BeOSJournal features a short article about the presentation of YellowTAB’s Zeta (BeOS-based Dano/R6) operating system at CeBIT. Also, click to view three shots from their new window manager design.
BeOSJournal Reveals New Zeta Screenshots
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’m a little confused about YellowTAB. Have they got a license for the source code of either BeOS 5.0 or Dano?
I might have missed the thousands of threads posted by BeOS fans, and I’ve never used BeOS myself. From the screenshots, the thing looks like nothing special (though I’ve heard it can run pretty fast on pretty much the crappiest rig you can find). I’ve never heard of any advantage for using it in the desktop sector, server sector, or any computing sector for that matter.
So why exactly is BeOS still alive, or even better, why is it hitting the news?
Looks good!!
It’s great to see that people are putting the effort into bringing BeOS back.
Because this is a spin off of BeOS, not BeOS itself. It is about.. 95% compatible with the 2,900 apps for BeOS 5, but it is a spin off, a new, modified OS and under a new management. Kinda like eComStation did for OS/2.
And this OS, Zeta, is not out yet, this was the FIRST public showing ever, and BeOSJournal.org has three brand new screenshots of it. So, this is why it is news.
as far as I know, palm licenced beos r6 alpha code to them. My source is the zeta forums at yellowtab.com, where they seem to confirm it.
It seems they can make changes to the codebase also…
############ Awesome ScreenShots!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i’ve installed beos max edition, and it seems to work pretty good. i’ve actually installed the beos 5 personal edition on my old computer, which was an amd k6-2 350 with 256 megs of ram…and it absolutely screeeemed. i installed max on my new box, which is an athlon XP 2400 with 512 megs….i expected the same kind of blow me away performance….but no, I wasn’t that impressed.
it just feels old…and coming from a lycoris user hopelessly stuck in kde 2.2 that should say a lot lol.
on older and slower hardware, I think it’ll blow you away…so long as your hardware is supported.
i think it’s always good to have alternatives, but it’s linux for me thanks. mind you, if I still had my old box, i’d probably try to get it running exactly the way i wanted….but I have no need now. I’ve got the ponies and the space to run anything I want.
Wow, that interface is truly horrid looking, its almost blasphemous. The need a real interface designer there.
That background image makes the whole shot look very cheap. They should not be using such an image, it indeed makes it look the whole thing worse than it really is.
Call me stupid, but I’m confused. Those circular objects down the left aren’t actually part of the UI, are they?
I think they are just part of the wallpaper. This is exactly why I said above that this terrible wallpaper HAS TO GO.
I like the design, only because Be was so plain. Granted BeOS was well designed and made to be simple looking, then masses will require “pretty”.
Guess they should put a bookmark to Osnews on one of those screen shot too!
I know a lot of Great people worked at be and wanted a different path for BeOS but, at least it is alive for one more year. I say good news. Can’t wait to get a copy. Hope some more native apps get coded for such a good OS. We really need some industial based apps to pay the bills.
Okay, I don’t really understand. What does BeOS shine at ? Desktop? Server? Would it make a better desktop tahn RH 8.1, Mandrake 9.1 or Xandros?
Also in terms of speed… Is this faster than Gentoo’s latest and greatest with either KDE or GNOME? Would apps like Mozilla even run really fast?
If it is so fast why isn’t OS X, Windows, Linux, Unix, Os/2 etc. as fast? What makes BeOs so fast?
I agree. Jagged edges, poorly proportioned, hard to click widgets – the BeOS interface wasn’t amazing, but this is definitely a downgrade. Maybe they come from an Amiga background, where no one cares what the gui looks like…
>What does BeOS shine at ? Desktop? Server?
Desktop. BeOS is an excellent Desktop and Multimedia OS.
Version BeOS 5 is a really BAD server. Version 6 (Dano/Zeta) is better on the server-side with the addition of BONE networking stack, but still, desktop it is its primary focus (BeOS is bad on security for example).
>Would it make a better desktop tahn RH 8.1, Mandrake 9.1 or Xandros?
WAY better. For me, XP, OSX and BeOS are the best desktop OSes around, none of the X11-based environments come even close to these three.
>Also in terms of speed… Is this faster than Gentoo’s latest and greatest with either KDE or GNOME?
Yes and yes. And no. For server operations and compilation times etc, Gentoo and ANY other unix/linux is better than BeOS. On desktop operations and mulitmedia and UI/media responsiveness, BeOS is much better than any of these unix-based OSes.
So, depends what you want really…
BeOS’s performance makes X feel like you’re running it on a 386 with VESA graphics.
Seriously, X needs to go and we need something like photon or BeOS’s GUI, they are so much faster!
If BEOS has such an excellent file system performance etc. Why aren’t all the good things implemented in the linux kernel from the OpenBeOs. PLEASE EXPLAIN!
A lot of people are asking Why this and Why that. Why is BeOS still around? Why is BeOS making the news?
It’s pretty simple actually. If you’ve looked aound you’ll notice that there are a lot of momentum picking up from other operating systems that’s not called Windows. You just can’t ignore the fact that Microsoft is feeling threatened by Linux, MacOSX, and other lesser known OSes such as Amiga and BeOS. We’re entering an era where other OSes are thinking they can gain popularity over Windows and they’re taking that chance.
If for no other reason, it’s at least fun for geeks and you shouldn’t rain on other people’s parade. Just how I think.
<em>Okay, I don’t really understand. What does BeOS shine at ? Desktop? Server? Would it make a better desktop tahn RH 8.1, Mandrake 9.1 or Xandros?
Also in terms of speed… Is this faster than Gentoo’s latest and greatest with either KDE or GNOME? Would apps like Mozilla even run really fast?
If it is so fast why isn’t OS X, Windows, Linux, Unix, Os/2 etc. as fast? What makes BeOs so fast?</em>
BeOS is a Desktop OS, IMHO it is the Best OS for the desktop, but Zeta will also perform well as a server as it has the newer BeOS Network Environment — BONE.
Alass, BeOS is fast because it is pervasively multi-threaded, but apps like Mozilla are sluggish in BeOS because they were not developed for such fine grained threading and suffer slower speeds than native BeOS apps. Not that Mozilla is particularly slow, just in terms of the BeOS user’s expectations.
