Submitted by The SkyOS team has released Build 5550 to beta testers. Highlights of this release: improved login and installer including progress bar; MMX/SSE and improved MTRR support which results in better VESA perfomance; Factory (utility used for building/porting software); support for Mono; Apache, APR, VLC, Perl, etc.; VMWare tools service; new Software Store; WebServer service; many improvements for developers; 206 fixed bugs since last beta; and much more.
Congrats to Robert on another fine release. This one pushes the limit of SkyOS usability. It adds many new features, and fixes many bugs. A great release all around.
Also, the news of much more frequent releases to beta testers is a welcomed sight.
On yet another note, SkyOS has moved away from Beta 8, 9, 10, 11, etc in favor of build numbers.
If anyone is interested in seeing how SkyOS’s build numbers have progressed, see this page:
http://mattst88.no-ip.com:8181/skyos/?page=buildnumbers
This is amazing work for one guy to accomplish himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point in the future, a major company pays millions to acquire this OS, like Apple did with NeXT. Who knows, if Vista really is Microsoft’s Copland, we could be looking at the next version of Windows here.
Those ultra-thick window borders really need to go, though. The trend these days is borderless (OS X) or trasparent (Vista). Thick, solid borders look clunky.
it certainly is amazing and advancing at such a pace there are often jokes about the number of arms Robert has or if he ever sleeps. I just hope it doesn’t go the way of BeOS if it ever gets acquired – undervalued and killed off! I also hope it doesn’t go the way of others such as Amiga OS and RISC OS – mismanaged into oblivion by people who just don’t understand the technology and ideas behind it
I cannot reach the page cause of the slashdot effect.
Anyway is there any planned release date?
Is there any roadmap to an release candidate or above that – an 5.0 release?
Is there any clear goals to what kind of users SkyOs looks for?
Anyway, for me I could buy this just for the reason that I am interested in operatingsystems :=)
It whould be nice to see some diagrams and statistics of the perfomance and so on..
goals and release schedule are pretty much what Robert wants and when Robert wants
Performance isn’t so hot for a variety of reasons (features and bug-fixing taking priority over optimisation, graphics drivers written from scratch with no official docs, binaries including debug symbols to aid bug reporting) but is very usable and ever improving
Why would a company want to buy it if there are already a myriad of operating systems and kernels available for free, more mature, with more drivers?
Also, launching a new operating system is a risky investment nowadays on both server and desktop markets.
is that a company can buy it and destroy it. Do you see the XGI story?
First : Congrats for the hard work and the features packed release !
Secondly : I welcome the decision to have more frequent builds is a good one :
a) It’ll help spread your bandwith usage more evenly
b) You can still have Stable and development builds
(to tell people what builds should be used preferently)
Thirdly : don’t forget to update the roadmap !
It is important to tell your (potential) customers where developement is leading to.
I can’t help noticing that SkyOS and it’s website is looking more and more profesionnal.
Keep up the good work !
Lakedaemon.
ps : by the way…I noticed too (with the bug count number on the homepage) that bugs were resolved on a daily basis. What a hard working 5-armed Robert !