They introduced lazy task swapping that improved things, although I'd wager task swapping is still reasonably expensive...Not sure about the latest version of RISC OS, but I remember writing a test program that I ran on an Archimedes 410 way back that basically just did wimp_polls.
Keith also wrote:
On machines other than the Pi - most Fonts are in ROM (in Pi in SD) - Fonts yes can be fetched from HDD - but then are usually Cached - and given the luxurious amount of memory in the Pi you can crank up the FontCache to limit such accesses. On the occasions where such accesses occur not having a proper Multithreading in place possibly does hit performance (but as fonts files are relatively small not a particularly noticeable one).When RISC OS renders some text in a window, it goes to the Font system which may have to do I/O to disk.
KeithSloan Wrote:
Well if we're at that how many did Debian have ? How many had ArchLinux? Raspian is THE recommended distribution - of course it's going to have more appends - the surprising thing is that RISC OS has been closing in on Debian and Arch (it's now the 4th most popular if Appends are a valid measure at all...). For a laugh how is Android doingJust look at the number of appends to RISC OS forum compared to Raspbian its about a tenth

I'd tentatively say this having some form of Multithreading would be useful (task swapping a la Wimp_Poll does work - but perhaps it can be improved on). The biggest problem in not having MT is that it makes it more difficult for developers to port to RISC OS from other OSes (such as Linux). Given the number of developers working on RISC OS it would be helpful to "leverage" code from places such as Linux.
And I'd agree with you it's (very) unlikely to see RISC OS running on large servers - for security reasons as well as the more obvious fact that it is *NOT* intended as a server OS and never was. The flip side of that (though) is the Linux IS a server OS and squeezing it onto smaller devices (like Pi) does not, I would humbly suggest, show Linux off to best advantage.
There is a definite place for Linux and (I would suggest) one for RISC OS - the place may not be the same one - but hey there's nothing wrong with diversity is there ?
I have noted though the comments from people in other posts who have noted that RISC OS does seem more responsive than Raspbian - obviously *something* in RISC OS does lead it to give a more satisfying user experience and any changes made to RISC OS should not throw that particular "baby" out with the bathwater (all in my humble opinion - of course !)