Interactive Studio has published the QubeOS web site which serves as the developer’s web site for Qube application developers. You can also download there the Windows, DOS, and Linux compatible Qube environment and the Windows Qube SDK. An interesting article found on QubeOS web site is about the Object Routing technology, a technology which Michal Stencl has been developing for Qube. OSNews featured an interview with Michal recently. Our Take: A port to FreeBSD would also be desirable.
Qube Launches Developer’s Web Site
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Great!!! I can’t wait to see some Qube apps… i’d love to see a FreeBSd version…
I just downloaded and played around with QubeOS a little, and have to admit that it’s pretty slick. Definately need to look into it a little more.
Can’t FreeBSD run Linux Apps anyway?
Look here
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2000/03/17/linuxapps.html
A native port of FreeBSD is way more desirable than emulating Linux. Especially because Qube in the future is going to bypass X.
Bypassing X would mean reinventing yet another wheel right? I mean, how will you convince the likes of NVidia to write 2D/3D drivers for your X? We need better X toolkits, not an X replacement.
Michal is looking into use the X drivers as a kind of module, but not use the rest of X itself (the same way that BlueOS wants to do the app_server for BlueOS 2.0 – bypassing X, but use its drivers). I was discussing that with Michal the other day on ICQ.
“We need better X toolkits, not an X replacement”
I don’t know who you are reffering to when you say “we”, but IMNSHO *nix needs to dump X, two years ago. KDE and Gnome BOTH are slow bloated system pigs, thanks to running on top of X as well as the “proffesional” quality of toolkits currently available in the *nix world. There are people out there working on replacing X, but most of the Weenix Unies and slashdotters brush them off. Interest in their projects would be like admitting X Windows sucks, and that would hurt their fragile egos.
If you want a true cross-platform or “write once, run anywhere”, I would take a hard look at REBOL before indulging in Qube . . .
>If you want a true cross-platform or “write once, run anywhere”, I would take a hard look at REBOL before indulging in Qube.
Rebol is not a graphics toolkit/OS (as Qube is) therefore it cannot ‘replace’ X or anything similar. Rebol _needs_ X or Qube or Windows or the command line in order to function. It is like comparing oranges with apples.
“Bypassing X would mean reinventing yet another wheel right? ”
IMOP, it would be replacing a round rock with a nice modern steel wheel. Faster and stronger…
I would like to say to everybody that Qube is not a scripting language and not run on the technology similar to Java(tm). Qube use the new technology and applications running under Qube runs on level of MACHINE CODES. It means it’s much faster then Java(tm) virtual machine, because Java’s applications are translated to native codes at run-time. Qube’s applications are compiled once and from this moment use the native codes of operating systems. Only few codes are use such as unary plus, minus, addressing, etc… from the CPU. Others are automatically repointed to operating system, becuase of use C pointers.
>>Bypassing X would mean reinventing yet another wheel right?
Yeah, but sometimes its necessary to reinvent the wheel if
you want to improve things. X is a standard that is how *many*
years old? Perhaps its time to find a better way? Stencl’s
previous contributions to the open source community with his
work on FreeBE/AF give ample reason to believe that the guy’s
able to make these improvements and implement them–the page
this earlier project: http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/
lists that they were actually able to make NVida drivers!
>>>>NVidia Riva 128, TNT. Conflicts with Windows!
>>>>100% portable, banked and linear modes. Supports
>>>>config extension. Hardware accelerated.
Hey Michal, you should change your email and isp password.
has ANYONE written apps for this thing?? i haven’t found any, i’m also a little curious how it works with the platforms that supports it, as when i run the included apps, no new processes etc. get created in Win2k according to taskman. I would think it would need this kind of stuff if its to be so great. Looks like a toy right now. Does it use its own special “stuff”? Event then, i don’t see a use for it right now. Someone enlighten me please.
Eugenia, why don’t you start posting articles on Litestep and Geoshell. They’re alot more useful than this is. This isn’t going to replace X anymore than Litestep and Geoshell are.
