YellowTAB provided us with a copy of Zeta 1.0 RC-1pre+ plus a few additional patches that were not available at the CD’s press time. We installed and tried out this new version and here’s what we think.
Installation
Installation took about 20 minutes with a 52x CD-rom, for full installation. The Installer program has changed a bit, but it still asks you to select if you want a full installation or to install only select programs. I find absolutely no reason in this day and age to bother your users with selective installation a-la Linux, when the difference in the install size is +1/-1 GB. with today’s hard drives, 1 GB is nothing. The somewhat updated UI of the Installer since the Beta 1, also has 2 usability bugs and I have already notified its developer. Overall, it is the same installer as last May: choices and more choices, and badly-resized screenshots. I’ve said this in the past and I will say it again: “BeOS was all about the best possible defaults, not the most choices” and that was one of the reasons why people loved it. “Less is more” our Gnome friends are preaching these days too, and that’s the usability trend both Apple and Microsoft has followed as well.
The Good Stuff
Booting into Zeta on my AthlonXP worked like a charm and I was up and running 15 seconds later. The desktop feels fast, as all BeOS versions of the past did. Users who have never used BeOS will find a friendly feeling as learning the OS takes almost zero time. The whole point of BeOS/Zeta is simplicity and ease of use and this is what “wins” these new users.
The font rendering engine is not great in today’s standards, but it is much-much better than Beta-1 last May. Tracker has SVG vector support, localization works well for a number of languages, USB-2 support is seemingly good as well. Zeta also found my PCI Firewire card and recognized it. Sound worked fine too, it found my Yamaha YMF-754 PCI card, while the mounting ext2/ext3 Slackware partition and my Windows 2003 Server NTFS mounting also worked well. Zeta found successfully my GeForce2MX AGP card too, its network card and used the drivers immediately on boot.
Zeta is fast, as any BeOS you might have used in the past. Loading apps is instant. BeOS users know very well that the occasional UI lock that applications get on all other OSes don’t happen in BeOS and its derivatives. Zeta is no different. It boots and operates fast. Zeta also includes the BONE networking stack, inspired by FreeBSD’s, and while this networking stack still has problems, it is worlds better than BeOS 5’s plain net_server. Additionally, you get the smooth window dragging, as explained here, and lots of new driver support for your PC not found on other BeOS-based releases. I usually use PS/2 mice and keyboards in order to have support from many obscure OSes that I run for OSNews’ business, but I tried my husband’s Logitech USB mouse on my VIA-based hardware (previously not well supported by BeOS’s USB stack) and it worked perfectly. Please note that most of the new drivers (USB 2, better SCSI support, basic wireless etc) can NOT be found on BeBits or elsewhere, they are only available on Zeta.
Zeta comes with a lot of software, software that is mostly found freely on BeBits, but also software that is unique to Zeta: like the fax preferences and app, the address book, ZEdit etc. Some of the software bundled is buggy though, such as Abiword (context menu/3rd mouse button switch, crash on exit). Bochs with FreeDOS is included as well and some other game emulators too. Other software involves CD burning, some system utilities, lots and lots of games. Gobe Productive Office suite 2.x is also included, and I think it is the full version, not just a demo.
Developers will find gcc 2.9-pre installed and ready, however the documentation of the updated Be API to take advantage of the new features (e.g. new printing kit, non-rectangle windows) is not included (Be never wrote that documentation).
The latest releases of Mozilla and Phoenix are included and while they seem a tiny bit faster than my earlier attempts with BeOS on the same machine, the overall feeling is not so positive about their performance under BeOS. Zeta still needs either a better/faster port of Firebird or to finish up their Safari/WebCore port.
If you don’t count my buggy network driver I mention below, YellowTAB Zeta is rock solid. I run it for a few days now with no problems at all. The system just works fast and reliably.
The Bad Stuff
One of the things I did not like in this version of Zeta is that it is using pWarp’s instant-on changing of virtual screens. Each time I put my mouse fast over the Deskbar to do something, I end up on a different workspace. I could not find the pWarpConfig applet on the preferences (it should have being there if YTAB is planning to use pWarp by default in its desktop). I had to go to BeBits, find out that the link for the app was dead, go over to BeZip.de and download it, unpack it, run the configuration app and tell it to stop this very annoying behavior. Only hours later I found that the config applet was placed somewhere the application directory, among hundreds of other apps. The hot corner workspace switch is a nice behavior if a) you are a long-time unix user who can’t live without this ‘feature’ b) if the Deskbar were not in the same “hot” corner as the warping capability. Zeta needs to take care of this immediately in my opinion and not enable this behavior by default. Or if they do, to place the applet in the preference menu. Update: Now YellowTAB tells me that they don’t know how this feature ended up on my default desktop! The pWarp input add-on was pre-installed you see. Update 2: YellowTAB now informed me that they removed the pWarp software from the default Zeta installation.
I still have problems with the RTL8139 driver, as it would randomly fall from 0.200 msec to 7000 msec pinging my FreeBSD gateway, 5 metres away. It feels like I am pinging the moon. Opening the (still buggy) brand new Network panel (BONE’s replacement?) and tell it “Apply Changes” it will fix the problem for about 5 seconds and then the RTL driver would go berserk again. Additionally, Zeta can’t figure out my broadcast address, at least this is what “ifconfig” tells me (0.0.0.0 instead of 10.255.255.255). YellowTAB is currently working on fixing the problem and I must say that I found YellowTAB forthcoming and willing to fix any such problems I found in their software during my evaluation.
Other problems I found are with the Tracker. The redraws are not consistent so I get half-drawn icons, while the status bar of any tracker window is not polished, e.g. it says “10items” instead of “10 items” (yes, I am a nitpicker). Also, the “Show Disks Icon” is broken on Tracker, it just displays a white 32×32 rectangle. Plus, I have to kill Tracker each time I reboot or shut down the machine, because Tracker would refuse to unload.
The weirdest decision to date I saw on Zeta, though, was the inclusion of all available decors (window managers) made available via the… Deskbar. So, you click the main menu of the OS and you get some helpful options, but I don’t see the Decor drop down menu fitting in there. This should be a preference panel, maybe the same as the Colors pref panel and the scrollbar one, but it has no place in the root menu of the OS. And speaking of the preferences, the whole thing needs reworking, it is not 1999 anymore (Be was working on a new preferences system 3 years ago but work was stalled).
Also, I fail to see the point of 11 different calculators included with Zeta, be it the Zeta-Deluxe version or not.
Conclusion
Zeta still requires more polishing and less annoying “features”. Luckily, it would not be difficult for existing BeOS users to customize a Zeta system to their liking, but new users might lose themselves with the confusing warping capability. There are still bugs in the system itself (Dano was work in progress and Zeta is based on Dano code as we found out by comparing system libraries and not just the kernel), but my main concern is the –seeming– non-ability of YellowTAB to bug fix its own system, as it seems they don’t have access to PalmSource’s source code. How do you support a product when its distributors seem to only have binaries? Furthermore, how do you evolve and innovate without having access to the guts of your own product? Yes, I am spoiled by Be,Inc.: I need to see some form of innovation from the OSes I use. So far, Zeta has not innovated. It has patched, it has added some craft (some very useful, some not), it has updated drivers and some high-level parts (this is its strong point as a product), but it has not innovated. Zeta has nothing that other consumer OSes don’t have (except its legendary UI responsiveness and good usability, all inherited by Be’s BeOS), and other OSes have pretty much caught up over the years.
Zeta seems to me more of a distribution of BeOS, based on the Dano codebase, plus additional drivers and applications. This is not particularly a bad thing, it is actually a good thing overall. But it is not the hope for BeOS’ revival. No, and I’m afraid that I do not think that OpenBeOS will be able to save the day either. Maybe there will never be such a revival without PalmSource’s interest in cultivating its own IP.
Overall, this version was a positive upgrade over Beta 1 so I would suggest OS enthusiasts take a look at Zeta, especially UI speed lovers. Ex-BeOS users should definitely consider buying it (because this is effectively BeOS 6’s code plus some of YellowTAB’s craft in it), while other users who want support for very exotic hardware (e.g. Bluetooth, good wireless etc) might be better with their current OSes. Read my Zeta buying guide for more information on your purchasing decisions.
Chill out…you seem to be getting mental over the install options. Most people like options, don’t let your personal preference get you so riled up – if you don’t like the selective option, take note of it and leave it at that.
The problem exists because YellowTab replaced the driver written by Be with my driver coded for the OpenBeOS project. I have notified them in a certain bug database about the fact that it didn’t (and still doesn’t) work properly. You’ll be best reverting to BeOS R5 drivers (I give the same advice to YellowTab). Alternatively, if you have found my mistake (and corrected it), please share the improvements (the same request to yellowtab). It would have been an intelligent move of Yellowtab if they would have asked me for the status of the driver.
Of course I do go mental. They replaced a perfectly working good installer with craft. Instead of adding where the previous installer really lacked (partition creation), they “fixed” something that didn’t need fixing.
And it is not just a personal preference, it is the way of the BeOS.
I have asked this a number of times on the yT forums but not gotten an answer…
Does anyone know if Zeta supports WEP? The leaked Bone drivers, though working great with my NIC, don’t support WEP 🙁
Adam
I think this is really a personal opinion. I for a fact like the options…
I’ve read a few reviews already and I still haven’t seen anything that justifies my spending that much money on Zeta. It seems to me that you’re basically paying $100 for Bone, some new window decors, ZEdit and some unimportant miscellaneous features.
The things that were wrong with BeOS in 1999 are still wrong in Zeta today. Most of the improvements worth mentioning (like drivers and apps) are easily available on BeBits. I don’t care that’s it’s based on R6 (it’s just a number to me). What I want to know is what does the R6 code mean in terms of benefits to the users and developers?
I think it is a personal preference.
What BeOS did couple of years ago, doesn’t necessary mean it was good. I haven’t seen the installer but I like to modify my installation of OS X, Linux, so I would also like to have the option in Zeta.
I hope they can figure out the Source Code situation.
Just my 2 cents.
>I for a fact like the options…
Advanced and Linux users do like options. But the crowd that Zeta and BeOS is after, do not. Even Gnome is going to the right direction (along wiht Apple and MS): Less is more. Zeta should get out of the early-Linux distro syndrome they got into. They need a *usability engineer*.
>What BeOS did couple of years ago, doesn’t necessary mean it was good
I can assure you, it was. This is what people loved about BeOS: its simplicity. Giving useless choices to your users, you put them in a situation where they have to CHOOSE something. This is _always_ a counter experience for the user, because people don’t want to “think too much”. It’s that someone who needs to perform a calculation doesn’t want to have to have to think about how to evaluate and decide upon a calculator program. It’s a tangential task to the real, useful work he/she wants to do……the calculation itself.
Apply this to the usability and you will see that simplicity is the key.
> (like drivers and apps) are easily available on BeBits
Some of the drivers on Zeta CAN NOT be found on BeBits. USB-2, wireless, better SCSI for example. These drivers are either new or they were part of Dano/R6 and they are not elsewhere available. So, if you want better hardware support, Zeta CAN be the answer for many people.
I always like to modify my installation and always have done. Except when it came to BeOS – it’s the only OS where you hit install and don’t get a load of pap that you don’t want. I just wish my R5 pro cd would work on my machine now
Unfortunately my hardware has just got a bit too recent – even the BeOS Max CD won’t boot up – it just restarts my machine
Ah well, I’m gonna get Zeta just so I can use BeOS again, I don’t really care if it’s been improved or not – the only improvement it ever needed was drivers.
I have seen lots of comments on this site about font rendering, and I have to say that I can never seem to tell a difference on the screenshots. What is it exactly I’m supposed to be looking for? Is it just the font defaults that you’re talking about? Are there screenshot compairsons somewhere that I could look at that highlight font rendering differences?
Thanks guys.
Okay,
When I first looked at yT and Zeta I thought they were just a bunch of newbies to the BeOS scene (as shown by the looks of the OS, the preparation of the applications/Installer, etc.), but now when I see they’ve included pWarp without pWarpConfig, and not even having the decency to _ASK_ if they could include the app in the first place, if they’re using it as default!
I’m really mad with yT, and I’m really courious on how they are expecting to stay alive as a bussiness. They should definitely not be treating their long-time users/developers (well, since Jan ’99 at least) this way.
Now I need to do something else before I completely boil over.
I’m with Eugenia about the installer. Regardless of OS (but especially with BeOS), if the low end of the installation is 2 gigs, and the high end is 3 gigs, somebody please tell me why it is worth it to bug the user about that extra 1 gig.
