OSNews

Yes!

That's... well... intersting. I'm not sure if it will be profitable and i'm worried that YT will learn the lessons of the BeBox the hard way.

And also... Europe only?! Hello! You have a lot of BeOS users in the Americas and Japan. I understand it costs alot to ship stuff overseas but still...

As a first step, Europe-only makes business sense. If this pays off, I am sure YellowTAB will consider expanding their hardware market.
For now, you can buy Zeta from all over the world.

It's hard to compare building BeBoxen to using off the shelf components. They,re really two different beasts.

The systems are built by a German OEM hardware vendor.

I am just saying that I hope YT does't devote to much of their resources to Zeta PCs and then have to cancle them because they are losing money.

Still, I hope it works. I like the idea of having a Zeta laptop.

The laptop has an option of shipping with a gigabyte of memory, has YT fixed the memory bug or is the graphics card really only mapping 64mb?

So, this means I can now order Zeta, right? And, another question, if I buy the Deluxe Edition special bundle thing, will I get an upgrade to the full Zeta 1.0? And what about .1 upgrades? Like, when Zeta 1.1 comes out, am I going to have to buy the full version all over again, or will there be a free/reduced price upgrade I can install?

...if i hadn't bought a PowerBook just last week. I was even thinking of going with the lowest of the low as well.

[quote]The laptop has an option of shipping with a gigabyte of memory, has YT fixed the memory bug or is the graphics card really only mapping 64mb?
[/quote]
No, you can only get 768MB Ram as maximum yet. But believe me it is HELL fast. We use it also for our developers and everyone of them can be asked, it is amazing.

[quote]So, this means I can now order Zeta, right?[/quote]
Yes, thats what we offer

[quote]if I buy the Deluxe Edition special bundle thing, will I get an upgrade to the full Zeta 1.0?[/quote]
Yes, you only pay the Shipping and burning the CD which is round $10.

[quote]And what about .1 upgrades? Like, when Zeta 1.1 comes out, am I going to have to buy the full version all over again, or will there be a free/reduced price upgrade I can install?[/quote]

Yes you get Updates for free like R1.01-03, R1.1, R1.2 you have to pay for R1.5 and also for R2 but not for steps between it

Bernd Korz
CVO yellowTAB GmbH

Thats impressive. I'm glad to see a german company in the computer market. Looking forward to the first review and the new features YellowTab added.

Regarding the comment about the BeBox.
I don't think YellowTab is making the same mistake Beos did.

They are selling complete systems and in the future the standalone OS.

Good work YellowTab.

S.

--------------------------
http://www.sideliners.ca

Next to all the OS offers, there's some small print which states "(Not yet available)".

Now I'm not comparing Zeta to the Amiga in anyway, but I really miss the days when you were paying for a product knowing that you'd receive it.

How many of those people who signed up and paid for Amiga OS4 + T-Shirt a year and a half ago are talking positively about their experience?

There's a lotta buzz about Zeta, and from what I've seen, I think most of it's grounded in reality, but come on... This "Buy it now and receive it when we finish it" stuff is kind of lame, particularly when companys such as the aforementioned Amiga (er... Eyetech I guess is the latest purveyor of the OS) have already shown that not everyone out there's on the "up and up" (http://amiga.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2718)

Good luck to you Zeta, but until there's tangible product to be had, you'll not be seeing my hard earned cash.

You can order Zeta, but only one edition yet. We are working really hard to get it as complete as possible and as fast as possible. But to get also feedback from REAL users we made a special Deluxe Edition wich you can order now. You have no risk and loose no money, because you get R1 almost for free.

Bernd Korz
CVO yellowTAB GmbH

Next to all the OS offers, there's some small print which states "(Not yet available)".

Look at the special offer, it seems that it is available. I would consider looking at it if it was cheaper. I guess I have to wait for the final release of the home edition.

Thanks Bernd. One more question. If I order the Deluxe Edition special bundle, how soon can I expect to get it? I live in California, by the way.

yessssssss!!!!!

at least they are trying hard. i can not wait to buy it.

great job!

- 2501

Take a look at the options of the each of the boxes. They tell you what up to date hardware you can use(as far as BeOS is concern) with Zeta. The labtop interests me the most, Centrino Technology(w/ wireless), ATI Radeon mobility 9000, USB 2.0, Firewire, and SD-Card reader. You can go to Dell, Gateway or HP and configure a labtop like what YellowTab is selling and just install Zeta. If you are really feel daring, create 3 partions with one having Zeta, one with Windows, and with your favorite Linux Distro.

For those who haven't seen a good video demo of Zeta go to;

http://ddanneels.free.fr/Zeta-CeBIT2003.avi

from what i havee seen on the YT graphics chipset compatibility list, there's no support for GF4 (or higher) cards. is this going to be fixed for the final release?

Bernd,

I CAN'T order. It logins and then redirects me back to the login page, saying that cookies must be enabled. However, they ARE enabled.

Help!

GF4: Yes we hope we can provide you soon with a driver. We are also want using Rudolphs great Driver and concentrate on other work

Shipping around the World: At least we try to have resellers everywhere in the World. We send then boxes to them and they ship them further. For the countries we have no one it canot blame on you as customer.

What browser are you using?
Use another browser for now.

If I order the Deluxe Edition special bundle from the yellowTab site, when can I expect to get it? I'm in California.

This looks really great. between these guys and the Pegasos/MorphOS people it looks like really cool alternatives a up and coming. Keep up the good work!

I will check that and answer you asap

Bernd

Just wanted to know whether Zeta will work on a Shuttle XPC- Nforce2, AMD 2500XP, 64MB ATi Raedon + 1GB of RAM ? I'm aware of the 1GB RAM limit and I can just reduce the RAM if I have to.

Also have you tested it with VMware or Virtual PC ?

You can use maximum 768MB RAM if you want to be sure.

About the nforce i know from two of our members that they have that chipset and they said it works BUT i have NOT tested it yet myself. I will do that asap.

VMWare it works but only in Vesamode. Ask mmu_man he know 100% whats to do that it works.

This has probably been discussed over and over again, but I just have to ask:

The screenshot provided shows the "old" BeOS GUI (nothing wrong with that by the way, it is probably one of the best out there), but I just want to know: Will there be a redesign of the GUI in the near future?