Are there enough apps to make BEoS viable for me. I need good (prefferably free) multimedia/sound applications, openoffice.org 1.02 equivalent, e-mail, if possiblea good IDE lik Kdevlop, and msot importantly for my ahrdware to be supported.
IS OpenBeos as good as Zeta also?
>Why aren’t all the good things implemented in the linux kernel from the OpenBeOs
1. Because OpenBeOS still doesn’t have all the good things BeOS had, it is work in progress. It is a lot of kernel architecture involved in this, not just the fs.
2. Because Linux is not BeOS.
As for the BFS, it was never a great performer. It was a great fs *feature*-wise, for its time. I would expect XFS to perform better any day.
OpenBeOS is trying to clone BeOS, but it has no code relationship. Not to mention it is years from completion.
YellowTab IS BeOS. Same source code base and same APIs and all that stuff. What’s more, it’s finished NOW. (Well almost, not shipping yet AFAIK)
> I need good (prefferably free) multimedia/sound applications,
There are some yes.
> openoffice.org 1.02 equivalent,
Gobe Productive 2.02 is the best it’s got, which is not up to par feature-wise as OOo 1.0.2.
>e-mail,
yes
> if possiblea good IDE lik Kdevlop,
Try Eddie. There are no good visual gui editors for BeOS btw. You will have to write code by hand.
>and msot importantly for my ahrdware to be supported.
You will have to check this out with either Zeta when it is released, or with BeOS Max Edition v2.x.
Instead of asking here, please go to http://www.bebits.com and see what is available for BeOS, for yourself.
>IS OpenBeos as good as Zeta also?
No, OpenBeOS is not finished. It is in very early stages still.
good to see someone still carrying the beos torch. i only used it for a couple of months a few years ago, but was very impressed. want to try it again, but my beos max cd doesn’t seem to be bootable (is it just my disc or is there some other way to go?). only problem is the lack of apps, apart from that it kill every except MacOs in terms of a desktop os.
Agreed, BFS is doesn’t shine in terms of raw performance.
OpenBFS is actually far better in this regard, but I would agree its still not actually designed with this in mind.
In regards to what makes it actually useful in a BeOS context; integration. Nice (IMO) APIs for accessing attributes, extensive support in Tracker, and the real world applications (BeMail anyone?) make it a winner in terms of actually improving the end user experience.
Yes, it could be taken further (Tracker’s “Find” panel could use some work, for example, and I’d like see queries get used far more). Yet, I don’t really imagine that its possible for anything like this to happen in Linux, purely because of the integration/choice/standards thing that is the blessing and the curse of the Linux world.
BeOS will always have a special place in my heart. I remember signing up for my Slashdot nick as be-fan, because I was so enthused with it. That must have been a long time ago, it seems. BeOS, if nothing else, was fluid. It did justice to a C++ API. I pioneered the “Ease of Mac, Power of UNIX” thing long before OS X came out. It was never all that technically incredible. It was a sensible microkernel (not ultra-minimalist like the research kernels, not obscenely bloated like NT). It had excellent filesystem performance, but not any better than modern journaling FSs like Reiser or XFS. It wasn’t even all that fast (compiles, unzipping, etc, were significantly slower than a contemporary Linux machine). However, it *felt* fast. It achived this through a multithreading GUI paired with a scheduler that has yet to be matched. Over time, Linux has improved to the point where it can now beat circa 1998 BeOS in pretty much everything. But I still can’t help wondering what BeOS could have become if Be had met an
untimely demise…
This Zeta thing is rather interesting. I always liked the original Dano screenshots, and hope this new interface lives up to them. Unfortunately, I’m typing this from Lynx so I can’t take a look at the previews
I’m really surprised to see how Zeta got this far working with binary code. Beyond that, the legal implications are troubling. But I wish them the best of luck, at least ’till OpenBeOS hits R1 
So, YOU were the be-fan???
I remember guessing with my friend Jonathan as to who that might be…
>It had excellent filesystem performance, but not any better than modern journaling FSs like Reiser or XFS.
I like XFS too, it has ALL the features found on BFS, except Live Queries though I hear (which also needs kernel support).
“If for no other reason, it’s at least fun for geeks and you shouldn’t rain on other people’s parade. Just how I think.”
I don’t think he was raining on people’s parades, just asking the question. I, as someone who has never used BeOS, have the same questions. I’ve seen screen shots and heard how good it is–but then again, there are people who claim OS/2 and DOS are the greatest, so (like many others) I’m curious as to what exactly BeOS and its spinoffs can do that other OS’s can’t (or don’t do as well). If we’re going to run it and make it worth developers’ time to come up with apps for the BeOS family, we should probably be convinced that it’s worth the time to learn.
as far as I know, if the people from zeta are telling the truth, then they have SOURCE CODE from zeta, THEY ARE NOT ADDING BINARY PATCHES TO A BINARY BEOS r5.
now, since I bolded the statements above. I will bold this one too (okay not bold but it it easier
WARNING: IF YOU DO NOT TRUST WHAT THE ZETA DEVELOPERS SAID, then take what I said with a grain of salt…
now, many questions can be answered at the zeta forum at yellowtab.com, under the support section.
here is a nice clickable link…
http://www.yellowtab.com/board/
…but as long as it can be set back to the old R5 style, I’ll be content.
Supposedly they were supposed to announce a release date at Cebit…. has that happened yet? 😉
Wait! This isn’t the new Amiga operating system that has been promised and not delivered on for years. This is the new BeOS system that will be promised and won’t be delivered.
I’m sick of companies saying that they have the greatest tech and never producing it. By the time they do, it is out of date (Crusoe anyone?) Release someting, anything. Apple was right to release the Mac OS X beta. Sure it was unusuably slow for everyday use, but at least it showed that that had something. The final version showed huge improvement and it has been progressing since. Until companies put something out there, nothing will ever come of them. Nothing like going live to stoke the coals under developers.
I really hope that this new window manager is a beta and not the final thing. I LIKE its design BETTER than their previous efforts, BUT the one they got in these shots has bugs:
1. The borders of the window don’t have the same width in its four sides.
2. The “curved” corners of the window manager are not the same on all 3 corners (down-left, down-right, up-right).
3. The header/title font on the yellow tabs is not centered vertically, and it is a bit too big. Make it a size smaller, but BOLD and center it vertically.