Am I the only person who thinks the gui looks terrible? I don’t know if that is the default theme, or if it was changed after installation, but I hate it to absolute death. Am I alone here?
I must say I don’t like the whole corner things either – there’s something about it that doesn’t look right.
Also I hate to see the Zeta icon on the menu, as much as I hate the BeOS Max icon there – i just want to see BeOS for that extra reassurance
Personally, I like to have install options. Why make an OS install any bigger than it needs to be? Regardless of how big my hard drive is, if I can shave 500MB from the default install, I’ll certainly do it.
What does 1.0 RC-1pre+ exactly mean?
…sounds fine. You said the potential user can either do some sort of “install all” option, or pick and choose. You ask why anyone would want to not just install all, and berate them for offering the pick and choose method. So if it bugs the potential user, wouldn’t they use pick “install all” and sit back for 15 to 20 minutes while the everything is dropped onto the hard disk?
Or, to put it another way… this is a non-issue, your review bares this out. Move along, nothing to see here.
p.s. why are you using such a crappy network card? They need a good rt-8139 driver, no doubt, and including one from OpenBeOS and not using the existing one doesn’t really make sense, but…. eePro, 3c905, etc might be a better deal, right?
[quote]I must say I don’t like the whole corner things either – there’s something about it that doesn’t look right. [/quote]
There are som serious flaws in the design If you strip it down, but the sma mistakes can be find in other os-ses. For starters the tracker is located on the right-side of the screen, after the first stage you get folders with an arrow pointing right and the second stage appairs to be left. I find these things very irritating.
>why are you using such a crappy network card?
I am sorry, but this sentiment is laughable. The RTL8139 card is just fine, thank you. IT works perfectly and even better than I need it to, with my Win2k3 and Slackware on the same machine.
Besides, I am out of PCI slots (Firewire and a two-leveled sound card). The NIC is onboard and came with the machine.
>What does 1.0 RC-1pre+ exactly mean?
It means that YellowTAB has not pressed the CDs for 1.0-RC1 for its customers yet. They still fix bugs. At least this is what I figured.
Does it support DVD Burning? I see that they are shipping it on a DVD but I just want to know for sure if we’ll be able to burn data to a DVD with it.
Ahem. I’m using a RealTek 8139 myself actually. My two 3c905’s are in my FreeBSD gateway, and all of them work equally well
I didn’t see such a program included. My Zeta came on a CD btw, not on a DVD. It had a DVD *case* but it was a CD.
Eugenia – I’m very excited to see this review and comparing it to the beta 5 review it seems to me that yellowTAB has done at least something good in your eyes to make your opinion about Zeta become a bit more positive (though I think there’s a sharp contrast between “Zeta is rock solid” and “I don’t think Zeta will save the day”).
Since I’m involved with yellowTAB myself I think it’s safe for me to say that I agree with you on basically all parts, except for the way we made the Installer (but yes, the screenshots are bad). Your other comments are objective and well-funded. A decent browser is still an issue, and yes the preferences are not yet what they are supposed to be.
Personally I do also differ from your opinion regarding the potential of Zeta. I have permanently abandoned the Windows platform about 5 months ago and am perfectly getting by on Zeta alone, with the exception of not having Flash so I cannot visit the few Flash-based websites out there that I would like to visit from time to time. I do not feel to be missing out on much else (I’m not as such a gamer, and the only games I really care about are DOS-games).
Soon (tomorrow, perhaps) I will publish a peek (including photos) into yellowTAB’s main office in Mannheim, Germany, on my LiveJournal.
thanks again Eugenia. Concise and to the point.
Just curious though about the installer. I’d say the Home Edition would (or at least should) offer less choices whereas the Deluxe Edition is probably more aimed at enthusiasts or “geeks” as the Americans say.
while i’m here, i sent you some links via “submit news” to the Mandrake site re:9.2 pre-orders are being accepted.Not sure if you got it or not.
keep up the good work
cheers
peter
I find absolutely no reason in this day and age to bother your users with selective installation a-la Linux, when the difference in the install size is +1/-1 GB. with today’s hard drives, 1 GB is nothing.
yT should choose one and make it the default, so the user can just keep clicking “next” until the file copying starts or a something appears that the user must take care of (like setting the time zone or locale). If the user wants to choose what to install, he or she should be able to. The difference isn’t just 1 GB, it’s 1 GB plus the time it takes to copy those files.
On the subject of the installer, it wasn’t mentioned in the article, but does the installer ask for everything up front and wait until the very end to copy files (like ELX Linux, for example), or is it more like Windows where it asks for a few things, copies files, reboots, asks for a few more things, etc. before it’s done?
Also, the not-quite-perfect font rendering was mentioned again in this review, and again a lossy JPEG image was provided, which does little to justify the statement. So I would suggest to OSNews to use the PNG format for screenshots from now on. (JPEG is fine for ordinary photographs.)
You don’t need PNGs to see the rendering engine. All you have to do is install BeOS, install the Arial or Verdana fonts which are the industry’s standards web fonts and see that they don’t render at all as they do on Linux, OSX or Windows. The rendering engine has trouble drawing the correct shapes for fonts, not any problems with the actual rendering quality (I mean AA and such)
>it wasn’t mentioned in the article, but does the installer ask for everything up front
Yes.
Coudn’t have been that good otherwise BEOS would still be around and don’t tell me microsoft etc.. . They did have a fair chance like every other company. (Redhat, Suse, etc..) but couldn’t do it. I said it in an earlier post. Beos was great 2 years ago, but it needs quite a bit of work to come even close to Windows, OS X and even Linux.
However, I can’t get my mother and uncle (both living in Germany) switching over to MAC OS X so they won’t switch to BEOS any time soon. So that means for the next 2-3 years maybe even longer the “crowd” is US. The geeky guys sitting in front of the computer 24/7 and trying new things.
Despite the fact, I hear people saying Linux is to bloated; they can’t customize Windows Xp or even uninstall components. The other majority of people (like my mom) doesn’t care about it. They just want to get the digital camera, printer and MS word to work.
So all in all it is a personal preference. You don’t like, because maybe you are used to it from the original BEOS and or because you were so involved with it. Other people might like it. Like us …the geeky guys.
i think too the original beos installer is great (if used like it is in max v3). but a few description-texts would be cool too because a normal user doesn’t know what a program like “BeServed” or “Refraction” does.
i’d add simplicity to zeta if i could…
Thanks for another good, critical analysis. I’m in 100% agreement with you about everything, except I personally would like to leave OUT 99% of the content that Zeta will ship with. I have no need for three calculators, four text editors, yT’s “productivity software,” etc. So I want customization only to defend myself against unwanted JUNK, just like I wish I could do when I install Windows or MacOS. Zeta is offering a choice and that’s better than not having a choice. However, it would be nice if the choice was offered via an “advanced” panel that is revealed if the user WANTS to pick and choose to protect people who don’t want to think about it.
3GB of hard drive space for a BeOS installation is grotesque.
And yes, yT needs a usability specialist. BIG TIME. But, what can you do but tell them this again and again and again and again and again… And again… and… It’s not just usability, either. It’s readability. But hey, they’ve been told about this too, over and over and over and over and….
> Developers will find gcc 2.9-pre installed and ready
Eugenia,
Is gcc 3.x not included?
When I did a “gcc -v” it told me that it is 2.9
Well, if its true that the developers dont have access to all the sources, then they will have trouble upgrading the compiler, as they can’t break compatability with the kernel. 😉
…of their mascot that is in your screenshot?
Maybe they can name their web browser(Webcore port) after that character.
Or does their browser already have a name?
>…of their mascot that is in your screenshot?
Spliney
I think it’s unfair to criticize
a) the installer to give the OPTION to choose out what you want to install and what not
b) that there is too many software
so perhaps you would have liked to choose out which of the calculators you want to install? yo don’t! It’s just about 1 Gig, so what the hell…
You see the point?
What solution on that issue? Include far less software. That’s not a good idea as this OS lives from the software that can be packed within it. Nobody wants to spend time searching software for BeOS/Zeta on some websites, install it on their own etc.. as you yourself pointed out: ease of use.
picking out what you want to install or not is much more easy and much less time consuming than searching the web for software or complaining about that bunch of calculators.
why does zeta need 15 seconds on your modern machine while beos max 3 needs 5 seconds on my old cel 533 based box?
Can someone explain that one? I mean, what does it mean and why is it the mascot?
Here, again, is a place where yT should have consulted a professional in the area of image, PR and naming.
> why does zeta need 15 seconds on your modern machine while beos max 3 needs 5 seconds on my old cel 533 based box?
BeOS does not boot faster than 9-10 seconds. Better time it a bit better.
As for Zeta, it is based on Dano, it has more drivers that need scanning etc. Additionally, there is a problem with the ATA-133 driver they include (the same found on bebits) with my IDE chipset. Both BeOS 5/Max and Zeta has a ~4 second stalling when it boots because of that new IDE driver.
To make that clear, he “normal” ATA-33 driver that come with the BeOS 5 doesn’t have that problem, only the new IDE driver does (not very well tested it seems on VIA chipsets).
I really hate the new rounded look, bur really liked to old BeOS R5 widget (and also decoration) look – can you still change it back or only the decors?
BTW: You should have mentioned that the tiny close/maximize buttons are bad for usability – no matter if the look good or bad for you.
Nice objective review (thats why we love visiting OSNews). Its good to see Bernd listening to Eugenia, she’s an excellent usability expert. Not bad for RC1, I’m pretty sure that yT will address as many issues as it can before R1 is ready.
I too dont like choices (aka Linux installers). Install a default app, but have an optional directory with your BeBits archieve. Infact, the installer only needs 2 options – basic and developer editions. All other apps can live in an optional directory, just supply a HTML based interface with descriptions and screenshots so that begineers can tell the diference between AbiWord and Refraction. See, no need to make a seperate Installer app at all. This is the BeOS way.
Personally, I dont agree with Eugenia’s OBOS comments, but hey, everyone is entitled to an opinion. Hopefully OBOS results will make Eugenia change her mind.
Anyway, cant wait for my version of Zeta to arrive…
>Is the old BeOS 5 widget look still included?
No. The Widgets are hard coded, themes can’t change it.
>You should have mentioned that the tiny close/maximize buttons are bad for usability
They ARE bad for usability, but the default theme now on Zeta is the classic BeOS window manager, not the one in the screenshot.
Yeah, there’s a stall on the SCSI driver for me on my system with R5. I use Adaptec 2940U2W. Stalls at the drives icon on the boot screen. If I boot from an IDE drive there’s no pause there. So my boot time, while still better than XP (though XP is a vast improvement over W2K and 9x) is slower than it should be. It’s negligable and I don’t mind it. What I do mind is when it freezes at this step (once in 20+ boots it seems).
The stall on SCSI is normal. The spec says that there should be a 15 second initialization of the SCSI bus. FreeBSD does it this way as well. The IDEs do not require this.
I guess my idea of having the mascots name as the name of the web browser won’t work.
Spliney would be a terrible name for a web browser. Maybe they should change the mascots name.
I just love the BeOS installer. It has had more value to me than the rest of the BeOS. It was there when fdisk would not destroy a reiser file sytem.
I have given up on partiton magic. the 4 partitons created within the BeOS installer are rock solid, letting me share the drive with XP, BeOS, QNX and Mandrake and make OS changes with ease once those 4 partitons are created.
And need I mention Limbo.
My vote is for a simple installer installing a base system with 1 of every important application MOMS/POPS use. I can do my revisions later.
A new improved installer will include a partitioner that allows resizing and moving without destroying. Can Limbo be improved upon, please, as suggested in the Bible.
Eugenia makes these assumptions
1) yellowtab do not have access to the kernel
2) #1 is based on a build date of 9/02 from a test screen
if we believe these then i really want to know why palm (the only other entity with access to the kernel) was working on the kernel in late 2002.
You see if palm was working on that kernel then
1) this is not a dead os. it is being developed in part by palm in part by yellowtab
2) it is not necessarily the experimental dano that was leaked. It could be a much later version.
3) it opens up all kind of questions about the future of beos through palm
Now, you are making assumptions. First, Palm does not work on BeOS, put that in your skull. Second, the kernel is the same as in Dano of Nov 15 2001. YellowTAB has just MODIFIED its date with a hex editor. Doing a file compare of the two kernels, reveals that the 22 Sept 2002 kernel is the exact same as the Dano Nov 15 2001 one, only some text strings and the Resources are different, the whole rest of the kernel (600+ KB) is the same. So yeah, that’s enough for me to “assume” that YTAB doesn’t have the sources, OR if they do have them, they can’t use them or they don’t know how to use them.