Thanks in advance

I assume you mean the tabs. The GUI elements themselves look similar to the ones in Dano/EXP and PhOS, to my eyes. Zeta can change the window borders/tabs at the users command. I think.

We have the R5 design and a lot of nice other Decors you an very easy switch in the Deskbar

I just ordered the special Zeta offer. I can't wait to try it .

What browser are you using?

Mozilla on RH Linux 7.3...

Also does the same with Galeon 1.2.0 web browser ( Gnome ).

Just forgot to ask... When will you start shipping Zeta R1? I live in the Netherlands, so I guess shipment won't take long .

Excuse me, I mean RC1;).

How?

With what browser/OS?

Help!

I tested the login myself with Galeon and Mozilla on Redhat and did not have any problems. You might be behind some proxy which filters the cookies or something like that.

Great to see Zeta ship again. The idea of a pre-configured machine is great for YT. After all, you can't loose. They're just selling standard PCs that are tested and installed with Zeta. If you don't like it...Just install Linux, OS2, *BSD, QNX, or SkyOS!

When will R1 be released? Right now it seems that everything is shipping with RC1.

How many guaranteed orders would be needed for YellowTab to port Zeta to Mac/Pegasos/Teron/RS6000?

I'd pay £100 for Zeta on the Pegasos.

Yeah, a port of Zeta to the Pegasos would be really nice. I'd pay a bit extra for that aswell.

Great work YT.

Way to go bernd and other zeta-ppl.

What I don't understand for the full 100% is, you said you get 1.0 for 10 euro's, if you order the RC1, will that be an update CD or an full version.

I would pay more than 100 to have beos in my powerbook... I miss it!! And my PC is +10000KM from my new house
Pablo

nforce2 is kind of supported there are video / audio / lan (only the 3com one) drivers on bebits other then that i don't know.
You may also have problem with big hard drives, they'll could just work in pio (slow, slow, slow).

Besides that i can't belive it's comming out , better start saving my €.

I wonder what font renderer Zeta is using? Is it FontFusion? If so, I'd have to say that even the new screenshots don't look like very good output by FontFusion standards.

Ah, that's one of the things I miss about BeOS. It wasn't hostile to technical users. The system itself achieved a parity between GUI and CLI that even OS X can't touch. It was easy to use because it was simple, not because there were all sorts of artificial barriers between you and the system. And the BeNewsletters and API docs gave tons of insight into the inner-workings of the OS. I think the OpenBeOS guys are doing a great job keeping the Newsletters alive, I wish Zeta would do something similar.

Thanks for the tip!

However, it seems I was using an older Mozilla ( .99 ), so I upgraded to 1.5 RC1 and voila! I am ordering yt Zeta!!!!

Thanks!

Hello Bernd!

I have to work in my job three months for free to get a copy of Zeta. Live in Brazil it's hard... I've no money to test Zeta, but good luck. BeOS really rocks!

Michael Vinicius de Oliveira
~ BlueEyedOS.com Webmaster ~

It is indeed FontFusion, I'd suspect it might need some fine tuning to get it to look optimal, but seeing as I have no idea what is/isn't tweakable with respect to internal rendering settings, I'm not completely certain on that point.

Font APIs don't usually have a lot of knobs to tweek, and should produce good output at their standard settings. Perhaps its just not a very well-hinted set of fonts?

No, there are constraints with the Interface Kit and App_server that don't really allow any font rendering of showing its true potential...

"Font APIs don't usually have a lot of knobs to tweek, and should produce good output at their standard settings. Perhaps its just not a very well-hinted set of fonts?"

Maybe they look a bit dodgy due to the loss of JPEG compression?

>Maybe they look a bit dodgy due to the loss of JPEG compression?

No.
Arial, Verdana etc fonts look even worse than this fine-tuned-by-hand-from-Be font...

"No.
Arial, Verdana etc fonts look even worse than this fine-tuned-by-hand-from-Be font..."

Hmmmmmmmm..... I assume this will improve by R1?

> I assume this will improve by R1?

Maybe not. From what I hear, the font rendering and all the related code in BeOS/Zeta is black magick... Nobody really understood well how it worked, not even back in the day... ;-)

Curious --- how to you make font-rendering complicated? You tell the rendering library (which is a black box) to render a glyph for each letter in the string. You go along the string, composit each letter, adjusting the spacing according to the kerning table. That's all you really need to get pretty good rendering. Now, text layout and font metrics are hard, but they shouldn't affect quality. Maybe FontFusion's API isn't as easy as FreeType's?

There is the issue of mixing that together with various color/transparency blending modes, etc. while drawing, which complicates matters considerably.

Wow, Im glad that this is really happening. This is truly an OS that I can use out of the box without saying "It'll be ready for the desktop any day now". I can't wait to try it out on my old laptop (15 second boot!!).

I have been dying to switch away from windows for a long time, but OSX is too costly in money and Linux is too costly in time. I grudgingly go back to windows every time.

Great thread, by the way. It is great fun to see an actual developer here on the board to answer questions. Great way to get people excited!

I don't believe that those are just I-Kit and API constraints.
Just buggy hinting. Switch, for example, antialiasing off and look at 'o' from arial. In windoze and freetype it is normal symmetrical square with rounded corners.
In BeOS - ugly assymetrical shape with deformed right-top corner (or such). I think that that cheap version of BitStream engine was tuned to use only in antialiased mode, where those "wrong" corners must be blurred out.
But it has bugs even in simplest elements, like in N in some NATIVE Bitstream fonts, where this element gets double width (like being bold) when vertical elements have normal size.

Are you talking about the old bitstream renderer (in BeOS R5) or the new FontFusion renderer in Zeta? I highly doubt there would be a crippled FontFusion used in Zeta. It wouldn't make any sense --- its not like it costs less or anything, and would be bad for Bitstream's image.

But i tried new engine (i'm sure Zeta one is same as in Dano) - and wasn't impressed, inspite attempts to tweak all settings.
I got feeling, that new engine has almost same core for "traditiona"l TTF, while all new features were intended for fffonts. Unfortunately i couldn't find free ff-font for testing.

Bernd
I've been looking forward to this.
So with R5+bebits switching to Zeta what are the big improvements to expect?

