Block

 About RISC OS

RJB Online> Computers> Acorn & RISC OS> RISC OS

Servers: RJB Online / Secondary Servers
Co. Cork, Republic of Ireland (Servers: Eircom)


First, a quote from the RISC OS User Guide:


The RISC OS operating system

RISC OS 4.24

This is the 'Info' window, under 'Task Manager'

RISC OS stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer Operating System. RISC OS consists of three layers:


And now on with the show...

Mouse Buttons

At this point, it is worth noting that a RISC OS mouse has three buttons: (Please note that all mentions of 'clicking' refer to Select unless otherwise stated)


The Desktop

RISC OS, for the majority of the time, is used from the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer - otherwise called the desktop or GUI (Graphical User Interface))
RISC OS Desktop
Here is the basic desktop, no 'bells or whistles' attached.

At the bottom, there is the Iconbar, a place where icons for disks and programs the user loads are kept; here's what's on it:

On the left:

On the right:


The Filer

The filer is the way you access, delete, move, copy, rename, or any other task involving file manipulation.
RISC OS Filer
Here is the 'Apps' Filer open

At the top is "Resources:$.Apps".
This is the address of what directory you are currently in, just like C:\My Documents\Work\Letters\ or something of the sort.
Let's break it up (but we will do my main hard drive this time:
ADFS::Hard Disc.$.Richard.Files.MyFile Basically, a dot (.) is a separator between directories.

Anyway, back to the filer:
There are several icons also on the title-bar and down the side; they are:

All the applications on RISC OS start with an '!' to denote that they are special. (Applications are like directories, shift-clicking on a application will open up a directory with the program's files in it.)
Clicking on one of these will run and load an icon onto the iconbar.


Filetypes

On RISC OS, we don't have an extension (like mydocument.doc or mypicture.bmp) like Windows, but instead we have filetypes
Files
Here is '!Boot' open, showing its files and directories

Here are some files, and here's what they are: There are filetypes for almost every type of file, like image files JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, et al.


Well, that almost completes my mini-tour of the RISC OS operating system, but if you want more info, point your browser to:

Back To Parent Page Back To Top
Copyright © Richard J. Butler MCMXCVIII-MMIV Last modified: