Submitted by SkyOS has received a few updates. First, the new theme engine makes it possible to completely theme SkyOS, without having to write even a single line of code. Furthermore, with only minor changes, WindowBlinds and MS Visual Style (WindowsXP or Vista) themes can be converted to the SkyOS theme format. Additionally, the Viewer (file browsing application) has a new feature called ‘NavigationView’, which makes it possible to possible to navigate to your devices and manage files easier and faster.
Will there ever be a real release of skyos? It seems to follow the general development model of e17, that being continuous modification without a final product.
Is that such a bad thing?
Yes it is bad thing, just look at E-17 … oh wait a minute, we are not talking about the pop band right?
Edited 2007-10-31 20:19
Yup, SkyOS is set to move out of beta phase by year’s end but not to a public release. Most of the new features are there and stable now there are some apps Robert wants to port/code and some love for the default UI.
Please review your comment and replace SkyOS with your OS or application of choice and reread.
When is anything ever finished? If Microsoft was finished with windows, they wouldn’t have invested millions into windows update, if apple was finished with the iPhone why did they just release the 1.1.1 Firmware? Hell they just put out Leopard and its in the same state as it was in beta. When is a product final? When they ship it? when the stop supporting it? Does it really matter? Each piece of software has its own development style.
I hereby deem your comment irrelevent.
Isn’t TeX finished ?
TeX is “frozen” which means that development stopped
and only bug fixes occur now (has been decades since a bug was found in TeX).
Yet…new varaint of TeX are being developed :
XeTeX supporting unicode
(it is at version 0.997…don’t know if there will ever be a version 1.0 : it has been between version 0.95 and version 0.997 for a few years)
and LuaTeX (the future of TeX) supporting :
_unicode
_with integrated Lua
_ with revamped internals (that can be overloaded) and callbacks
Actually in Beta version
AS for myself, I don’t use TeX anymore as I need Etex features or unicode.
For now, I stick with XeTeX but I’ll switch with Luatex some time in the future…
My conclusion is…finished products like TeX are “dead” (cause we want more, limits are frustrating) however great they are…
I quite agree, this does seem somewhat like that ever elusive e17 (at least I see their website is running). Personally I think the SkyOS development should have either gone open source, or sought funding to hire a larger R&D staff to actually put out what they wish to put out; a commercial product. Sadly I fear that this may just end up going the BeOS route.
Well, this depends how you define a release. SkyOS Builds are released every few months and development (alpha) builds are released every few weeks. There will be nothing like a SkyOS v1.0, just a steady flow of builds, with roadmaps defining the coverage of each build.
There will also be a change in the release naming scheme and roadmap definition, which will be announced soon.
>>>>When is anything ever finished?
>>Isn’t TeX finished ?
Well, an OS will definitely never be finished. If it is finished, this just can mean that development has stalled and the project is dead.
Edited 2007-11-01 11:47
Well, this depends how you define a release. SkyOS Builds are released every few months and development (alpha) builds are released every few weeks. There will be nothing like a SkyOS v1.0, just a steady flow of builds, with roadmaps defining the coverage of each build.
This being the case, can we stop calling it “news” every time SkyOS releases another monthly?
–bornagainpenguin
The posts about SkyOS are news.
Each release/beta build brings (many) features and a few people (including me) want to read about it.
And if you don’t care, nobody forces you to click on the “read more” link of SkyOS related news.
The posts about SkyOS are news.
Well this depends on what you define as news… ^_~
–bornagainpenguin
PS: Go ahead and mod me down! I know all you closed-source zealots and Szeleney Suckups are going to anyway…
Looks like someone is a bit angry here. I wonder, why do you even contribute to SkyOS news discussion here on osnews? If you are so pissed off, why don’t you just mind posting here?
because they are jealous. everyone else has to cobble together parts to make an OS, nobody has control over the design. That’s what makes skyos so different and interesting.
Edited 2007-11-01 20:01
ROTFLMAO!
First you guys say that I’m angry, now you have me as jealous… And for the most ridiculous reasons…
everyone else has to cobble together parts to make an OS, nobody has control over the design. That’s what makes skyos so different and interesting.
Does BFS maen anything to you? How about WINE? Or Gecko? Maybe Mono? Perhaps Pixel rings a bell? Or SAMBA? GTK+? BASH? AbiWord? GIMP?
And that’s just going by the headlines on OSNews.com in their SkyOS section! Who knows what someone with access to the perpetual betas would be able to point to? If anyone is “cobbling together an OS,” it’s not OSS or Linux. Would you like to try again?
–bornagainpenguin (waiting to see how quickly this post gets moderated down…)
skyos is based on gtk+?
No, they mean that GTK+ was ported to SkyOS to run several GTK-based applications.
They’re doing a good thing. They’re trying to fill the platform with software so that it may actually be a viable alternative to some people.
SkyOS doesn’t use any GTK appications at the moment,
but there is a instable port of GTK+
It’s not usable and crashes all the time,
so it cannot be used in SkyOS at all.
It’s only there to make porting of GKT based appications possible. But there is also a port of GTK to windows, also a close souce OS, so I don’t see GTK support as a valid item in this discussion.
Porting GPL licensed appications to a close source OS is not a bad thing. How many windows programs are GPL licensed?
And the SkyFS file system is based upon OpenBFS. Just a small part of the whole operating system. Just the fact that some parts are based upon existing code, but the biggest part of SkyOS is writting from scratch.
Yes, SkyOS steals (err.. “uses”) a lot of code from open source projects and gives nothing back. Robert used to talk lots of crap about open source too by in SkyOS’s “prime”. Basically, SkyOS is a hobbyist version of SCO UnixWare in spirit.
Do you even work for any OSS projects that it uses be this bitter?
And gives some back
like BSD people says GPL project that takes from BSD project don’t gives back as much as you would think.
The Haiku project have gain some patches from SkyOS regarding OpenBFS and also there are a BFS/SFS reader for windows.
>>Does BFS maen anything to you? How about WINE? Or Gecko? Maybe Mono? Perhaps Pixel rings a bell? Or SAMBA? GTK+? BASH? AbiWord? GIMP?
It looks like that you have a major problem with open source projects and the possibility to use them on other systems.
The maintainers of the most projects you listed in your posts were pretty happy that it has been ported to SkyOS, even without requiring their involvement in the actual porting process. (which again is a advantage of open source for the project maintainers).
So, whats your problem with these projects if the actual maintainers welcome such a port very much? (e.g. take Mono, I even got contacted by Miguel de Icaza offering me help if I ever want to port Mono to SkyOS).
Same with Pixel, Mozilla, etc… I talked with many developers of most of these projects, and they very welcome such a port.
What are the open source projects you are involved with again?
Btw, do you know that most projects you listed here where designed with portability in mind? Meaning they initially want to reach as most operating systems as possible?
So whats your point again?
I guess you should really rethink the attitude you have against open source.
Edited 2007-11-02 08:59
Some people need to learn the difference between userspace software and the actual OS…
Yes, there is open source software that runs on SkyOS. Is that a crime? It’s meant to run on diffent OS, not meant to run on open source OS.
We did contribute code back to these projects so people saying we don’t should look up some of these projects. (for example pidgin already contains patches for skyos)
So whats your point again?
The post I was responding to was making wisecracks about Linux users and other OS users having to “cobble together parts to make an OS[…]”
My post was to show him or her how ridiculous such an assertion was in light of how often SkyOS has had to use “borrowed” code from the very OSS and Linux coders he or she mocked!
I guess you should really rethink the attitude you have against open source.
Nice try, except I don’t have anything against OSS or Linux. I’m not the one pushing an OS in perpetual beta either, one that needs to “borrow” from a collection of cobbled together applications, APIs and utilities to survive.
–bornagainpenguin
They have no idea how much a house in Purkersdorf/Gablitz really costs
. i love your work man..maybe we could organize some sky os fans meeting in vienna some day.
with a project as complex as a complete, user friendly operating i would rather they take their time and make it right than rush it and make it wrong. OSX 10.5 (while good still a little unpolished and felt rushed) and Vista are prefect examples. I develop software in my free time and i don’t release it “until its done” setting a dead line is pointless when the goal of your project is to produce a real solid piece of software. hitting your date is good, releasing a system you can be proud of and taking your time with it is better.
Nah, setting deadlines is an act of realistic thinking. I don’t think E-17 is ever intentioned on being *released*.
But if you can imagine a set of features you want and a date by which you would like those done, you can then start to balance what you want with the date.
Consider however that a new project is not the same as an established product. GNOME would be hard pressed to have a two year gap between releases, even if the features wanted are great. KDE is making this choice right now, the gamble being the payoff will be worth it.
…“without having to write even a single line of code”
Excerpt from a theme file:
FrameWindow.Border.Left.Brush.Type STRING Image
FrameWindow.Border.Left.Brush.SolidColor COLOR #00525252
FrameWindow.Border.Left.Brush.Image STRING FrameBorderLeft.ico
FrameWindow.Border.Left.Brush.Image(inactive) STRING FrameBorderLeft(inactive).ico
FrameWindow.Border.Left.Brush.SizingMargins RECT 0,0,0,0
How accurate the summary is.
>>How accurate the summary is.
Yes, it is.
The lines you posted are from DataCollections Editor export function just to teach the user how a theme configuration file is handled internally. (this is not a text file you can edit).
Just modify the images and use the DataCollection Editor to adjust a few keys to get a complete new theme. I think you don’t want to compare editing images or modifying a few keys (using an dedicated application) with writing source code which hooks into a theming API, do you?
Edited 2007-10-31 22:29
I don’t like waiting as long as SkyOS is getting better and better.
Watching SkyOS develop is refreshing and helps me (i.e. encourages me) to do as well in my many personal projects that involve work and efforts…
(like learning japanese, learning to play the drums, recording songs, improving my maths courses…, writing a japanese dictionary).
Congrats Robert. Keep up the good work !
On a side note, porting apps to the C++ Api looks like a neat thing as it seems to help fixing long standing bugs, producing simpler code easier to maintain and allowing implementation of more powerfull features…
Damn…what I wanted to say is : “I don’t mind waiting”…
Sorry, I’m french…
That must be a universal excuse, an international get-out-of-jail-free card:
…sorry I’m French.
You are right,
instead of correcting my mistake
and making excuses by saying
“Sorry, I’m French…”
(which implies that English is not my native language)
I should have made excuses by saying
“Sorry, I typed too fast and submitted without making sure my post was correct”
or
“Sorry, my mind slipped and I wrote the wrong word”…
Damn…People are getting picky to the point that being French isn’t even an excuse anymore ! ^_^
Actually, the mistake was mine, I forgot to add the, now obligatory, [/joke] tag to the end of my post. I just thought ‘Sorry I’m French’ a rather amusing excuse to use in a wide variety of situations.
DIRTY FRENCHMAN!
I always wanted a UI that supported windows blinds, and looking the direction gnome and kde have taken, skyOS seems promissing, exept for the reason it’s not open source. To bad 🙁
Well, there’s lots of different projects, with lots of different licenses. We chose closed-source, simply because it worked best for how we want the direction of SkyOS to head. We certainly appreciate and respect every project’s license though, and the right of the respective parties to choose what works for them. I personally use Ubuntu Linux at home myself almost exclusively, so I very much respect the ability of open-source to deliver a strong, polished product!
When its released the following things are going to be said about it. I’ll bet anyone a subscription to OSNews we’ll see comments on the day it’s released that say:
“Why should I have to pay for this when Linux is free?”
“Looks nice, but doesn’t have any apps.”
“How do they intended to compete against MS/Apple/Ubuntu?”
Get off it people. It’ll be released when its ready.
Are you saying these are NOT legitimate questions?
No, I’m saying for all the hue cry people are putting up about the long beta cycle that once it is released, this is what they’ll complain about next. People seem to want to find something to complain about with SkyOS no matter what happens.
I’ve always thought this looked like a fun OS. I wish you could try out the beta without having to pay for it. I’m not sure it will even run on this old laptop I have as it is! Either way, I’m amazed at how much progress seems to be made. Keep up the good work!
Well, bornagainenguin…
Most of the people trolling about/hating SkyOS are people who think that SkyOS looks/is shapping up like a neat thing, with lots of nice goodies in it.
They want to have it (my preciousssss), to play with it but they can’t because :
1) they are cheap and can’t/won’t pay.
