RISC OS-on-Linux first Live CD available
Published on 2nd Oct 2007, 20:34:26, source is drobe.co.uk
By the Drobe news desk
A unique blend of RISC OS and Linux on a demo disc
A CD that will boot a PC into a RISC OS-on-Linux environment is now available. Punters can download a free .iso image of the operating system and various software packages to burn to a Live CD. The alpha-quality disc was prepared as part of the on-going RISC OS Look and Feel project, which aims to bring a RISC OS-style desktop and other Acorn mannerisms to the GNU/Linux platform.
The CD includes a terminal emulator, a simple image viewer, text editor Vim, web browser NetSurf and graphics package Inkscape. The screenshot, above, shows the latter being compiled with NetSurf running in the background.
Developer Simon Willcocks said: "A first attempt at a Live CD has been uploaded, the space has been kindly donated by Ned Abell. This CD should boot into a desktop with Tux on the right and disc icons for /home/rolf and /tmp, on the left of the Iconbar.
"In /home/rolf are three apps that should work immediately, !Terminal, !Viewer and !Vim. !NetSurf needs a little help to run, as does Inkscape, which has no application directory yet.
"This is a one-person project, so far, a work in progress which will probably mostly interest current or lapsed RISC OS users."
ROLF uses its own custom-written window manager to provide a RISC OS-style desktop, although GTK+ applications can be used thanks to an interface layer. Programs can be developed natively for ROLF using a provided library, and software that uses OSLib could soon be easily ported across to ROLF. An image-support library is also included.
Links
The ROLF website
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