Besides, what is this thing with the kernel? Other parts of the system and libraries are also the same as in Dano, not just the kernel.
Where did the rumor start that yT had bought a license for the BeOS source? I remember reading that a while back and was rather shocked when I read recently that it appears they don’t have the source at all. What has yT said on the issue?
You forget so quickly
from 10/4/03
” Attention everyone
By Eugenia (IP: —.client.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-10-04 02:35:22
Check the date of the kernel build: Sep 27 2002
http://zetanews.com/review/zetarc1-3.jpg
This means three things:
1. YellowTAB does not have access to all sources, which is bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
2. YellowTAB engineers have no clue about kernel development, which is also bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
3. There is a bug with the dates in the OS, and so might be 2003 instead of the displayed 2002.
I can’t think of any other reason why this kernel has not being recompiled for over a year now. The kernel was one of the most actively developed modules in Be, they had almost daily builds (and trust me, the Be kernel needs a lot of fixes and engineering still)! IMO, YellowTAB should come forward and explain this, because this is SERIOUS”
And then
RE: Attention everyone
By Eugenia (IP: —.client.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-10-04 02:52:31
>it wasn’t built be Be, Inc. right?
Wrong, it could very well be. For more than one year after PalmSource acquired the Be IP, Be engineers kept working on their FREE time on BeOS/Dano codebase (as they did work on their FREE time during the BeIA days even before Palm acquired them). I am even aware that there is a later build than Sep 27 2002, from ex-Be engineers in their FREE time.
do make up your mind eugenia:
which of your posts, which contradict one another, is it.
by the way i won’t get it in my skull that palm is not developing the technology that they purchased from be because i think that is ridiculous. no one on gods earth is stupid enough to rewrite an entire os in just two years and test it while working on emulation for another os (palm os 5) and improving that os, especially when microsoft is starting to kick their rear and they have a good structure to start with (beia/beos). No one could be that stupid. No i don’t think it is beos. I think it is a lot of beos though and a lot BS too.
Palm cares about the technology that made up BeOS and the knowledge that created it. That’s all they care about FOR SURE.
Eugenia’s comments about Be engineers working on the Be sources long after stopping development of BeOS officially does not contradict that this appears to be Dano and not whatever the engineers were working on in their spare time. Who said that yT had anything newer than what Dano was? Bernd. Where’s the proof?
Frankly, without someone at yellowTAB giving a direct and honest answer or Palm telling us what is what, all we have to go on is logic and reasoning. If there is essentially zero difference between the Zeta kernel and the Dano kernel, short of some text values… guess what? They’re the same kernel.
If Bernd cared at all about telling the BeOS community the truth about all these things, he wouldn’t keep evading and ignoring the questions.
WHERE is the contradiction?? Cause I don’t see it!
The clues that the kernel is the same as Danos came to my attention only 2 days ago.
Sorry I am just correcting this.
I saw craft written everywhere. If you mean that they have made things like the installer messy because of extra junk that isn’t needed, then the word you use is cruft.
So did you mean craft
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=craft
or cruft
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cruft
Just type the following (or equivelant):
fc /b kernel_dano kenel_zeta
This will resolve all issues regarding the kernel.
fc – file comparison
/b – binary flag
(or use equivelant, depending on OS used)
One of the things that caught my attention was the lack of a firewall, has this been solved? Just a quick thought about this, but would you be able to use Snort? I’ts written with BONE in mind but I’m wondering if anyone has actually tested this. OK its not a perfect example but it does seem to address the security issue in part at least, though I don’t honestly know how good Snort (or the other firewall type program available for BONE whose name I can’t remember) actually are… Still, its worth considering perhaps?
SNORT is NOT a firewall. Its an Intrusion Detection System. All it does is detect attacks, its can’t stop them.
“I find absolutely no reason in this day and age to bother your users with selective installation a-la Linux, when the difference in the install size is +1/-1 GB. with today’s hard drives, 1 GB is nothing.”
No wonder Eugenia’s so forgiving of Microsoft with an attitude like that.. I was using a 10 gig drive up until just a few weeks ago that hosted multiple OS’s and I wouldn’t waste 100 meg yet alone 1 gig. It was just one of those things way down the list of things I needed and I can imagine there being a whole lot of people out there worse off than me financially.
That aside a lot of people want their OS lean and efficient no matter the cost of hardware these days, it’s just good practice with the benefit of such things as PDA’s not requiring cut down versions to run.
yep, Realtek make crap network cards alright.
I’ve never had a problem with a 3Com. And 3Com cards work in every single OS I’ve tried. They also talk to each other faster than standard network cards.
Is there a “minimal” install option ?
So, you can just get the OS on your drive and decide if you want to install something later ?
But if i am to buy it I want to know this.
Is their office sutie as good as StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice 1.1? I need a very good office suite.
Does it play wav, mp3, mpg, avi, mov, wma etc.?
Does it have good games like Linux or Windows? Is there a UT2k3 or everwitner Nights for it?
It its hardware support better or equal to most linux distributions such as SuSE 9? (any chance on a review of SuSE 9?) Will it support by 3 GHZ athlon and radeon 9800?
Zeta sounds cool, but 100 euros is a lot when many of the applications are available for Linux at a lower price, and when it is so new to the market that I can’t really say something like, this must be good, after all it was used on 14,000 government computers by Munich, it is endorsed by IBM, HP and other big name companies and hey IDC predicts it will quadruple it’s market share by 2005.
you can actually make Snort drop connections if certain rules are met. Unfortunately i wasn’t able to get this to work on BeOS BONE. If you try and configure it to use it, Snort will crash. I decided not to worry about getting that feature to work when i released to http://www.bebits.com.
So it can actually do *some* things which firewalls do but as the other guy said, it is not a firewall and most people use it to detect and report intrusion attempts. Read up on the pre-processor stuff over at http://www.snort.org for more info.
I have it logging to a PostgreSQL database and also wrote a Sybase database output plugin for the 1.x release.
