO). It lets you access the contents as if they were in a regular directory. (You can drag & drop files, open files from within the archive by double clicking etc.) – So, simply said: It converts an archive into a folder.

Q: Why is SparkFS read only?
A: The SparkFS included in the RISCOSpi distribution is a free ‘demo’ that only allows reading from the archive files. If you would like to have a complete version of SparkFS order it directly or buy a NutPI addon that contains the full version.

Q: How do I create a new ZIP file with SparkFS?
A: If you have the full version of SparkFS: Launch !SparkFS from ‘$.Utilities’ and MENU (middle) click on the IconBar icon. Select ‘New Archive’ and chosse the archive type you want to create.

Q: How do I install SparkFS to the RISC OS PI?
A: Follow these steps:
1. First you have to copy the installation files from the NutPI SD card to the Main SD card. (See NutPI installation?.)
2. open the file ‘$.NutPi.DavidPilling.SparkFs.sparkfs/zip’ using InfoZIP or the read only version of SparkFS shipped with the RISC OS pi distribution.
3. Copy the ‘!SparkFS’ folder to the RAM disk or any other location on your SD Card.
4. If you used SparkFS to extract the archive close SparkFS by MENU-clicking on its IconBar icon. Select ‘Close>Only FS’.
5. Go to ‘$.Utilities’ and delete the ‘!SparkFS’ folder found there. (Select it and press CTRL-K.)
6. Copy (Drag & Drop) the new ‘!SparkFS’ folder to ‘$.Utilities’ and delete the file from the temporary storage choosen in step 3. (CTRL+K)
7. Double click the new !SparkFS icon to launch your new SparkFS.
8. MENU-click the SparkFS icon in the IconBar and select ‘Choices…’ to modify the SparkFS setup.

Q: I have SparkFS. When trying to open a ZIP file I get an error message saying I don’t have enough RAM!
A: SparkFS normally only uses 4 MiByte of RAM. To increase that launch !SparkFS from ‘$.Utilities’, MENU-click on its IconBar icon and say ‘Choices’. Drag the Maximum Slider in the RAM panel to the value you desire. (48000 is a good value.)

Q: How do I compress a file with !Squash?
A: Squash can ony compress files. To do so, simply drag it onto the Squash Icon in the IconBar. (Squash has to be stared beforehand.)

Q: I don’t want to buy SparkFS, any alternatives?
A: You can use Info ZIP to create new ZIP archives, add files or extract files from ZIP archives. Info ZIP is available from !Packman, the RISC OS package manager. Install “Infozip”, “Zip” and “Unzip” from !Packman.

Q: How do I make screenshots?
A: Using “!Snapper” from the ‘$.Utilities’ drawer ($ is the root of the main filing system of RISC OS). It allows you to create screenshots of a window, the whole screen or a region on the screen and save it as a variety of image file formats.

Q: How do I convert Image Format X to [JPEG/TIFF/PNG/etc]
A: Using “!ChangeFSI” from the ‘$.Utilities’ drawer ($ is the root of the main filing system of RISC OS). Usage see: Software information: ChangeFSI

Q: What are Sprites? / What is the native RISC OS image Format?
A: A sprite is to RISC OS what a BMP is to Windows. Sprites are the RISC OS native image format. One sprite file can contain multiple sprites. This can be completely different sprites which can be different sizes, colour depths, etc.

Q: I want program !XYZ to execute on startup! (Eg. !WinSnap, !Alarm)
A: Menu click (middle button) on the switcher icon (righthandmost on the bar), use the ‘Configure’ option and then click !Boot in the configure window. Click ‘Run’ in the new window and drag the icon of the application you want to start at boot time into the ‘Run at Startup’ window. (This adds a pointer (link) to the original file to the startup list.)

Q: How do I get a clock down the icon bar and how do I set this to run every time I boot the RISC OS box?

Q: How do I uncompress something?

Programming – BASIC

Q: I want to program! How do I get started?
(Point us to the two good example books provided with the RPI distro.)