ZetaJournal posted parts 1 and 2 of their YellowTAB Zeta 1.0-RC2 review. Part 3 of the review will be published freely later today (already available in their forum — to view, requires free login).
YellowTAB Zeta RC2 Review at ZetaJournal
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It seems Yt are vastly improving polish as they move towards the R1 release. It will be interesting to see what happens when the masses decide to purchase a copy when R1 is finally released.
I’m glad there is a decent Firebird port – to cover all the main desktop angles should be Yt’s priority. Email, web browsing and music applications should all be polished. It seems the media player needs more work before this aspect of the OS is polished to the max, but I am enthusiastic about the work Yt is putting into their BeOS product.
They are getting closer, but what they miss is a serious browser, firebird still has major problems, try reading the beos firebird blog (don’t have the link).
What they should work on and what I hope they are working on is a native browser, they ported the engine safari uses, why not build a GUI around it 😕
Zeta looks better every day. It will do nicely as a stop gap until OpenBeOS arrives. On DarkWyrm’s website there is talk about the OBOS AppServer (probably the hardest kit) being in alpha by the end of the year. The MediaKit is also making great progress (CVS checkout logs). All in all, looks like the biggest hurdle in the OBOS world will be crossed sometime this year, and that is to get a majority of the components running standalone (ie – no reliance on the original BeOS R5 at all). Although in alpha, this milestone should herald the arrival of OBOS.
Zeta will do nicely until OBOS is ready for prime time. The doom’n’gloom from 2002 is way behind us now – nothing will stop this phoenix from rising from the ashes…
> On DarkWyrm’s website there is talk about the OBOS
> AppServer (probably the hardest kit)
Are you sure, that the AppServer is the hardest kit and not the Kernel?
(btw.: for people how don’t know DarkWyrm’s side: http://www.beemulated.net/network/darkwyrm/index.htm)
> Zeta will do nicely until OBOS is ready for prime time.
Until OBOS R1 is finished, it is IMHO better to use BeOS R5.
All BeOS R5 programs will run under OBOS R1. But it is not sure, if all Zeta programs will run under OBOS R1.
Klusou
Sad to hear that you don´t like what i never called a “review” – these are first impressions of Zeta RC2, i can´t write that often enough i guess.
Second, you don´t have to become a member of the ZJ community (which is FOR FREE by the way) – just wait one day and you can read my “very poor review” on the front page
And last but not least: There IS a very professional website for Zeta news and reviews – it is called http://www.zetanews.com and they are doing a REALLY great job.
ZetaJournal is the place “where user publish news” (as we put it in the header of the site), it´s NOT a news site. ZJ focuses on the Zeta users and sharing know-how about Zeta.
regards,
choulth
http://www.zetajournal.org
Are you sure, that the AppServer is the hardest kit and not the Kernel?
(btw.: for people how don’t know DarkWyrm’s side:
This is ofcourse an issue that can be discussed. But in terms of Kernel, OBOS gets help both from NewOS and inspiration by other open source kernels.
The app server is AFAIK very special and is also a crucial key to what made BeOS become what it is. Therefor kernel, surely difficult, but app_server is just as or more difficult.
Not to be forgotten though is that many other kits are also difficult like media or net (which lives in kernel).
Darkwyrm may be optimistic but many might call this very pessimistic news. 1 year before alpha??? that’s a LOOOONG time for a project that’s been alive already for quite some time. After alpha is beta so it’s quite some time before OBOS is something to really count on in terms of an overall solution.
For the first time in a very long time I’m starting to doubt about OBOS… unless… yes well unless we get to see some commercial interest in it (Sun? Sony? something embedded? broadbandbox? mediastation?). This is where yT fails… they should help OBOS to get better in along with the community, then people might actually buy zeta at a lot higher pace than now…
Also the new name change could bring interest to it assuming the new website is as attractive as claims are =)
I have a little question about OBOS.
Some apps – like the preferences app “Mouse” – abourt after startig, if I only install this app alone. (I don’t know, if I need to install some libraries additional for it and I don’t have tried it)
But I see, that there existing an additional library in /beos/system/lib called libopenbeos.so
But there is no libbe.so. So I think libopenbeos.so is the same like libbe.so only with an other name. (so, if Mouse need it, it is possible that this is the reason, why it abourts).
But where is the sourcecode of libopenbeos.so?
In the binary-distro of OBOS (http://gravity24hr.com/obosbuild/) there is libopenbeos.so included.
But at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/open-beos/current/src/
I don’t find anywhere a file like openbeos.c or so.
Klusou
libraries are collection of functions, in the case of libbe, it collects functions from several different kits (app, storage, …), so it’s the union of the function from some folders in http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/open-beos/current/src/kits/
@ Pete
>Sad to hear that you don´t like what i never called a “review”…
Discovered that you´re right, I CALLED it review in the header of the News… thanks, changed that!
regards
choulth
http://www.ZetaJournal.org
> In the binary-distro of OBOS (http://gravity24hr.com/obosbuild/)
I’ve now downloaded OBOS-Distro-x86.tgz.
But there is no floppy.x86 inside. And it is in no other file of the side.
