After six months of bug-fixing and development of new features, SkyOS 3.9.7 is now available to download. There is a new installer, automatic device mounting, VMWare 3/4 support, a media player, SkyKruzer the web browser and more. The OS can be installed on the hard drive or can be used with the ISO “live” CD (29 MB).
SkyOS 3.9.7 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
thats major eye candy: the mp3 player supports winamp 2.0 skins!
this OS is really coming together, its nice to finally see a few user applications showing up..
my next highest anticipated apps before this is my daily OS is instant messaging (with skin) and basic office suite (many GPL ones to choose from, which toolkit to convert?)
he says that SkyOS apps are now skinnable.. but is the GUI itself skinnable? such as the windows/taskbar/widgets? the standard ones seem to be basically proof of concept
but still very impressive!
This is really shaping up nicely. Very impressive!
You mean one guy writing an OS in his spare time managed to do write a nice clean application installer framework, and not a SINGLE ONE of the Linux distributions has managed to do the same? This is one of the single biggest hurdles faced by any new Linux user today!
SkyOS rocks man, good luck in the future 🙂
Yes I know there was an RPM install wizard written by someone a while back, but I can’t even find the project today, and that shows how far it went
…that new mediaplayer and web browser? If this
thing has enough speed and its mediainternet systems
are good enough it might be worth switching over to
this as a media system.
SkyOS seems to be coming together pretty well for ‘just
a hobby OS’ like some have complained here before. His
design decisions which seemed to piss people off because
of their ‘randomness’ and the out of whack ‘priorities’
like working on the Java VM and Quake instead of whatever
more ‘important’ things they thought should be tackled
have yeilded to what appears to be an amazing bit of
work. Reminds me of what I’ve read about Linus’ early years with Linux, where he did things just for fun…
Good book BTW; but I wonder if this is next big thing?
Especially once he adds in more of that LinuxWin32
subsystems support…
A JavaVM is certainly impressive. I wonder if anyone might be able to post screenshots of Java applications running in SkyOS?
With Linux binary compatibility, this thing could easily snag a big share of the “alternative desktop” space. Driver support will always be an issue, but thank goodness for GPL Linux kernel drivers 🙂
I know this is by far a muuuch smaller project, but I’d like to see, just for kicks, a few compare / contrast articles putting SkyOS up against bigger OSs, just to see how it stacks up. It’d clearly be lesser in most ways, but just for kicks. To sort of get a feel for… stuff.
Yes, I think that’d be a great piece for OSNews to do. Any chance we’d be able to see something like that in the future, Eugenia?
SkyOS should next put a little effort into its UI. Don’t flame me for saying so, but it’s not great at the momemnt. It really only needs a few tweaks here and there to give it a better look; and since I’ve seen the look and feel of SkyOS improve over its development, I know the author has the ability
I certainly wish I had the programming talent to write my own OS in my spare time.
Hehehe that was the first thing I was thinking when I saw the screenshot. An hobby programmer, by *himself* only, does what an army of l33t Linux hackers still can not deliver to this day!
I was thinking the same! It is getting pretty ridiculous for linux…
http://207.44.206.59/~skyos.org/sky397_iso.img
It’s up now.
It’s pretty obvious WHY an army of 1337 linux programmers have not delivered this yet … there’s absolutely zero organization to Linux development. There’s no unified vision for what Linux should turn out to be … it’s all such a mess.
Cannot get the thing to work under VMWare or Bochs, guess I will have to wait a while for it to mature a little
It’s called focus!
this guy knows what he wants and goes and does it, he doesn’t have split personalities telling him that his interface sucks and to creat a second or even third while maintaining the first also because the left side if his brain likes it better…
choice is good to a certain point, but at some point it becomes a distraction or just added bulk, and takes away from the development as a whole.
it has been my thought recently (i haven’t always thought this way) that a project like this has a better chance of becoming a *real* *consumer* desktop contender than Linux ever will.
same goes for Syllable or even OpenBeOS someday…why? because they will have one goal, one focus -> desktop use…it won’t be a server/router/firewall/palmtop/desktop, they are simply focused on creating an end-user desktop
there won’t be divisions in the camp fighting about what desktop environment to use or which one to develop for. Creating the same exact app for both DE’s…and so on.
it has also got me thinking…why does it HAVE to be Linux on the desktop anyway? I will be the first to admit that it works great in the server, embedded, and even corporate desktop market! Mainly because in those situations it either doesn’t need an interface, or the ones in charge will dictate which environment to support.
But again, why does it have to be Linux? why does one shoe have to fit all? if the community (and not just the GNU/OSS folks) want a open desktop to rival MS why not create one from scatch, from the ground up, to BE a desktop OS? Focused from the begining to create a consumer desktop.
Linux on the server -> {SkyOS?, Syllable?, OpenBeOS?} on the desktop!
Can anyone who is wise and learned in the ways of SkyOS give a very brief description of it? Is there any reason for many/most of us who’ve never tried it to dive in? Does it actually specialize in some particular area of computing (ie: BeOS was multimedia, *BSD’s are primarily server OS’s, etc) or is it a general all-around OS? What is its kernal? Thanks in advance!
