I read with great interest Gavin Wraith's Comment: "Linux and Netwinder - a Model for Acorn?"
At the end of his article, Gavin suggests, "Acorn could provide tremendous added value in this area, especially by developing and marketing a RiscOS look and feel GUI for Linux."
I would like to encourage the Acorn enthusiast community to go one step further.
Acorn are interested in RiscOS as a "cash cow" - an internally developed resource suitable for licensing revenue as they re-focus toward consumer appliances. Whether or not they are right, or that this is a Good Thing, is not the point. This is their stated course.
I suspect that a RiscOS "look and feel" GUI is not what Linux, the Netwinder or the Acorn communities need to further their interests, fun and growth. There are already a few good GUIs for the X environment on Linux. They are different than that of RiscOS, but that doesn't make them bad. There are Linux applications that mirror UNIX utilities and applications - PERL, AWK, C++, EMACS, etc. There aren't many Linux applications, however, that are along the lines of the applications that most of us run on Acorn PCs - Ovation Pro, Schema, Easiwriter, Prophet, you get the idea.
No, what I think is needed, and what I think must come from the Acorn enthusiast community itself, is a RiscOS shell, or emulator, that runs on top of the Linux kernal! Linux is a freely developed, open-source OS that appears to be UNIX, and runs UNIX applications, but avoids the license issues and is providing lots of education and fun (and aren't many Acorn enthusiasts using their computers in education or for gaming?). We need a GPL (Gnu Public License) version of an operating system that runs RiscOS applications, and a great place to start is by porting a RiscOS shell - one that runs RiscOS applications - on an ARM-based computer like Netwinder or CATS.
As is the case with Linux, this could be done by a group of RiscOS enthusiasts working loosely together over the internet. Each person or group works on the pieces of the OS that appeal to them and freely distribute the results on the internet for other folks to pick up, modify, improve, add to, etc.
Some folks could focus on getting the sound system to work, others the video system and modes, others the windowing section, the filecore, and so forth. Some Acorn Clubs could get into the act by helping organise efforts within their community and in the process re-kindle the sort of involvenent that sparked the creation of the club in the first place.
We have the PRMs that already document what needs to be done. And only a subset need be done at first, tested by porting simple applications that use only those services, then growing a piece at a time. And some of this work has already been done and lain dormant for years (Hint: see the Acorn Emulation page on the Cybervillage).
If successful, this could help enlarge the potential market for RiscOS applications software, and might breathe some life back into such development. It would also be a great way to get RiscOS ported to the SA-1100 and allow us to make a cheap, powerful laptop computer. The folks at IMS responded to inquiries about their choice of the CS7500FE processor over the SA1100 because RiscOS doesn't run on the SA1100 (see the IMS webpage under Peanut Questions and Answers).
The possibilities are enormous, the learning and fun aspects large and real - any takers?
Linux and Netwinder - a Model for Acorn? - RISC OS in ROM
Disagree? Then reply!