In this shot: http://www.beosjournal.org/images/articles/2003/2003-03-10-zeta/zet… the tab view of the “Uber” window is GLUED to the window manager and that fact makes that window look crappy. It does not follow the Be UI guidelines.
Get rid of that terrible background.
Other than that, it looks fine, and better than their previous window manager effort.
The widgets look entirely usable, and the window decorations are sharp. And are those SVG icons?
Now the screenshots show Zeta still has a ways to go in the UI department (like the wallpaper and the low-res icons blown up to match the size of the other icons – disgusting). And I hope they did something to make sure the text isn’t unreadably small on high-resolution displays. But don’t even get me started on hardware support!
So I’m interested to see how it all works out in the end. BeOS was written very well, let’s hope Zeta carries on that tradition.
> And are those SVG icons?
Yes, as far as I can tell.
Did apple sell the OSX beta? answer that…
Howdy,
I created all the decors thus far for Zeta. They have been coding tests and proofs of concept only!!
All R5.1d0 (Exp/Dano) decors are included, and the decors will under go close scrutiny. The YT About box put the tabs to close to the top, the Gonxish decor (in use) glues itself to the absolute edge of the window. However, the early yellowZeta decor (attempt to duplicate features of other Dano decors) was squatted onto the window on the right side by a few pixels, whilst the remaining window decorators (about a dozen) were glued to the outermost edges of the window.
Scrollbars need to be spaced out from the side too as it stands. Currently there is not even a pixel of seperation between the scrollbar in Net+ and the window border. I have yet to investigate if this is a coding error on my part (very feasible), or a sad reality of these decorators. When I find it, I will fix it.
The background image.. yeah.. that plainly sucks.. and the stretchign of non SVG icons.. better than having some HUGE, some small icons on the same plane like so many Linux distros I have seen do!
And Eugenia, in regards to the font size and vertical centering, they were repaired about eight hours ago and have been committed to cvs. I hope to find a way to customize the fonts in window decors without needing to do some major coding changes. Also, the corners are actually pretty close to the same. The top and bottom have more narrow borders by design.. I wanted it to feel like water flowing around a center of gravity.. expanding on the sides, and flattening where gravity is greatest.
But, just for you, I will try it with thick borders all around. The right side of the tab does need to be a bit more agressively curved, nothing more than art.
Hmm, what else can I clarify??
Yes, those are SVG icons. And they scale flawlessly!!!!!!
Zeta is much faster than plain R5 in MANY MANY areas. File system access is blazingly fast compared to the days of old (ATA133 support as well). Videos load in just a second.. at worst, instead of taking sometimes thirty seconds (Media Player problem). And Zeta starts on my system in about ten seconds (timed from moment I press ENTER in the boot menu (I choose Between Zeta or Zeta backup) to the time the last item in my startup is loaded ( I add an alert to the end of the UserBootscript ). Though, I must be honest and say I do not overload my system.
Occassionally, the time to boot is longer.. maybe 12 seconds.. which is irritating when you are use to going shig…shigg..shiggy…mouse..Desktop…go .. though, that is because the entire fs journal is rebuilt in those two extra seconds after a power outage 😉
Also, I believe it is planned to release Release Canidate 1 _SOON_, at which point we focus on the small stuff like user suggestions for GUIs. I have 7 GUI mockups that I have been ordered to create in HIGH_QUALITY.
Oh, yes.. security… I guess no one read about our security deal? http://www.yellowtab.com/article.php?id=20
We have plans to plugging security holes to aid in opening more markets. For the next six months or so after Zeta RC1, Zeta will very much be something for the BeOS Community for full-time use, as they already know how to get by. They will find it less difficult with the extra tools we supply (many of which will be open sourced upon release).
Long live Zeta and the BeOS Community!
–The loon
…for all the info, loony! Can’t wait for the final release.
From the looks of the screenshots I’d rather browse their beautiful website then actually use Zeta. I mean if those added features I see are standard I’ll stick with even KDE over Zeta anyday.
Soon Zeta will hit the shelves I hope. I’ve waited for so long.
Finally the ultimate desktop OS is available and we have no need for Linux anymore. ACtually is there any need of Linux at all when BSD exists?
BeOS is the best Desktop OS out there and perfect for using the computer productively, rather than just wanking with the computer itself.
Buh bye Windoze hazzle and Linux Problems… welcome BeOS
Hmm, I tried coding for BeOS once when I installed R5, my whole design concept fell over when I discovered the lack of child class Windows, no wonder BeOS has no good looking IDE’s… I hope they have fixed this problem atleast
… I tried BeOS for 2 months, LOVED IT, I wish them luck (and the wisdom to add child windows 
)
>Finally the ultimate desktop OS is available and we have no
>need for Linux anymore. ACtually is there any need of Linux
>at all when BSD exists?
You might look at the diffrences in license, hardware support,applications, business support etc.
Linux is here to stay!
http://www.shaolinmicro.com is a good example.
ps. watch IBM closely the following months..
>Buh bye Windoze hazzle and Linux Problems… welcome BeOS
Beos (personal and Max edition) is not real stable, lots of apps crash all the time and the system often freezes or does no longer work “normal”. Things get even worse if you use a network envoirment (apple or nfs) Do not expect your problems, whatever they are, to disapear just because the boot menu sas BeOS. I use BeOS everyday and it is fast has great multimedia support but no problems anymore? nah..
If you want a OS that is fast, stable, multimedia strong try QNX its the only OS i know that could be suited for you.
Looks horrible, I won’t be purchasing any skinnable BeOS that’s for sure. Next purchase I make will be a Mac with OSX, why? Cause they have enough confidence in their default UI that the user doesn’t need the hassle of skins.
OpenBeOS won’t go for this kiddie crap will they? Last I checked they intended to mimic R5 rather then Dano, hope that still is the case.
What do you mean by “Child Windows”?
Windows which belongs to the “main” and are destroyed automatically when the main windows is closed ?
You’re all such a fickle lot, aren’t ya?
I honestly haven’t seen more than a handful of people who have given good ideas, and actually put their money where there mouth is.
If you think the efforts by openBeOS, Zeta, Cosmoe, AltheOS, Sequel, AtheOS, and others are such horrible abominations, then please, step forward, and offer your help.
Being an armchair “UI/Design Expert” will get you nowhere but the scorn of the hardworking individuals who ARE doing their best behind the scenes to get things done.
