September 16, 2003 marked the dawn of a new era for SkyOS. After the UI design contest poll was closed and the SkyOS design team and lead developer cast their votes, a winner was chosen: a very forward-looking and professional design dubbed Wind UI. This is the critical moment in which the SkyOS developers have to make a choice: create an OS look and feel which generally mimics pre-existing popular operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS, or create a truly innovative interface and usability paradigm which pushes the envelope and offers exciting new ways of interacting with computers.
SkyOS: Don’t Miss the Chance to Innovate
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
So why does this OS matter? Sorry, I’m not trying to be a jerk; I really just don’t get why I would want to use this versus the plethora of other OS options? I mean, I understand what Windows and Linux have to offer, and I can see how BSD has carved out its own particular niche, but why this?
“This” is not an OS for the masses. Hobby OSes, as we have said a zillion times over here, are hobby OSes: they are personal quests into knowledge and research. They are not meant for widespread usage.
It is all about choices, what if your focus is on usability and not on speed. Or what if your focus is on speed and not reliability. What if you didn’t care if your OS ran elf binaries and you wanted to make up your own binary file format. What if… You can’t possibly believe that OS development has reached its pinnacle of human development, surely some other OS may have something to offer?
SkyOS is actually, unless I’m mistaken, the kernel used for the OpenBeOS project.
Heck, if the UI is anything like the mockup, I’d probably use it as my main OS, given it had decent applications.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect SkyOS and all, but the author makes it seem like if SkyOS is about to jump from HobbyOS to RealOS real soon. And even if it WOULD do that jump (which is not happening), they’d get bashed if they’d “innovate”, just like most X Window Managers get bashed when they make something that’s “unfamiliar” and then bashed again if they make something “too familiar”. There’s no winning, either way.
What kind of estimates are they looking at in regards to getting the new theme propagated throughout the OS? How many people are working on it, what underlying theming elements are complete, etc? This OS looks very fun, I can’t wait to give it a try. tia
You are mistaken, you’re thinking of “NewOS”.
I’ve never seen something that is ‘unfamiliar’ as far as X Window Managers went… and certainly nothing spectacular. The world of UI has been, unfortunately, pratically stalled since Win95.
For you OSX lovers out there, sure it is pretty, very pretty, but there is more to a UI than how pretty it is.
Richard is right: the OpenBeOS project is using its own forked version of the NewOS kernel by (ex-Be, Inc. employee) Travis Geiselbrecht, not the SkyOS kernel.
The fork was made with the blessings and support of Travis, who continues to offer assistance to OpenBeOS.
http://www.OpenBeOS.org
Aah, got the two confused.
“So why does this OS matter? Sorry, I’m not trying to be a jerk; I really just don’t get why I would want to use this versus the plethora of other OS options?”
Would we have Windows if someone said this when everyone was using DOS? Would we have Linux if people said this when only Windows was available?
If you are a user of Linux, I find your comment to be very hypocritical. I could very well still say the same thing about Linux. Why would I possibly need to use Linux? They only have 2% of the market, and Windows works a lot better out of the box, and has a lot more software support. Linux shouldn’t even be continued.
The reason that SkyOS is being made is the same reason that Linux is being made: to provide yet another alternative.
“So why does this OS matter?”
Why is there, on a web site DEDICATED to talk about all existing OS, there’s *always* someone to ask the same question over and over again : “duh ! what’s the point with this hobby Os? ” …
I mean, we’re not in a Walmart here. One would think that people coming at OSNews knows about hobby OS and what they are for : “personal quests into knowledge and research” (thanks Eugenia).
Jezz …
“For you OSX lovers out there, sure it is pretty, very pretty, but there is more to a UI than how pretty it is.”
Exactly, and you can even replicate the exact OSX desktop functionalities using some theme tools like ObjectDesktop (from Stardock.com).
At the end what differenciate desktops are only the widgets and refresh performance. The second is the most important as the first can be replicated on any platform.
I wonder if, in a near futur, someone will bring us a completely different interface philosophy …
Guys, sorry, this was not a troll and not meant to provoke anything. My “LinuxBuddy” handle is a bit loaded and probably pokes some of you the wrong way. For that, I apologize.
Okay, so I get that it’s a hobby OS, and I’m all for that. But nobody told me what distinguishes it beyond that. I mean, so why would I want to run it? What distinguishing characteristics does it have other than it isn’t Linux and it isn’t Windows? Put another way, what is the target user profile for this OS?
