The Ubuntu team has released the first beta of Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. It includes GNOME 2.16, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 RC2, Xorg 7.1, Linux kernel 2.6.17, and a new init system. Download locations are listed in the release announcement. Update: Kubuntu 6.10 beta 1 has been released as well. Other than that, Ubuntu is taking over the BBC. And all they show is underwear. I don't get it.
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Member since:2005-07-06
So binarycrusader, care to elaborate exactly what OS functionality todays OS's have over BeOS?
Gee, I don't know, true multi-user support?
A fully detailed and functional robust hardware accelerated 3D and 2D API (DirectX)?
A fully detailed and functional hardware input API suitable for supporting game devices (DirectInput)?
A fully detailed and functional sound API suita ble for supporting games (3d Sound Support) and multimedia (DirectSound)?
Fully functional multi-lingual input and display support (IME, xinput, bi-directional language, etc.)?
The list goes on and on, but the point is that BeOS actually was very lacking in several areas that many people take for granted.
BeOS had extremely limited to non-existent implementations of all of the above when compared to current commercial standards or even the standards of that day, notably when looking at games. BeOS had good multi-media support for the time, true, but today's operating systems provide a *lot* more and that's the point.
Edited 2006-09-29 03:50
Member since:2005-07-06
>I don't know, true multi-user support?
And why should multi-user support add 1min in boot time, reduce the responsiveness ?
As for DirectX, BeOS had OpenGL which does the same thing.
For the other API, sure they are nice to have but they don't explain the bloat of current OSs.
Member since:2005-12-31
I think I have to agree with renox here. 2D/3D architecture, input, sound, and displays are in essence drivers and a processing architecture above it. This means that the startup is nothing more than loading code and config and initializing the devices. Unless something is seriously wrong, code/config are small in size, thus loading it should be in the area of a few seconds, *absolute* maximum. Initializing devices means setting device registers and usually works in less than a second. The computation for all this can be neglected.
I cannot comment on the rest as I don't know what exactly it is 
My point is that today's long startup times are not directly related to real features, but rather to how they are implemented. For example, a lot of time is wasted when several config files refer to each other in a chain. Loading them means a sequence of alternating I/O and computation, resulting several runs across the hard drive until you're done, and this is *really* slow compared to anything else.
Member since:
2006-09-15
So binarycrusader, care to elaborate exactly what OS functionality todays OS's have over BeOS?
I can't seem to think of any myself. Sure BeOS lack some in applications but there is no way you can tell me, eye candy aside, that it couldn't do anything Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS-X or Linux can do now.
Maybe I'm dreaming.
Only 1 thing comes to mind and for a home/workstation OS it ain't such a big deal. Multi User.