The “OS” part in this apps name is truly misleading, as its just a program that reads some special binary as applications. The first time i saw QubeOS it was under another name, can’t remember what it was called, but Michal’s name rang a bell. It was the equivilent of dosshell, with a spiffy UI. That was only a year ago.
I’m not trying to step on any toes or anything, i just can’t figure out why this was posted to an OS news site, and the only thing i can come up with is because its name has “OS” in it. Someone tell me what purpose is this supposed to serve, and why one would want to license it. There’s 100+ embedded platforms (not that QubeOS actually is one) out there that run on their own, have a nice UI, uses standard tools, etc (read: nothing weird). Why should i or anyone else use this program as a basis for anything, and what would it be the basis of??
and this Object Routing stuff? Why is this better? It seems like a new term for a global (?) and worse iteration of function pointers in C or C++. Isn’t one likely to just completly trash other stuff running? ie: replace Do(int) with Do(string) just as an example. One of OO’s strong points is that one can make a class, add new features to it etc through its descendants without breaking stuff that’s already running. As before, maybe i’m missing something.. I’m just imagining it being really easy to bring this thing (lack of a better word) to its knees.
pity
>>The first time i saw QubeOS it was under another name,
>>can’t remember what it was called, but Michal’s name
>>rang a bell. It was the equivilent of dosshell, with
>>a spiffy UI. That was only a year ago.
That would probably be SEAL 1.x, which has since been open
sourced and REWRITTEN by a group of guys to be SEAL 2.0..
(Not quite finished at this point but still quite beautiful!)
Can be found at: http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/
AFAIK the only one doing any development on SEAL 1.x using
the earlier kernel is a Greek dude who calls himself “Bad
Sector” who releases something called “Bad Seal” which can
be found at: http://scorpius.spaceports.com/~dig/
>>has ANYONE written apps for this thing??
Bad Sector has been waiting for the SDK in order to be able to
port some of the apps from SEAL X.x over to QubeOS. In an earlier
post to the comments list he stated:
“Michal (again): do you want the help system to be ported to Qube? I’m still waiting for that SDK…”
He also said simuliar things at the “new” SEAL 2.x forums…
So we’ll have to wait and see what makes it over. IMHO Seal
apps are well written and work fairly well at hardware recognization.
SEAL 1.x was developed by myself as well
2 years ago. SDK for Qube is now available at http://www.qubeos.com as you can see. I would like to help to all in porting SEAL application to Qube. If we can talk about Kostas, I like him and hope all bad about us will be definitly ended, if he read something about this.
What good does this do? Nobody ever pays someone to make something cross-platform. Qt (though slick) is not highly used by serious commercial writers, and ther only truly cross-platform app is Mozilla. Mozilla uses its own giant set of buggy, proprietary UI libraries.
Then there’s Gobe productive. But that uses BeOS to run in windows and linux. How ironic.
So Qube is essentially doing what Gobe is…. I’m seeing in the near future Gobe triyng to do exactly what Qube is… Offering cross-platform porting services… Except Gobe has a head start– they have a proven, commerically viable product on the shelves, (if they ever get around to fixing the graphing engine and having an equation editor…
>Eugenia, why don’t you start posting articles on Litestep and Geoshell. They’re alot more useful than this is.
OSNews does not care if a product is going to finally make it commercially or not. If we cared, we would not have write articles for V2OS or AtheOS, or even BeOS for that matter. OSNews reports on all cool OS-related news.
Qube is a full Toolkit, Litestep is a theming engine and replacement for Explorer. Nothing to compare here.
As editor in chief over here, I don’t have to answer to you Mr Doctor, but I will play nice this time and explain to you some things.
>i just can’t figure out why this was posted to an OS news site,
For the same reason KDE and QT and GTK and Gnome and even GnuSTEP news are posted in this site all the time. GUIs/toolkits are important parts of an OS, so they are getting coverage over here. Mozilla, IE and Opera news are also not OS news as per se, but again, are important parts of a modern system, therefore, they are also taking coverage on OSNews. In fact, Qube is way more relevant as ‘news’ on OSNews than Mozilla/IE is.
