"I found a nice present in the mail today, the Zeta 1.5 upgrade. Installing on top of 1.21 is a breeze and worked flawlessly. After installing the upgrade you need to do a reboot and you are greeted by the new login screen." Lots of screenshots in the article, boys and girls. Rejoice.
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Member since:2006-09-30
Yeah the 5 seconds default is a bit too fast 
Using multiuser with apps never tested with that inherently exposes hidden bugs. Deskbar seems not to be free of bugs either. The multiuser support really needs more testing and many fixes but that's a known fact.
I'm not aware of any change in the network configuration... network.conf has been there since the beginning of BONE, it's nowhere new. the profiles folder appeared with Zeta, R1 or so.
Member since:2006-09-11
"I'm not aware of any change in the network configuration... network.conf has been there since the beginning of BONE, it's nowhere new. the profiles folder appeared with Zeta, R1 or so."
It may be, but the question is, why do I have to find in the 1.5 upgrade a file in an invisible system folder when it was not necessary before? I just looked there because I played a little bit with haiku and tried to connect to a network. In the haiku rev I tested there was no networking prefs app and I have to edit two files to connect (my last test was a little time ago, sorry if it is included yet). But without this experience I had a system that crashes short after booting into it.
So I have to ask you, should a system behave this way or shouldn't the Zeta programmers find a better way to avoid problems from the time they occurred the first time? This would make Zeta a little bit better.
Member since:
2006-09-11
In this article it seems the author haven't played around that much with the upgrade. My experiences are not that good. So i also replied this comments to the article.
He told about the Autologin feature but forget to mention if you let the default settings to "5sec" you have to hurry up when you want to change from one account to another. - That's very annoying. And after I get back to the root account after several tries I deactivated it again.
Another not really working thing will only mention all non English customers. The menu entries in Deskbar (the formerly BeMenu now called Zeta-Menu) are not localized, means here you have to know how a Preference app is called in English.
And that's not enough, also very dirty seems to me the zeta-network implementation. While with v1.21 it was good to remove the bone-profile folders when your network options are not working well, as it is on my system with an onboard forcedeth nic. Now you have to edit the file "/etc/network.conf" - never seen this folder before? me neither. But it exists , and was there also in the beos times, but i never had to look for it. While the system was developed by Be. Inc. all system settings where placed under /home/config/settings and it was easier to edit a configuration file when something went wrong. And now?
The network problem I wrote above, forced the the system bit by bit to crash. First thing that doesn't worked was the Tracker the next was the app I started directly after the start and in any time in between the Deskbar crashed too. Before v1.5 I used a vmware image to get to the installation on the real hard disk partition and removed all folders under /home/config/settings/bone/profiles. But with 1.5? Zeta started to reconnect after a restart also without the profiles and i had to figure out what went wrong. I found the hidden settings telling Zeta how to continuously use the unsupported nic ("static ip" or "dhcp"). And because the crashes I wrote about before I couldn't fix the prob in 5 min. :-(
So the solution - if anybody else encounters this annoying behavior - open Terminal and enter "StyledEdit /etc/network.conf". I commented out every line including "forcedeth" with a leading "#" and after the next reboot Zeta works fine again on my machine. But without network.
I also updated my VMware installation but now this isn't a solution anymore, since 1.5 the mouse moved to the upper left corner after the first move, and stayed there for the whole session (restarting of the inputserver didn't helped). So how to get to the Deskbar? I don't know but it's not really cool :-(
Okay I tried it on the real system and an half hour later it was fixed, but to much time for an "easy and ready to use system".
The next thing I'm missing, how to change administrative settings from a regular account? There is no way to do this currently. So every time you have to change an administrative setting you have to logout and login to the root account. If an OS behaves this way users will never change to a more secure environment. You just have to look to WinXP, how many users uses Administrator accounts? Argh, the next missing thing: how to set user privileges in Zeta? Theres no option in the new Administration prefs app for such tasks.
And another one I figured out were some entries in the Deskbar. First of all back in my regular account I saw the "network.conf" file under recently used files, although I modified it as root.
Additionally you have different entries under development in the ZetaMenu in root and user account: root has two entries "bdb" and "Install dev tools" and in the user account menu I found broken links to "Cortex", "MeTos", "Pe" and "Spy" and the working link to "bdb". But where is MakeMe the new Zeta development environment? It's in the app/development folder but there's no link to it in the Zeta Menu.
And last but not to forget to mention MediaFire Pro, do you have a Serial for this app? No? But I have and I tried to enter this into the registration dialog that pops up the first time you open the app, "Serial is wrong" I read after I entered it and I tried it again and again. (BTW you have even to enter a company/organization that's mantadory). Okay, here the solution. Close MediaFire Pro and open it again now your key will be accepted.
MediaFire Pro reached me two weeks before the zeta upgrade and the first thing that happened when I opened the installer I saw the MF Pro splash screen and after that the installer crashed. I tried many times on different machines but every where the same. So I tried to get support. On the Zeta-OS-website I found a support email address sent the mail and a few hours later I got an answer mail from the zeta-mailserver "no more mails accepted for this account" (or so). After some more investigations I found a mail formular in the zeta-shop and on this way i get contacted to the support. But is this the best way to keep contact with customers? I don't think so.
The Problem with MF Pro was an old MakeMe version which doesn't worked correct with the installer. I missed an error handler that shows a dialog telling me there was a missing lib or old version of app xyz. - Really not cool!
After all I'm disappointed and expected more after the delivering was delayed for some more bug fixing. And how about the price for an unfinished product upgrade? For me it smells a little bit like being part a public beta testing program for 29Euros.
But there is a good news to the information mentioned in the Zeta 1.5 preview article I'm replying to, all previously installed apps and some settings like the Firefox profile are not deleted. They are saved by the upgrade installer in an archive on Roots Desktop.