The summary of the responses so far is simply “‘cuz…”
I think we already answered very well. But here’s again : this is a *HOBBY* OS. Hence, if you LIKE hobby OS you have reason to play with. If you DON’T like hobby OS you don’t have a reason to play with.
Yes it is a hobby OS.
But the creator of this OS also wanted something simple and fast and something to play his MP3’s.
But really “hobby OS” says it all. This is one man programming effort (and hobby) with others helping with its design.
It’s his hobby, and he says if you would like to use it, your more than free to do so.
I don’t know what more to say, it reason for being is as simple as that.
If you are looking for features and architecture of this OS Vs others, Robert is trying to add as many modern features too it as he can.
See this page.
http://skyos.org/about.php
and this one,
http://skyos.org/developer/sky50.php
The first post wasn’t answered yet.
For example, what is SkyOS’s forte? Its focus? Is it hardware support? Multimedia? Networking? Being real-time? Stability? Looks? Compatability?
It is very possible that the designers simply want this to be just a normal complete OS, but I’m sure there is SOMETHING they are dreaming this OS of doing and doing it really really well. …besides just everything. What is it?
People still aren’t getting it. All this talk of “focus” and “direction” and “innovation”…that’s not relevant here. Let’s try to put this into context: The purpose of SkyOS is to see what one guy can do while playing around on his computer. Since when do you need “vision” or “forte” to hack around and see what you can do? This is one guy playing around. It will remain one guy playing around. Why should you care? You shouldn’t! This is not nearly as usable as Linux, Windows, or OSX, and probably never will be.
So why does it concern you? Well the mockup for the UI is sexy for one thing. Man, the closer the author can get to mimicking that the more likely I am to change my underwear.
Just remember, way back when – Linus’s OS was a hobby OS too..
Here’s the link:
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:sgOtgBmGQ4wJ:24.202.71.228:808…
(google cached version since I am not familair with this particular website)
“The first post wasn’t answered yet. For example, what is SkyOS’s forte? Its focus? Is it hardware support? Multimedia? Networking? Being real-time? Stability? Looks? Compatability? ”
omg … None of them ! This is an *H*O*B*B*Y*. It’s like my father when he built a car-alike in our backyard when I was young. Made of crap metal, almost-dead engine, etc.
Did he planned to offer a new revolutionnary car that will offer something more than the car build by Toyota resulting from a billion dollars of R&D ?
* He * didn’t * give * a * crap *
He had fun building it, learning few mechanic stuff in the process. And most of all, the joy of driving his home-made car in the sand-pit. Who get interested ? Uncles and friends that shared passion for his home-made mechanic projects, laughing around a beer.
That’s just it. SkyOS is a backyard builded car by a single guy. Period. Is that so hard to picture it ?
After reading all the posts, I’d have to side with LinuxBuddy on this one. Perhaps the way his original question was posed was not the best way, but I haven’t seen any real answers.
I think anybody who has read OSNews for more than two or three hours knows that SkyOS is a hobby OS, so why not answer a little deeper than that? What does it do well? Are there any great features in it? Can you access the code and see new and interesting ways to interoperate with hardware from a programming point of view? Is it fast? Just saying that it is Robert’s hobby OS doesn’t answer any questions about the OS itself. I think that is what LinuxBuddy was looking for.
“Just saying that it is Robert’s hobby OS doesn’t answer any questions about the OS itself.”
I don’t see anything than “hobby” to be responded. But here we go, if it can end it all … 🙂
“What does it do well?”
Nothing, beside booting and offering a very minimal desktop/os expenrience.
“ Are there any great features in it?”
No.
“Can you access the code and see new and interesting ways to interoperate with hardware from a programming point of view?”
No.
“Is it fast?”
No. Not faster than any OS of it’s size.
Actually all those questions were easily answered by “hobby OS”.
SkyOS is a hobby OS. Right now, its intent is not to beat any other OS. We are simply interested in building a nice OS that can provide an alternative. Why does our goal have to be to beat someone else? We’re hoping that we can make a nice OS that runs well and looks nice.
