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Comment by lproven | Hacker News Reader

> simplicity of ... Raspbian

You think Raspbian is simple?

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

« Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software

    Release date: March 15th 2024
    System: 32-bit
    Kernel version: 6.6
    Debian version: 12 (bookworm)
    Size: 2,678MB

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi

« Complete SD card images

RISC OS Pi

2024-04-28 06:15:00

For Pi Zero & ZeroW & Zero2W, Pi 1 models A(+) & B(+), Pi 2 model B, Pi 3 models A+ & B(+), Pi 4 model B, Pi 400, Compute Module 1 & 3(+) & 4.

Version 5.30 Size 155.1 MB »

2.6GB of code, vs 155MB.

It's nearly twenty times bigger.

17.25x as big. And yes, I chose the image with "recommended software" because that 155MB RISC OS image is packed with dozens of apps as well.

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Apps? So you would use this OS for the amazing consumer experience? And in your mind is that comparable to a Linux distro like Raspbian or Ubuntu in terms of availability of apps?

Strange way to gauge simplicity too "this screen has 10x less pixels!"

What's better for a tiny underpowered computer with not much RAM...

* A tiny simple OS with a modest selection of really good apps?

* Or a huge slow complicated OS with lots and lots of indifferent-quality apps?

The way you're talking (Linux is a "slow complicated OS") means you're likely some dark wizard in a tower somewhere inventing either the apocalypse or the next great consumer experience.

For that reason I thank you for your likely many contributions to obscure open source projects and gosh speed on your endeavors.

No, not really.

I'm a techie turned journalist, who's been using computers for well over 40 years now, with a particular interest in obscure and niche OSes and programming languages.

I've used an exceptionally broad range of computers for someone still active in the industry. Counting the entire field of PC-compatible x86 machines as one, then I'd guesstimate I've used and worked with 30 or 40 different architectures. Counting all forms of Unix-like OS from SCO Xenix to Linux as being Unix, being 1 OS in different implementations, then again, I'd estimate 30 to 40 different OSes.

I remember how small and simple OSes used to be. I remember the era when a multitasking GUI OS fitted easily into a single megabyte of RAM. When a machine with 4 or 8MB of RAM was more than adequate for exploring the Internet.

I am especially interested in OSes that are still around today, still being maintained, that are small enough for a single person to read the entire codebase, all of it, every line, in a matter of weeks and understand the whole thing in months.

There are several such systems.

There seems to me to be a belief today that a serious useful system must inherently be gigabytes of code, tens of millions of lines, and nobody can understand the whole thing. That is simply NOT TRUE and it never was.

No, I am not writing such things. I am writing about them and trying to bring more peoples' attention to them.

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