ICO brings the new look at the upcoming Zeta R1 via new screenshots (pronounced “zeeta”). In them you can see the new Network preferences panel, Printer panel using CUPS and the Theme manager.
Zeta R1 Screenshots
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Love it.
very nice
Welcome to 1995.
Okay, so I know it might just be me. I’ll admit that.
I remember seeing BeOS R4 screenshots and just thinking “wow, that looks so complete, so polished.” Compared to BeOS in screenshot alone, Windows 95R2 looked like everything was bolted on as an after thought.
I get a similar feeling from Zeta unfortunately akin to Windows 95R2. Each widget looks like it was designed individually– not as a cohesive whole. Where some widgets use a not particularly attractive violet blue, the scroll bars do not. And those titles (the ‘cheese tabs’) look like the gradient is simply white thrown on yellow, as opposed to a complementary, analogous, or other color that would work with the yellow to create the notion of depth.
Okay, so that really all was probably just my inital personal feelings. Sorry.
pfft. its at least at 1997.
Nice work , i will purchase a copy as soon as i get my new computer.
Can zeta break the application barrier?
There are two mainstream operating systems: MacOS and Windows – they have broken through = used full time
There are quite a few niche OSes: Solaris, Linux, BSD – specialized usage, or almsot mainstream – may have broken through in some or all areas – have a following
Experimental & Hobby: Syllable, SkyOS – have NOT broken the application barrier, still kind of backwater but have potential.
An OS these days, and in the days gone by, is NOTHING without apps and continuing support – I fear zeta will not get off the ground because of this
ndis
how much does this cause overhead? (never used it with linux)
will native driver will be available also?
cups
i usually hate what come from linux to other platform, it’s always BIG and eat ram. Is it small this time, and can we completly remove that if we don’t need printer?
the pref panel
Is it still possible to acces it the old way by the tracker? If so, would the system complain if i delete that panel. I don’t find it unfuctional or anything, i jyst prefer to have stuff unified in tracker (same reason i don’t like dock).
pronounced “zeeta”
I always thought Z is pronounced “Zeh tah”…
Nice, anyways.
P.S. i think this Zeta could brak that “application barrier”.
Chris, I’ll give you an analogy. When a new baby is born, do you immediately tell the mother “This baby is useless, it cannot paint/sing/run/write etc?”
Chris, when MacOSX was released, it had hardly any native applications, everything else was run in emulation. When Windows NT 3 was released (the grandfather of W2K and WXP), it too had limited native applications, but look at these systems today. Zeta starts with the existing BeOS application base. The BeOS world has applications which fill basic needs (40%-50% of features of the big name apps), and I agree that these applications cannot fully replace big name commercial offering. But for home use, the 40-50% is all we need, so it is quite usable. For instance, Refraction is usable by home users for photo editing. Sample Studio is usable for sound editing. personalStudio for Video eding, etc.
There are no native games for the XBox 360 yet, or the PS3, yet people will buy them.
The application scene will improve with time.
Noone is asking you to abandon Windows. I do 80% of what I need in Zeta (in a pleasurable environment), and for the remaining 20% I dual boot into Windows. Whats the problem with that? With time, the 20% will decrease to zero.
Hey it looks nice, much polished than the original BeOS. I may buy it when it gets released.
I just don’t know whether the market will be receptive enough for Zeta. Is there room for yet another proprietry operating system? SkyOS looks great and is freeware. So is QNX. Where do Zeta see their customers coming from? BeOS loyalists? They will be in thin supply when Haiku starts making a bit more visible progress (and it’s made plenty of progress lately).
Good luck to Yellowtab, but I don’t predict much success. It’s just several years too late to be competitive as anything other than a hobby, free OS and they don’t have the resources to make it good enough to compete against todays proprietry pay-for OSes like XP and OSX.
Basically, the Zeta potential customers are all BeOS users (or ex-Users), who want to run their OS on newer hardware while waiting for Haiku to be finished. Even if Haiku shipped tomorrow, Zeta has some additional features (like NDIS, CUPS etc) which Haiku still doesn’t have.
YellowTab will be the dominant Haiku distributer in the future (like Redhat, Suse). They will inherit the core system, and add value with their components. This is why yellowTab seem to not want to invest too much effort in the BeOS kernel, since it will be replaced anyway. That’s why yellowTab are more into enhancing core system applications than working on the kernel.
I think it is a viable long term strategy. I wish them luck.
We need to increase the user base to get quality apps. Show developers that there is a market of paying customers. yellowTab is the biggest commercial BeOS software company – the world will be less colourful if they were to disappear. So show support.
Sorry, but you post was just plain silly.