Right now, SkyOS is a free download. If you’d like to grab it, test it, and give feedback, we’d really appreciate it. If you’d just like to grab it and test it, that’s fine too. If you don’t want to download it at all because you don’t find any purpose in doing so, then once again, that is also fine with us. Our intent is to build a nice OS for the sake of building a nice OS on our own (Robert coding, the rest of us on the GUI team helping out with various graphics polishing).
There are lots of neat little things about SkyOS. Do they necessarily *beat* any other OS? Probably not. SkyOS has a really cool little theming thing so that users can change around the interface. There is a pretty nice SDK available for people to port or program new software for SkyOS.
The bottom line here, though, is that SkyOS is being built for the sake of being built. We aren’t trying to crush competition, or revolutionize the world. We are just having fun making something that we hope turns out well. If you would like to join in that by testing out the OS, that should be your motivation. If you do not wish to do so, then more power to you.
If that is too tough to understand, then God help you, you should not be using Linux. Get a Mac.
“Man, the closer the author can get to mimicking that the more likely I am to change my underwear.”
I don’t think the UI will look like that for at LEAST several months (if not a year or more). I really hope you change your underwear more often than that
Yeah I agree with andr3w, change your underwear
What is the purpose of changing your underwear, is their some advantage of you changing compared to someone else changing their underwear.
—–
Sorry just a little humour, not a personal attack
Several months? Maybe. A year? No. We have a time frame, and while I don’t want to tie us down to it (due to fluctuating schedules), I can guarantee you it is a lot closer to the former than the latter.
Well, I hate to be nitpicky, but i’ve read from a few sources saying that M$ created a system nearly identical to expose’ a few years ago, but didn’t implement it in XP. However because they demonstrated it Apple copied (yes, Apple copied Microsoft), that’s why M$ is being so hush hush about Aero.
Grow up!
That goes for the rest of the trolls in here!
On a site that i usually find to be frequented by predominently articulate people, i find this thread extremely disappointing to say the least.
What’s the point of rewording what numerous people have typed before you unless you have something interesting to add keep stumb!
Just remember everybody who reads this thread after you has to filter through all that dribble!
The first post was a reasonable question!
afterall…
Software engineering without focus, direction or planning? my tutor would turn in his grave.
I think i may understand Robert’s reasons for calling it a hobby OS & if he want’s it to be viewed that way, that’s his right, we should respect that.
The article host has been OSNews’d.
Mike I think you meant to post that here.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4832
How many sites have gotten osnews’d over the years?
At least there’s one now… 🙂
i think skyos is going to be a commercial os. anybody else thinks so?
Remember if your mind is too open, your brain could fall out
Hehe, i like that! Heard it on slashdot once. Im afraid it’ll happen to me cause my mind is more open than any body else i know… who like to astral travel?
I think what distinguishes SkyOS is the huge list of features it has in so little time, mostly programmed by just one person (as it’s closed source). The majority of hobby OSes die before being bootable.
Also, not all of them have SMP, cd-writer and DVD support, USB, networking, a GUI, True Type fonts, OpenGL and a bunch of drivers like SkyOS has, just to mention some of its features.
<<<…frankly, the prevailing Linux desktop environments are largely derivatives of Windows themselves.>>>
I am not sure exactly what is meant by this statement. X-windows has been around since 1984. Also, there aren’t many functional differences between Mac and Linux GUIs. Most GUIs simultaneously evolved into basically the same configuration out of necessity and common sense. Much of this progress is obvious and probably would have happened on its own, somewhere other than where it first appeared. And if the window manager/desktop is sufficiently theme-able, any default, aesthetic differences are inconsequential.
<<<A good example of this type of innovation is Expose’, Apple’s new window management function… The familiar (using windows to contain data views and widgets) is augmented by the original (dynamically shrinking and laying out windows so that all can be seen at once).>>>
I have not seen Expose’, but it sounds like a flashier version of the tiling function, which has been around since the dinosaurs. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 had this feature. One would go to the “window” menu and click on vertical or horizontal tiling, and the child windows would arrange themselves accordingly. Then one would merely click the appropriate window button to maximize the desired window. This feature also worked with the windows of application groups. By Windows 95, the tiling feature worked with multiple applications, by right-clicking the taskbar and then clicking the appropriate menu selection.
Speaking of the taskbar, it is probably faster and easier than tiling/Expose’, from a usability standpoint. A taskbar gives constant visual and functional access to all open applications. And, since the order on the taskbar is fairly consistent, there is no reconnoitering or confusion, as encountered with tiling/Expose’ after the applications are tiled. It seems that the dynamic taskbar/dock first appeared in Windows in 1985 (see http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline3.html )
By the way, I don’t use a taskbar anymore… I just have a dynamic pager.