You want to know how these actual screeenshots came about? I was talking with Bernd in BeShare, and he said he wanted to show me a few things. I said, sure.. that’s fine, and while we’re at it, can I see what the current Tracker looks like, etc etc.
I for one like the background, but do agree that the circles on the left are a little jagged. Big deal.
What matters is that there is progress.. Tangible progress that indicates to me that the people at YellowTab are in fact making some headway, against all odds, and against the negative feedback that seems to swell in these waters.
I do not want to post this message because I am mad, or angry, or dissapointed, but merely wanted to let you how these screenshots came to be.
As to the other technical issues that BeOS development faces.. well, all I can say is that all things will be revealed in time. It’s not like Windows is coming out with anything stellar in the past few years anyhow. BeOS, Linux, and other alternatives are now firmly entrenched in the mindsets of too many people for them to go away so quickly. It’s now just a matter of time, and getting the fine details right.
So, if you have something positive to say, please speak up. Otherwise, please don’t bother wasting your time, my time, and the precious time of the many developers who do read your comments, no matter how asinine.
Thank you.. Peace.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
http://www.beosjournal.org
Good morning, sorry for the late reply, i only started to read the thread 10mns ago (i’m at work). Since looncraz didn’t answer Greg’s question i though i’d do it. Yes, those round widgets on the left are usable, and user-defined. In this decor you can put anything you want inside those, partitions, volumes, folders, apps, etc.
Take care,
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
Get to work, what are you doing posting in here? You don’t see me posting from wor…er… nevermind…
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
I just want to say keep up the good work everyone working on YellowTab, OpenBeOS or other alt. OSes. I come here because of you and I do appreciate the work involved.
Personally I believe Zeta will be great although it’s hard to judge as a bystander from nothing more than screenshots and word of mouth. I’m looking forward to the day when you can play around with a demo or my own copy. The sooner the better.
If you are starting to develop under BeOS and you have trouble with child windows or other programming issues. Do download BeShare and log on to beshare.TyComSystems.com. I guarantee that ppl will be very friendly and try to help you out. Many of the Zeta devs can be reached that way too, but don’t ask them about release-dates. They are pretty tired of that…
is how people keep posting screenshots as JPEG. JPEG is made for photos, not images which should be sharp, such as screenshots. Use PNG instead, it will probably compress just as well.
I see a fine looking UI, a neat dock-like addition, and one craptacular desktop backround… Oh the whole thing sucks then doesn’t it…
Jesus people, its a bad backround, and yes the icons arent perfect, but they are just as pretty as my win2k ones, if not prettier.
I have seen more than enough Zeta screenshots, I’m tired of it. I don’t care about SVG icons, I don’t care about a dock-like application, I don’t care about localization and I don’t care about fancy about-windows with the latest CPUs being recognized.
Has there been any work at the core? What font rendering is it using? Does it do subpixel rendering? Is Bone more stable than the leaked beta? How about OpenGL? How are Media and Midi Kit doing? Has there been any work done on the USB kit? What about bug fixes? The max RAM limit (R5 wouldn’t boot on computers with 1.5GB RAM)? Are there any new drivers (new=not already on BeBits) included? What gcc version is it using? Will there ever be a PPC version, possibly supporting new world Macs?
Yellow tab looks nice, but I believe the next thing BeOS needs is a port of OpenOffice. Sure, Gobe is nice but that MS-Office compatibility just isn’t there. Considering how easily OO has been integrated to work with aqua, I would say that native Be widgets wouldn’t necessarily be too difficult. After all, Aqua is Objective C + Cocoa (no offence but YUK!! IMHO) whereas OO is mainly C++ AFAIK.
Well done YellowTab, keep up the good work
Oh my word.
I can’t believe I have just noticed this now…
My apologies everyone, for being misled, but these screenshots are NOT the ones that will be shown at CeBit, if even there are any shown at CeBit.
These are three screenshots I obtained from Bernd on Monday, March 10, 2003, while conversing with Bernd in BeShare, online.
Also, CeBit hasn’t even started… So how could these the statement, “YellowTAB Shows BeOS-based Zeta at CeBIT” be true?
I apologize for not spotting this earlier, but the cluestick was put away for the day, and I’m running in windoze lately, so I’m a bit brain dead.
Anyhow. Eugenia.. If you could kindly change the headline to something like, “BeOSJournal Reveals New Zeta Screenshots.”, I would appreciate it.
I honestly didn’t foresee this getting even picked up by so many people as being greatly new, or exciting.. I just wanted to show our small BeOS Community a couple of neato screenshots.. That’s it.
Thanks in advance, Eugenia. We wouldn’t want to be labelled as mis-leading the public, now would we?
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal
http://www.beosjournal.org
I love BeOS!
BeOS is REAL enemy for MS and any Lunix’.
Palm tries to kill them but they are alive.
I wish success for Be.
Good work guys!
Chris – I went ahead and updated the title for you.
Thanx Adam.
Any chance anyone from OSNews will be going to CeBit?
-Chris
It is much better then those found on BeShare.
About those circles on desktop: on TBJ forum it is said that it is not part of background picture, it is part of decor, so you can add them to desktop or choose not to have them at all.
BTW, check out my screeny, SVG Tracker on plain vanilla BeOS r5. Large png in full glory 🙂
http://www.bug.org.yu/svgtracker.png
Looking forward to get Zeta on my Computer and some money into their pocket 😉
Their efforts need to get recognized!
Very nice screenshot.
Does zeta let you go back to the “classic” Beos look? while i find what they have done interesting, i still prefer the old BeOS look.
I was totally skeptical about all BeOS projects. However, I have come to see and learn that Zeta is the real thing. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. And, it is great loon is talking about rc1 being such that user comments and suggestions will be the case.
Alot of you don’t know much about BeOS. Some questions were answered. But, the basic story is that it was built from scratch – completely. It has true multitasking and protected memory. Multithreading is extremely important for programmers, but it also makes it more difficult to program for – more time consuming . but, oh the pay off in the end!!
This is not such a big thing now, but a cool demonstration to show your friends about five or six years ago was to get about four movies going at the same time (in small boxes), open something like GoBeProductive and then open the command line. People would go crazy when they saw that!
Unfortunately, .there was never enough time or money or risk taking to get “big” apps for be – Adobe, Macromedia, that type of thing. There are some good apps though for doing specific things.