When new versions of windows or Mac OS where released, maybe there wasn’t many apps there, but it was just a matter of time for Companies to get their apps their, was no way it wouldn’t happen. With Zeta there is no way it will happen.
Zeta is not OSX, or Windows, it will never break hobby-ness, not trying to mean or anything, but to think that it has any grand future is silly. It will stay a small OS at best used by Geeks, just like BeOS did when Be Inc was in Business.
When Apple or MS brings out a new version of an OS, companies are already running apps on previous versions of the OS, and Apple and MS already have the market share. So even if they had to start from scratch it’s no big deal, but they aren’t going to do that for something with no market. And Companies would be perfectly happy is MS or Apple went away leaving them with just one OS to support.
Zeta does have benefits over others out there, it’s not GPL’d thus doesn’t have the problems linux does, Zeta isn’t a religion, or political movement, so it has more attractiveness to big App developing companies, plus provides a unified platform. But still don’t expect anything for it. Yellowtab will have to develop all their apps in house or leverage existing BeOS developers to create all they need. The best they can hope right now is to find a nice small niche with enough geek following to keep them afloat. Maybe that media center they showed off a while ago can keep them going.
Yellowtab has done a nice job with things, but in the end it will be just a ton of money wasted unless they can find some way to market it and bring people in. Be Inc couldn’t do that in 10 years with a good amount of PR, and corporate connections and tons of money.
You are a really upbeat and optimistic person
.
But no amount of optimism or cheering can save things. Your right, their market would be former BeOS users. Problem is that was a tiny market in the first place, and most of those only ever ran PE. And more importantly, most all of us have moved on. After a year and half of BeOS, it got formated along with any other OS’s I had and WinXP became my only OS, and I was happy, now I have a Mac like so many other former BeOS users (maybe even the majority have gone mac). I would highly doubt more then a hand full of us would leave our macs to go back to BeOS.
People have moved on. BeOS’s only shot was before WinXP and OS X came out. At the time compared to Mac OS9 or win 98 it was great, and living without apps was acceptable cause Mac and Win suck so bad then. Now it’s changed, MS and Apple have solid OS’s and no one feels like leaving them.
Just like Linux, you can only get people to switch if there are massive gains, look how hard it is to get people to OS X from windows, and you can buy the whole OS with computer for 500 bucks. Linux doesn’t stand a prayer of getting far and for the moment if has some corporate support. But even then, how many people have ever even heard of Linux, 5-10% of the population? how many have ever heard of BeOS? less then Linux for sure.
If YellowTab/Haiku have dealt with the issues with the Multimedia stack then you could see some major players in the audio industry jumping on board.
Already before the demise of Be Inc you had Steinberg demoing a Beta of Nuendo 1 on both BeOS and Windows2000. Guess which OS Nuendo performed better on?
Then there was Roland with their Editrol system which was a Video/Audio editor Software/Hardware combo built on BeOS.
Also you have Tune Tracker which is still one of the best sub $50,000 radio automation software packages and guess which OS that ran on? Yep, BeOS for less than $5,000 hardware included.
There was and still is a lot of interest in BeOS and its modern day versions and I wouldn’t count it out yet.
Meh, no eye candy here. What I see is something that could of been implemented in the 90s. We’re in the 2000s, so futurize it! Get with it and make things nice looking and useful. The useful part may come close, but the visual is an eye sore.
simplicity is elegance.
You always have OS-X if your eyes are not entertained enough. Some of us just want a simple OS that alows us to do what we do really efficiently.
It’s the apps that drive the OSes, not the other way around. Unless these guys can get a binary compatibility layer to use apps compiled for another OS’s API, they will not take off big time. It’s sad, but true. And don’t start with OS/2 dying because they did – the market was different then. Now, it’s saturated, and hundreds of thousands of existing applications. The only way some of these OSes can get ground is by making a binary compatibility layer. Though, that alone is not enough. Look at FreeBSD with it’s Linux compat. layer. BSD is still a niche compared to Linux (which is big enough now, but it had over a decade to do it). I wish these guys luck, but it won’t be easy for them to penetrate into the market.
I’m glad to see that YellowTab has made some nice progress, CUPS, NDIS etc. Too bad that the NDIS wrapper is their own, it’d be better if they’d ported the FreeBSD or the Linux one.
Man for an os that no one cares about anymore, there are sure alot of opinions about its fate.
A lot of the former BeOS crowd used Amiga previously.
When Amiga went down, it was basically fooled me once.
(Shame on you).
When Be went down, it was fooled me twice.
(Shame on me).
Now if YellowTAB goes down, it would be fool me the third time. (Anyone feeling they are strong enough for this?)