Does USB2 work for large HDs Ie >130GB etc, Flash drives. Can I install on external USB or FW & boot from it if my mobo supports it, most new mobos support USB2 booting but never seen it yet.

I am sure this will prompt a whole lot of new developer activity on BeBits to add on Zeta.

ZeBoxen? Zut alors...congrats to Zeta for shipping their product...

Is the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 supported under Zeta now? If so 100 euro on the way.

Anyone know if dual displays (either via two video cards, or one dual output card) are supported in Zeta?

I know there's a driver out for some ATI cards (sadly, I'm told that it doesn't support my 9600), but are there any other options for dual display with Zeta?

Since using two monitors in Windows & Linux, I find it somewhat limiting to use a one monitor system (much to my boss's chagrine since he's sick of hearing me tell him I need another monitor!). Anyone?

See this: http://www.bebits.com/app/2938

However...One thing that needs to be stressed is the importance of software availability equaling that, in terms of quality, of other commercial operating systems.

IMHO, if Zeta can get wine running, without the need of X11/X11drv. Zeta could then team up with Codeweavers, get them to produce a Codeweavers Crossover Office then bundle it with Zeta, meaning, adopters of the operating system will be able to run Office 2000/97/XP, Photoshop and a few other sundry applications.

But that's the one I was referring to that doesn't support the 9600 card

Thanks for the heads up though!

I'm a bit confused with many mod BeOS such as FreeBeOS, BeOS Max, and BeOS Pro original. So what is yellowTAB zeta anyway? Is it BeOS pro newer version? or is it just personal version?

It is a _new_ version, based on the unreleased BeOS 6.
The rest, like BeOS MAX and DEveloper Editions are just tweaked BeOS 5 PE.

Zeta is the real BeOS 6, plus enhancements.

As for OpenBeOS, is an effort to redo BeOS from scratch, so at the moment is not even alpha state, it is still under development.

This is really good news! I've been waiting for this!

There is a trivial little amusing semantic goof on the ordering
page. It says Zeta has an "excessive" amount of bundled
software, impying that there is *too much* software :-)

It really is good news.

What about WinModems support?

Does Zeta support Agere SV92P chipset?

Does Zeta support Nomad MP3 players?

I doubt I can use it for what I want though, which is to do midi sequencing and multitrack recording with my Delta 1010 card.

I'll order a copy anyway, though; I suppose if I want it to do those things they need to make some money first. I really liked BeOS, and was sorry when my final CD came.

I am an idealist, but I really hope this time it can be the "media os" I had hoped for the first time around.

"Update to GoBeProductive 3 for EUR 49, if/when available"

Does this mean that you've gotten in touch with GoBe and they are open to creating a GP3 for Zeta? At what point will they make this decision?

"Zeta compatible DVD-writer" so Zeta has a DVD buring program included?

Any contact with other former BeOS software makers as to if/when they'd consider programming for Zeta?

Support for the newer Radeons and GeForce cards will happen soon, the drivers are both in progress and in good hands.

-Scottmc

and looks like Java 1.4 is coming soon too, using Sun's code:
http://www.beunited.org/

-Scottmc
www.bedrivers.com

Great News Bernd, and the rest!

I still need GeForce4 MX support though. And I want to see a full list of included applications, names and version numbers, for each of the products before I order.

I've got some cash with YT's name on it when the above requirements are met and the Home Edition is ready to ship. Very exciting news for BeOS fans, congradulations!

-Bob

In the spelling of Zeta in the Greek alphabets on the screenshot, it is spelled zeta-epsilon-tau-alpha, the correct spelling is ???? / ?????. Hmmm..... (That's a eta, instead of the epsilon)

I forgot that OSNews doesn't support Unicode, the second one is zeta-eta-tau-alpha, as opposed to zeta-epsilon-tau-alpha.

May I suggest having 1024x768 screenshots galore for each Zeta edition offered, showing the most valued apps in dashing action; come on, three Desktop screenshots?

Having gone Pro, with these exciting first Zeta online retails, it wouldn't hurt going also Pro in Web design. Hint---> http://fedora.redhat.com

Less austere details is a a must. There is not a single entry regarding ADSL in the Zeta's FAQ. A newer network stack is great and all but... "Hulloooo." I guess everything is still being build.

'Nuff ranting. Best of lucks,
"CAAAASSIOPEEEAAAA!!!" (now back to classical)

Congrats to the Zeta team... good luck!

(How about porting OpenOffice to YellowTab? I know GobeProductive is usable and kool...but OO.org would be ideal, as documents would be 100% interchangable with other OSs.)

This is the correct greek spelling: ζητα while what they write there is this: ζετα
The first one is reading "zeeta" while yellotab's spelling reads "zetta" (the "e" as in "left").

It's not like limiting this only to a bunch of random countries. In the union, there is one currency (largely), unified trade laws, etc... Maybe they wouldn't even start right off to the US if it was the country next door... there are many things to sort out if you are new to business.

Thats funny with the greek letters, I tried it here once and it didn't work, but it did work in the phorum.

So rajan r is saying that, (in capitals)
ZETA = incorrect
and
ZHTA = correct

saying "zetta" (ZETA) is like you would here from your science teacher, and "zeeta" (ZHTA) is the way your Greek teacher would say it.

Is there any support for ACPI ?

The 1 Gig ram limit?

GF4 / Radeon support?

Has anything actually changed since Dano?

Is Zeta legal? Have Palm confirmed somewhere that yT has legal access to sourcecode?

Multi user support?

Just support them if you like BeOS. Buying Zeta means inversting in YellowTab, investing in yT means new employees, new employees means new technology. They seem to have done some great work, like porting KHTML and providing USB 2.0 support. With more manpower YT can possibly revive BeOS.

Please don't start trolling. Some people invested their savings in yT, because they love BeOS. This is only the beginning, give them a chance.

Wow, I watched the CeBit video someone mentioned, and I am am absolutely impressed!! WOW!

That wasn´t a trick, running Mac OS on a PC? Did I notice correctly: you were running Mac OS X on Zeta?

If so, man, how do you do THAT? That alone is enough a reason for me to buy Zeta... :-)

Rugbuz: I'm sorry but this was only Mac OS 8 with some skin.