Next time you would like to question my judgement, send an email to our osnews team and we will discuss it there further.
mozilla with his GUI is on the same level of interest of QUBE….
and mozilla works on linux, QUBE at least for me isn’t …
(anyone got it working? it try to set a negative resolution and 2 color depth… I set the config file, don’t ask about it)
“OSNews does not care if a product is going to finally make it commercially or not. If we cared, we would not have write articles for V2OS or AtheOS, or even BeOS for that matter. OSNews reports on all cool OS-related news.”
No one is disputing that, i simply stated that my opinion was that this was about as OS related as Litestep. In that it runs on an operating system.. woopty. How is it any less related to a shell program, or an app launcher of sorts? One could say that writing plugins for Litestep and/or any other shells is the equivelant of writing an “application” for this “os”. I think i’m missing the cool factor. V2_OS, it does something, BeOS, same here.. QubeOS ??
“As editor in chief over here, I don’t have to answer to you Mr Doctor, but I will play nice this time and explain to you some things.”
Don’t be so defensive. It was a simple question. I know you don’t have to answer to me, and i don’t expect you to. I’m sorry if my sarcasm pissed you off, as i do like your site. But thanks for doing me such a favor as playing nice.
“For the same reason KDE and QT and GTK and Gnome and even GnuSTEP news are posted in this site all the time. GUIs/toolkits are important parts of an OS, so they are getting coverage over here. Mozilla, IE and Opera news are also not OS news as per se, but again, are important parts of a modern system, therefore, they are also taking coverage on OSNews. In fact, Qube is way more relevant as ‘news’ on OSNews than Mozilla/IE is.”
The difference here is that KDE, QT and GTK can be understood, and have a well defined purpose(s). I’m not the only here who is having trouble figuring out what this thing is supposed to do/be/provide, etc. So i run it so i can browse my file system and look at a gui.. what else? I can’t use it as an embedded os be because.. well it needs an os.. can’t use it as an embedded gui.. because.. well.. it doesn’t do anything. One would think that a straight answer as to what its targeted goal is could be provided. Everything is so vague and unanswered. Is this a conspiracy of some sort? hehe.
Arguing and bickering asside, can someone explain this thing in even a little amount of detail?
Hello, I see, there are people they try to find the factor of use. It’s simple one. This is only an engine of the desktop environment and there is SDK for programming applicaitons for this engine. I’m sure there aren’t many applications for Qube now, but what KDE had in 2 months of existance. This is new desktop environment. What’s the purpose and point of view for Qube is something like KDE running on many platforms. Can you run application developed for KDE on Windows ? Can you run KDE in DOS ? This is the point of view in Qube. Yes, you can say, I have KDE why I need to use Qube. You couldn’t. Qube is only the thing that run on 3 operating systems now. The thing, that KDE can’t. Qube uses your native filesystem without problems. You couldn’t format or mount FAT to run Qube or access files in Qube. Why do you thing, there is no usage on embedded os ? It’s easy to be ported. Applications for embedded systems are many times focused only for few things of usage. They can be prepared. There was only one man that developed Qube. You can understand there can’t be many applications without support of others. I prepared the engine and SDK for programming in Qube and the inspiration is, that application you will write for Qube will run on all currently supported platforms much faster than any of scripting applications or under Java(tm).
Thank you for reading.
Arguing and bickering asside, can someone explain this thing in even a little amount of detail?
I was just wondering what it does aswell…
from what I can work out it uses Machine Code and it’s own GUI and Shell so pointless as a xp tool kit.
Yet, “No more porting of your applications to other operating systems is necessary, because Qube is compatible with most of them.”
So I guess I’m the only person that wants a XP tool kit with uses the native l&f…
Mlk
Does it just run on top of Linux for the Intel/X86 architecture? Can I run it from PPC Linux? If not, will I ever be able to do so, or otherwise use Qube on my G3?
I’m just a simple guy, but if i understand it right it looks a lot like what amiga is doing with amigaDE.
Anyway, it sounds interesting if you ask me
I guess the Dos version won’t run in a DOS session under OS/2, will it?