Personally, I will not use Zeta regardless of how good or bad it is. I would rather just wait for Haiku to come out and buy a copy from them in order to support them.
If Haiku goes out of light before ever getting to the stage of releasing a self contained ISO, I have nothing to lose since I am stilling getting my daily computing work done in Windows XP, MacOS or Linux. If Kauku goes of light after releasing an ISO, I am sure there will be people to pick up their effort since it is an open sourced project.
If Zeta goes out of light, well, it would basically be fool me the third time. I don’t think I am going to allow this to happen.
I’m glad to see that YellowTab has made some nice progress, CUPS, NDIS etc. Too bad that the NDIS wrapper is their own, it’d be better if they’d ported the FreeBSD or the Linux one.
Seriously now, how can you make that judgement without actually trying the product (other than yellowTab themselves and a small number of beta testers, no one has seen this feature yet, since it’s not in the release candidates). For all we know, maybe the yellowTab implementation is the best of the lot.
The BeOS UI used to scream out (to me at least…) elegant functionality. There was nothing redundant about it, but what was there would always look top notch. I’m a bit worried zeta is losing site of this.
Just because mac, windows and the linux WMs fall over themselves to obscure everything behind candy doesn’t mean that zeta should need to so as well.
Me too liked the old look. I don’t know – there is something about this integrated preferences panel that I can’t seem to swallow. I liked the simplicity of simply using Tracker/Deskbar to get to the right pref app – plus it was a matter of dragndrop to add a new pref app – no add-on APIs to follow to write one either. KISS!
i remember when be first started giving out beos standerd edition. i was on dial up at the time. and it was worth waiting 3 days to download it. there are some features that would make beos complete and those are flash 7 and java. hell flash dosnt work right in bsd eiether. so lets give zeta some cridet. keep up the good work.
I’ve always been one of the first to critizise yT when they do something, because they did most stuff wrong when they started out. However, I’m not less of a man than being able to change my mind. yT is doing great stuff now and I wish them the best. I can see that there is definitely room in this world for both Haiku and yT. Even if me myself would prefer Haiku, I understand the need for a company who can write NDAs and develop software, port software etc which wouldn’t be possible for Haiku. Also the support issue is important for many users. Did I forget mentioning the fact that if there is gonna be any OEM providers there need to be a company behind the software.
So Bernd, good job and I’m happy to see you’ve come to your senses and run your company better than before.
Screen shots, demonstration, screen shots…. But where is Zeta? When will it finaly be on sale? It’s the never ending beta for this OS.
And YES, you can say welcome to 1995 because that’s what it looks like. You may not like this comment but it’s true. It’s late in the game GUI wise. For the price they are asking, I would expect a little bit more.
I don’t know who is still waiting for this OS…
Just because you may think it looks ugly some of may like it, like me, I love the GUI!
Neither Amiga or BeOS is dead.
New hardware, OS and software is developed for the Amiga.
New hardware, OS and software is developed for BeOS (Zeta/Haiku).
Where the heck is Java, and is there any chance of ever seeing an OpenOffice port, its looking like no to both, or tell me I’m wrong. Is Sun that difficult to deal with.
Since OO was written in Germany by StarOffice, perhaps Bernd could get them to do a port, I’ve used it enough that I’d pay for it if I had too on BeOS/Zeta. Gobe proved to be a disaster under windows so OO took over.
while the multimedia apps people talk of are nice to hear about, my only interest in BeOS/Zeta is not multimedia at all other than soundplay in the background. Its the office apps that will bring in far more casual users.
I read somewhere I think was that interview transcript on ICO that yT has some other office suite being ported or made.
“Zeta is illegal because it not under the GPL.”
Have you asked them about the source-code for CUPS?
Why should they release the whole OS under GPL just because they use CUPS?
Oh WOW yes, this is the best operating system ever, I am sure it will be on every desktop soon at some point. The corporate world will be forever indebted to this wonderful new OS. Look out Microsoft!! .Is this the end of Windows and MS Office and Exchange server??
J
The BeOS UI used to scream out (to me at least…) elegant functionality. There was nothing redundant about it, but what was there would always look top notch. I’m a bit worried zeta is losing site of this.
That’s one of the best summations of the issue that I’ve seen – to me, BeOS always looked like a more modern version of the classic MacOS look.
As a current R5 user who has no problem with the “old” GUI, I think I would prefer it if YT sold an upgrade pack for R5 users that just added the under-the-hood improvements (USB, wifi, updated kernel, CUPS, etc) and left the userland alone.