Precisely my point! Zeta is actually pronounced something like Zita. Sure, the epsilon may look like a E, but it doesn't pronounce like one.

John Blink, η looks like a H indeed. BTW, my science teacher calls zeta as zeeta. The only problems with her pronounciation of greek alphabets is beta (pronounced veta, IIRC) and Mu as mule.

Congratulations yellowTab......IMO this is the best and most important OS news in a long time !!

Hello, I'm really interested on buying it cause I used to be (and still now) a BeOS fan. But there's a question I want to do: I have read that it will ship only in DVD media. Is that correct?, 'cause I don't have a DVD player, just a CD-ROM.

Congratulations to yellowTab

Have a look at http://www.yellowtab.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=887 for the answer .

I tried to send an email to Yellow Tab via their web page form but it would not accept it even though the required fields were completed. I tried to send to support@yellowtab.com but that was rejected as well. Anyone know a method of sending email to them?

Ok, I think I just found a valid email address. Cancel the request.

The yellowTab team deserves some congraduations on keeping the faith in their project, and I'd dual-boot between Windows and Zeta in an instant if they could fix the 1gb ram issue, and could allow the use of 2 video cards in the same box. I've got a Radeon 8500LE with single monitor output for a primary card, and a 7500 pci for a 2nd monitor. If I didn't dual boot, I'd just run the 7500 and yank half my ram. But there's software I need for school that only runs in Windows. And I play games, at least currently (school may change that) so I'm kind of stuck. I *will* be purchasing Zeta R1 and will figure out some kind of solution, but, until then I'll be waiting over here, quietly.

Today's OS's need capabilities such as SMP

BeOS always had great SMP and multithreading support, it is a microkernel OS and it has a database-like filesystem, which most filesystems cannot match (especially at making queries, etc.).

I see too many free alternatives to even consider this operating system deployment in any productive environment.

BeOS/Zeta will become more free every day, because an increasing number of components can be replaced by OpenBeOS components.

Gnome and KDE are both rapidly reaching a decent state of usability,

Are they fast? Are they uncomplex? On *nix, I always use WindowMaker for simplicity. But for me Gnome and KDE are much to complex and slow.

why would you want this over all the other os's about ??

i mean linux is moving at good speed then you all the bsd's ?

etc..

i asked a similar question before and i was told that it was because it works on legacy hardware blah blah,

but the machine they are selling arent legacy so why not get these machine and run linux or other OS ? is there something im missing about BEOS ??

Snake

i wanna see a review and more screnshots :-)

Too bad I don't have the money right now... Oh wait, my birthday is comming up I know what I'm gonna wish for .

Interpretation "yadayadayada....Linux....yadayadayada....Linux."

If the Linux advocates want "choice" then they're going to have to accept that people aren't always going to "choose" Linux.

***

Good luck to the Zeta folks, it's a bold step.

why would you want this over all the other os's about ??

i mean linux is moving at good speed then you all the bsd's ?


Because BeOS is better than all the alternatives in many aspects. If you want to build your own opinion, why don't you try it?

http://bebits.com/app/2680

is the Mozilla browser a native port ?

Deluxe Edition has it in list:
"Servertools (Apache, Samba, RobinHood...)"
Is it real? Did they port at last Samba for BONE?
Which version?

No zeta for me until they have ATi Radeon 9800 support.

I do not want a system... I just want the software!
when is that coming out?!

Look at the shop, you can order RC1 for a limited time...

The software is coing out. For God's sake, read the article and go to the Zeta order site.

people get a bit touchy too easily so i better explain my self a little better?


i wasnt advocating Linux or any other OS ?? i was just asking whats the BIG diffence from BEOS to BSD Linux Windows etc....???

i mean yeah it could be consider good to have all these OS out there competing against each other ??

but i want to know what is ZETA offereing that others dont ?

Choice is good more OS more choice, but whats the offering why would i CHOOSE BEOS ovre linux, BSD windows ? apart from the fact its latest and greatest right now ?

just a simple question.

im not trying make linux sound great but there is alot of support out there for it and alot of hardware vendors are beginning to make drivers for it ? will this be the same for BEOS ??

can i CHOOSE the hardware ?? or do i by a prebuilt pc?

Snake

It is hard to tell. I personally think Linux/BSD is too hard for most users. This is where Zeta fits in as an alternative operating system.

Besides that, it has many cool features. The filesystem BeFS is actually a kind of data base, which allows you to use extended attributes. For example, one can search a complete filesystem for a file that starts with "a", is larger than 300 KB and is created after januari 2002 in about 2 seconds. Try that with NTFS, Ext3, ... . Besides that BeOS is threaded to the bones and provides good SMP support. It is very responsive, has a good networking stack (with Bone) and a very well implemented microkernel. Besides that the API is great, which makes programming for BeOS a joy .

With a bit more hardware support and more applications, it could be the ideal consumer OS. Also, the more technical users will probably feel at home to.

A feature with Zeta on the desktop and Linux/BSD on servers would be very bright .

I was just wanting to make certain before I buy it. I am using a Sis315 video chipset, is that supported? Also I have a 160gig drive. If that is a go then I am off to by Zeta!!

Dave

I did look at the shop!
Home, Dev, and deluxe have a little "(Not yet available)" tag on them

Look over here: http://www.yellowtab.com/yellowtab.com/shop/shop.php?category=softw... and go to the bottom of the page. Over there you can find "Zeta :: Deluxe Edition Special Bundle".

David, for Zeta hardware compatibility look at http://www.yellowtab.com/yellowtab.com/support/hardware/

The Sis Graphic Chipsets listed as compatible are: SiS 5598, SiS 620, SiS 6326. However you can always use (without graphics acceleration) the generic VESA driver.

A 160gig drive is no problem as far as I know. The limitation Zeta (all BeOS releases) has is addressing no more than 768 Megabytes of memory (RAM).

Does this mean the centrino wireless chipset (Intel PRO/Wireless 2100) is supported?

The 160G & bigger HDs do work with BeOS but I only used it with multiple NTFS/Fat32/BFS partitions all <=30G (Win2K limit). Not sure if BeOS could format it as 1 giant partition or whether one should, though BFS claims to be able to work with TB size files.

thats what i was looking for

reasons to move maybe even try it out before i move over?

what about application support games ??

is there a version i can try now ~?

