RISC OS - Download



Here at Ident Computer, we've adopted RISC OS 5 as our prime OS environment, mainly because version 5 is open source, free to use, is very fast - (even on the slowest Raspberry Pi boards), has the powerful BBC BASIC programming language underpinning it and is very easy to understand and use.

The Wi-FI Sheep build of RISC OS has now been superseded by RISC OS Direct an official distribution from RISC OS Developments Ltd.

And can be downloaded for free from:

www.riscosdev.com/direct/

Ideal for beginners of all ages to learn how to create programs and software, whist at the same time giving a real useable alternative to Linux or Windows PC platforms.

Thanks to recent developments in licensing we can offer for the first time a completely free version of RISC OS 5 for Raspberry Pi computers.

And best of all you do NOT need to have been a customer of Ident Computer or Wi-Fi Sheep to download and use!

Our Ident Computer / Wi-Fi Sheep edition of RISC OS 5 comes with a few add-on and tweaks that we think you'll love!

To RUN RISC OS you will need any Raspberry Pi computer board, a 3 button mouse (clickable centre scroll wheel is fine) and an 8GB or larger SD card (OS needs 7.74GB).

Download the zip file to MAC or PC and unpack/uncompress.

Use a image writer program such as Etcher to write the IMG OS file to your SD card.


A brief history of RISC OS


RISC OS or (Reduced Instruction Set Computing Operating System) was first developed by Acorn computers in the mid to late 1980's for use with Acorn's new high performance processors, the 'ARM' chip. The OS is built on the technology and programming language first used by the Acorn BBC Micro computer in 1981. RISC OS added modern user friendly features to the BBC Micro system such as graphics, icons, cursor and mouse support.

The first version of RISC OS was released in 1987 under the code name 'Arthur' and ran on the 'Acorn Archimedes' range of computer systems.

After the breakup of Acorn Computers in the late 1990's, development of RISC OS continued for a range of independent computer brands. In 2012 the 'Raspberry Pi' a low cost ARM based single board computer was released with the sole aim to teach people how to programme computers once more.

After its launch in 2012, a number of operating systems were released for the then new Raspberry Pi; one of these was a newly updated and completely free version of RISC OS, known as RISC OS 5.

RISC OS is the commercial property of RISCOS Developments Ltd & the stock build is freely available to download from RISC OS OPEN Ltd.


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