<<<You rarely see this type of innovation in the mainstream open source world, and not very often in the Windows world either.>>>
This statement sounds sort of Mac-centric. Apple has certainly innovated a few functional/interesting GUI features: the trash-can; the “magnifying” dock, and now, perhaps, Expose’? (The menu bar was included in the Xerox Star two years before it appeared in Apple’s Lisa, and it is unclear whether the pull-down menu first appeared in Lisa or Visi On.)
In addition, Apple is not exactly the paragon of usability that it is commonly held up to be, and this misconception applies to the Apple hardware as well as to the GUI, consider: the round mouse; monitors that cannot tilt down; colored bubbles for window buttons instead of established, recognizable symbols; an applications “finder” that conceals open applications (which probably necessitated Expose’).
I am not sure about the claim against open-source GUI innovation… X-windows has had a lot of versions and window managers. Maybe the free-floating menu was introduced in open-source X-windows, before it appeared in NeXT. I created a theme for the Golem window manager which possesses an interesting distinction from a usability standpoint… the 3D window frame has a “perspective” that shifts, depending on whether the window is active or inactive. This arrangement slightly increases the speed at which the user spots the active window. Interestingly, the outline shape of the 3D window frame remains constant, regardless of the window’s active/inactive status, so it requires lighter coding than active and inactive windows with two different shapes. By the way, this theme was an entry in the SkyOS GUI contest.
In regards to Windows GUI innovations, there’s: the dynamic taskbar mentioned above; perhaps, the above mentioned tiling function; and it seems the color GUI was first introduced in GEM for DOS in 1984 (Commodore and Windows had it in 1985, Mac had it in 1987).
Apparently, the pager was first in QNX.
<<<As many usability experts well know, just because most people are familiar with a certain way of doing something doesn’t make it the best way of doing something. >>>
Yes, but, of course, usability experts generally realize that established, user conditioning is a crucial design consideration. For instance, it is commonly known that the Dvorak/ASK keyboard is easier to learn and about 10 percent faster than the Sholes/Qwerty keyboard, but how many keyboards are pre-configured with Dvorak/ASK layout?
I think that it is fantastic that the SkyOS GUI team might try something different that could advance the computer UI. However, I hope they keep the GUI theme-able, so that some can have more typical desktops while others can create their own experimental UIs.
the link from the news does not work here.
anyway, when SkyOS 5 will be available?
“This” is not an OS for the masses. Hobby OSes, as we have said a zillion times over here, are hobby OSes: they are personal quests into knowledge and research. They are not meant for widespread usage.
Just to expand on this. The author I assumed thought, “hmm, wouldn’t it be cool to create an operating system that does what I want it to do?”, and so decided to create something which he wants in an operating system.
The best anology is this. I bake a cake. Sure, I *COULD* buy one, but I decide to bake one at home. That doesn’t mean I am getting into the cake baking business, it just means that I prefer the cakes I make.
Same situation for an operating system.
I think Robert should take it as a compliment that people don’t get the “It’s just a Hobby-OS” thing.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
The reference to baking a cake, but not getting into the cake baking business is an incorrect analogy. SkyOS is becoming more than just a hobby OS and for those of you that are too lazy to analyze it and automatically labeling it a hobby OS should be ashamed of yourselves. It’s becoming a commercial OS, in one form or another, and to visit the site and click the buy now button reinforces that idea.
Even DOS started out as a hobby and look where that took the IT world. Just because it’s new and relatively unheard of doesn’t make it pointless to use other than for fun. It can and probably will be more than that, if it isn’t already.
“SkyOS is becoming more than just a hobby OS and for those of you that are too lazy to analyze it and automatically labeling it a hobby OS should be ashamed of yourselves. It’s becoming a commercial OS, in one form or another”
I disagree. The fact that he may one day become more than an hobby OS doesn’t make it less *now* an hobby OS. Nothing more, nothing less. The day there will be a real intention from the owners to compete on the market, then it will cense to be a hobby OS and it will become commercial. Until then, it’s definitely not lazy to qualify it as hobby. It’s just realistic.