Snake

There used to be a BeOS preview CD of R4.5. BeOS actually works quite easily from CD-ROM, so yT might release a Zeta demo CD. If you don't like to wait you can try BeOS MAX 5, it probably hasn't got as many features and software Zeta will have, and has support for less hardware (e.g. Zeta will support USB 2.0), but it is a good way to see the power of BeOS.

More information can be found on this site: http://www.beosmax.org/main.php

Do consider buying Zeta if you like it, it is an investment in the future of BeOS .

>>>Besides that BeOS is threaded to the bones and provides good SMP support. It is very responsive, has a good networking stack (with Bone) and a very well implemented microkernel.

BeOS has 4095 threads maximum --- it was cool in 1995. But others have done better now --- QNX has a maximum 4095 processes and 32767 threads per process.

BeOS is a MACRO-kernel.

>>>Besides that BeOS is threaded to the bones and provides good SMP support. It is very responsive, has a good networking stack (with Bone) and a very well implemented microkernel.

>BeOS has 4095 threads maximum --- it was cool in 1995.
>But others have done better now --- QNX has a maximum
>4095 processes and 32767 threads per process.

There is a guy in work doing a specialist Security / Embedded OS, he decided to add a limit at *one million* threads!

>BeOS is a MACRO-kernel.
It's not a macro kernel like say linux but it's not a pure micro kernel either, probably something in between. Maybe pseudo micro kernel is a better description.

>>>There is a guy in work doing a specialist Security / Embedded OS, he decided to add a limit at *one million* threads!

You can also do 32K threads in Linux now. As I said before, it was way cool for BeOS to have 4096 threads in 1995 --- but others have surpassed it.

I've tried two browsers (Mozilla 1.4 and IE 5) and neither one works. They both stop on the shopping address page.

Grrr... I really want to order this. I hope I'm not the only one with these problems or they're going to turn off a lot of customers.

I want to do midi on zeta. Beos failed just before convincing emagic to port logic. Will zeta please talk with steinberg or cakewalk to port their sequencers to zeta? (I'm assuming emagic/logic is out cos apple owns it)

And the related piece is pro audio hardware support (like the midiman/m-audio delta series). Any plans for zeta drivers?

Overall, I'm THRILLED to see the next generation of beos in zeta. I'll buy it anyway, but MIDI is what I'm dying for cos it would enable me to once and for all DUMP WINDOWS FOREVER!!!

To NEVER use a microsoft product again would be a dream come true.

I think the thread count discussion is missing the real question. The question is this: Is there some unique feature or attribute that yellowtab/obos brings to the market that is not other wise present. The answer is yes it does. Below is what it brings

1) high performance on underpowered hardware
2) User experience second to none
3) Ease of use
4) solid for audio performance

Linux does not bring these to the table, at least not the mainstream distros. Apple can not brings all of these to the table and neither can windows.

The user experience (speed response) of my old fujitsu 233 Mhz laptop running beos is comparable to that of my P4 1.8 dell running redhat 9.0 or windows XP home. That is impressive.

There are unique attributes available to only beos. remember that in a market the consumers award the vendor based on the features that they (the consumers) see as important not the ones that computer engineers see important. Point of fact, consumers don't care about the thread count. they keep buying windows for its ease of use and perception as a defacto standard not for its thread count.

How many RCs are anticipated before the final release?
Do purchasers of RC1 installed computers get RC2 and RC3 before 1.0? How would they be distribtued? If you order when RC2 is available do you still get RC1 or RC2?

Anyhow, this is good news and I cannot wait to purchase my deluxe edition (solo kit, already have a PC).

But I'd love to try Zeta under VPC on my Mac I still need to get a new Mac tho... Anyone know if it will work? Bernd? I know my R5 Pro CD wont install on VPC.

I used Camino successfuly on my Mac to order Zeta. I was afraid to try Safari as it often chokes on things like that (although it has been updated since I last tried),

>>
Do purchasers of RC1 installed computers get RC2 and RC3 before 1.0? How would they be distribtued? If you order when RC2 is available do you still get RC1 or RC2?
>>

I don't know how many Zeta RCs will be released, commercial programs rarely go beyond RC#5 when they are already being sold. The most usual schedule are three official Release Candidates before going final.

Read what Bernd Korz posted before:
"Yes you get Updates for free like R1.01-03, R1.1, R1.2 you have to pay for R1.5 and also for R2 but not for steps between it"
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4668&offset=0&rows=15

According to Yellotab.com, "buyers will be able to upgrade to 1.0-Final for about 10 Euros. (only manufacturing + shipping)."
http://www.yellowtab.com/shop/details.php?item=17

So all that means you get free any upgrade from Release Candidate#2 up to the last upgrade before Zeta 1.5. "Free" does not mean you won't have to pay for the CDs or DVDs (the manufacturing) + shipping, as you can read above that will be charged for around 10 Euros.

Finally I can reformat my dano partition when the DVD gets here. I don't like having stuff that I didn't pay for. Super glad that Zeta is out and the openbeos people keep at it with java. The team at yellowtab and well known beos users seem to have put together a good software package.

For those that wish answers to question I suggest that you post them in the forums at osnews or yellowtab. You might get exact replies.

I am ordering the RC1 deal, if I ever get the cookies issue on there site worked out, but I think it would be nice to pay like 5 bucks to be able to download RC2, RC3 etc. Then pay for the shipping of the final.

As with a few others here, I can't get past the shipping information page. It just keeps asking me over and over. Windows 2000 Pro, using IE 6.

Great to hear of the progress, and the release! However, I have noticed as I've been keeping up with the goings on on the Zeta site, that there are many language "irregularities" and not-quite-right phrasing (the type of slight errors made by non-native English speakers, I'm guessing). If you want some help proof reading and polishing the verbage on the site, let me know... (cluvius2000@yahoo.com)

Brennan

I don't fully agree about the non-microkernel comments. BeOS has much kernel functionality as servers. Yes, the networking stack has now been moved to the kernel (for performance issues), but besides that it really looks much like a microkernel (if such thing can be defined .