I have not been able to get 2.x to compile on BeOS BONE but i havent really spent much time on it as my servers are now all Mandrake Linux and i use a firewall. My “workstation” is multiboot:
BeOS BONE/Mandrake 9.1/Windows 2000/BeOS PE and i mainly use BeOS BONE.
cheers
peter
It doesn’t disturb anyone: if you want full install, just chose full install, doh! No biggy. Why deprive those who have just a small partition, from instaling Zeta there?
I, for instance, still use didsks that are smaller than 1G. And surely have partitions that are smaller than 1G. I think this option is good to keep, expecially because it doesn’t harm anyone – you can easily chose to install everything. Compare this to Debian, which FORCED you to select each piece of software, one by one!
I completely agree with Eugenia that smart defaults is MUCH better than a sea of config options.
So, apparently, Zeta has excellent hardware support. I am guessing that this will be a selling point. Or at least, it will force the “spoiled brats” to find another excuse not to buy it.
I have not followed the yT story closely but consider the following possibility (if only to tease the optimistic).
Binaries based on new code, when distributed bears new liabilities. There are royalties, copyright licensing issues, and patent licensing issues.
Royalties are often calculated on a per-copy basis. For that reason, a company of limited resources might not wish to distribute royalty bearing binaries for external beta testing.
Furthermore, certain licensing agreements may not be complete and might not gain final approval until the golden master stage. Some technology licensors might not be interested until the are reasonably assured the product will show off their technology in a good light and a significant volume of the product is likely to be sold. Otherwise, it is a waste of their time, and erodes the marketing value of the technology if too many licensees exist.
Also, yT may be concentrating on development and have not got around to obtaining all the necessary licenses. The case may be they might hold off until they are certain a technology will be in the current release. Furthermore, until they are near completion they might not know what their budget is for licensing incrementally better but non-critical technologies.
Perhaps even, Palm wants to ensure there is one and only one licensee of the BeOS source, and that licensee is the best choice. Protecting the licensee from competition may be the most effective way of milking the intellectual property.
Finally, consider yT does not have access to the source but Zeta is sucessful nonetheless. With a revenue stream, yT gains more respect and is in a better position to convince Palm that they can cover ongoing licensing fees with future revenue.
I’ve seen Bernd comment on this website, and others working at YT.
It seems to me, that they are listening to Eugenia, fixing bugs and accommodating the requests of the reviewers.
Given that, it would only seem common sense to me that someone at YT steps up to the plate and resolves the issue whether or not they do have access to the kernel.
By not doing so, it points to the obvious. They do not.
I would appreciate honesty from the company in this issue…
This website gets a lot of readers…
Anyways, I’m just confused about the whole issue surrounding the kernel sources.
Thank you for pointing that out. I am currently taking cleaner shots of the apps, so for the final release of Zeta there will be no blurry vision.
Chris K. (ChaOS)
[email protected]
Well I’d like to see someone install Zeta on a 1000+ nodes simultaneously, or provide patches at once on all these machines, better yet do it halfway across the world. Since this is OSNews and we’re comparing OS’s, I would just like to say that GUI installers are bad for OS’s where the above situation comes into play.
I recall in an earlier post you had mentioned that the Zeta
kernel was dated back to 2002?
Sean
The kernel is the same as in Dano, of Nov 2001. The date and resources at Zeta’s version has being edited to read 2002. Zeta’s kernel is 2 years old AFAIK.
I will write an article today WHY we are using such an installer instead of the BeOS one and WHY we are adding softwar instead of using the wrong PE way.
Maybe you will understand it THEN. Bernd
IMHO has the huge selection of Software nothing to do with Usability.
“Less is more” -> right, but IMHO in the field of Preferences for the system, _not_ the selection of Software.
Apple distribute an OS with some of their own coded apps, MS do the same, Zeta doesn’t. You name gnome: gnome is a part of some Distributions, and for them “Less is more” means AFAIK exactly the Preferences.
I hope, the installer have zwo options:
1. minimal Installation
2. default installation with a selection of the most needed apps.
if so, i see no usability issue for everyone. And: if you select a complete Installation with all apps you don’t must wonder about Software that was installed that you didn’t want (pWarp).
Poldi123
(excuse my english . . .)
The horror, the horror
You should shed light on this annoying kernel discussion as well!
“You should shed light on this annoying kernel discussion as well!”
I think we’ve already had all the answer we’re gonna get.
I agree that less is more (at least at install-time).
You want to get people running an OS ASAP. For those admins who want to install a bunch of software in record time we need to have a ghosting utility or something comparable. The OS needs to have a simple installer mechanism like Windows for managing installed applications and for searching the CDs for software to install.
Eugenia, are you planning on diving deeper into the OS for more installments in this review? I’m interested in knowing more about peripheral compatibility. Specifically printers, digital cameras, scanners, external memory devices (HDD, CDR, MemoryStick, you name it). In any case thank you for your review, be it a first in many or the whole thing.
Except an epson printer and a working-with-beos digital camera, I have none of the other hardware you mention, so I can’t test.
>> Except an epson printer and a working-with-beos digital camera, I have none of the other hardware you mention, so I can’t test.
Anything is helpful. Another item I just realized that I forgot to inquire about was stability. Can you run a couple video/audio players loop-playing, apache with another PC running a light-stress test (hitting a webpage once per minute) overnight and wake up to find it all going strong? This is a little difficult for me in BeOSMax on my modern hardware.
Thank you for your incredibly fast reply!
I could I guess, I might try it over the weekend.
Might be true, but…
I want to hear the truth from those who should know, which is either yT or Palmsource…
This is just to know whether we can count on some true development and enhancement in the future and despite from all business intentions this would serve a good reputation, especially for potential future users.
What the BeOS community needs least is another blown and forked historical version.
From a commercial version we can demand more (I know there’s usb, odbc and so on, but this won’t take us to the waterhole).
This thread is ridiculous. You’re discussing a review of a release candidate ‘deluxe’ edition, that admits itself to coming with an ‘excessive’ amount of software on yellowtab’s own online shopfront. That overhead itself justifies a contrived installer, and to say it includes the _full_developer_kit_ seems quite reasonable to me as it’s not directly for new users. Maybe 11 calculators is over the top though.
The price, at 100EUR probably is a bit much. That’s why people that don’t want the extras or developer tools will be able to just get a 40EUR one, once this _prerelease_programme_ has finished.
