RISC OS comes to Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi is, in many ways, a
throwback to the past and not just in terms of performance. The
uncased single-board ARM GNU/Linux computer was originally
conceived as a way to get students programming again, like they
did back in the 1980s and 90s, and now there’s even a 25 year-
old OS available for it. RISC OS is an operating system you’ll
possibly be familiar with if you’re of a certain age, and come
from the United Kingdom (like me). A descendant of the OS used
in the BBC Micro, it was created by Acorn Computers for the
First Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) ARM chips, and
made its debut in Acorn's 1987 Archimedes microcomputer. The
desktop OS is small (under 6MB), fast, and has a working GUI, so
is easy to understand and master, making it the perfect fit for
the Pi. If you’re familiar with RISC OS -- it has evolved a fair
amount over a quarter-century, but it’s still essentially the
same -- you’ll be able to load some old programs and even code
your own in BBC Basic