Please know I’m not saying this as an anti-Linux statement – I use Linux, KDE and Gnome. Be blows them out of the water. As I said before, built from scratch, no bloat. For that matter, it would blow all heavily laden desktop environments out of the water, like OS X.
It is dated now, of course. I have a desktop iPaq, a 700 MHz PIII with 512 MB RAM. Everything on it works with BeOS – sound, ethernet, graphics, etc. I still use it, although it is dated. Why? Because it is such a pleasure to use.
I don’t know for a fact what all Zeta will bring with it. Better networking, for one, I hope :-), but, when it does come out, many of you should try it out. It is worth the effort.
I hope BeOS comes back in one form or another. As of now, I’m committed to Linux and Windows to get my work done (it’s non-geek work). BeOS has a very sweet feature that I haven’t seen in any other OS, maybe I just don’t know about it. You can right click on a folder icon and it displays a list of sub-folders, point at the desired sub-folder and it displays sub-sub-folders, etc and you click on the folder you need to open. It’s a little thing, but it’s so much quicker and handier than clicking, waiting for window, clicking, waiting for window, etc. that you really miss the feature when you don’t have it. Does this exist anywhere else? Like I said, it’s a little thing, but this kind of thing is more important to 99% of users than measuring differences of speed that aren’t even perceptible to the user.
<<Yellow tab looks nice, but I believe the next thing BeOS needs is a port of OpenOffice.>>
The port is a BeUnited project, but whether or not the few people who signed on for it are actively working on it is a mystery. It is supposed to be a huge, nightmarish project, and some have even questioned whether it can be done at all. (I don’t know whether or not the progress on Java improves this prognosis any.)
Most BeOS users seem to much prefer Gobe Productive as a superior product, and one wonders if this has hampered motivation towards a BeOS port of OpenOffice.org. Given the problems that arose with the release of the GP code, it looks unlikely that GP3 will be available anytime soon for BeOS.
I think it’s a mistake to “ignore” openoffice.org because of Gobe Productive. Gobe Productive may be elegant, fast, cleanly coded, etc., but feature wise it is *not* comparable. If Gobe Productive does everything you want it to, great, but those extra feature in OpenOffice should not be characterized as “bloat” simply because you personally never use them. Many of these features would be important for businesses & gov’t. (Zeta/BeOS may never be used by businesses, but OpenOffice may be.)
Some of the most important advantages of OpenOffice that I can think of are database connectivity and the possibility for automation via scripting (StarBasic doesn’t seem to be quite as flexible as VBA, but at least it’s there). It also has excellent features for creating very long documents, and the vector graphics capabilities are good. It’s MS file format support may not be perfect, but it’s better than GP’s. The most important advantage over GP though, is that it appears to be the most serious contender to erode MS Office dominance at the moment. If OpenOffice becomes popular enough to be “that other non-MS office suite” then the lack of it in BeOS/Zeta would be considerably unattractive to the prospective user.
From the article:
I hastily reached for my insta-matic camera (hey, some tech just won’t die.) and snapped some pictures so that people would believe what I saw.
These are most definitely not photographs, no matter what he says!
i own beos 5 but can not run it due to my nforce and athlonxp i cant wait for this to be released! it looks awsome! so does the openbeos project.
Brandon
mmmmmmmmm… that “(…) spanned some pictures (…)” was just some humour from his part… i know his isn’t the best, i know him
It’s obvious those are screenshots.
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
If you mean the lack of ‘MDI’ style windows, then it must be pointed out that even Windows is trying to get rid of these.
However, if you’d have taken the time to look at BeBits, I’m pretty sure someone *has* developed an evil MDI solution you could have used yourself.
I would like to thank everybody who has been working on Zeta and OpenBeOS. You have been doing a wonderful job. You have my good thoughts for now, and financial support in the future.
On a related note, IIRC it wa once mentioned that Zeta would be incoporating/creating open source components, presumably from OBOS. Is this still true and what is the status? For instance will you be using OBFS in the Zeta release?
Apple gave the beta away for FREE as long as you purchased the final version, so no they didn’t sell it.
I am about half-way through readin these posts..
If you mean window in window coding, that is now supported.
As are non-sqaure windows.
If you mean what Jack Burton said.. that is supported too.
How about downloading pretty much any good image app for BeOS.. or look at the screen shots.
Hey, if you want, I’ll spend 5 minutes writing one for you!! Though I have never messed with window in window, I deal with them daily (decorator).
The must reiterate that the decors that have been seen from yellowTAB are not meant for public-consumption as-is. They are proof of concept (coding challenges). They workd flawlessly, and very well.
Stable??
I typed this into Terminal:
“uptime”
And Got this:
“Zeta System was booted 8 days, 23 hours, 8 minutes, 11 seconds ago. ”
Zeta is not like these other distros using tons of experimental junk on top of an unmodifiable base. If we see a problem, we go in and fix it. Asthetics are the least of our problems.
Stability was our first priority, with only one remaining stability bug left known on your lists. And it is an IconCache problem related to the Tracker that takes a few days to show up and only shows itself through a 3rd-party IRC app named Vision (nice app). Well, looking at it this morning I saw the problem! 😉 Coders will understand:
type_code cache_array[cache_amt];
Then about 73 lines down..
type_code variable = cache_array[cache_amt]
Hmm.. accessing the last #… tsk tsk…
The fix??
Add +1 to the first line..
type_code cache_array[cache_amt + 1];
There, no more corruption. All works 😉
So Zeta should now have no stability issues outside special cases and third party software that we have not tested (if we find troubls with 3rd party software, we try to get the code and resolve the issues for the author, or give the author a Zeta beta as to help resolve the issue).
Also, please realize that interface is user-configurable in many many facets. For instance, if you want a fish in your Tab (or no tab at all, but a bar like Windblows), you can just draw a fish, type COMPILE, and your gonna prolly need to do a little code change to my decors as they stnd (I write them to be light), but you can do it.. all you do is adjust a BRect for the image location to draw to the window.. and maybe the relativeness of the fish to the window Bounds(). All easy Lua code! 😉
Colors are adjustable, and we have a partially implemented method now of modifying BControls. BControls being buttons, checkboxes, radials, menus, etc… Yes, that means that maybe in the future we will give y’all system-wide transparent menus if y’all really want that ugly crap. This feature is most likely not gonna be ready for the initial RC releases, but may still make R1 or an after-the-release free update, via the tightly integrated Updater (me wrotes).