About threads: I think there are two important things: the number of threads, but also how the OS handles them. AFAIR BeOS handles them very well. The 4096 limit isn't a problem for normal daily use. So the threading performance is imho a bit more important in this case. But I am wondering how hard/easy it would be to make the maximum number of treads higher (it seams to be tied to memory constraints).

>>>I think the thread count discussion is missing the real question.

The real discussion behind the thread count discussion should be the make-up of the beos user/developer population. The beos gurus are always computer enthusiasts or musicians or artists or technical writers who are "self-taught" programmers (i.e. doesn't have a college degree in computer engineering) --- and so are the BeOS fan base.

How do these beos fans feel when they learnt that they weren't betrayed by JLG for the focus shift --- but they were betrayed by JLG for selling them a 32 bit OS (many fans swear that it's a 64 bit OS), a MACRO-kernel written in C (and not a microkernel written in C++), multi-treading means nothing if BeOS app developers don't actually knows how to use them, and a working API written in C is much better than a broken API written in C++.

How do these beos fans feel when almost every former Be engineer basically telling you that BeOS was never a gem that you think and that the whole thing is held together by scotch tape. It's one thing to be faster than windows 95. But to be doped (Be Dope) into believing that BeOS is the best thing since sliced bread is another. There had always been better OS'es in both performance and in OS design than BeOS.

Once people learn that "the emporer has no clothes", you will lose much of the BeOS fan base.

>>>I don't fully agree about the non-microkernel comments. BeOS has much kernel functionality as servers. Yes, the networking stack has now been moved to the kernel (for performance issues), but besides that it really looks much like a microkernel (if such thing can be defined .

Most people are too hanged up with the Linus vs. Tanenbaum discussions that happened in 1992. The definition is a moving target. Advances in OS theoretical designs (like exokernels) and in real life implementations during the last 10 years have changed the definitions. The newer QNX6 kernel is physically bigger than the older QNX4 kernel. The thing is that BeOS didn't meet Tanenbaum 92 definition and who knows what the 2003 definition is (for that you have to ask the people at MIT).

Currently, there is a 137 GB limit in BeOS for HDDs, as teh IDE standard has this same limit. Above you need to use a different addressing scheme, and so does the IDE driver.
I'm not sure if the replacement ide driver supports it either.
The issue is being looked over at yT. But for now I'd advise you don't use 160 GB + HDDs in BeOS or Zeta, i fyou don't want to loose your data.

BeOS does NOT use a microkernel (as per Tanenbaum), despite what has been written even in books. It's a "monolithic" but modular kernel, that is fully preemptible.

indeed, maximum threads, teams, semaphores and ports are bound by the available RAM, with a maximum value I suppose.

but they were betrayed by JLG for selling them a 32 bit OS

I think you are wrong, and most users know that it is a 32 bit OS.

and a working API written in C is much better than a broken API written in C++

Please tell us why it is broken, show some examples. You are making unsupported claims.

Just support them if you like BeOS. Buying Zeta means inversting in YellowTab, investing in yT means new employees, new employees means new technology. They seem to have done some great work, like porting KHTML and providing USB 2.0 support. With more manpower YT can possibly revive BeOS.

Ehrrr... what possible good could that do? OBOS and BeUnited are the two groups actually providing something futurewise. yT just taking the cash for other peoples efforts. They don't even develop their own drivers, they've stalled the GF4 driver and now they stall the release until Rudolf fixes his open source driver. And JAva is pretty much the same, so why not send cash to beunited???

I Love BeOS, but frankly I can't see how sending money to a yT will revive it? Their "license" they have with Palm is up next year anyway, meaning their is no future for Zeta except for the future in OBOS. Why you think no time has been put in serious OS development rather than porting GPL apps?

The disappointment people might get from buying Zeta will lead to the end of BeOS and not to the new beginning!

I was wondering why the thread limit is 4096 and not lower. It is mentioned in the comments that BeOS/Zeta can use 768MB of memory. Somewhere else I read each thread has a 256KB stack. 4096 * 256 KB = 1GB. Or am I making a mistake?

their "license" they have with Palm is up next year anyway,

Is this true? Can somebody confirm this?

I wish people would sight their sources.

"The filesystem BeFS is actually a kind of data base, which allows you to use extended attributes. For example, one can search a complete filesystem for a file that starts with "a", is larger than 300 KB and is created after januari 2002 in about 2 seconds. Try that with NTFS, Ext3, ... . "
---------------------

You can do this in Windows 2000 and later with the Indexing Service and Query Language.

You can do this in Windows 2000 and later with the Indexing Service and Query Language.

I haven't used Windows for years, but as far as I know the Indexing Service generates indexes in the background, which differs from BeFS, because BeFS is a real database.

BeFS is not a real database. It once was during early development, but was replaced due to performance reasons IIRC.

http://www.beosbible.com/exc_query.html
Is the Be Filesystem a "True" Database?
"...BFS isn't built to operate like a high-end relational database, and there is (currently) no way to extract and view the collection of all attributes of all files in tabular format, as you would in a relational database management system. Neither does BFS incorporate any kind of high-end query language like SQL (though Find by Formula is capable of accomplishing most of what SQL's SELECT statement does). There are several reasons for this.

For one thing, the attributes given to your thousands of files are dissimilar from one filetype to the next (Person file attributes share only a single common field with StyledEdit's file attributes, for instance). Therefore, keeping everything "connected" would require the maintenance of an insanely complex relational system, incurring overhead that's better kept out of the operating system itself (this is part of the reason why the true database foundation of the early Be filesystem was abandoned in favor of the current "database-like" filesystem). Second, Be's usual M.O. is to provide an elegant infrastructure in which third parties can develop high-end applications, rather than to provide so much native functionality that some third-party tools are simply unnecessary...