But it seems, that they have successfully compiled it. There stand under “:: Jam Build Log”:
Start Time is Wed Jan 28 21:34:56 EST 2004
…patience…
…patience… Repeated 28 times
…found 29898 target(s)…
…updating 547 target(s)…
MkDir1 distro/x86.R1
MkDir1 distro/x86.R1/beos
MkDir1 distro/x86.R1/beos/system
[…]
…failed KernelLd objects/x86.R1/kernel/boot_loader …
BuildKernel objects/x86.R1/kernel/kernel.x86
Kernel linked!
KernelFloppyImage objects/x86.R1/floppy.x86
size 991232, blocks 1936 (size 991232)
*************************************************
* Kernel build completed! *
* Boot image for a 1.44M floppy created *
*************************************************
Floppy image is objects/x86.R1/floppy.x86
The following command will write it to a floppy on BeOS
dd if=objects/x86.R1/floppy.x86 of=/dev/disk/floppy/raw bs=18k
Alternatively you can run
./configure –floppy /dev/disk/floppy/raw
once and build + write the image subsequently via
jam installfloppy
…failed updating 4 target(s)…
…skipped 3 target(s)…
…updated 540 target(s)…
Finish Time is Wed Jan 28 22:02:05 EST 2004
Who published this side? And why don’t they publish floppy.x86, too?
Do anybody know an other place, where I can download a – more or less – new floppy-image of the OpenBeOS kernel?
http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/
As far as I know yT just compile our work. Never heard a word from them, and it seems like noone there cares. ATM I’m the only one focusing on Firebird issues, fixing several Firebird-build bugs and working on some others.
I hope that Zeta does well. It looks nice, except for the new yellow tabs for the windows, but it’s how it runs that counts. Without firsthand experience, I really can’t make a determination as to speed and stability and consistency of user interface and well everything that would give me an opinion on where Zeta was.
At least they keep coming out with something. They have proven that this isn’t simply vaporware (even if it is taking longer than I want to come out). This is so much better than Amiga who hasn’t publically released anything.
Hopefully OBOS will come up with something good soon. I want my BeOS. I’m also curious to see if any of these can still compete – hey, it has been a while and the computer industry has changed a lot. Does Firebird run as fast or faster on it as it does on Win/Lin? Hey, the browser is my biggest app and therefore my biggest concern.
I’m really stretching to fill space since I won’t pay to grab the RC Zeta’s.
“That is a very poor “review”. And they charge for membership!”
No, they don’t charge. It is FREE to sign up.
“Some apps – like the preferences app “Mouse” – abourt after startig, if I only install this app alone. (I don’t know, if I need to install some libraries additional for it and I don’t have tried it)”
I can answer that, as I wrote it
I started getting involved with OpenBeOS and the prefrences and applications a few months after the OpenBeOS project started, and helped create the beginnings for many of the Preferences. I stopped working on them a few months later, I am sure the code will have changed since and I would have thought it bears little in common with the work I did.
I haven’t looked at the code for over a year, maybe longer but the problem, and delay in finishing, the Mouse preference panel is due to the Input Server on BeOS R5 being undocumented. You can’t finish the Mouse preference panel until the OpenBeOS Input Server has been completed enough to offer an interface for the required functions to the Mouse preference panel.
I don’t remember it crashing at because of this though!
Perhaps you could move your existing Mouse settings file to the desktop and start the OpenBeOS Mouse Preferences to see if its a problem creating/reading/writing the settings file. IIRC thats the first thing it does.
Andrew McCall
Was just looking through the App server & Interface kit mailing lists and I cam across this :
* From: “DarkWyrm” <bpmagic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
* To: interfacekit@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
* Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 06:28:08 -0500 EST
> > Just wondering because the list has been pretty quiet for quite
> > some
> > time. What’s everybody up to?
> >
>
> After committing BOptionPopUp (it’s basically finished, and it
> doesn’t have some of the bugs I noticed in R5) I turned back to work on
some projects of mine. I should even find the time to work on a patch
for Opentracker, since I almost promised Axel I would’ve done that (in
decembe), but I hope he forgot about it
>
> How’re things for the app_server ? Are we ready to run Opentracker on
> it ? :=P
Nope, but we’re close to a major milestone, thanks to Adi’s hard work.
Expect a news update very soon.
–DW
we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully, we wont have to wait till end of 2004 for an alpha let alone a beta.
harjtt
:o)>
At least they keep coming out with something. They have proven that this isn’t simply vaporware (even if it is taking longer than I want to come out). This is so much better than Amiga who hasn’t publically released anything.
Not sure you read the post about Mozilla…
it’s not yT that comes up with all this stuff, it’s the community in itself which pops up with most of the stuff that yT distributes… just like BeOSMax do.
Mozilla is just one very small example of a bunch of apps… nvidia drivers being another very important thing..
Its sad that development moved from ppc to x86, since ppc is no longer developed. Its good to see someone trying to keep BeOS alive. It was a dream back in the windows 95/ OS8.1 era.
well, OpenBeOS is making a PPC port from what I hear.
their main focus is still x86 though, but NewOS has allready been ported to several platforms so a PPC version isn’t that far away.