(30€ is 5 tickets to the movies in france or 30 smokes…it is half the price of a pc game. SkyOS bring more value than that).
Basically, they are so cheap/spoiled and they have so much disrespect for the work of others, that they want it free (like in beer).
The most shameful of those steal it, by downloading it illegally for free.
The people that put those SkyOS builds on p2p networks are even more despicable and low, in the first place.
2) they hate the fact that SkyOS isn’t open source (because they are open source zealots or they want to play with the code or they want a more open development process or whatever…)
Basically, they deny Robert’s right to choose the licence for his work (and are being plain annoying).
And they still want his work for free…
3) they want to play with SkyOS but whine that their hardware isn’t supported…
(some of them whine don’t provide Robert with the necessary feedback (debug log) to fix their hardware support…though Robert TRIES to help)
Of course, those people behave in a childish manner (probably because they are still brats, or worse adults with a spoiled teen behavior)
Now, there is another kind of people that don’t like SkyOS.
Those are people who have good reasons not to want to buy SkyOS
(for example, they might fear that SkyOS go the BeOS way, or they want to fix bug themselves, etc….and they don’t support non open source oses for these reasons)
and who behave sanely, like adults :
If they don’t like the product,
They don’t buy it.
They don’t whine about it
they don’t post zillions of negative posts on SkyOS related forum/news.
They leave it be.
They don’t care but don’t annoy to no end the people who care.
They aren’t silly and don’t try to pick fights for wrong reasons (you steal from open source and don’t give back, you breach the GPL, etc…).
bornagainenguin and sirhomer, I’m afraid that you are definetely not of the second kind.
You don’t like SkyOS and don’t want to have anything to do with it. Fine. We understand your message.
You have stated your opinion very clearly.
Now, could you do us a favor and stop posting zillions of times the same hate/negative/unbiased/silly posts please ? It gets annoying and we would appreciate if you could stop. Thanks.
By the way calling the people who bought SkyOS “Szeleney Suckups”, is like saying that the linux people suck Linus'[censored], that the people who use windows get Gates’ [censored] deep in the [censored], and that mac’s users swallow Job’s [censored]…
Not liking is one thing, defiling SkyOS user base is quite another. In my opinion, you suck big time too.
Edited 2007-11-02 08:50
“The people that put those SkyOS builds on p2p networks are even more despicable and low, in the first place.”
Since the serial number is tied to your account (I know this since I paid for the beta), could you explain this further? I’m struggling to see how this behaviour is happening if the serial is tied to a user.
Edited 2007-11-02 12:25
[quote]
“The people that put those SkyOS builds on p2p networks are even more despicable and low, in the first place.”
Since the serial number is tied to your account (I know this since I paid for the beta), could you explain this further? I’m struggling to see how this behaviour is happening if the serial is tied to a user.
[/quote]
Well, I hear you but I was just stating
observed facts (however silly they may be) :
-a few builds of SkyOS have been leaked on p2p networks
-a few people with an illegal copy of SkyOS even asked for help on the SkyOS website.
If I’m not mistaken, there have even been occurrences of people with an illegal copy of SkyOS implementing 3rd party apps for SkyOS (please correct me if I’m wrong)…I believe that a piece of the Wmware support for SkyOS emlerged from such an occurence… (thanks for that) ^_^
On a side note….
among the many people who applied for a free copy of SkyOS in return for developing SkyOS apps (the now forsaken Beta developer programm),
only a few (we love you guys) stayed true to their words and actually developed apps for SkyOS.
(stupid) Humans…
I don’t think you have the right to make the broad assumption that everyone who doesn’t buy SkyOS is cheap, spoiled and childish. While I don’t approve of bornagainenguin making comments about suck-ups, you are definitely not taking the high road here.
I personally think SkyOS looks like a fun project, and I’d love to try it out. I can’t see paying for it for a few reasons. One is that I have an old laptop that I install different operating systems on for fun, and doesn’t seem to work well with anything but Windows. I also have a hard time with purchasing a beta of something I’ve never tried before. I don’t know how it works, I’ve only seen screenshots and changelogs. If SkyOS were further along, I might consider spending the $40 US to use it. Right now, I just can’t see it.
