alt Hacker NewsI guess technically that'd be Arthur rather than RISC OS.
My high school had a particularly well connected compsci teacher who managed to get his hands on one of the first Archimedes to be sold (using his own money it must be said ...). At that stage it shipped with Arthur because, or so we were told, the "actual" OS was still in development. As it turned out, that OS was eventually cancelled and instead Arthur was upgraded (in practice ... replaced by) RISC OS.
I still have fond memories of playing the demo that would become Zarch (aka "Virus" on the Amiga/ST/Spectrum/etc.).
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Yep, I think of Arthur as a sortof Beta for RiscOS
I had an Archimedes A305 which launched with Arthur, when I upgraded to Risc OS (which arrived on ROMs, if I remember correctly, you ordered the ROMs and then your local dealer would fit them onto the motherboard) it wasn't really _that_ different, everything I'd written continued to work, etc. Like it was a major upgrade but fundamentally the same "thing".
> At that stage it shipped with Arthur because, or so we were told, the "actual" OS was still in development.
I think this was ARX[0], which was overambitious. Arthur apparently stands for A Risc by THURsday[1]
EDIT: a detailed article[2], linked from lproven's article[3], about the history of ARX / Arthur / RiscOS.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARX_(operating_system)
[1] https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/23/how-risc-os-...
[2] https://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2012/PaulFellows/
[3] https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/73983.html