01 May 2024
============

Back into 'Riscy' business ;-) The news of the recent
release of RiscOS 5.30 brought back a sudden urge to again
try out this dinosaur of an operating system as an daily
driver again.

The setup process was easy as usual (you can find more
details in an article in the "computer stuff" section of
this phlog - it hasn't changed anything). Well, after about
15 minutes from downloading to flashing to wiring my trusty
Raspberry Pi i had now again a working RiscOS system. After
firing it up it took my only another 5 minutes until my
muscle memory kicked in and i was using the system again
like i had never stopped.

What still to this day amazes me is the sheer
responsiveness of this OS on objectively meager hardware
(i am running it on a Pi 3, but its perfectly usable even
on slower Pis). Another thing that still amazes me is the
software ecosystem that somehow managed to survive and even
put food on the table of small software companies releasing
commercial software for this platform... and that the users
of this platform are very willing to pay for software. And
by "pay for software" i am not talking about some dubious
cloud subscription like we are used today, but for actual
software licences that you OWN afterwards.

Somehow, everything in this ecosystem and this community
seems to be frozen in time at some point in the mid to late
90s, even the websites of most companies that cater to this
platform look this way... and i am absolutely loving it.

Oh, by the way: This post was written with StrongED on
RiscOS.