Also, Zeta is a capable server OS performance wise now, offering excellent networking performance (I tax my network equipment like no tomorrow by transferring a 650MB file from my garage Zeta file server (running Apache for http, xitami for ftp, and BeServed, and a few other neat services I just had to fool with ;-). I would show you benchmark data, but then I’d need to upgrade my file_server to something a little more capable than a K6-2 😉 My Athlon XP system (with working SSE folks) smokes like mad on Zeta.
Another performance item…
When I use R5 for whatever reason, I feel like I’m using old software. Its slow, has some obvious quirks (net_server.. bleh) and some true weaknesses for coders ( less-than-ideal posix support (no mmap() and such) and even implemented parts of the API that do not work. Such as a nice little BWindow flag B_QUIT_ON_WINDOW_CLOSE, which has no effect. This should be taken care of in the future by YT, but aren’t worrying about that at the moment.
YT is currently focusing on getting the latest stuff out in usable and stable form. Then we will work on the eye candy and such (though the Tracker is certainly done for eye candy with transparent selections and dragging and gradiants and SVG icons, and 128×128 ssize normal icons rom larger images, and all kinds of neat stuff such indicators explaining why the window contents are organized in a certain manner…. 😉
QNX may be fast and stable, but I bet when pitted against Zeta R1, it will not stand a chance (heh.. I’ll compare NOW an bet you we can out do it on the EXACT same hardware.. compatible to both of course). Zeta, however, currently uses the R5 media kit in almost its entirity for backwards compatibility (as some of the developers that were around are no longer around for the programs that would need a few minor changes for Be’s latest kit). We will use the OBOS kit in the distant future in all likelihood. We have been in contact with the OBOS media and printing teams. We have yet to discover the source of a bug when using OBOS’s faster oBFS, when we do, we will make an optional update available, or perhaps just throw it on BeBits 😉
hmm… wonder if I’ve hit the 8000 char limit ;-p
All you doomsayers need to realize that we have been working on this project with more people than OBOS currently has active, for longer. We have done much more, but not as low-level stuff. We have a few more drivers (with a radeon issue currently urking us… can’t seem to get HW OGL and the overlay to work nice with each other.. seperately.. WOW.. but who is gonna restart for HW OGL/Overlay switching?..ugh).
Have funs!
–The loon
I’m not speaking officially for yellowTab, but i can tell you that they won’t be using OBFS in their release. OBFS isn’t finished yet, nor is it ready for public comsumption.
Take care,
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
Hey Looncraz – I just gotta say that your excitement is quote infectious. I am really looking forward to Zeta. I just wish it was here now… I’m doing some analog to digital video conversions for a client and I love the look of the ffmpeg gui.
Can’t wait!
So Zeta came from BeOS R5? Or was it from a liscense of R6? WHat are its features is there a rough timeframe for its arrival?
Zeta is based on BeOS R5.1x+ Being Dano and later, and having a large number of the features originally planned for the real R6 from Be.
I cannot state anything in regards to licenses or contracts.. as I know nothing of them (that is Bernd’s area).
The timeframe is soon. More details should be released during CeBit. We do have a _very_ close internal deadline, which my work has pretty much met, for RC1. The wheels are rolling, and people should be able to begin getting copies for the following tasks from yellowTAB in the very near future:
Reviewing
Developing for Zeta new programs
Porting Existing programs to Zeta
You will purchase RC1 for the full purchase price of R1, however you receive R1 for free when it is released. I imagine you wlll also receive all future release canidates should there be need for multiple RC’s.
Yeah, the FFmpeg GUI is craziness.. heh… Sooooooooooo many options geez… how can one keep them straight?!?
We will not be using oBFS for the first versions of Zeta, however should we make it compatible enough, we will donate all changes to OBOS FS Team and also release the changes to the mass public if they wish to mess around with it. 😉 Or at least I will 😉 muwahaha
Anyway.. me gots works to do
–The loon
It seems like osnews is a real haven for beos fans. I honestly never see stories on the other news sites I read (although they all cover Windows, Linux, and OSX on news). It seems to me that osnews a disproportional number of beos fans to the rest of the world.
Anyways, I haven’t tried it, but I might check it out for kicks after I kill this gentoo install (I have been installing a lot “unstable” ebuild lately). I think the installation should be dead in about two days if I keep up my current pace of abuse
.
My impression is that OSnews is a haven for fans of all sorts of “minor” OSes, not just BeOS, because the operators recognise that there are more than just the three or four famous ones out there. I’ve found it an invaluable resource for maintaining my “Alternatives to Microsoft” site http://alternatives.toddverbeek.com (especially the not-Windows page), because I keep finding out about things (like Zeta) here.
Hello,
I am desperate PC user. I have great difficulty installing an 802.11b USB wifi adapter, specifically the Linksys WUSB11 Rev 2.6 adapter on ANY NON-WINDOWS SYSTEM. So far, no system had built in drivers that work out-of-the-box including Win Xp. the drivers for xp are easy enough to install, but atleast for me, are uninstallable on Mandrake 9.0 and Red Hat 8.1 b2. BeOS R5 personal edition locks up every time i try to install it on my old i810e test computer. It’s old and its documents have been around for a LONG time.
question:
Will Zeta help me in my task of a achieving an 802.11b i810e pc? I don’t like windows. I like linux, but not it’s current drivers, I like BeOS’ screenshots, but it locks up when I first boot up the CD (and the loading icons get all scrambled.)
I’ve tried following the sourceforge guide for installing Atmel chipset 802.11b USB and PCMCIA cards but to no avail.
Thanks and good luck.
short answer: no.
the USB support isn’t up to par with even Linux, and I doubt anyone in the BeOS community had time to spend on wireless drivers. Your best bet outside of Windows for that kind of stuff is definately Linux.
sorry for the disappointement
there have been some talks about wireless support in zeta at http://yellowtab.com/board , but I can’t tell what it is right now, since I don’t care to much about wireless devices…
Where do you get your information, Dave? BONE had wireless networking and Dano had (so I understand) improved USB support. I don’t see why Zeta wouldn’t have these, possibly even improved over Be’s version…?