I’ll probably still buy Zeta anyway, but there are 3 bare-minimum things I demand from it:
1) Ability to revert to the R5 look, including scrollbars. I’ve tried to keep as open a mind as possible to the GUI changes, but those XP-ish scrollbars are hideous and look like they were ripped from a bad KDE theme.
2) Compatibility with my existing R5 apps. They’ve been working on Zeta for long enough, I expect the majority of R5 apps to run out of the box.
3) A pony (not really).
Barring that, I’ll just stick with R5 and wait for Haiku to become complete / wait for OS X/Linux to advance to the point where I wouldn’t be taking a major step back by switching.
“[or] wait for OS X/Linux to advance to the point where I wouldn’t be taking a major step back by switching.”
What, like getting USB, wifi, updated kernel, CUPS, etc?
Stop saying that Zeta uses old technology/old themes/etc.
What’s important is that it is a substantial improvement over BeOS w/BONE, and it’s legal.
What would u rather use? A non-working Haiku, a working but outdated BeOS R5, or a NEW Zeta?
‘Nuff said
After ussing the last Gnome or KDE, this really looks old to me…. and I loved BeOS
first you where claiming about “legal” and “illegal” use of the BeOS code. Now, after seeing that drivers for the most needed Hardware (printers, scanners, wifi-adapters, usb) are done, you say something against the UI. Shame on you. If you search a mulfunctioning operating system which looks bloated (you call it “nicer” or “more beautyful”),go to windows or linux. Sure, Linux “can” work as it should, but if you don’T exactly know how to configure it…no chance.
ZETAs UI is indeed a bit behind, but that does not say that it looks bad.
Some like the UI, some not. Probably there will come something that everyone can change the UI he likes best…
GuG
I know how you feel. Bill Gates and his business cronies set the desktop back 20 years. Only thing that has been a saving grace is that hardware evolution has been so great that it actually feels like your getting improvements.
Can one say stagnation and code bloat in the same sentence?
I’ll probably still buy Zeta anyway, but there are 3 bare-minimum things I demand from it:
1) Ability to revert to the R5 look
Select Preferences, Decor, “Original Theme”.
2) Compatibility with my existing R5 apps.
Over 90% compatibility rate with R5 apps. The broken ones will no longer work (none that really matter). The big apps (Productive, personalStudio etc) work nicely.
3) A pony (not really).
Will a nice wallpaper with a picture of a horse do?
Stephen, I will hold you to your commitment to buy Zeta.
“[or] wait for OS X/Linux to advance to the point where I wouldn’t be taking a major step back by switching.”
What, like getting USB, wifi, updated kernel, CUPS, etc?
So I can switch to an OS that will run slower on more expensive hardware and *might* catch up to Be’s cira 1998 metadata support in the next 2-3 years? (OS X) Or so I can switch to an OS that makes it harder for me to perform simple tasks and lacks the polish of an OS that’s been “dead” for half a decade? (Linux) No thanks.
Hey Smallstepforman, ’tis I, Shice, from the Ars Battlefront.
I’ll probably still buy Zeta anyway, but there are 3 bare-minimum things I demand from it:
1) Ability to revert to the R5 look
Select Preferences, Decor, “Original Theme”.
And that covers the scrollbars as well?
2) Compatibility with my existing R5 apps.
Over 90% compatibility rate with R5 apps. The broken ones will no longer work (none that really
matter). The big apps (Productive, personalStudio etc) work nicely.
The main thing I’m worried about are some older, unsupported input_server filters and things like dockbert.
Stephen, I will hold you to your commitment to buy Zeta
Ehhh, or I’ll lose my cred in the BeOS community or something? What if I score a free copy to review on BeDoper, does that get me off the hook?
Just saw this on BeGroovy:
http://bryan.varnernet.com/files/BeOS_jEdit_01.png
Hmm, the UI is not that imortant atm as many people feel (i mean that futurized looks). I for one need a GUI fast and pregnant with all available options and NOT a bloated GUI where i can’t see on the first sight what’s going on (bad example: Nero6 and up)
Who needs a nice looking car without ignition or gasoline or a car with a transmission 4th and 5th gear broken…
On the other hand the feedback after the Release1 brings enough for yellowTAB and so they can choose the UI direction after a global release.
As yellowTAB mentioned they’re thinking about a 64bit ZETA, there is also a chance to change the UI a bit.
So where is the problem with current ZETA UI?
@JJ:
“”Where the heck is Java, and is there any chance of ever seeing an OpenOffice port”
http://bryan.varnernet.com/files/BeOS_jEdit_01.png
http://bryan.varnernet.com/files/BeOS_jEdit_02.png
The OpenOffice monster… i hope it will _not_ be available for the BeOS… would be sad for all the manpower for an OOorg port…
greets,
BCC