As for the kernel issues, initially this did concern me somewhat as well, but it occurs to me that as the obos project matures that kernel will become a viable option – it is BSD licensed for the very reason of promoting BeOS, and if yT can value-add like Red Hat/SuSE/etc do to Linux I can’t believe why people are going to complain such as they inevitably will. Meanwhile be happy Yellowtab have given anyone reason to mention BeOS’s name in two years.
1. Choice is good. I’d rather select what I want and need during the *installation*, than have to remove applications, shortcuts and services later on.
2. They should have kept the standard BeOS decor (the one with sliding tabs). The alternatives are all so fugly.
3. Are Mozilla keyboard shortcuts still broken? this is my main issue with Mozilla, not speed.
4. As for font rendering, how about comparing the results from different operating systems? a PNG with plain text should only weigh a few KBs. I’d love to see how Zeta’s rendering compare with OS X, WinXP and Freetype (especially with small and medium sized fonts).
If the Developer edition is too much software to stomach then why not try the Home edition?
Personally I want a base OS install as default with the options to then add software ontop of it. I believe the Home Edition will be closer to what I want than the Developer Edition.
Now for the kernel issue, we all know that this version of Zeta is tying the BeOS legacy over until OpenBeOs comes more to fruition. Why the wailing over the kernel, I don’t know, I would be happier with attention being paid to device drivers as I would like full hardware support and leave the kernel development to the gang working on OpenBeOS of which code will be integrated into future releases of Zeta down the track.
People saying that OS-X and WinXP and Linux provide the same user experience of the prospective Zeta and even BeOS 5.03, well piss off then and use them. To me they do not. The onlything these other platforms have going for them is application development and even then Linux for the desktop is questionable here. Personally, and I have used all said three, they do not come close. My current preference is Windows but it is only through application necessity I use it and not due to the wonder of Windows 2k/XP as an OS. For media purposes, which is what I use it for, it is still far fromn stella.
Bernd, would you be able to hold talks with Steinberg when you feel Zeta is up to it cause I see a great mariage of Zeta and Nuendo/Cubase SX and for me I would be in heaven. They had a version 1 beta of Nuendo developed for BeOS but put development on hold when Be Inc (the morons) announced their focus shift. With some communication and commitment I’m sure they would love to start up further development of their primary audio platform on Zeta especially with the fixed media kit.
Now there was also a company developing a DirectX translator for BeOS alla WineX, could we get them on track again as I would love to play Il2 Forgotton Battles on Zeta to. With Cubase SX and FB I would piss Windows off in a heart beat.
Anyway, there is hope in the computing world again but I am growing impatient. I know what the prospects are and I hope Zeta and OpenBeOS all the best cause I can’t see anything better on the horizon.
End of Rant (-:
IMHO has the huge selection of Software nothing to do with Usability.
“Less is more” -> right, but IMHO in the field of Preferences for the system, _not_ the selection of Software.
Apple distribute an OS with some of their own coded apps, MS do the same, Zeta doesn’t. You name gnome: gnome is a part of some Distributions, and for them “Less is more” means AFAIK exactly the Preferences.
I hope, the installer have zwo options:
1. minimal Installation
2. default installation with a selection of the most needed apps.
if so, i see no usability issue for everyone. And: if you select a complete Installation with all apps you don’t must wonder about Software that was installed that you didn’t want (pWarp).
Poldi123
(excuse my english . . .)
Yes what the installer is doing:
1) Booting from CD
2) New and small view opens and ask you for the langauge you wanne use needs 5 secends
3) Agreement Window pops up and you click agree (needs 2 secs)
4. The installer window opens with only 3 buttons and you can a) chose the Partition b) stop and c) Install
Thats all (needs 5 secs) And zeta will be installed with Best-Choice.
Or you
5)You click in the Installer to Advanced Mode and you can set with ONE click to “Full Installation” and it will install EVERYTHING or you can click to “Development” and it will only install the HomeEdition + !!! the Development tools
So all in all you would need only 2 minutes to start the complete installation!
I think this is really simple to do for beginners and EVEN profi users.
Yes, that sounds good and has nothing to to with something like the many many Preferences you can find in KDE or older Versions of Gnome.
Poldi123
When designing a user interface things to keep in mind aside from the less is more approach ( which i adhere to.) is minimal ui clutter and designing with the User in mind.
First of all I have not looked or reviewed this installer But some generic advice.
– Don’t compromise usability for Function
– Place the user in control and provide ProActive assistance (no not msft bob)
– Build on the users’ prior knowledge.
– Make objects and their controls visible and intuitive
– Make actions predictable and reversible
– Create a feeling of progress and achievement
– Make all objects available at all times
– Keep the user out of trouble (VERY IMPORTANT)
– Support alternate techniques of interaction.
– Allow the users to customize (less is more, advanced settings buttons is a good way to achieve this, not optimal but a good way)
Final tip:
Bring the objects to life through good visual design, this encompasses something you will very often see stressed by Eugenia, Typography is one and colours is another.
now, who do i send the invoice to?
Personally I would like the installer to install just the most basic apps. No questions about what to install. The only installer questions should be on locales and partition.
Then when Zeta is booted everyone should be encouraged to install more apps from the CD, after liking. If this interface is simple enough no-one will have problems with it.
This is the Be way and the right way IMO. This is also the way MS and I think also Apple settled with after millions of OS’es shipped. Consider it!
Ramble Alert….
RTL8139 saved my life the other day. I was reinstalling a XP machine as a 2000 server for office use. The onboard NIC failed to respont after installing 2000 and the Dell website (badly organized) had the wrong driver listed at the top of the NIC drivers list (because they, for some reason, don’t consider the onboard hardware to be more important that the additional options, or don’t at least catagorize things with that distinction.) So I merrily burnt a CD witht he driver, bang no dice. I thought, right I’ll just chuck that spare Davicom card in… fairly standard chipset.. no driver in W2K. At this point I was ready to chuck it in, but then I remembered the box I had brought in to work to sit under my desk as a file server. P200MMX, crappy, but had BeOS on it at one point, and had a RTL8139 card in it. Reluctantly I ripped the box open, installed the card in the W2K box.. rebooted, and got NIC and DHCP out of the box, so to speak. It was at this point I looked at the Dell site again and noticed that the 20+ drivers thaty had included, at the bottom and Intel gigabit network driver, which I merrily installed and got the onboard revitalized. Without the RTL8139 I would have been screwed. ‘K I might have gone back and re-checked the Dell site and found the driver, but it was just cool to have such a bog standard NIC at my disposal 😉
Those who got that ~70 MB zip with Dano and installed it,
after careful investigation could notice, that:
1)There is PE-“license” on desktop
2)No real player
3)No bikjet drivers
4)mp3 encoder was LAME based
5)Don’t recall about indeo video codec though.