That is hideous…jeez. Give up already. This OS is dead. No one cares. Kill it while it still has a shred of respect.
No, they mean windows that look like they were designed by children!
See Frizbe’s Hardware Matrix for information on Beos compatible hardware:
http://hardware.frizbe.net/
Dano/BONE was supposed to support a number of wireless cards, so Yellowtab should.
> Thanks in advance, Eugenia. We wouldn’t want to be labelled as mis-leading the public, now would we?
It was the headline that was submitted to us, sorry.
“That is hideous…jeez. Give up already. This OS is dead. No one cares. Kill it while it still has a shred of respect”
obviously someone cares if there are already better than 80 replies on this one posting. Obviously someone cares if there is an open source movement to bring the OS back. You might not care but other people clearly do.
I for one enjoyed using beos and i welcome an opportunity to put an easy to use media oriented os on my pc. This is cool in my opinion as linux is cool. Variety is good. I thank those persons that are putting in the efforts to bring us alternatives to windblows.
Zeta has massively improved support in networking, USB, and pretty much every area but the media kit at this writing.
The short answer to the gentleman’s question would be: in six months.
yellowTAB has a *STRONG* interest in wireless technologies. Our USB is UHCI and OHCI with full support for every USB Mass Media Storage device in reading and writing for every device ever tested. Even those nice USB thumb drives work. Just initialize them as FAT32 or BFS or HFS or..or…or… and Zeta will work with it. We have noticed that it may be necessary with some USB mass storage devices to restart before they are recognized… and the theory stands as follows:
When a USB device is added, it is ID’d as a SCSI device, as such information regarding drive parameters and storage abilities is looked for. When you have a device with removable storage media and you first plug it into a Zeta box with no media in it, you may need to install a media and then restart ( a massively time consuming 20~30 second job, excluding BIOS time). From that point forward you can mount and unmount all the new media you wish.
Of course, that means if you leave a media in the USB MMS device, it will work right off the bat. And it does..
Note to all you Windows users:
Don’t wait for a notification, you plug it in, and it is done, no drivers, no alerts, nothing.. it simply mounts on either the Desktop or under the Disks icon (depends on your settings), 😉
As it stands, USB Web Cam support has been examined by myself, but I am not a driver writer yet, so the job will be passed onto one of our competent driver writers, once the radeon issue is cured.
And yes, we have tested and used wireless networking in Zeta. My PCI rangelan works great! 😉 However, USB wireless support may wait until a later release.
For some reason, many people don’t seem to realize that there are tens of thousands of dollars being spent anually to do this. yellowTAB has to focus on keeping the investors happy. So if the investor asks for a driver for radeon in HW OGL with overlay, we do that first and foremost. We have the base system complete, we are just now only scratching at the surface of asthetics and other drivers.
Also, Zeta is not planning on being limited to just PCs. On our web-site one can easily see the “Pad Edition” meant for web pads. The base of which, is similar to the Desktop OS. We simply have to focus and release as many products and distros for as many areas as possible.
If we enjoy even 1/8th the popularity of BeOS R4.5 in our first yeat, we will become profitable. Be spent $20 million making BeOS, that is $20 million we don’t need to spend (thank the licensing gods and goddesses). Do the math..
If we sell just 10,000 copies of Zeta Home Edition (VERY LIKELY, BTW) at $39/each, that gives nearly $400,000 !! Let us assume half goes to PalmSource, leaving #200,000 still. So then let us assume $100,000 of investor cash-back requests, leaving $100,000 for further development.
Now, Bernd is a business man, not a computer nerd as some seem to think. This is why the screenshots you get from him aren’t always the best in the eyes of computer nerds such as myself. In the next few hours I will be working on the latest and greatest we have at yellowTAB, and I will be making screenshots galore of features that no other OS has ( and some that others do of course ). I will have to receive permission to share those screenshots as they will possibly reveal items Bernd does not wish to be shown yet.
Lastly, remember that the good folks at yellowTAB are almost entirely BeOS old-timers. I started back with the first x86 Demo CD, and purchased every version of BeOS since. We want, more than anything, for the user to start the machine and feel like.. WOW.. BeOS R6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!! So, there are things you must do to create this response.
1. Keep Screenshots from revealing final look.
2. Closely folow all interface guidelines USED by Be (not just what
they wrote down)
3. Make default decor either the original BeOS R5 appearance, or
something very similar (like the Gonxish theme, when completed)
4. Walk users through the ability to choose element one of decor one
and use it instead of element one of decor fifteen .. post R1
this should be completed. It is pretty much doable now, but
writing a preview window and such right now is not important to
our goals.
Also, being from the BeOS community, we at yellowTAB know what it takes to please our friends. And, if you are on BeShare at TyComSystems at the right time, you could become part of the process! I am fairly often asking for mass public opinion and suggestions.
The Gonxish decor in fact, was very well received. Mostly not because of its look, but because these people realize the complexity of doing such items, and usually know they can change what they don’t like. The people in the know are patiently awaiting Zeta. It is the Linux users who will not be happy with our goal of minimalism.
For instance, the fonts are fixed to the decors, size and all. Color as well. You do not “preview” a decor. You select it from the list, and then all your windows are magically set to that decor. You can press revert, or select another, if you close the pref app, then you ae using that decor you last looked at.
Linux users will not like how smooth the mouse moves, or how quickly the windows open.. they will get motion sickness for the first few runs. BeOS users will even say.. oh..wow..smooth.. Double buffered interface and sub-pixel precise (though the image is only updad per pixel due to video limitations of modern crappy windows-centric hardware). mouse movement make Zeta astonishingly smooth.
Zeta RC1 will outclass BeOS R5 any day of the week in practixally all areas. The remaining areas are either the same, or so technically different that a comparison is not appropriate.
-The loon
————————————————-
I am a yellowTAB Developer
All figures are imaginary, with the exception of likely number of copies sold, and the price asked for Zeta Home Edition.
The opinions I have expressed here are not neccessarily shared by all the other yellowTAB developers, and some information may not be accurate at the time of Zeta’s release, though all information is accurate to my current knowledge.
I am definately getting a copy of this! This sounds like it rocks. If RC1 is good you will have me dedicated for versions to come.
looncraz is amazing, the more he talks, the more I am interested to upgrade. He has given away quite abit of info that I never saw/looked for before on the yT site.
