RISC OS
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![]() A screenshot of RISC OS 5.30 (released 2024) running on a Raspberry Pi | |
Developer | Acorn Computers
Open-source (version 5) Proprietary (versions 4 & 6)
|
---|---|
Closed source; open source for some versions since 2018 | |
Initial release | 25 September 1987[1] |
Latest release |
|
ARM | |
Kernel type | Monolithic |
Default user interface | GUI |
License |
|
Preceded by | MOS ARX (discontinued) |
Official website | riscosopen riscos |
RISC OS (
RISC OS is a
After the break-up of Acorn, development of the OS was
History

The first version of RISC OS was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was released in April 1989. RISC OS 3.00 was released with the A5000 in 1991, and contained many new features. By 1996, RISC OS had been shipped on over 500,000 systems.[15]

Acorn officially halted work on the OS in January 1999, renaming themselves
In May 2001, RISCOS Ltd launched RISC OS Select, a subscription scheme allowing users access to the latest RISC OS 4 updates. These upgrades are released as soft-loadable ROM images, separate to the ROM where the boot OS is stored, and are loaded at boot time. Select 1 was shipped in May 2002, with Select 2 following in November 2002 and the final release of Select 3 in June 2004. In the same month, RISC OS 4.39, dubbed RISC OS Adjust, was released. RISC OS Adjust was a culmination of all the Select Scheme updates to date, released as a physical set of replaceable ROMs for the RiscPC and A7000 series of machines.
Meanwhile, in October 2002,
In October 2018, RISC OS 5 was re-licensed under the
In 2018 RISC OS Developments acquired Castle Technology Ltd including its intellectual property.[6]
In December 2020, the source code of RISC OS 3.71 was leaked to The Pirate Bay.[citation needed]
Features
OS core
The OS is
The core of the OS is stored in
Most of the OS has defined application binary interfaces (ABIs) to handle filters and vectors. The OS provides many ways in which a program can intercept and modify its operation. This simplifies the task of modifying its behaviour, either in the GUI, or deeper. As a result, there are several third-party programs which allow customising the OS look and feel.
File system
This section needs additional citations for verification. (July 2017) |
The
/[extension]
' to the filename under RISC OS.[24]A file system can present a file of a given type as a volume of its own, similar to a loop device. The OS refers to this function as an image filing system. This allows transparent handling of archives and similar files, which appear as directories with some special properties. Files inside the image file appear in the hierarchy underneath the parent archive. It is not necessary for the archive to contain the data it refers to: some symbolic link and network share file systems put a reference inside the image file and go elsewhere for the data.
The file system abstraction layer
File formats
The OS uses metadata to distinguish file formats. Some common file formats from other systems are mapped to filetypes by the MimeMap module.[25]
Kernel
The RISC OS kernel is single-tasking and controls handling of interrupts, DMA services, memory allocation and the video display; the cooperative multi-tasking is provided by the WindowManager module.[18]
Desktop

The
The GUI functions on the concept of files. The Filer, a spatial file manager, displays the contents of a disc. Applications are run from the Filer view and files can be dragged to the Filer view from applications to perform saves, rather than opening a separate 'Save' dialog box where the user must navigate to a location already visible in the Finder. In addition, files can be directly transferred between applications by dragging a save icon into another application's window.
The RISC OS Style Guide encourages a consistent
Font manager
RISC OS was the first operating system to provide scalable anti-aliased fonts.[28][29][30][31] Anti-aliased fonts were already familiar from Arthur, and their presence in RISC OS was confirmed in an early 1989 preview,[32] featuring in the final RISC OS 2 product, launched in April 1989.[33]
A new version of the font manager employing "new-style outline fonts" was made available after the release of RISC OS,
From 1993, starting with the German RISC OS 3.12, and in 1994 for RISC OS 3.5, it has been possible to use an outline anti-aliased font in the WindowManager for UI elements, rather than the
Support for the characters of RISC OS (and some other historic computers) was added to Unicode 13.0 (in 2020).[42]
Bundled applications