In a military camp without name:
“Guys, today we all will change our underwear – Bill with Jack, Paul with Phil, Digger with… who wants to change with Digger? Come on guys – nobody?”
—-
Sorry for this offtopic joke but I couldn’t stop it.
—-
As for SkyOS – Robert go your way, you are doing great.
You guys still on the Hobby OS subject or talking about the originial topic, the UI?
I personally think SkyOS is smooth and the work gone into it is amazing. However, I still don’t see how the Wind UI prototype won. (I only got to vote in the 2nd round, but I voted for the one that came a distant second). The image shows a window (in OSX style), a pseudo-taskbar, and a desktop icon or two. Not very “forward- looking” if you ask me. It showed me nothing of how one may interact with the system, windows, or even desktop.
Someone want to point out to me the “forward-looking” aspects of that design?
“Account Temporarily Disabled
This account has been temporarily disabled. If you are the owner of this account and have questions about its status, please contact your provider’s technical support staff.
Thank you for your understanding”
Does anyone else also recieve this message when clicking the link? It might be just me…
I’m terribly sorry, but my site’s been temporarily “deactivated” by my crappy host. I don’t think it’s so much a bandwidth problem as it is a “server load” problem caused by all the PHP/mySQL processing going on. I apologize profusely for this downtime — I’m trying to sort it all with my host right now.
Thanks for being patient,
Jared
Guys, I just asked a simple question and all of a sudden we got all this.
To all the folks who keep responding with “It’s a hobby OS, don’t you get it?!?!?!” please tone it down. Just because it’s a hobby OS doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any redeeming features or isn’t distinctive in some way. In short, it may be a hobby OS for the author, but why should anybody else want to run it? The answer may be (just a suggestion, but nobody originally answered this way and just kept yelling “Hobby OS! Hobby OS!”) that there is nothing particularly distinctive about it but that it provides a way to view the guts of an OS and tinker. Again, just a suggestion, but at least be able to answer a simple question without getting hysterical.
In my mind, legitmate answers could have spanned the known universe:
– It’s faster than…
– It’s slower than…
– It’s written in Perl, just to see if we could do it…
– It’s got better multimedia performance…
– It’s the only OS we know with this color scheme…
From all the posts I have sifted through, “Hobby OS” appearently means “good for nothing other than the joy of the author.” If that’s true, fine, but just say that. Presumably by having OS News actually take up space and time posting progress about it, the implication is that this might be interesting to somebody else for some reason. If that’s not true, just say so. If there is a particular reason that the rest of us might care about the project, great, but please be able to articulate that without getting defensive.
As a really good example, somebody pointed out that Linux was a hobby OS once. That’s right. And when asked what Linux was all about, the Linux users that were interested in it were able to say, “It’s a Unix-like OS that runs on a 386 and is open-sourced so you can fiddle with the guts of it yourself.” At the time, that was pretty interesting to many people because Unix was closed source and ran on big, expensive workstations. What Linus and crew didn’t do was say, “It’s Linus’s own hobby OS, for pete-sake, sheesh, don’t you get it!?!?!”
“The summary of the responses so far is simply “‘cuz…” ”
That’s about it. It’s the Mt. Everest thing; because it’s there. It’s a great acheivement to be sure.
SkyOS: Don’t Miss the Chance to Innovate
Posted by Jared White on October 1, 2003 12:32 PM
September 16, 2003 marked the dawn of a new era for SkyOS, one of the most impressive of the x86-based operating systems that has arisen in the “hobbyiest” market for some time. As a personal experiment for the lead developer, SkyOS is most definitely a success; as a viable product for a much larger audience, it already boasts a solid feature set and possess immense potential for future innovation.
Which brings me to the point of this commentary. The SkyOS community recently participated in a very exciting contest whereby folks would submit their user interface mockups for the OS and then users could vote for their favorite UI. On September 16, after the poll was closed and the SkyOS design team and lead developer cast their votes, a winner was chosen: a very forward-looking and professional design dubbed Wind UI. Unfortunately, the Wind UI mockup is no longer available online at the present moment (update: it can now be viewed here), but trust me when I say that it really was one of the top designs in the contest. And there were a lot of great designs.