The Same, Only Different
Like a database, the Be filesystem includes collections of named fields containing discrete values. And as with a database, you can mine the system by running powerful queries against attribute fields to extract meaningful information from your file collection. However, BeOS returns its query results in the form of file collections in Tracker windows, rather than as data collections in tables (although with the Tracker's customizability, it comes pretty darn close). Unlike a database, BFS won't let you establish lookup systems or other complex relations between tables. Finally, BFS doesn't do SQL."

http://www.beosbible.com/bos/updates-scot.html
p. 293: Original database in filesystem
Some engineers contend that the pre-DR9 filesystem was not in fact a true database, though it certainly was closer to one than is the current implementation. A better description of the reason the database filesystem was dropped as of DR9 might be: "The database could easily be lost after a crash". It wasn't lost after each crash of the system, but it had to be reindexed. That operation could take long minutes (if you had many many files), and possibly fail. This reindexation could fail, but that wasn't the rule. In that case, you had to erase the database and rebuild one, and then, you'd lose the information in the database with no chance of recovery." Thanks to Georges-Edouard Berenger for the suggested text here.

Can usa residents purchase this promotional offer? And if so what does 99 euro amount to in US Dollars?

Expect to pay almost $140.00 USD shipped.

"The disappointment people might get from buying Zeta will lead to the end of BeOS and not to the new beginning!"

Anonymous, your comments sound like dogma. Zeta is *something*. If anything, it will continue interest in BeOS until, if and when, OBOS comes out. Nothing could be worse than there being a gap of years and years until OBOS is released with nothing but R5 to continue playing with. Why are you so dead set against Zeta? Aren't you even the slightest bit interested in what they've done? If nothing else, we will at last have Dano and BONE. Even if you are interested in OBOS only, this will continue interest in BeOS, not diminish it. Why not wait until the Home Edition comes out and give it a whirl? You never know, you might be surprised.

I will certainly buy Zeta as soon as the home edition is out.

Honestly though, I think my investments in Refraction and SoundPlay means more for the community. And for me.

Has anyone found info on how long the shipping will take? Are the RC1 CDs finished and ready to ship?

Anyony who placed an order - what response did you get?

>>>Please tell us why it is broken, show some examples. You are making unsupported claims.

The most famous one would be Adamation's open letter.

But that's not my point at all. My point is that BeOS fans are all like musicians and artists and technical writers who are "self-taught" programmers ---- and they get all caught up with buzzwords because they don't actually have computer engineering degrees.

There is nothing wrong with a good old monolithic kernel (look at Linux for example). There is nothing wrong with a kernel written in good old C. There is nothing wrong with API's written in good old C (even the inventor of C++ have said that C++ is just a tool, nothing magical about it). There is nothing wrong to have a file system with database-like qualities, but not really an actual database.

The effect is three-fold. One is that when the ordinary BeOS fans learned that the emporer has no clothes, you lose your fan base. The second effect is that if the BeOS developers are just as clueless as the fans, then the apps aren't going to any good. The third effect is that the gurus in the current OBOS development are also the "self-taught" programmers.

If you want to know why JBQ and the rest of the ex-Be engineers laugh at OBOS, go and take a look at obos mailing lists in the first few months in 2001 and 2002. You should read this WHOLE thread (about why there is a 1 gig ram limit).

http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/09-2001/msg00097.html

The so-called "gurus" have no formal kernel training or experience, some without even formal college computer engineering educations. The real kernel gurus were trying to be helpful, but always get trashed because the "unwashed" are stuck with their "emporer has new clothes" buzzword thing.

Now, you get the idea why OBOS went with the NewOS kernel --- because the OBOS developers didn't even have a rudimentary understanding in kernel development. NewOS' inventor, Travis, is an ex-Be engineer but he doesn't want to directly get involved with OBOS because of legal reasons (i.e. he actually seen and touch the real BeOS kernel source code).

It's a cascading effect, the remaining BeOS/OBOS fans are like the blind following the blind (the so-called BeOS gurus).

Amen Jay. I'm giving Yellowtab.com a fair chance, that means I will look closely to the Zeta 1.0 final reviews and If some of the drawbacks, backward decisions and plain amateurisms seen in the Zeta beta are fixed (crappy font rendering, buggy browsing, linux-like bloatware, amateurish graphics design here and there; tell the guy who put that blurry logo of Zeta in the beta deskbar to take a hike) I'll be more than happy to buy me an updated BeOS, Zeta. If not..., "CAAAASSIOPEEEAAAA!!!"

I was quoted "7-14 days". But, as I'm in the USA, I assume that means the time to get it to their distrubutors and extra time to get to me.

>>>Please tell us why it is broken, show some examples. You are making unsupported claims. "

sam,

answer the question. The man didn't ask for a term paper on the deficiencies of JLG or OBOS. He asked the question above. try answering that.

>>>Please tell us why it is broken, show some examples. You are making unsupported claims.
>>>answer the question. The man didn't ask for a term paper on the deficiencies of JLG or OBOS. He asked the question above. try answering that.

I didn't make any claims at all. If you look at my original comments --- all I said was that a working API written in C is better than a broken API written in C++.

BeOS fans got doped into thinking that anything written in C++ is going to be much better than something written in C. Even Bjarne Stroustrup (the inventor of C++) doesn't claim that. Somehow BeOS fans think that if it's written in C++, it can cure even cancer.

>>>Even Bjarne Stroustrup (the inventor of C++) doesn't claim that.

Quote from Bjarne Stroustrup's official website at AT&T bell labs:

Does it matter which programming language I use?

Yes, but don't expect miracles. Some people seem to believe that a programming language can or at least should solve most of their problems with system building. They are condemned to search forever for the perfect programming language and become repeatedly disappointed. Others dismiss programming languages as unimportant "implementation details" and put their money into development processes and design methods. They are condemned to program in COBOL, C, and proprietary design languages forever. A good language - such as C++ - can do a lot for a designer and a programmer, as long as its strengths and limitations are clearly understood and respected.

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html

That is the very point of my original comment. You people expected miracles just because BeOS' API is written in C++.

No one other than apparently you, has ever expected any "miracle" nor any "cancer-curing" from BeOS. BeOS just works as a Desktop-Multimedia orientated OS, and for many it just works better than the few available alternatives. Who gives a damn rat about Stroustrup's official website in this thread. Be so kind to read the topic again and take your you-poor-blind-people/not-miracles/C/C++ stuff somewhere else.

See if Stroustrup's official website has anything about Zeta's Release Candidate1 of an updated BeOS, higly doubt so, but again: DO NOT EXPECT MIRACLES.

amen

Sam,

You're attacking a strawman. Believe it or not, there are actually BeOS users who are well aware of the OSes deficiencies. I know it's not a 64bit OS, and that it's not a true microkernel, and that BFS is a database-like FS, etc etc etc. And hey - guess what? I still use it.