RISC OS is available in several distributions, all of which include a small standard set of
Backward compatibility
Limited software portability exists with subsequent versions of the OS and hardware. Single-tasking BBC BASIC applications often require only trivial changes, if any.[citation needed] Successive OS upgrades have raised more serious issues of backward compatibility for desktop applications and games.[43] Applications still being maintained by their author(s) or others have sometimes historically been amended to provide compatibility.[citation needed]
The introduction of the
The
Additional incompatibilities were introduced with newer
Supported hardware
RISC OS has also been used by both Acorn and
Versions of RISC OS run or have run on the following hardware: (
Machine | ARM architecture |
Introduced | Acorn version | RISCOS Ltd version |
Castle Technology, RISC OS Open version | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First | Last | First | Last | First | Latest | |||
ARM with 26-bit program counter | ||||||||
Acorn Archimedes | ARMv2 | 1987–1992 | 0.20 | 3.1x | — | — | — | — |
ARM with 26- & 32-bit program counter | ||||||||
Acorn Risc PC | ARMv3 / v4 | 1994[64] | 3.50[64] | 3.71 | 4.00 | 6.20[65] | 5.15 | 5.30[66]/5.31 |
Acorn A7000 and A7000+ | ARMv3 | 1995[67] – 1997[68] | 3.60[67][68] | |||||
Acorn Phoebe (cancelled) |
ARMv4 | 1998 | 3.80 (Ursula) | — | — | — | — | — |
MicroDigital Medi[69] | ARMv3 | 1998[70] | 3.71[70] | — | 4.02 | 6.20 | — | — |
MicroDigital Mico | 1999[71] | — | — | 4.03[71] | 4.39[65] | — | — | |
RiscStation R7500 | 1999[72] | — | — | 4.03[72] | 4.39[65] | — | — | |
Castle Kinetic RiscPC | ARMv4 | 2000[73] | — | — | 4.03 | 6.20 | 5.19[74] | 5.30[66]/5.31 |
MicroDigital Omega | 2003[75] | — | — | 4.03[76] | 4.39[65] | — | — | |
Advantage Six A75 | ARMv3 | 2004[77] | — | — | 4.39[78] | — | — | |
ARM with 32-bit program counter | ||||||||
Iyonix Ltd Iyonix PC | ARMv5TE | 2002 | — | — | — | — | 5.01 | 5.30[79]/5.31 |
Advantage Six A9 (Home/RM/Loc) | ARMv4T | 2005 | — | — | 4.42[65] | — | — | |
BeagleBoard[9] | ARMv7-A | 2008 | — | — | — | — | 5.15 | 5.30[80]/5.31 |
IGEPv2[81] | 2009 | — | — | — | — | |||
DevKit8000 | ? | — | — | — | — | |||
Always Innovating Touch Book | 2009 | — | — | — | — | |||
OpenPandora's Pandora |
2010 | — | — | — | — | 5.17[82] | ||
PandaBoard[83] | 2011 | — | — | — | — | 5.17 | 5.30[11]/5.31 | |
Raspberry Pi (1 - 4 and compatible)[13][84][85][86] | ARMv6, v7-A, v8-A | 2012 | — | — | — | — | 5.19 | 5.30/5.31 |
IGEPv5[87] | ARMv7-A | 2014 | — | — | — | — | 5.23 | 5.30/5.31 |
Wandboard Quad[88][89] | 2015 | — | — | — | — | 5.21 | 5.31 | |
Titanium[90] | — | — | — | — | 5.23 | 5.30/5.31 | ||
Pinebook[91] | ARMv8-A | 2017 | — | — | — | — | 5.27 | 5.31 |
RISC OS can also run on a range of computer system emulators that emulate the earlier Acorn machines listed above:
Emulator | Machines emulated | Host platforms supported | Latest release |
---|---|---|---|
!A310Emu[92] | Archimedes | RISC OS | 0.59 |
Archie[93] | DOS, Windows | 0.9 – 10 February 2001 | |
ArchiEmu[94] | RISC OS | 0.53.3 – 7 December 2014 | |
ArcEm[95] | Windows, Linux, macOS, RISC OS | 1.50.1 – 18 December 2015 | |
Arculator[96] | Windows, Linux | 2.2 – 24 June 2023 | |
Virtual A5000 | Windows | 1.4 | |
Red Squirrel[97] | Archimedes, Risc PC, A7000 | 0.6 – 28 October 2002 | |
RPCEmu[98] | Risc PC, A7000, Phoebe | Windows, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD | 0.9.4 – 30 October 2021 |
VirtualRPC | Risc PC | Windows, macOS | 5 September 2014[99] |
See also
- Acorn C/C++
- ArtWorks
- Drobe
- ROX Desktop, a graphical desktop environment for the X Window System, inspired by the user interface of RISC OS
- Sibelius (scorewriter), originally an application for RISC OS, rewritten for Windows in 1998
- RISC OS character set
Notes
- ^ (such as that used in the BeagleBoard and Touch Book)
- ^ (such as that used in the PandaBoard)
References
- ^ copyright notice Arthur 1.20 (25 September 1987)
- ^ Revill, Steve (27 April 2024). "RISC OS 5.30 now available". RISC OS Open. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
- ^ RISC OS is open for business! Archived 22 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine, RISC OS Open Ltd, accessed 23 October 2018
- ^ "RISC OS" (PDF). ISV Department news from Acorn. No. 14. Acorn Computers Limited. May 1989. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 May 2021. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
It is RISC OS (pronounced risk oh ess, not risk oss)
- ^ Proven, Liam (21 June 2022). "RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well". The Register.
