Linux and the 'clssic' computing world

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 15:55, Murray McCullough via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> even though WIN 11 is much more secure than previous Windows
> versions

[[Citation needed]] ;-)

There still are more choices than people realise.

I sometimes play around with Haiku. It's getting there and is quite
usable for some stuff.

I have friends who are OpenBSD enthusiasts, although for me it's too
Spartan to be much use. I intend to have a proper look at the Hello
System, a new FreeBSD distro aimed at people migrating off Mac OS X
put together by a very smart chap I know online.

https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/

I have a Raspberry Pi running RISC OS, which for many tasks is a
surprisingly usable OS these days. It's not great on the Web but it's
entirely usable for email, productivity, graphics, sound/music,
programming and more -- and it has a rich assortment of emulators for
classic 1980s home computers.

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

RISC OS has new owners now who are pursuing a relatively aggressive
programme of updating the OS.

https://www.riscosdev.com/projects

Soon it will have a modern Webkit-based browser, a new IP stack ported
from OpenBSD that includes IPv6 and Wifi, and some people are working
on SMP support.

By the same token I know people still using Amigas, and a new wave of
activity is happening in the Amiga world. The attempted move to
PowerPC chips hasn't really taken off, so  the company that owns the
OS now is doing new releases for 68000 hardware. There are also new
processor accelerators for classic Amigas so that you can bring them
say 20 years up to date -- at least into the realms of hundreds of MHz
CPUs, hundreds of megs of RAM, and modern storage. Given the
efficiency of the Amiga OS this makes a 1980s Amiga a very powerful
and usable machine today.

https://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/news/1-latest-news/290-amigaos-42-for-all-classic-amigas-released-and-available
(Note, there's a typo in the URL -- they're talking  about AmigaOS
3.2, released 24 years after v3.1. :-)

https://www.apollo-accelerators.com/ ← FPGA replacement CPUs/graphics cards

https://www.hackster.io/news/hands-on-with-the-pistorm-the-ultimate-raspberry-pi-powered-accelerator-for-your-commodore-amiga-449ef0634f3e

It's easy to look at modern desktop computing and conclude it's all
either Windows, macOS or Linux, but there is more to life!

-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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