Not all BeOS users are buzzword-spouting fanbois, you know. I'd tell you the reasons I use BeOS, warts and all, but I have a feeling it will be much more entertaining to see you turn your pop-psych powers of intuition to the task. Here, I'll give you a head start: you could say I must only use BeOS because I'm an anything-but-Microsoft nut. Have at it. Be creative.

sam: I didn't make any claims at all. If you look at my original comments --- all I said was that a working API written in C is better than a broken API written in C++.

You made the claim that all BeOS fans are "idiots" (admittedly this is a summary of what you said, but I feel it's accurate) with no education and that they all believe/believed alot of dumb things.

Get this, not everyone is the same. Some people simply liked working with BeOS. Some never expected miracles or anything else. And a lot of people make dumb comments about a lot of different OSs. Does that mean that all the fans of "whichever-OS" is to blame? If so... Then I guess all the fans of any and every OS need to be condemned, because I've seen ALOT of dumb comments out there. Too bad I don't keep a list of 'em all.

Also, I've met plenty of lame "computer people" with college degrees and plenty of great "computer people" without them and vice versa. You also state that people who are "self-taught" get all caught up in buzz-words and what not. Guess what? I've seen the reverse happen probably just as often.

Honestly, I don't have much to do with the BeOS community and I didn't get to use BeOS much, and as a result, I don't know what the dominant beliefs and what-not are for the community. However... I have this to say about your posts... You started out well... With... What your first two posts? But after that... It seems to me that your posts had very little point to them except to display your own prejudices towards people.

Will you please stop replying to Sam?
Get over it and don't reply to flamebaiters.

I can only congratulate this company for doing what it does.

I just hope they are successful.

And good choice for the laptop as it is a Compal, right ?
I¡ve only heard good things about this laptop.

But my question is if they're selling for all Europe,
1) is the software available in all the languages
2) is the laptop keyboard available in AZERTY and Spanish QWERTY ?

Berndt if you're still reading this thread, I was curious if you guys looked at possibly using SciTech's snap drivers to possibly use in Zeta. They claim its os independent and I just think it would be a smart move especially once SciTech starts putting out 3D hardware support in the drivers.

General concensus is that BeOS was always fast. Does anyoen know what compiler they used to compile the system? Was it GCC, ICC, or some in house compiler?

BeOS (Intel) used the GCC compiler, 2.9x I believe. Reportedly yellowTab has support for using either the stock BeOS compiler or GCC 3.x. I hope someone who knows can confirm this...

After using MacOS X 10.2.6 on my "new" G3 B&W/350, I honestly have to say I don't have much enthusiasm for anything BeOS these days anymore. Of course, if BeOS (er, Zeta) were to take off and regain the foothold it once had and grows from there, I *might* just find time to build an old PC back up to install it on.

Afterall, BeOS is... ]< E VV L :-)

Luposian

I can understand that perspective. If apple increases the processor speed of those $1299 G4's then i will no doubt buy one.

regardless, Beos is just fun to work on. It has a pleasant personality of sorts to accompany its under the hood functionality. Thus, i will purchase yellow tab and install it on my x86 PC which i must have since i work from home. I intend to use the PC mainly for work (under Xp) and OS experimentation (linux and beos) and the apple for multi-track audio recording.

I'd keep an eye on palm and OBOS as well. Palm talk about palm laptops suggests that be technology will live under the palmsource banner.

BeOS (Intel) used the GCC compiler, 2.9x I believe. Reportedly yellowTab has support for using either the stock BeOS compiler or GCC 3.x. I hope someone who knows can confirm this...

Cool. Thanks for the info big al. They must have really written some nice code, considering they didn't use ICC which is better than GCC (margnially) on intel architecures, although GCC is superior considering it's portability.

>>>You made the claim that all BeOS fans are "idiots" (admittedly this is a summary of what you said, but I feel it's accurate) with no education and that they all believe/believed alot of dumb things.

Did I say that these fans are "idiots"? If you get that impression, I apologized to everyone of you. All of you could be musical geniuses with an IQ of 200 and have graduate degrees at the Juilliard School. I have been very careful in my wording that many fans don't have formal education in computer engineering. Perhaps I should do a Jerry Seinfeld, every time I used the phrase "no formal education in computer engineering", I would add the phrase "Not that there's anything wrong with that!".

Eugenia, et tu, Brutus. My interpretation of your husband's past comments seems that they are very similar to my views (and he got attacked as well).

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=66&limit=no

My views on buzzwords and JBQ's comments "BeOS "pervasive multithreading" is just smoke and mirrors" and "the BeOS way is a fairly lazy way to write an OS". (JBQ did tried to reduce the incendiary comments a bit later.)

For those of you that likes BeOS because it provides you a great environment to program on, that your apps are fast and never crash because of the design of BeOS, please read what JBQ said 2 years ago in the above link. I'll try to give you a summary (I apologized in advance for any mis-interpretation).

JBQ: Lazy designed OS made BeOS unnecessary tricky platform to develop for.

BeOS Fan: For professional sized development maybe, but for me I find it clean.

BeOS Fan: Not beiing sure that a BMessage will be delivered is something that keeps me up at night. (Well almost --- I don't even take that into account when writing code or it would be unnecessary complicated/bloated).

JBQ: You are the living proof that devs are lazy. This is why you find it clean --- those problems affect small projects as well, but you just didn't look hard enough.

BeOS Fan: Non of the apps that I written crashed.

JBQ: You never tested your apps enough.

So how DO you order it? Have tried with Opera 6.05 set to accept ALL cookies from ALL servers, several times & still can't create an account. Then I tried with IE 6, also set to accept all cookies, & I still can't create an account. Can someone tell me the secret, I very much wish to make this purchase.

I've given up trying for tonight - having failed with Win98/Opera 6.05 & IE6 then with BeOS 5.03 & Mozilla 1.3 - all cookies enabled.
The "support" email function doesn't work either - it keeps saying Oops, you must complete all fields - over & over. Don't make it impossible for would-be purchaserd.

Have tried again today - & now success!