Also for the “never_tried_it_yet_crowd”. Give it a go. If you have a HW setup that isn’t BeOS clean, the cpu XP/P4 issue can be easily patched or already is in Max edition. The video card is also a canard, most PCs can easily have a 2nd cheap vid card thrown in, so now you have 2 cards for Windows/Linux and can see what you missed out in. Most other HW issues will not stop you from checking it out after you can see the screen.
Myself I used an nVidia in AGP slot (I don’t care what) for Windows. In a PCI slot I use an old Creative Blaster Banshee but you could pick something else off the compatibility list. I usually boot to PCI card. Question to looncraz, any dual vid card support coming?
Also it took me many tries before I could even get BeOS to work all those versions ago, many before RC3, I only succeded at R4.5 and haven’t looked back. I even dumped it a few times switching back to W2K, but I am 90% committed these days. Still need something else on occasion.
Another question, I have Gobe3 for Windows, but only the old demo for BeOS, is there anyway I could at least enable the BeOS version having paid for the Windows?
Dual head cards have some support, multiple video cards have had no work done for support. Though once or twice it has been mentioned to me that PhOS surprisinlgy worked with it, though same image on both cards.. some kind of weird phenomenon though.. theory has that it cannot work without tons of extra code in the app_server to send the screen data to multiple display devices… maybe two cards using same driver?
Your Gobe issue is a sad one. Though, if you show to pretty much any Be user that you purchased it, they will share with you the full version for BeOS / Zeta. As I will do if you desire.
–The loon
Thanks for all the answers looncraz, as long as you are answering, I have one more.
I may be getting a laptop soon, most likely a Dell Inspiron 8200. Do you know if/how well Zeta will run on laptops?
Thanks!
I fixed the About Box…
The rectangle used for the TabView:
BRect tabViewRect ( Bounds().left ,Bounds().top, Bounds().right,Bounds().bottom);
Changed to:
BRect tabViewRect ( Bounds().left ,Bounds().top+5, Bounds().right,Bounds().bottom);
Small diff huh??
–The loon
Did you fix the window manager problems I reported too (font size, wrong curving on the corners, different thickness of borders on sides)?
Thanks!
months ago I wasn’t sure I would buy another BeOS. I am in very dire straits at the moment. However, I just need to have this baby. I still use and love BeOS, and now I am sold on Zeta.
While it is now clear that these are just concept mockups, I’ll still complain a bit. I just don’t want any mistakes in these to go into the finished products.
First of all, the cross-shaped close gadget has to go. It doesn’t look by far as elegant as the usual BeOS design, which is one GUI design which I adore. Remember, the X has to go.
Yeah, the FFmpeg GUI is craziness.. heh… Sooooooooooo many options geez… how can one keep them straight?!?
And the FFMPEG GUI brought my attention. The window borders cling fair too close. Add some grey space before the borders, so they don’t look like a passe-par-tout.
Oh, and the check buttons are so small. Think about target areas. It requires a lot of attention to hit such a diminutive gadget.
> is how people keep posting screenshots as JPEG.
Maybe they still think IE still can’t read them ? (well, IE5 used the QuickTime plugin to do so anyway)
> JPEG is made for photos, not images which should be sharp, such as screenshots.
So true… that’s coz JPG uses lossy compression, and frequency coding, so sharp things get noisy.
> Use PNG instead, it will probably compress just as well.
Well, not as well as JPG, but they definitely look better (lossless compression).
> BeOS is REAL enemy for MS and any Lunix’.
Mind you, Lunix is really an OS (an unix-like for C64)
> How about OpenGL?
Well, there aren’t many supported cards for now, but at least it will be useful now: http://clapcrest.free.fr/revol/beos/shot_BZFlag_004.png 🙂
> Child Windows
as in coding, like every button is a window ? sorry, but it doesn’t make sense. just a point-of-view issue anyway.
If you mean MDI stuff, then you don’t need anything special to amulate that weird behaviour.
> (decors)
> All easy Lua code! 😉
Hmm, after fiddling with it, I wouldn’t say “easy” and “Lua” part together very well… anyway :p
(<rant>WHY oh WHY not just simple C++ ?
</rant>)
> (no mmap() and such)
Well, Zeta won’t have mmap() either for now, though it isn’t much useful in porting apps as most can be compiled without (and would work better than using a workaround anyway).
btw, I think Technix will have to pay for extra BW this month
Now this is looking more and more like a reality. I remember in the beginning everyone was wondering just how close to reality yellowTab and Zeta were. Now that we know this is the real deal, this is terribly exciting. However, I just have one question that’ll determine whether it’s truly something for me:
Will Zeta have PPC support? I think it would be amazing if I could drop this in my BeBox, and watch das Blinkenlights get a workout.
Also, will r5 compiled software run in Zeta without source modification? (It seemed to indicate that it would.) And looncraz posted something about gobeProductive … is this to imply that Productive3 will make an appearance on BeOS? Are you working with BeUnited on the Java project, or will Zeta not have Java as of yet …
Thanks in advance …
— Rob
Bernd said at yT forum that they will first see the sales of R1 and then decide about ports to other systems. (or sometihng along these lines..)
I also heard that vast majority of r5 sw work without any hassle on zeta.
Zeta will have PersonalJava (java from BeIA afaik), though I don’t know how functional it is. But I don’t mind it too much. BeUnited lately made important progress on the Java port.
K, Zeta and laptops usually get along just fine. Only issues seem to revlve around APM features of Zeta and certain chipsets. Though Zeta will most likely run on pretty much any laptop today (x86), they are not necessarily going to hevae flawless support.
Eugenia, yes I have begun addressing these concerns of yours, currently I am too busy writing books on OSNews.com to get that done for you. I will post screenshots of the final result with permission from Bernd, so give me a couple years (j/k).
R5 software is a little more than 99% compatible with Zeta *NOW*. It was not always the case, it was 95% at one point, which I didn’t like, so I snuck a fix under Bernd’s reluctant nose (net_server compatibility changes, and the media kit changes). Never know how long they will stay a peice of Zeta.
Well, I’m off for now.. gonna start smoking I guess, heh…
–The loon
Loon’s art
http://www.xentronix.com/module.php?mod=gallery&op=view&page=0&orde…
it sounds like they are saying that they are using mock ups to keep the final look secret until it is revealed.
If this is true, can I ask why?