So now SkyOS has a new GUI, or rather I should say that the design team now has a base from which to design a new GUI. This is the critical moment in which the SkyOS developers have to make a choice: create an OS look and feel which generally mimics pre-existing popular operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS (I won’t say Linux because, frankly, the prevailing Linux desktop environments are largely derivatives of Windows themselves), or create a truly innovative interface and usability paradigm which pushes the envelope and offers exciting new ways of interacting with computers. The promise of Wind UI, at least judging from the mockup, was that it looks both familiar and unique. That is the course of action I wish the SkyOS team will take: make a desktop environment that, at first glance, seems familiar to previous OS users, yet offers features and methodologies never before seen in an OS. A good example of this type of innovation is Expos?, Apple’s new window management function for Mac OS X 10.3. At the press of a button or the flourish of the mouse, all the windows on the desktop shrink down to a smaller size and arrange themselves so that no two windows are overlapping, thereby making it very clear what windows are currently available and making it easy to chose which one to activate. The familiar (using windows to contain data views and widgets) is augmented by the original (dynamically shrinking and laying out windows so that all can be seen at once). You rarely see this type of innovation in the mainstream open source world, and not very often in the Windows world either.
As many usability experts well know, just because most people are familiar with a certain way of doing something doesn’t make it the best way of doing something. Yes, you really can build a better mousetrap ? and I firmly believe that you can design a better GUI as well. Because it is fairly new and without any commercial prospects at the present time (I say that with the utmost respect; I see that as a good thing), SkyOS has been given the unique opportunity to challenge the status quo. Without the immense pressure of making sure SkyOS “works” with anything else or like anything else, the developers and design team have been blessed with the chance to push the envelope, to try something new. The chance to discover easier and more efficient ways of accomplishing goals; to bend the rules, remove the ones that are no longer useful, and put better ones in their place. The chance to design something visually stunning yet sports a solid core of substance beneath the style. The chance to innovate, to build a new brand of computing unencumbered by legacy technologies and the design mistakes of the past. This drop of time in the sea of history is rarely encountered in any project, so it must not be rushed or wasted. This is the chance to slow down just a little bit, to evaluate where we are, and then tread the path of where we need to go. The chance to get it right ? or at least more so than were our processors able.
It’s an exciting moment for the SkyOS project, and I wish the developers and design team the best of luck in their endeavors. Please visit the SkyOS Web site to read up on the development status and also submit your feedback and ideas. You can add your comments to this topic below as well. Thank you.
omg … After all that, you still don’t want to understand, but at least I feel you’re close :
“From all the posts I have sifted through, “Hobby OS” appearently means “good for nothing other than the joy of the author.””
YES !!!! It’s nothing more than that ! And we are few people who enjoy this exploit from someone.
“If that’s true, fine, but just say that.”
OMG … we repeated it, like, a 1000 times or so ?
“Presumably by having OS News actually take up space and time posting progress about it, the implication is that this might be interesting to somebody else for some reason.”
Yes it’s interesting to the few people who likes hobby OS. Period. You *DEFINITELY* have no interest in hobby OS, so please just ignore it. I don’t care about Linux, so I don’t read most of it’s news.
“If that’s not true, just say so. If there is a particular reason that the rest of us might care about the project, great, but please be able to articulate that without getting defensive.”
Wow… again for the 1000th time : hobby OS. I just can’t believe this is that hard to get …
I’m with LinuxBuddy on this one, everyone who’s been yelling “It’s a hobby OS!!! So shut it!” are behaving like idiots. To me it was obvious he was just asking about its pecularities and features, yet loads of people had to get abusive and/or impolite. Learn to live folks.
“I’m with LinuxBuddy on this one, everyone who’s been yelling “It’s a hobby OS!!! So shut it!” are behaving like idiots.”
People that ask “what this OS does better than other major OS” and that he doesn’t even understand a *clear* answer like “It’s an hobby OS, so there’s nothing in it better than a major OS” are behaving like idiots.
“To me it was obvious he was just asking about its pecularities and features,”
And he was answered, then some people decided they don’t want to hear it.
“yet loads of people had to get abusive and/or impolite. Learn to live folks.”
Yes I get frustrated when I go to a web site like this, solely to get news about Hobby OS, and see the forum polluted by people who keep ignoring the simple definition of “Hobby”, over and over again.
Would you become irritated if people systematically post a message like “What’s the point of Linux/Windows anyway?” every single time a news is posted about this specific OS ?
Well that’s why. It’s called build-up frustration. Nothing personnal against anybody in specific.
