Post a Comment
I wouldn't mind supporting them with my money. But give me something to see it in action. A 24-hour trial demo with some "copying files is not available in this demo" restrictions!
After that, I will for sure sign up for the beta, rc or whatever.
I've only seen screenshots and changelogs so far, very impressive indeed.
if server is down, the newspost on skyos.org site is basicly the second newspost from the google cache page with an extra remark that build 6132 has been released as beta.
So you can read the changes in that 2nd post:
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:YDc98F9QRssJ:www.skyos.org/+sky...
Their site is down at the moment so I can't check if this new build finally has the one and only feature I've been waiting for: is swap finally enabled?
Because until that's done, it cannot run (officially) on machines with less than 512mb of RAM and this is one thing that truly frustrates me about SkyOS. While I have a couple of old machines 'to play with' I could use for SkyOS, none of them have enough memory...
(Yes, I paid for access to beta and I've been waiting for more than a year now for a build I could actually use)
Go buy a 5 dollar 256 meg stick of ram? Whip out the big notes and buy a 512 meg stick? It's not like you'd want to run anything on any machine with under 512mb anyways. As for swap being enabled, I *briefly* looked at the site earlier when it was up, and I do not remember reading about the swap being enabled. that MAY or MAY not be true, that's just from the brief scan I did.
http://cgi.ebay.com/PC133-256MB-RAM-Memory-Desk-top_W0QQitemZ150013...
eBay is your friend for old crappy systems and old crappy ram. Price may go up with bidding, but it'll end likely under 10$. That's just one such auction, there are thousands, do a search for "256mb ram".
If the computer doesn't even have 512mb in it to begin with, do you REALLY think it's that big of an issue? Obviously this isn't exactly a mission critical computer we're talking about (the guy wants to run SkyOS on it). If 256megs of ram is too much for him to buy retail, then his only option IS used.
A freshly booted skyos system takes around 200MB or even less RAM.
The bigger applications like firefox and thunderbird take a lot of ram at this point.
If you are just using the smaller apps, you have enough with 300MB, which is the amount I use for vmware all the time.
And no, unfortunately swap is not enabled yet.
How is this OS developed?
By one monster-coder who probably sold someone's soul in exchange for the gift of programming non-stop. I don't know how he supports himself, but the paid beta's cover a bit. There's also some extra coders/site-maintainers helping out. I presume they don't get paid a lot, based on SkyOS' income.
I know the phrase "When it's done" but does SkyOS has a defined roadmap to complete?
I've seen nice additions and overhauls of it, but what is expected to be delivered to end users ?
For example, Haiku has a roadmap. When all those bars get to green status, there will be Kaiku 1.0.
Haiku does not have a roadmap.
You are most likely referring to this:
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=status
This is just a development status chart on a kit basis. Addmitted by the project members themselves, this chart is not even up to date.
Edited 2006-07-28 17:51
dcibils indeed didn't refer correctly to Haiku roadmap, but it's not true it doesen't have one.
The page you linked (and the one dcibils was referring too indeed) shows the status of parts, towards Haiku first goal: R5 compatibility.
Having a roadmap means having defined plans for the future, and Haiku does have ideas on how to go beyond the first release.
Given the development model of SkyOS, I'd also like to know what is the readmap to the first release and if there are already ideas for the future - or if it's just too early to think about it.
Maybe someone has a link? 
For a roadmap to be meaningful, it should show milestones and target dates (that can be adjusted over time if needed).
R5 compatibility may be a goal for Haiku 1.0, but to pretend that that alone is a roadmap for the project is a bit too simplistic (IMHO). Here is a good example:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html
Does Haiku have such a roadmap?