- ^ a b "Home". riscosdev.com.
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(October 12th 1998), Cambridge, UK-Acorn announced today that it has completed negotiations with Castle Technology for them to distribute Acorn products.
- ^ "RISC OS 5 features". Iyonix Ltd. Archived from the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 31 January 2011.
All IYONIX pcs ship with RISC OS 5 in flash ROM.
- ^ a b Farrell, Nick (27 April 2009). "Snaps leak of RISC OS5 on BeagleBoard". The Inquirer. Archived from the original on 19 May 2009. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
A snap of an RISC OS 5, running on a BeagleBoard device powered by a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with a built-in graphics chip, has tipped up on the world wide wibble. The port developed by Jeffrey Lee is a breakthrough for the shared-source project because it has ported the OS without an army of engineers.
- ^ "Cortex-A8 port status". RISC OS Open. Archived from the original on 26 October 2021. Retrieved 31 January 2011.
[The port includes] a modified version of the RISC OS kernel containing support for (all) Cortex-A8 CPU cores.
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- ^ OCLC 208951251.
- ^ Williams, Chris (26 July 2003). "Imagining RISC OS and PMT". Drobe. Archived from the original on 17 June 2018. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
- ^ Michael Reed Tech Book 1 – Published articles Oct 2006 – June 2008 Archived 26 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "RISC OS Memory Protection". Drobe: The Archives. Archived from the original on 31 March 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
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- ^ Phil, Mellor (23 March 2007). "An arbitrary number of possibly influential RISC OS things". The Icon Bar. Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
Admittedly it wasn't until RISC OS Select was released, almost 10 years later, that the standard Acorn applications (Draw, Edit, and Paint) implemented the style guide's clipboard recommendations, but most products followed it with care.
- ^ Round, Mark (26 February 2004). "Emulating RISC OS under Windows". OSnews. Archived from the original on 14 November 2010. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
Many of the UI concepts that we take for granted were first pioneered in RISC OS, for instance: scalable anti-aliased fonts and an operating system extendable by 'modules', while most of the PC world was still on Windows 3.0.
- ^ Ghiraddje (22 December 2009). "The RISC OS GUI". Telcontar.net. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
Only with Mac OS X did any mainstream graphical interface provide the smoothly rendered, fractionally spaced type that Acorn accomplished in 1992 or earlier.
- ArsTechnica. Archivedfrom the original on 2 December 2011. Retrieved 25 May 2011.
[...] in 1987, the UK-based company Acorn Computers introduced their [...] GUI, called "Arthur", also was the first to feature anti-aliased display of on-screen fonts, even in 16-color mode!
- ^ Holwerda, Thom (23 June 2005). "Screen Fonts: Shape Accuracy or On-Screen Readability?". OSNews. Archived from the original on 19 November 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2011.
[...] it was RISC OS that had the first system-wide, intricate [...] font rendering in operating systems.
- ^ Pountain, Dick (January 1989). "Screentest: Archie RISC OS" (PDF). Personal Computer World. p. 154. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 June 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
[ArcDraw] can also add text in multiple sizes and fonts to a drawing (including anti-aliased fonts)
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- ^ "Acorn Customer Hotline". Acorn User. April 1990. p. 19. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
- ^ Raine, Neil; Seal, David; Stoye, William; Wilson, Roger (November 1989). The Acorn Outline Font Manager. Fifth Computer Graphics Workshop. Monterey, California: USENIX Association. pp. 25–36.
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- ^ "Acorn signs pre-press deal". Acorn User. Addison-Wesley. July 1993. p. 10.
- ^ Murphy, Dean (29 March 1994). Acorn Computers Support Group Application Notice 253 – New features of RISC OS version 3.5 (PDF) (Technical report). Acorn Computers Limited. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
- ^ "Unicode in RISC OS". riscos.info. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
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[...] Willi Theiss has recently announced that he's been working on a port of RISC OS to the PandaBoard [...]
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[...] The heart of the machine is a Freescale i.MX 6 series processor [...]
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- ^ "Welcome to my homepage!". Home.tiscali.nl. Archived from the original on 19 June 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
- ^ "Archie – Acorn Archimedes Emulator". 12 August 2001. Archived from the original on 6 February 2004. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
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- ^ "Arculator – The Acorn Archimedes Emulator". B-em.bbcmicro.com. Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
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- ^ "VirtualAcorn". virtualacorn.co.uk.
External links
- Official website RISC OS Open