So right after reviewing all these posts there was something on GNU/Fiwix, another OS I had never heard of. Interesting, the author, Jordi Sanfeliu, wrote:
The objective of the GNU/Fiwix project is to design and to implement a UNIX based architecture kernel exclusively for educational purposes, while keeping the kernel as simple as possible for the students’ benefit. The advantage of having a complete UNIX-like operating system, with detailed documentation of each line of source code, with good availability of its development team, could be a great benefit for schools, as well as for the computer science faculty, at least here in my country.
That’s it. Point made. Nice job, Jordi!
Now, is that a “hobby OS?” Maybe. I guess so. But at least I understand what it’s all about and why I may or may not want to spend the time to check it out. In this case, I probably won’t as I’m not interested in what it provides, but if I’m teaching an OS internals class at a school, I would be really interested and I might just spend the time to go grab a copy and see if I can’t use it for what I’m working on and possibly contribute back.
For the record, I think “hobby OS” is a horrible way to describe your efforts. Even if you are working on it as a hobby, if you’re bothering to take the time to communicate to others about it, you best have some articulate statement about why anybody else should care. Note that I’m not trying to denigrate SkyOS here. It’s probably a fine effort. It’s probably well programmed by people who really enjoy what they are doing. I’m sure those who understand something about the project are also thrilled to see progress reports about it on OS News. That’s all great. This is about communication with people outside your little clique. When you communicate on a broad forum, do it sensibly.
I think of your first message :
“So why does this OS matter? Sorry, I’m not trying to be a jerk; I really just don’t get why I would want to use this versus the plethora of other OS options? I mean, I understand what Windows and Linux have to offer, and I can see how BSD has carved out its own particular niche, but why this?”
and it feel like you want to say : “why bother with this OS if it has nothing to offer better than Windows Linux or BSD”.
Which is kind of frustrating to read that most of the time there’s a news about an hobby OS. Cauz some people, including me, have a passion for home-brew OS, and “what it has to offer” is not even in the equation. This kind of news is aiming toward those people, and the last thing we want to do, is to keep justifying an hobby OS existance over and over again.
It’s just this. Probably a big misunderstanding, with a dose of build-up irritation thrown in for good mesure.
and it feel like you want to say : “why bother with this OS if it has nothing to offer better than Windows Linux or BSD”.
Sorry. I think you’re reading more into my comments here. I apologize for using stronger wording than I probably should have started with. My intent wasn’t to say, “why bother?” but rather, “can you tell me what this is all about?” The answer I have finally gotten to is, “There’s nothing particularly compelling about this particular OS in terms of features. It’s just ours and we like tinkering with it.” That’s cool. I respect that.
Which is kind of frustrating to read that most of the time there’s a news about an hobby OS. Cauz some people, including me, have a passion for home-brew OS, and “what it has to offer” is not even in the equation. This kind of news is aiming toward those people, and the last thing we want to do, is to keep justifying an hobby OS existance over and over again.
I don’t think you should have to justify its existence, but I think it would be wise to at least be able to articulate why you like it. For instance, if you could answer the following questions, it would probably help you develop the answer: Why do you like hobby OS’s? Why do you like SkyOS rather than other hobby OS’s?
Like my dad enjoys model railroading as his hobby. If you asked him why, he’d say that he finds it relaxing to build models and he loves the aspect of recreating history in minature. Why trains? Well, that’s just his own particular thing and he can’t explain that over boats or airplanes. Whether that works for you or not is up to you, but that’s why he likes it. Specifically, he doesn’t respond to the question of why he does it with, “Because it’s my hobby.”
Right, I get that it’s your hobby, but why this rather than all the other hobbies or even all the other hobby OS’s?
It’s just this. Probably a big misunderstanding, with a dose of build-up irritation thrown in for good mesure.
Yep, I think so. I can tell that I struck a nerve. I apologize for that. It was not my intention to provoke or agitate. I was just trying to understand SkyOS and what it offers.
In particular, it looks like I caused a minor slashdotting of the SkyOS site. Sorry about that to the author. But hey, maybe you’ll have a few more SkyOS users trying it out now… 😉
Hexydes, that’s good to hear! I’ve always been amazed at how quickly SkyOS evolves – I should have taken that into account when guestimating
No body wanted to answer my question eh? or did it get lost in the hobby OS debate?
One problem with your theory, Pessimist.
SkyOS IS Useful!!! It has many good features!