By the way, before anyone says it: yes, I’ve been to the SkyOS web site, and they don’t really get into this stuff there (at least as far as I found…that was about a month ago).
The fonts remind me so much like the ones in Windows. That’s a great sign. It has the potential of a real desktop OS!
Can’t get it to install on VPC6…
Anyone get it to install on VPC willing to post a drive image for download?
>Yes, I think that’d be a great piece for OSNews to do. Any chance we’d be able to see something like that in the future, Eugenia?
Comparing SkyOS to bigger OSes is of no use or purpose. SkyOS works, but it can’t be used on a daily basis as a BSD or QNX or even BeOS could. Therefore, it makes more sense to actually compare it to the same of its kind: TriangleOS, MenuetOS, Syllable/AtheOS.
And I already wrote something like this last year:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1385
SkyOS works with VMWare and it is the only runtime/emulator that is being tested with by its developer.
Excellent work, maybe now it would be a good time to think about including a journaling filesystem. AFS (from Atheos/Syllable) is very fast so maybe this or JFS would be a wise next step.
Wish the “ISO” image would work with VMware … have to mount the image with Daemon Tools and point VMware to that.
Well, that doesn’t help me on my Mac :p
Usually Bochs and/or VPC 6 are good enough to run any OS I want…
He he he. Running VMWare full screen was killing my eyes at 60Hz at 2:30 in the morning! Lucky i had the sense to *eventually* run it in a window.
It’s looked damned fine to me.. couldn’t seem to enable sound though
Is there anyone that post here have ever tried it? I tried the CD from ISO images but it just cost me to through away to CDs. It just didn’t boot as claimed.
So if there are anybody ever tried please give some guide. (Better that writing comment about something that you yourselves didn’t try)
emey,
my second attempt to burn the .img to disc was successful through Nero using ‘raw’ data mode.
I’m not sure but I think this would work for cdrecord too if you use ‘-raw’ argument. My first attempt (using cdrecord) was a dud like yours.
After finally getting the cd burned grub would not boot properly. Although the install guide says to use ‘c’ in the grub menu for this I found ‘e’ (for edit) was easier. I had to add ‘/bootdevice=”/dev/cd3″‘ to my kernel parameters (that’s the line with ‘kernel /kernel.sys’) to get it to boot properly.
SkyOS is quite impressive, but it looked like there was no USB support as I had to plug my mouse in the old serial port to use it. Also heed the warning in the command prompt that says there is no error checking! So easy to crash!
Anyway, although it’s far from complete, it’s great to see work like this. Very inspiring.
I downloaded the zip file, and unzipped it onto a fat32 partition that I have windows on… Booted up fine with grub… Looks much like 3.9.6 does. I pulled out my SB Live! and put in an older Ensoniq PCI card, which uses the es1371 chipset that’s now supposed to be supported. I also have a Realtek 8139 card, which is supposed to be started… Couldn’t get either to work.
The mp3 player wouldn’t launch when I double clicked it. And trying to run “mpg123” on an mp3 file just got me dropped back to the terminal prompt.
When trying to get the network configuration utility to give an IP address to my realtek card (which showed up as one of the options in the utility), I got a number of “device not found” errors (or something very much like that). Same thing happened if I tried to use dhcp…
All in all, SkyOS would be much more impressive if it actually worked the way it’s supposed to 🙂
Adam
I think your reply enlighten me enough.
Thanks dude.
Agreed! Finally an OS with small yet readable fonts. Just like Windows! No freekin AA fonts, just simple, easy to read small fonts.
After an untold number of revisions that I’ve tried through the months (years?) that wouldn’t boot for one reason or another, SkyOS 3.9.7 *FINALLY DOES!!!*
After my “happy, happy, joy, joy” dance was over (about 10 seconds), I was suddenly struck by this odd, alien graphical monster that reared it’s head at me…
One can only describe it’s hideous appearance by something like, oh, say… DRAGGING A WINDOW!
No, it’s not one window… it’s 5! No, it’s 10… 20… 30… ACK! I’ve got my own pop-up windows nightmare (even when I’m NOT using the Internet!) and they’re following my every move! Chasing me to the ends of my desktop! AAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEE! 😀
Um… is this just a VESA 2.0 thing or…? I have a GeForce3 Ti200 card in my system. Do I need a supported video card to get better video performance?
As well, I can’t run OpenGL Teapot Demo from the desktop. I double-click all day long and it just sneers at me. “I’m not gonna run, so THERE!” Is this because it actually *doesn’t* work or because my video card isn’t supported?
In the overall, I am extremely pleased to have a working copy of SkyOS to boot, even if it has near to no actual functionality for me. At least this copy WORKS!
Keep up the good work, Robert… you’re FINALLY getting somewhere. At least on my system.
Luposian
Hi,
I’d like to have a look at SkyOS but I wanna be sure it won’t affect the windows stuff on my FAT32 part… (the same goes for the MBR…)
Is it possible ?
If so, how ?
Leo.
Just toss the whole SkyOS install right on your C: (or D:) root directory. That’s where I have it… hasn’t bothered my Win98SE install one iota.
But your mileage may vary…
Luposian