So basically it was BeOS 5.1 PE (and PE was FREE for personal and non-commercial use).
In that sense, without access to sources, IT DON’T DIFFER from BeOS MAX, excluding difference in binary dates/versions.
And i think that Bernd’s answer about why they don’t have RealPlayer, is full hypocricy.
They just didn’t get right to it, as they got only rights to improve and distribute BeOS 5.1 PE (!!!)
It’s a case of ‘if it ain’t broke’ I’m afraid. The BeOS installer had the option to include and exclude packages, just not single apps. I;m sure it would have been simpler to just group the apps into catagories and install them all for each selected catagorie. I loved the simplicity of the original installer, which stood the test of time because it has changed little since PR2, the oldest BeOS I’ve ever seen/installed. Eugenia has a habbit of getting het up about things needlessly, but she is absolutely right on this point.
Another thing… the BeOS installer app will take any valid BeOS install and mirror it to another drive/partition. This is a *big* thing to loose. I’ll bet the yT one doesn’t do that.
mario, Zeta comes woth GoBeProductive 2.01. It’s getting pretty old, but has always worked well for me for ordinary use.
On another note, I do think Zeta will help OBOS in the long run. It cannot hurt to have Be bubbling on the surface as we go along.
I have installed the new Zeta CD twice now. I have no clue hoe Eugenia got to 2 a 3 Gb software, as mine only contains 1.2Gb for a full install (At least the installer says so).
I totally LOVE the installer. It asks you for the language, where you can choose from 20! Then it opens a screen very similar to the old BeOS one.
You have a popup to select your destination drive as we did with BeOS, and it has an Advanced button which you will have to press if you want another option than the yT default !
So why is this not friendly ?
The advanced tab has all software in catagories. Most items have a short description AND a small screenshot. And you you choose from a few predefined sets of software by a popup menu.
What is wrong with this ?
Personally I DO mind another Gb more or less. Why should my system that was always so clean on BeOS be filled with 80 games I do not play, 12 calculators I do not use or Basic while I only want to use C/C++ and assembly ?
I think it is a MUCH better installer than Windows has, but that is personal. I do agree on having the BEST choice as default though, but what is the BEST choice ?
For me it is the developer edition !
Im tired of reading posts asking Bernd about the “kernel” and “system” dates “issue”!!! and getting no answers from him, or useless ones (like the one year old son).
So please, Bernd, in the name of theh community, can you at least tell us that you cant talk about it? or that you will tell us later? or what is going to happen about this…
Cause this is just growing and growing and is making people angry and many buyers are running away.
Thank you very much.
I have to agree that I prefer the option of what/what not to install. I like to be able to decide whether or not I’m going to burn disk space or crap I’ll never use.
I do see your point, Eugenia, that not everyone wants to do this, and that “install everything” ends up installing a lot of redundant apps. It’s the same with Linux, too – I used to do that as well, because it’s only disk space & I like to try out apps.
I would suggest that they come up with a good, solid Default option, that installs the best of what they have to offer, but to provide the choice to select individual apps or simply install everything. Choice is good.
*******************************************************
As for Palm – I think everyone should know by now that Palm doesn’t want to sell BeOS. Palm doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the ‘BeOS community’, and why should they? Notice their “new technology” – multimedia-enabled Palms, to compete with WinCE. That’s what they wanted, and that’s what they paid for.
However, I do think that it’s within the realm of possibility that, if Zeta were to have reasonable success & establish a profitable userbase, then Palm could decide that it’s in their interest to license BeOS source code to Zeta. In the end, for a business it’s about the $$ – and if they saw significant $$ to be made by selling a license to Zeta then they’d be foolish not to.
In addition to the obvious question of whether or not Zeta has access to, and/or has provided us with an updated kernel, I also wonder whether Zeta will work on a modern P4 w/1gb of memory.
Also, will Zeta support the hyper threading of my new P4? Will it see it and utilize the CPU as a dual cpu, such as Windows and Linux will, or will it not run at all on it, or what?
How about SATA drives (much less those setup in a Raid configuration via the Canterwood chipsets)? Are these recognized, and/or accessible?
I know there’s an ATI driver on Bebits which supports dual monitors, but it (supppsedly) doesn’t support the 9600 card. Will Zeta, or has anyone used the Bebits driver succesfully w/a ATI 9600?
How about a full version of Personal Studio as part of the package? If not, are there any decent video editors included?
Finally, in a previous “preview” of Zeta here on OSnews, a screenshot showing T-Racks was shown. Is a full version of T-Racks part of the Zeta Deluxe distribution? That would be a nice incentive for me (Although I have to admit that the Windows version of T-Racks is freaking awsome).
The kernel issue is an important one for me, but the above issues are equally important. What’s the point of even having an updated kernel if it won’t run on my hardware in the 1st place? 8)=
+ yT will fix the 1GB ram issue in a later release or update (this has been said many times already
+ Eugina has said in her beta5a review than Zeta will support hyperthreading (but I don’t recall yT saying anything)
+ Check bebits, in the comments section of the Radeon Driver. Euan has posted a hacked driver than currently works with R300/R350 cards. It is not elegant, but more than enough for now.
Can’t we just forget about the installer? I plan to use the installer only once for 20 minutes, where I want to use the rest of the system for years. Shouldn’t this tell us what will be worth the effort and what not?
I’m definately of the opinion that there should only be two install options:
-Default
Sane selection of best-of-breed applications, e.g one mail application, one calculator, one office suite.
There should be duplication only in exceptional circumstances (possibly web-browsers).
-Custom
The user can choose exactly what goes on.
For zeta, it sounds like the default should be personal edition + dev tools.
The description on the zeta website (“an excessive amount of applications”) sounds absolutely ridiculus to me. Immature even… (says me!)
Anyway, I hope they get their potential usability issues sorted, and wish them good luck! If the PE is more streamlined, then it has piqued my interest.
I would have hated it if zeta installed a lot of apps I didn’t need without giving me the option to choose not to in the installer. I don’t want 11 calculators filling up my menus.