I like the free open source business model. I think it’s great when people willingly donate money to developers of a project because they love using it, not because they’re obligated to do so. Of course, Robert has the freedom to choose any business model he wants for SkyOS. Some may agree with it and some may disagree, but I don’t think there’s any reason to fight about it.
I’ll leave this comment with a link to the Linux Mint forums, where people have been donating to the project that is free to use. This is the type of business model that I prefer, and I hope that Robert is making as much to support his efforts as this free project is.
http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26&sid=3f33bf66ea0dfe0d2…
[quote]I don’t think you have the right to make the broad assumption that everyone who doesn’t buy SkyOS is cheap, spoiled and childish.[/quote]
That’s not what I said/meant. Reread my post.
First, I spoke about childish people trolling about SkyOs and afterwards I spoke about more mature people “disliking” SkyOS/having sensible reasons not to buy it (and who don’t troll).
You appear to belong to the second category.
I don’t approve of bornagainenguin making comments about suck-ups[…]
Please see my response to that post. I chose my words poorly, not realizing they could be so misinterpreted. Did you know “suck up” has over ten definitions!! What I meant (as should be clear from the context of my comment) was to call the people who were moderating me down because they didn’t like anyone being critical of SkyOS “brown-nosers” is that more clear?
–bornagainpenguin
It’s a personal attack in whatever way you put it, and that’s actually against our rules. I’m too lazy to moderate this thread right now, but a bit more of this nonsense and this thread will receive some massive moderation.
I’m getting pretty much sick and tired of the comments’ sections on SkyOS stories. And yes, you are all responsible for that, on both sides of the fence. It is quite likely that I will have to resort to much fiercer methods of keeping SkyOS threads clean.
I’ve had it up to right about HERE with people pro and anti SkyOS. Get out more.
Nice try at character assassination! Only you couldn’t be more inaccurate if you tried…
Go ahead and look back through my posting record and see what I say are my concerns about SkyOS; you’ll find I often compare SkyOS to the BeOS. There is a reason for that. I was among the last people to purchase BeOS in the store, three months later they were out of business.
I’d been using the BeOS PE and finding it very usable, I could have just installed from that, like so many others did but I wanted to be legal and I wanted to be able to play my collection of RM videos. I also wanted to support the company I’d read about in Neal Stephenson’s essay…I wanted to see BeOS continue to grow and prosper.
Why would I want to go through that again?
The past has shown quite clearly what happens when an OS is closed and there is no money to continue development. Or its lead developer loses interest and quits. It is only thanks to the fact AtheOS was released under the GPL that Syllable was able to rise from its ashes. What will happen if/when Robert decides to quit SkyOS in favor of something else? Will there still be a SkyOS?
Why would I want to take that chance?
By the way calling the people who bought SkyOS “Szeleney Suckups”, is like saying […]
I think you’re missing my point altogether there. Perhaps I should have called them Szeleney Brown-Nosers instead? Does that make my meaning more clear? I did not mean anything sexual in my remarks, I was referring to fanatic who moderate downward any post which does not praise SkyOS or adulate its creator. As you can see I was correct in thinking this would happen….
Not liking is one thing, defiling SkyOS user base is quite another.
Not liking my posts is one thing, moderating them down as if I were in violation of the board’s posting policies is quite another. Also, as said above I was using “suckup” in … look see dictionary.com, particularly definitions 10 and 20.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=suck+up&x=33&y=25
I did not “defile” SkyOS’ user base. If you or any one else who bought the SkyOS betas were not moderating me down against OSNews.com policy, then you were not included in my statement. Do you have a guilty conscious?
–bornagainpenguin
Truth.
Edited 2007-11-02 19:49
Seriously who is more stupid, the people constantly making stupid comments about SkyOS. Or the good people who reply to them everytime fueling them to keep arguing.
Just ignore the bad remarks, SkyOS is good. Robert chose the license he wants, it will be “released” when ready. End of.
Yeah, its always a pity to see how much time I spent argumenting to people who can’t get their head out of the sand, over and over. What a wasted time.
@vchira:
;), at least its a very nice region there.
A meeting in vienna would be really nice someday, Pavel, the Pixel developer is also in vienna from time to time and showed interest in a meeting there too.
Maybe we could organize something for next year, who knows.